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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1forth of his spirit, who there, 5 upon the matrix in * the spirit moved upon the fifth form, framed the fiery heaven, as the the w»t«r. 78 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 5 highly worthy Moses hath clearly written of it. For the matrix is the water-spirit in the original, in the first form ; and now when it became material in the place of this world, then the spirit moved upon the water in the heavenly matrix, which is immaterial (from whence the material water is generated), and so formed the creatures. 30. Thus in this springing up [or going forth] the material matrix was extinguished, and the wrath fulness [tartness or fierceness] is come in the stead thereof. And the devil remained in the original of the matrix (which cannot be altered in eternity), between paradise and this world, in the dark matrix ; and with the creation of the earth, he was thrust down from his high throne [or seat], where now the fiery starry heaven is. THE SIXTH CHAPTER Of the Separation in the Creation, in the third Principle.

21. ~1~F we consider of the Reparation and the 1 distinction, J- springing forth in the third Principle of enle', form," this world, how the starry heaven should spring whereby every up, and how every star hath a peculiar form and own^ecuHar*" property in itself, in every of which a several es centre is observed, so that every one of them is fixed [or steady] and master [or guider] of itself, and that every one of them ruleth in the matrix of this world, and 2worketh and generateth in the 2 Or qualified matrix after their kind. And then afterwards, if we consider the sun, which is their king, heart, and life, without whose light and virtue 3 they could s the starsneither act nor effect any thing, but remain in the hard dark death ; and this world would be nothing (but a fierce rough hardness). And further, if we consider the elements of fire and water [and observe] how they continually generate one in another, and then how the constellations rule in them, as in their own propriety ; and also consider what the mother is, from whence all these things 79 80 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 6 must proceed ; then we shall come to see the 1 Or bringer separation, and the eternal mother, the l genetrix forth. .. . . of all things. 2. Nay, we have it clearly and plainly to be seen in ourselves, and in all things, if we would not be so mad, blind, and self-conceited, and would not be 2 outward so drawn and led by a 2 school-boy,'' but did stick

3close to the schoolmaster himself, who is the master of all masters; for we see indeed that all things spring out of the eternal mother; and as she is in her own birth, so she hath generated this world, and so is every creature also generated. And as that [mother] is in her springing forth in multiplication, where every fountain [or source] hath another centre in it from the genetrix, and a separation [or distinction], but undivided and not asunder, so also this world is generated out of the eternal mother, which now is such another genetrix, and yet is not separated [or sundered] from the eternal 3 mother, but is come to be in a material manner, and it hath through the sun attained another light and life ; which [light and life] is not the wise Master himself, but the wise Master (who is God) he keepeth that light and life, so that it standeth and continueth in the eternal matrix, and yet it is not the eternal wisdom itself. 3. Now because this birth [of the sun] hath a beginning through the will of God, and entereth again into its 4 ether, therefore it hath not the virtue or power of the wisdom ; but it continually Ch. 6] OF THE SEPARATION IN THE CREATION 81

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