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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123. In such a manner as this the sun rose up in the Fiat, and out of the sun (in its first kindling) [arose] the other planets, viz. upwards, out of the raging bitterness, Mars [arose], which the splendour Ch. 8] OF THE CREATION OF THE CREATURES 117 of the sun stayed [or upheld] when it discovered 1 it : And out of the virtue of the sun, which raised l Mars. itself higher [arose] Jupiter, imprisoned in the centre of the Fiat : And out of the chamber of anguish [arose] Saturnus : And downwards, Venus [arose] from the soft mildness, when the harshness was overcome, and was soft, sweet, and sinking down like water. And when the light kindled, then out of the sour harsh wrath came love and humility to be, running downwards : And out of the overcome virtue in the sour harshness [arose Mercurius], wherein standeth the knowledge of what was in the original before the light : But when the light made the virtue in the place of the sun material, as it were in an earthly manner [arose] the moon. 24. This the world comprehendeth not, but scorneth it, therefore I will here no further cast the . Pearl before the swine, for there belongeth another light to this knowledge ; therefore I will pass that by, and go on.

225. Out of the anguish of darkness (when God spake the [Word] Fiat therein) came forth all things : The anguish hath its original in the Fiat, and the Fiat [hath its original] in the will, and the will is eternal without original ; for it is (in God) the matrix of the genetrix. 26. God is invisible, and the will also is invisible, and the matrix also is invisible, and yet they are in substance, and are from eternity, and continue 118 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 8 in eternity. And the Word is the virtue of the will ; and the virtue [or power] maketh the Fiat, and the Fiat maketh the kingdom, and it is all alike eternal in one only substance : The will hath generated the Word from eternity ; and the Word the virtue, and the virtue the spirit, and in the spirit is the light, and in the light is the power, understanding, and knowledge ; otherwise it were altogether nothing. 27. That light hath wrought in the knowledge, and in the understanding, and generated a similitude of its substance ; and the substance which wrought was the Fiat, and the Fiat formed the similitude which was generated out of the will, and made it visible ; and the similitude was generated out of the darkness, out of the eternal nothing ; and yet somewhat was there, viz. the originalness of the \ Or taketh anguish, out of which the eternal will l generateth its 6ttrii3l original. itself from eternity.

328. Now the similitude also hath received such a will out of the Fiat, as the eternal will is ; and it hath generated the virtue [or power], and the virtue is the heaven ; and the light which is become shining in the virtue, is the sun, and that worketh in the virtue, so that there is understanding and knowledge : or else all in this world would be an immovable substance, and all would lie still, and so neither herb nor grass would grow. 29. Therefore in the Fiat is arisen out of the anguish the sim ilitude of the knowledge and underCh. 8] OF THE CREATION OF THE CREATURES 119 standing, and that is the constellation ; and it is the fifth form of the birth in the Fiat, and the Fiat hath severed the forms in the birth, so that every essence is several ; as hard, soft, thick, thin, hot, cold, bitter, tart, sour, sweet, and so forth, as we see : And the spirit continued in the matrix of the heaven, which goeth out from thence (viz. the air), and the spirit receiveth the understanding from the constellation ; for it is a member of the other in one only mother. 30. Now the matrix (viz. the created heaven) in the Fiat, together with the stars, is the similitude of all that was from eternity, though not visible ; and the Fiat is in the similitude ; and the paradise, wherein the angels dwell, is hidden in the matrix ; and God is shining in the paradise, and yet incomprehensible ; as the glance [or lustre] of the sun cannot be comprehended.

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