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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143. For the will in the centre climbeth aloft till it generateth the fire, and in the fire is the substance and essentiality generated. For it is the spirit thereof, and the end of the will in the dark mind, and there can be nothing higher generated in the anguish than the fire, for it is the end of nature, and it generateth again the anguish and the source, as may be perceived. Now therefore the dark anguishing [aching, or anxious] mind hath not only one substance, viz. one being [or essence] in itself, but many, or else no quality could be generated ; and yet it is truly but one [being, essence, or] substance, and not many. 44. Thou dear soul, thus saith the high spirit to thee ; yield up thy mind here, and I will shew it thee. Behold, what doth comprehend thy will, or Ch. 10] THE CREATION OF MAN, AND HIS SOUL 173 wherein consisteth thy life? If thou sayest, In water and flesh : No, it consisteth in the fire, in the warmth. If the warmth were not, then thy body would be stiff [with cold], and the water would dry away ; therefore the mind and the life consisteth in the fire.

245. But what is the fire ? First, there is the darkness, the hardness, the eternal cold, and the dryness, where there is nothing else but an eternal hunger. Then how cometh the fire to be ? Dear soul, here [in the fire's coming to be] the spirit of God (viz. the eternal light) cometh to help the hunger; for the hunger existeth also from the light : Because the divine virtue beholdeth itself in the darkness, therefore the darkness is desirous [and longing] after the light ; and the desirousness is the will. 46. Now the will or the desirousness in the dryness cannot l reach the light ; and therein con- J Or attain, sisteth the anguish in the will [longing] after the light ; and the anguish is attractive, and in the attracting is the woe, and the woe maketh the anguish greater, so that the anguish in the 2 harsh- - sourness, or , , . . astringency. ness attracteth much more, and this attracting in the woe is the bitter [sting or] prickle, or the bitterness of the woe ; and the anguish reacheth after the [sting or] prickle with attracting, and yet cannot 3 comprehend it, because it resisteth, and 3 Or catch it. the more the anguish attracteth, the more the [sting or] prickle raveth and rageth. 174 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 10

347. Now therefore the anguish, bitterness, and woe in the [sting or] prickle, are like a brimstonespirit, and all spirits in nature are brimstone : They [torment, or] cause the anguish in one another, till that the light of God cometh to help them ; and then there cometh to be a flash, and there is its end, for it can climb no higher in nature ; and this is the fire, which becometh shining in the flash, in the soul, and also in the mind. For the soul reacheth the virtue of the light, which doth put it into meekness ; and in this world it is the burning fire : In hell it is immaterial, and there it is the eternal fire, which burneth 1 Or property, in the x quality. 48. Now, thou dear soul, here you see in a glass how very near God is to us, and that he himself is the heart of all things, and giveth to all virtue 2 careless, [power] and life. Here Lucifer was very 2 heedless, inconsiderate. .

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