Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence

Gate passedSeeker and aboveModern transcription — not a facsimileJacob Boehme (1575–1624)PUBLIC DOMAIN as published. Boehme d. 1624; the Sparrow translation is 1656. Per-part determination MADE 2026-08-29: the eight front-matter segments carrying the 2009 electronic edition own introductory apparatus were withheld (three excised in full, five redacted in part where a public-domain title block or Boehme text shared the page). The remaining 5,022 segments are public domain and are open at seeker tier.905 of 1000 segments carry a modern register · 343 pp

Jacob Boehme — the works in English, and one in Frencheditor’s preface to the volume

Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.

The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.

Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.

That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.

The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.

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1of the lovely pleasant fountain, which presseth through all the fountains, so that from hence the light is kindled. 13. And the sound or noise, in the turning wheel, is now the declarer or pronouncer in all the fountains, that the beloved child is born ; for it cometh with its sound before all doors, and in all essences ; so that in its awakening, all the virtues or powers are stirring, and see, feel, have smell, and taste one another in the light, for the whole birth nourish eth itself in its first mother, viz. the 2 harsh essence, being now become so thin [or pure], 2 Or sour, meek, sweet, and full of joy, and so the whole substantiality. birth standeth in very great joy, love, meekness, and humility, and is nothing else than a mere pleasing taste, a delighting sight, a sweet smell, a ravishing sound to the hearing, a soft touch, beyond that which any tongue can utter or express. How should there not be joy and love, where, in the very midst of death, the eternal life is generated, and where there is no fear of any end, nor can be ? 14. Thus in the harshness there is a new birth again ; understand, where the tart [sour astringeiicy] is predominant in the birth, and where the fire is not kindled according to the bitter sting or prickle, or from the beginning of the anguish : But the rising [or exulting] joy, is now the centre and kindling of the light, and the tartness [or stringency] hath now 8in its own quality the1 Or for.

226 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 3 SUL, oil, and light of the father: Therefore now the birth out of the twig or branch of the first 1 Or tart, sour tree is qualified altogether according to the l harsh fountain. . r -. fountain ; and the fire therein is a tart [or sourj fire ; and the bitterness a tart bitterness ; and the sound a tart sound ; and the love a tart love ; but all in mere perfection, and in a totally glorious love and joy. 15. And thus also the first bitter sting or prickle, or the first bitterness (after the light is kindled, and that the first birth standeth in perfection) 8 twig or geuerateth again out of its own quality an 2 essence, wherein there is a centre, where also a new fountain or source springe th up in a new fire or life, having the condition and property of all the qualities, and yet the bitterness in this new sprout is chiefest among all the qualities ; so that there is a bitter bitterness, a bitter tartness, a bitter waterspirit, a bitter sound, a bitter fire, a bitter love, * Or exulting yet all perfectly in the 3 rising up of great joy. 16. And the fire generateth now also a fire, according to the property of every quality ; in the tart spirit it is tart ; in the bitter, bitter ; in the love, it is a very hearty yearning, kindling of the love, a total, fervent, or burning kindling, and causeth very vehement desires ; in the sound it is

34 Or life. a very shrill tanging * fire, wherein all things are very clearly and properly distinguished, and where the sound in all qualities telleth or expresseth, as it were with the lips or tongue, whatsoever is in Ch. 3] OF THE ETERNAL NATURE 27 all the fountain-spirits, what joy, virtue, or power, essence, substance, or property [they have], and in the water it is a very drying fire. 17. The propagation of the love is most especially to be observed, for it is the loveliest, pleasantest, and sweetest fountain of all. When the love generateth again a whole birth, with all the fountains of the original essences out of itself, so that the love in all the l springing veins in that a Or wellnew birth be predominant and chief, so that a centre ariseth therein, then the first essence, viz. the tartness, is wholly desirous or longing, wholly sweet, wholly light, and giveth itself forth to be food to all the qualities, with a hearty affection towards them all, as a loving mother hath towards her children, and here the bitterness may be rightly called joy, for it is the rising or moving [thereof]. What joy there is here, there is no other similitude of it, than when a man is suddenly and unexpectedly delivered out of the pain and torment of hell, and put into the light of the divine joy.

The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.

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Commentary

whole issue ·

Cross-estate[P-V]translated_asboehme:2:1:003

This English 'Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence' and boehme:11 are the same work in two languages — and the French is not just any translation. It is Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin's own: 'Des trois principes de l'essence divine', issued by the Périsse brothers of the rue Mercière. Saint-Martin learned German in his fifties expressly to read Boehme, and spent his last years translating him. The estate therefore holds, side by side, the text that formed the Unknown Philosopher and the form in which he gave it to France — the single most direct documentary link between the two founders of this corpus.

→ boehme:11