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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1operation at last, the earth and stones come forth, or concretion For in the second Principle (viz. in the holy birth) there is only spirit, light, and life ; and the eternal wisdom hath wrought in the eternal inanimate genetrix, which is void of understanding (viz. in her own property) before the original of the light ; out of which came the 3 dark chaos, which in the 3 Just, dirt, elevation of Lord Lucifer (when the light of God departed from him, and the fierceness of the source of the fire was kindled) became hard matter (viz. stones and earth), whereupon followed the gathering together of the earth, as also the spewing out of Lucifer from his throne, and the creating of the third Principle ; and thereupon it followed, that he was shut up in the third Principle as a prisoner, expecting henceforth the [judgment or] sentence of God. Now whether it be not a shame, disgrace, and irksomeness to him to be so imprisoned between paradise and this world, and not to be able to comprehend either of them, I propose it to be considered. 68 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 5 8. Thus now if we will speak of the third Principle, viz. of the beginning and birth of this world, then we must consider the root of the genetrix, or begettress, seeing every Principle is another birth, but out of no other essence ; and so we may find, that in the first Principle in the indissoluble band (which in itself is inanimate, and

21 Or working hath no true life, but the l source of the true life is born by the moving spirit of God, which from eternity hath its original in the first Principle, and goeth forth from eternity in the second Principle, as in the birth of the Heart or Son of God) the matrix of the genetrix is set open, which is originally the 2 astringency, 2 harshness ; yet in the light it is the soft mother or tartness. . . _. of the water-spirit. I bus it is seen and found clearly and plainly before our eyes, that the spirit of God hath wrought there in the matrix, so that out of the incomprehensible matrix (which is but a spirit) the comprehensible and visible water is proceeded. 9. Secondly, you [may] thus see the separation clearly by the stars and fiery heaven, that the eternal separation [or distinction] is in the eternal matrix ; for you may see that the stars and the fiery heaven, and the watery, the airy, and earthly, are generated out of one mother, that they qualify with [or have influence upon] one another, and that the birth of their substance is in one another, also that one is the case or vessel to hold the other in, and yet they have not one and the same [property] Ch. 5] OF THE THIRD PRINCIPLE 69

3qualification [or condition]. Thus here in the separation you [may] know, that the eternal matrix hath a separation in itself, as is mentioned before in the third chapter concerning the eternal birth of the four anguishes, where the fire is generated between harshness and bitterness, and the light in the flash of fire, and so every source retaineth its own due. 10. Understand it thus : as the spirit moved this matrix, so the matrix wrought, and in the kindling from the spirit of God in the fifth form of the matrix, the fiery heaven of the constellations did exist, which is a mere quinta essentia, or quintessence, born in the fifth form of the matrix, in which place the light hath its original ; out of which at last the sun is born [or brought forth], wherewith the third Principle becometh opened and manifested, which [sun] now is the life in the third Principle, and the opener of the life of every life in the matrix, in this place, or locus ; as the Heart of God in paradise, in the immaterial heaven and birth, openeth the eternal power of God, wherein the eternal life continually springe th up, and wherein the eternal wisdom continually shineth. ) Thus also the light of the sun (which is sprung up in the inanimate matrix) by the [flowing, hovering, or] moving spirit in the matrix, openeth the third Principle of this material world, which is the third and beginning Principle ; which as to this form taketh an end, and returneth into its 70

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