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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130. As hath been often mentioned, God is the essence of all essences, wherein there are two essences in one, without end, and without original ; viz. the eternal light, that is, God, or the good ; and then the eternal darkness, that is, the 2 source ; and 2 the nature yet there would be no source in it if the light were property. not. The light causeth that the darkness longeth after [or is in anguish for] the light, and this anguish is the source of the wrath of God (or the hellish fire) wherein the devils dwell : From whence God also calleth himself an angry, zealous [or jealous] God. These are the two Principles, the 142 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 9 orgna of which we know nothing of, only we 1 Or working know the l birth (therein), the indissoluble band, which is as f olloweth : 31. In the originalness of darkness, there is 2 sourness, 2 harshness and austereness, this harshness causeth sharpness, that it be light ; for harshness is a desirousness, an or attraction, attracting ; and that is the first ground of the

2willing [or longing] after the light, and yet it is not possible to comprehend it ; and the attracting in the will is the [sting or] prickle, which the desirousness attracteth, and the first stirring [or moving]. Now the prickle cannot endure the attracting in the will, but resisteth, flieth up, and yet cannot get away from thence ; for it is generated in the attracting. But because it cannot remove from thence, nor endure the attracting, therefore there is a great anguish, a desirousness [or longing] after the light, like a furiousness, and like a breaking whirling wheel ; and the anguish in the bitterness riseth up in the 8 wrath after the light, but cannot get it, being desirous in the anxiety to lift up itself above the light, yet doth not overcome, but is infected [impregnated or mingled] with the light, and attaineth a twinkling flash ; and as soon as the harshness, or the hardness (viz. the darkness) getteth the same into it, it is terrified, and instantly goeth away into its 4 ether : And yet the darkness continueth in the centre. And in this horror [terror or shriek] the hardness or harshness becometh mild, soft [supple], and thin ; and the 3 fierceness. 4 Or receptacle. Ch. 9] OF PARADISE, ETC. 143

3flash is made in the bitterness, which flieth up thus in the prickle : Thus the prickle discovereth itself in the mother, which so terrifieth the mother with the flash, that she yieldeth herself to be overcome ; and when the prickle strengthened itself in the mother, and findeth her so mild, then that is much more terrified, and loseth its [fierce, strong] wrathful propriety, and in the twinkling of an eye becometh white, clear, and bright, and flieth up very joyfully, trembling with great delight [lust] and desire ; and the mother of harshness from the light cometh to be sweet, mild, thin, and material, even water. For she loseth not the essence of the harsh condition, and therefore the essence attracteth continually to it out of the mildness, so that out of the nothing, somewhat cometh to be, viz. water.

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