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. Therefore the devil also, in regard of the might of the tart [strong fierce wrath], was called a prince of this world in the [angry strong] fierceness, of which you shall find [more] about the fall. And therefore God created but one man ; for God would that man should continue in paradise, and live eternally ; and on the contrary, the sternness [or strong fierce wrath] would tempt him, [to try] whether he would put his imagination and will wholly into the Heart of God, and into paradise, wherein he was. 24. And because Adam was drawn forth out of the strong [stern, sour] essences, therefore he must be tempted, [to try] whether his essences (out of which his imagination and lust proceeded) could stand in the heavenly quality, and whether he would eat of the Verbum Domini [the Word of the Lord] ; and [to try] which essence, whether the paradisical, or the strong [fierce, wrathful], would overcome in Adam. 25. And this was the purpose of God, therefore to create but one man, that the same might be 188 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 11 tempted [and tried] how he would stand, and that upon his fall he might the better be helped : And the Heart of God did before the foundation of the world in his love foreintend [or prepurpose] to come to help [him] ; and when no other remedy could do it, the Heart of God himself would become man, and regenerate man again. x

226. For man is not fallen out of strong [fierce, angry] pride, like the devil ; but his earthly essences have overcome his paradisical essences, and brought them into the earthly lust, and in that regard he hath grace again bestowed upon him. The highest, strongest, and the mightiest Gate of the Temptation in Adam. 27. Here I will faithfully admonish the Reader, 1 not only in deeply to consider Moses, for l here, under the veil but in ail ' of Moses, he may look upon the face of Moses : ings. Also he may see the second Adam in the Move of or°iaWOmb' ^e yirgin : Also he may see him in ^s temptation, and upon the cross ; as also in death ; and lastly, in the virtue of the resurrection at the right hand of God : Also you may see Moses on mount Sinai ; and lastly, the clarification [or transfiguration] of Christ, Moses and Elias on mount Tabor : Also you may see herein the whole Scripture of the Old and New Testaments : Also you find herein all the Prophets from the beginning of the world hitherto, and all the might and power of all tyrants, wherefore things have gone so, and must still go [as they Ch. 11] CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TEMPTATION 189

3do] : Lastly, you find the golden gate of the omnipotence [or almightiness], and of the great power in the love and humility; and wherefore the children of God must still be tempted ; and wherefore the noble grain of mustard-seed must grow in storms, crosses, and misery, and wherefore it cannot be otherwise : Also herein you find the essence of all essences. 28. And it is the gate of the lily, concerning which the spirit witnesseth, that it will l hereafter 1 shortly. grow in the wrathful tree, and when it groweth, it will bring us true knowledge, by its pleasant and fragrant smell, in the Holy Trinity ; by which smell Antichrist 2 will be stifled, and the tree of a Note, we the stern anger be broken down, and the beast ceaithe erp enraged, which hath its might and strength the tree for a time, till it be dry and fiery, because it can get no more sap from the wrathful tree that is broken down ; and then it will smell [or lift up itself] in the [fierce, tart] 3 wrath against the tree 3 Or rage. and the lily, till the tree (of which the beast did eat and was strong) destroyeth the beast, and his power remaineth in the fire of the originalness. And then all doors [will] stand open in the great tree of nature, and the priest Aaron [will] give his garment and fair ornament to the Lamb, that was slain and is [alive] again. 29. Reader, who lovest God ; hereby it will be shewn thee, that the great Mysteries * meet us, 4 Or are im- •_ . . parted to us.

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