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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1dark harshness is terrified, and sinketh back as vanquished. And so when the bitterness findeth the mother overcome, and as it were half dead, or soft [or meek], it is terrified more than the mother. But the shriek or terror being past in the harsh mother, which is now half dead, or soft [pliable or meek], then the bitterness loseth its terrible right [or property], and becometh white, light, and clear ; and thus is the kindling and birth of the fire, as is mentioned before. 23. Dear Reader, account not this ridiculous ; that this birth (which also is just so in the l begin- i in the ning of your life) may not trouble or confound womb, you ; and observe it further. 24. When God in the first matrix moved himself to create, and created the angels, he created them in paradise, in the light holy matrix (which is this and no other) ; but the matrix, with its fiery, dark, and harsh bitter property, remained altogether hidden ; for the light of God from eternity preserved it, and kept it pleasant, clear, and bright. But when God moved himself to create, then it became manifested ; for the angels were created out of the indissoluble band, out of the matrix, and were bodified from the moving spirit of God. 25. Now when God .had created great potent princely angels, and that in the place of the fourth form in the matrix, where the source of fire hath its original, they stood not, neither did they cast 76 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 5

2their imaginations forward into the fifth form, wherein the sprouting forth of paradise consisteth ; but they cast their imaginations back into themselves, and formed [or created] a will [or purpose] in the matrix, to domineer in the fire over the light of God and paradise. For the fiery matrix (viz. the abyss of hell) moved itself in £he creation so hard, that Lucifer (that great prince) hath formed his will out of it, and is continued therein, supposing that so he should be a great and terrible lord in his whole place [of dominion]. 26. Thus the devil moved the matrix, and the fiery form moved the devil ; for 2 that also would be creaturely, as [well as] all the other forms in the matrix, which yet was opposite to the fifth form in the matrix, where in the meek and clear light the pleasant source of love springeth up, wherein the second Principle standeth eternally. 27. When this storm was in the creation (in the first Principle) the matrix became very big [or much impregnated] and kindled ; and every form in the matrix wrought [stirred or acted]. But because the anger and wrath had there elevated itself, and that this place could not thus subsist in paradise, therefore God moved this place yet more in the matrix, which was yet the more kindled, where then is to be the devil's bath [repository or dwelling-place], and the fourth form stood in the flash of the fire, which reflected back into the Oh. 5] OP THE THIRD PRINCIPLE 77

3mother, and l found the spirit of God in the l felt or peri* • r -i i r ceived. forming [or creation], where in a moment [that fourth form] lost its wrathful [smart, fierce property, authority or] right, and became in great joy, white, clear, and 2 light : and in this place [or thing con- a Or bright sisteth or] standeth the Fiat, by which God created heaven and earth : for before the Fiat, the third Principle was not manifested, but there was merely paradise in the place of this world. 28. But God seeing that the great prince Lucifer would domineer in the matrix, in the strength of the fire in his place, therefore he shut up the fifth form in the matrix of paradise from him, for it is shut up both in its inward corporeal form, and outwardly also. 29. For when the matrix became 3 thin again, 3 rarefied. dead and vanquished, from the risen light, then the material [matrix] turned to water, as we may perceive ; and in this kindling before the light of the sun (when the matrix was still in the harsh fierceness) the matrix attracted that which was wrought together into a water-spirit, out of which came the rocky cliffs, stones and the dark earth, which before the time of the creation was but a 4 chaos ; and in that time sprang forth the third « dust, ciond, Principle, the fiery heaven, in the fifth form in puddle. the matrix, by the Fiat, which the Father spake through his Heart, or Son, by and in the going

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