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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1ness ; and there it was tried whether men could live in perfect obedience under this clarity [glory or brightness]. 5. What was done there ? Answer : Moses was called by God (out from [among] the children of Israel) up into mount Sinai, and stayed there forty days : And then he would try the people whether it were possible for them to put their trust [or confidence] in God, that they might be fed with l heavenly bread, that so they might attain * manna, perfection. And there now stood the mind majoris mundi, of the 2 great world ; and on the contrary, 2 Or macroco sin the eternal mind of God, in strife one against another ; God required obedience, and the mind of this world required [or desired] the pleasure of this transitory life, as eating, drinking, playing, dancing ; therefore they chose them moreover their belly-god, a Golden Calf, that they might be free and live without law. 6. Here you see again, how the three Principles strove one against another about man : The law that was given to Adam in the Garden of Eden brake forth again, and desired to have obedience ; in like manner, also, the spirit of strong [fierceness or] wrath brake forth again in the false fruit and voluptuousness, and sought the corruptible life. And this strife now lasted forty days, before they set up the calf, and fell [wholly like Adam] from God ; so long the strife of the three Principles continued. 200 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 12

27. But now, when they were fallen away from God, [as Adam was], then came Moses with Joshua, and saw the apostasy [or falling away], and brake the tables in pieces, and led them into the wilderness ; where they must all die, except Joshua and Caleb : For the clarity [or brightness] of the Father in the fire, in the first Principle, could not bring them into the Promised Land ; and although they did eat manna, yet it did not help [in] the trial, only Joshua, and at length JESUS, must do it. 8. And when the time came, that the true Champion [or Saviour] returned again out of paradise, and became the child of the virgin, then was renewed, the strife of the three Principles 1 came again. For there he was again set before the tempting tree, and he -must endure the hard brunt before the tempting tree, and stand out the temptation of the three Principles, which was not possible for the first Adam to do. And there the strife continued forty days and forty nights, just so long as the strife with Adam in paradise continued, and not an hour longer ; and then the Champion [or Saviour] overcame. Therefore open your eyes aright, and look upon the Scripture aright ; although it be brief and obscure [to reason], yet it is very true. 9. You find not in Moses, that Adam was driven out of paradise the first day ; the temptation of Israel, and of Christ, informeth us quite otherwise. For the temptation of Christ is to a tittle (in all

3Ch. 12] OPENING OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE 201 circumstances) the same with the temptation of Adam. 10. For Adam was tempted forty days in paradise, in the Garden of Eden, before the tempting tree, [and tried] whether he could stand, whether he could set his inclination on the Heart of God, and only eat of the Verbum Domini [the Word of the Lord] ; and then [if he had stood], God would have given him his body (the heavenly limbus) to eat, that he should eat it in his mouth, not into his body ; he should have brought forth the child of the virgin out of himself ; for he was neither man nor woman [male nor female] ; he had the matrix, and also the man [or masculine nature] in him, and should have brought forth the virgin full of modesty and chastity out of the matrix, without rending of his body. 11. And here is the strife in the Revelation of John, where a woman brought forth a son, which the dragon and the 1worm would devour; and » Or serpent. there stood the virgin upon the earthly moon, and despiseth the earthiness, and treadeth it under feet. And so should Adam also have trodden the earthiness under foot, but it overcame him ; therefore afterwards the child of the virgin (when it had overcome the tempting tree) must also enter into the first death of the strong [fierce] wrath in the death, and overcome the first Principle. 12. For he stood forty days in the temptation in the wilderness, where there was no bread nor drink, 202

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