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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1him, and I will grind him and break him to pieces, and his spirit must live in me ; and although thou world supposeth that he is thine, because he beareth thy image, yet his spirit is mine, generated out of my kingdom ; therefore take what is thine from him, I will keep that which is mine. 35. Now what did the virtue in Adam, in this strife ? It flattered with all the three [kingdoms]. It said to the Heart of God, I will stay in paradise, and thou shalt dwell in me : I will be thine, for thou art my Creator, and thou hast thus concreted [or extracted] me out of all the three Principles, and created me : Thy refreshment is pleasant, and thou art my bridegroom, I have received of thy fulness, and therefore I am impregnated [or with child], and I will bring forth a virgin, that my Ch. 11] CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TEMPTATION 193 kingdom may be great, and that thou mayest have mere joy in me : I will eat of thy fruit, and my spirit shall eat of thy virtue [or power] ; and thy name in me shall be called 1MMANUEL, God with us.

236. And when the spirit of this world perceived that, then it said, Wherefore wilt thou only eat of that which thou comprehendest not, and drink of that which thou feelest not ? Thou art not yet merely a spirit, thou hast from me all the kinds of comprehensibility in thee ; behold, the comprehensible fruit is sweet and good, and the comprehensible drink is l mighty and strong, eat and l powerful, drink from me, and so thou shalt come to have virtue or all my virtue and beauty ; thou mayest in me be s mighty [and powerful] over all the creatures, for the kingdom of this world shall be thy own, and thou shalt be lord upon earth. 37. And the virtue in Adam said, I am upon earth, and dwell in this world, and the world is mine, I will use it according to my lust [will, and pleasure]. Then came the command of God (which was 2 received in the centre of God, out of the a enclosed, circle [or circumference] of the eternal life), and compresaid, In the day that thou eatest of the earthly fruit, thou shalt die the death : This command was comprehended or enclosed (and hath its original in the eternal Father) in the centre, where the eternal Father continually from eternity generateth his Heart or Son. 13 194 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 11 38. Now when the worm of darkness saw the command of God, it thought with itself, here thou 1 Or have wilt l not prevail, thou art spirit without body, nothing to . 7 111 do. and contrariwise, Adam is corporeal, thou hast

3but a third part in him, and besides, the command is in the way ; thou wilt even slip [or creep] into the essences, and flatter with the spirit of this world, and take a creaturely form upon thee, and send a legate [or ambassador] out of my kingdom, clothed in the form of a serpent, and wilt persuade him to eat of the earthly fruit, and then the command destroyeth his body, and the spirit remaineth [to be] mine. Here now the legate [or ambassador], the devil, was very willing [and ready] at this, especially because Adam in paradise was in his place, where he should have been ; and [he] thought [with himself], Now thou hast an opportunity to be revenged ; thou wilt mingle lies and truth so together, that Adam may not [observe or] understand it, [the treachery], and so thou wilt tempt him. Of the Tree of Knowledge [of] Good and Evil. 2 might. 39. I have told you before, out of what 2 power the tree is grown ; viz. that it grew out of the earth, and hath wholly had the nature of the earth in it, as at this day all earthly trees are [so] (and no otherwise, neither better nor worse), wherein corruptibility standeth, as the earth is corruptible, and shall pass away in the end, when all shall Cll. 11] CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE TEMPTATION 195

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