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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11. ~^T"OW the highest question is, What that is -1-N which caused the mind of the devil so to elevate itself, and that so great a number of them are fallen in their high-mindedness [or pride] ? Behold, when God set the Fiat in the will, and would create angels, then the spirit first separated all qualities, after that manner as now you see there are many kinds of stars, and so the Fiat created them [several]. Then there were created the princely [angels], and the throne angels, according to every quality (as hard, sour, bitter, cold, fierce, soft, and so forth, 1 in the essences, till to the 1 in the end of nature) out of the source of the fire ; a simili- essential tude whereof you have in the stars, how different ^ they are. 2. Now the thrones and princely angels, are every one of them a great fountain ; as you may perceive the sun is, in respect of the stars, as also in the blossoming earth. The great fountain-vein [or well-spring] in the source, was in the time of the Fiat in the dark mind, the prince or throne177 12 178 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 11

2angel : There out of each fountain came forth again a centre in many thousand thousands ; for the spirit in the Fiat manifested itself in the nature of the darkness, after the manner of the eternal wisdom. Thus the manifold various properties that were in the whole nature, went forth out of one only fountain, according to the ability of the eternal wisdom of God ; or as I may best render it to be understood by a similitude ; as if one princely angel had generated out of himself, at one time, many angels ; whereas yet the prince doth not generate them, but the essences ; and the qualities go forth with the centre in every essence, from the princely angels, and the spirit created 1 by them 1 with the Fiat, and they continue standing 2 Or company, essentially. Therefore every 2host (which proceeded out of one [and the same] fountain) gat a will in the same fountain, which was their prince (as you see how the stars give all their will into the virtue [or power] of the sun) ; of this, much 3 The learned must not be said to my 3 Master in Arts, he holdeth it impossible to know such things, and yet in God all things are possible, and to him a thousand years are as one day.

33. Now of these princely angels one is fallen (for he stood in the fourth form of the matrix of the genetrix in the dark mind, in that place in the mind where the flash of fire taketh its original) with his whole host that was proceeded from him : Thus the fiery kind [condition or property] moved in reason. Ch. 11] CIRCDMSTANCES OP THE TEMPTATION 179 him to go above the end of nature, (viz. above the Heart of God), that kind stood so l hard kindled J Or fiercely. in him. 4. For as God said to the matrix of the earth, Let there come forth all kinds of beasts, and the Fiat created beasts out of all the essences ; and first divided the matrix, and after that the essences and qualities ; and then he created them out of the divided matrix, male and female. But because the creatures were material, therefore every kind [species or generation] must thus propagate itself from every essence ; but with the angels not so, but [their propagation was] sudden and swift ; as God's thoughts are, so were they. 5. But this is the ground : every quality [or source] would be creaturely, and the fiery [property] elevated itself too mightily, into which Lucifer had 2 brought his will ; and so it went 2 Or set his . , . 7 , . . delight or

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