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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1115. Beloved mind, we write no conceits and tales, it is in earnest, and it is as much as our bodies and souls are worth ; we must give a strict account of it, as being the talent that is committed 8 Or offended, to us. If any will be 2 scandalized at it, let them take heed what they do ; truly it is high time to awake from sleep, for the bridegroom cometh. 3 The confes- 116. 8 1. We Christians believe and acknowledge, that the eternal Word of God the Father became a true self -subsisting man (with body and soul) in the body [or womb] of the Virgin Mary, without man's 4 Or having * interposing : For we believe, that he was conceived do^n i?.g by the Holy Ghost, and born of the body of the 5 Or defiling. Virgin, without 5 blemishing of her virgin [purity or] chastity. II. Also we believe, that (in his human body) he died and was buried. III. Also [we believe], that he descended into Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 421 hell, and hath broken the bands of the devil (wherewith he held man captive) in pieces, and redeemed the soul of man. IV. Also we believe, that he willingly died for our iniquities, and reconciled his Father, and hath brought us into l favour with him. * 0* grace. o V. Also we believe, that he rose again from the dead on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and there sitteth at the right-hand of God.

2VI. Also we believe, that he shall come again at the last day, to judge the living and the dead, and take his bride to him, and condemn the ungodly. VII. Also we believe, that he hath a Christian Church here upon earth, which is begotten in his blood and death, [and so made] one body with many members, which he cherisheth, and governeth with his spirit and Word, and uniteth it continually (by the holy Baptism, of his own appointing, and by the Sacrament of his Body and Blood) to [be] one only body in himself. VIII. Also we believe, that he protecteth and defendeth the same, and keepeth it in one mind. And now we will, here following, set down all out of the deep ground (according to every thing's own substance) what our knowledge is, as far as is now necessary. THE EIGHTEENTH CHAPTER Of the promised Seed of the Woman, and Treader upon the Serpent. And of Adam's and Eve's going forth out of Paradise, or the Garden in Eden. Also of the Curse of God, how he cursed the Earth for the Sin of Man. 1 That is, we 1. "\~\7"-^ will not concoct the ^eat in the must not \l \/ .. speak of the mouth, and play with the Mysteries, with the8 to write one thing, and confess another with the

3mouth, to please the ear, as is used nowadays, ou™heartz.ea where they cover themselves continually with a strange cloak, whereas all is nothing else but mere hypocrisy, appearance, and [juggling] or fighting with a shadow. The spirit of God is not in such a one, but he is a thief and a murderer, and he useth his pen for nothing else but his own pride. If he 2 Or if he had 2 power, then he would himself cast all away, were from the • .•••••* «a r • J 11 true spirit, tnough he should [under a strange coverj acknowledge it but with half a mouth : He is to speak freely out of the abyss of his heart, and to write without a cover ; for Christ hath done away his covering [or veil], and his loving countenance appeareth to the whole world, for a witness to all people. 422 Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 423

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