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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1that shall not see it, by reason of their sleep and 2 children of great drunkenness ; yet the sun will shine to the SSStaLl!" Children at midnight. Thus I commit the reader s Or sweet, to the 3 meek love of God. Amen. 1 Or preat darkness, or blindness. CONTENTS OHAP. PAQE INTRODUCTION ........ xxxv 1. Of the first Principle of the divine essence . . 1 2. Of the first and second Principles. What God and the divine nature are : wherein is set down a further description of the Sulphur and Mercurius 10 3. Of the endless and numberless manifold engendering, [generating] or birth of the eternal nature . . 19 4. Of the true eternal nature, that is, of the numberless and endless generating of the birth of the eternal essence, which is the essence of all essences ; out of which was generated, born, and at length created, this world, with the stars and elements, and all whatsoever moveth, stirreth, or liveth therein ........ 29 5. Of the third Principle, or creation of the material world, with the stars and elements ; wherein the first and second Principles are more clearly under- ' stood. ........ 64 6. Of the separation in the creation, in the third Principle 79 7. Of the heaven, and its eternal birth and essence, and how the four elements are generated ; wherein the eternal band may be the more and the better xxxi XXX11 THE THREE PRINCIPLES CHAP. PAGE understood, by meditating and considering the material world 87

28. Of the creation of the creatures, and of the springing up of every growing thing, as also of the stars and elements, and of the original of the substance of this world ....... 105 9. Of the paradise, and then of the transitoriness of all creatures ; how all take their beginning and end ; and to what end they here appeared . . .128 10. Of the creation of man, and of his soul, also of God's breathing in ....... 151 11. Of all circumstances of the temptation . . .177 12. Of the opening of the Holy Scripture, that the circumstances may be highly considered . . .197 13. Of the creating of the woman out of Adam . .224 1 4. Of the birth and propagation of man . . . 257 15. Of the knowledge of the eternity in the corruptibility of the essence of all essences . . . 303 16. Of the noble mind of the understanding, senses and thoughts. Of the threefold spirit and will, and of the tincture of the inclination, and what is inbred in a child in the mother's body [or womb], Of the image of God, and of the bestial image, and of the image of the abyss of hell, and similitude of the devil ; to be searched for and found out in [any] one man ...... 339 17. Of the horrible, lamentable and miserable fall of Adam and Eve in paradise ..... 369 18. Of the promised Seed of the woman, and Treader upon the Serpent. And of Adam and Eve's going put of paradise, or the Garden in Eden. Also of CONTENTS XXX111 CHAP. PAGE the curse of God, how he cursed the earth for the

3sin of man ....... 422 19. Of the entering of the souls to God, and of the wicked souls entering into perdition . . .471 20. Of Adam and Eve's going forth out of paradise, and of their entering into this world. And then of the true Christian Church upon earth and also of the antichristian Cainish church . . . 502 21. Of the Cainish, and of the Abellish kingdom: how they are both in one another. Also of their beginning, rise, essence and drift : and then of their last exit. Also of the Cainish antichristian church, and then of the Abellish true Christian Church : how they are both in one another, and are very hard to be known [asunder]. Also of the arts, states, and orders of this world. Also of the office of rulers [or magistrates], and their subjects : how there is a good and divine ordinance in them all : as also a false, evil, and devilish one. Where the providence of God is seen in all things, and the devil's deceit, subtlety and malice [is seen also] in all things ...... 556 22. Of the new regeneration in Christ [from] out of the old Adamical man . . . . . .586 23. Of the highly precious Testaments of Christ, viz. Baptism and his Last Supper .... 632 24. Of true repentance : How the poor sinner may come to God again in his Covenant, and how he may be released of his sins . . . . . .658 25. Of the suffering, dying, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God : Also of his ascension into heaven, and sitting at the right hand of

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