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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1is harshness, bitterness, and fare ; and yet they 8 Tne attractare not three things, but one only thing, and they one generate another. Harshness is the first tart> 8niart" ness. father, which is strong [fierce or tart], very sharp and attracting to itself ; and that attracting is the [sting] or prickle, or bitterness, which the harshness cannot endure, and it will not be captivated in death, but riseth and flieth up like a strong fierce substance, and yet cannot remove from off its place : And then there is a horrible anguish, which findeth no rest ; and the birth is like a turning wheel, twitching so very hard, and breaking or bruising as it were furiously, which the harshness cannot endure, but attracteth continually more and more, harder and harder ; as when 52 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 4 steel and a flint are struck one against the other, from which the twinkling flash of fire pro1 the flash of cecdeth ; and when the harshness perceiveth * it, Mhe harsh- 2 it; starteth and sinketh back, as if it were dead nes8' and overcome. And so when the flash of fire cometh into its mother, the harshness, and findeth her thus soft and overcome, then it is much more terrified [than the harshness], and becometh in the twinkling of an eye white and clear. And now when the harsh tartness attaineth the white clear light in itself, it is so very much terrified that it [falleth or] sinketh back, as if it were dead and overcome, and expandeth itself, and becometh

2very thin and [pliable or] vanquished : For its own 3 AS when the source was dark and hard, and now is become s light smi'ttiriitiie and soft ; therefore now it is first rightly become hard cold ice • , j j j • j_i_ • -^ into thin fluid as it were dead, and now is the water-spirit. 50. Thus the birth getteth an essence that hath sharpness from the harshness, and sweetness, thinness, and expansion from the light. And now when the flash of fire cometh into its mother, and 4 Or can work findeth her so sweet, thin, and light, then it *loseth no more. . . its own propriety m the qualification, and flieth aloft no more, but continueth in its mother, and loseth its fiery right [or propriety], and trembleth and rejoiceth in its mother. 51. And in this joy, in the water-spring [or 6 Or stream, source], the pleasant 5 source of the 6 bottomless lbieMu.?fa- love risetn up, and all that riseth up there is the inconceivable, second Principle : for the whole begetting or generCh. 4] OF THE TRUE ETERNAL NATURE 53 ating falleth into a glorious love ; for the harshness now loveth the light dearly, because it is so refreshing, cheerly, and beautiful ; for from this pleasant refreshing it becometh thus sweet, ^our- gentle or f A] teous, and humble [or lowly] ; and the bitterness now loveth the harshness, because it is no more dark, nor so strongly [eagerly or fiercely] attractive to itself, but is sweet, mild, pure, and light.

352. And here beginneth the taste, whereby one continually [trieth, tasteth, and] proveth the other, and with great desire they mingle one within another, so that there' is nothing but a mere courteous embracing. Thus the bitterness now rejoiceth in its mother, and strengthened itself therein, and for great joy riseth up through all the essences, and declareth to the second Principle, that the loving child is 2born; to which then all2 begotten, the essences give heed and rejoice at that dear child ; from whence the hearing ariseth, which is the sixth form where the wheel of the birth standeth in triumph. And in this great joy the birth cannot contain itself [within its bounds], but expandeth itself, flowing forth very joyfully, and every essence [or substance] generateth now again a centre in the second Principle. 53. And there beginneth the unfathomable [or unsearchable] multiplication ; for the flowing and springing spirit, that proceedeth from the first and second Principles, confirmeth, fixeth and establisheth all ; and in the whole birth it is as a 54 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 4 growing or multiplying in one will ; and the birth attaineth here the seventh form, viz. the multi1 Or in. plication l into an essence of love. And in this form consisteth paradise, or the kingdom of God, or the numberless divine birth, out of one only 2 Or in ail essence 2 into all essences.

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