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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118. So also the sound, where the love is predominant ; it bringeth most joyful tidings or news into all the forms of the birth, as also the fire in the love, that kindletb the love rightly in all the fountain-spirits, as is mentioned above ; and the love kindleth love in its essence. When the love is predominant in love, it is the sweetest, meekest, humblest, most loving fountain of all that springeth in all the fountains ; and it confirmeth and fixeth 28 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 3 the heavenly birth, so that it is a holy divine essence or substance. 19. You must also mark the form of the waterspirit ; when that generateth its like, so that it is predominant in its regeneration or second birth, and that a centre is awakened in it, (which itself in its own essence doth not awaken, but the other fountain-spirits do it therein), it [the water-spirit] is still and quiet as a meek mother, and suffereth the others to sow their seed into it, and to awaken the centre in it, so that the fire riseth up, from 1 Or begtnneth whence the life l is moved. In this [form] the to stir. t J

2fire is not a hot burning [scorching] fire, but cool, mild, soft and sweet ; and the bitterness is no bitterness, but cool, mild, budding, and flowing forth, from whence the forming [or figuring and beauteous shape] in the heavenly glory proceedeth, and is a most beautiful substance ; for the sound also in this birth floweth forth most pleasantly and harmoniously, all as it were palpably or feelingly ; or in a similitude, as a word that cometh to be an essence, or a comprehensible substance. For in this regeneration that is brought to pass in the water-spirit, (that is, in the true mother of the regeneration of all the fountain-spirits), all is as it were comprehensible or substantial ; although no comprehensibility must be understood here, but spirit. THE FOURTH CHAPTER Of the l true Eternal Nature, that is, of the*0r right. numberless and endless 2 generating of the 2 begetting, or n • 7 /• i 77T 7-7- propagation. Birth of the eternal Essence, which is the Essence of all Essences; out of which was generated, born, and at length created, this World, with the Stars and Elements, and all whatsoever moveth, stirreth, or liveth therein.

3The open Gate of tlie Great Depth. 1. "i FERE I must encounter with the proud and _J — L seeming conceited wise, who doth but grope in the dark, and knoweth or understandeth nothing of the spirit of God, and must comfort both him and also the desirous longing Reader who loveth God, and must shew them a little door to the heavenly essence ; and shew them in what manner they should understand these writings, before I come to the 3 chapter itself. ' °r p°int2. I know very well, and my spirit and mind sheweth me as much, that many will be offended at the simplicity and meanness of the author, for offering to write of such high things ; and many will think (with themselves) he hath no authority 29 30 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 4 1 substance, or offspring. to do it, aud that he doth very sinfully in it, and runneth clean contrary to God and his will, in presuming, being but a man, to go about to speak and say what God is.

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