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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1THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 12 then came the tempter, and would have brought him from obedience, and said, He should out of the stones make bread ; which was nothing else, but that he should leave the heavenly bread (which man receiveth in faith and in a strong confidence in God), and put his imagination into the spirit of this world, and live therein. 13. But when the child of the virgin laid the heavenly bread before him, and said, Man liveth 1 Or by, or of. not only * from this world, * from the earthly eating and drinking, then came the second way [or kind] of temptation forth, viz. the might [power, dominion, and authority] of this world ; the prince of the wrath [or strong fierceness] would give him all the power of the stars and elements, if he would put his imagination into him, and pray to [or worship] him. That was the right scourge [or whip] wherewith Adam was 2 scourged, [viz.'] with the might, riches, and beauty of this world, after which at last Adam lusted, and was taken ; but the child of the virgin laid before him that the kingdom was not his, [viz.'] belonging to the prince of the [fierce, strong] wrath, but [it belonged] to the Word and Heart of God ; he must worship God, and serve him only.

214. The third temptation was the same into which the devil also was fallen, 3with high-mindedness [or pride], when he [Christ] was tempted to have flien from above, from the pinnacle of the temple, and should have elevated himself above humility and 2 Or driven ou with. 3 Or out of. Ch. 12] OPENING OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURE 203 meekness ; for the meekness maketh the angry Father, in the originalness, soft and joyful, so that the Deity [thus] becometh a soft and pleasant essence. 15. But lord Lucifer would (in the creation) have fain been above the meekness of the Heart of God, above the end of nature ; therefore he would fain also have persuaded the son of the virgin to fly without wings, above the end of nature, in pride ; of which shall be handled in its due place at large. I have brought this in thus, but in brief, that my writing may be the better understood, and how it stands with [or upon] the ground [or foundation] of the Scripture, and is not any new thing, neither shall there be any thing new [in them], but only the true knowledge, in the Holy Ghost, of the essence of all essences. Of Adam's Sleep 16. Adam had not eaten of the fruit before his sleep, till his wife was created out of him ; only his essences and inclination had eaten of it in the spirit by the imagination, and not in the mouth ; and thereupon the spirit of the great world captivated

3him, and mightily * qualified in him [or infected him]. l Or wrought And then instantly the sun and stars wrestled with him, and all the four elements wrestled so mightily and powerfully, that they overcame him ; and [so] he sank down into a sleep. 17. Now to an understanding man it is very easy 204 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 12 1 Or which will 1)6 20rpropagato be found and known, that there neither was, nor should be any sleep in Adam, when he was in the image of God. For Adam was such an image as we shall be at the resurrection of the dead, where we shall have no need of the elements, nor of the sun, nor stars, also [of] no sleep, but our eyes shall be always open eternally, beholding the glory of God, 1 from whence will be our meat and drink ; an^ tne centre iQ tne 2 multiplicity, or springing up of the birth, affordeth mere delight and joy ; for God will bring forth out of the earth into the kingdom of heaven no other [kind of] man, than [such a one] as the first [was] before the fall ; for he was created out of the eternal will of God ; that [will] is unchangeable, and must stand ; therefore consider these things deeply. 18. 0 thou dear soul, that swimmest in a dark 3 lake, incline thy mind to the gate of heaven, and behold what the fall of Adam hath been, which God did so greatly loathe, that [because of it] Adam could not continue in paradise : behold and consider the sleep, and so you shall find it all.

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