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. 18 his suffering and dying for the poor soul of man, that it might be delivered from the eternal death, and be regenerated anew, in the Son of the virgin ; which was done after three thousand nine hundred 1 3970 years, and l seventy years ; and then the Word of the promise, which God promised to Adam and Eve in the paradise in the Garden of Eden, when they fell into sin, and which imaged [or imprinted] itself in the centre of the life, through which all men that come to God are justified, became man. 34. It continued a long time in the covenant of circumcision (in the life and light of the Father) with the shadows and types of the incarnation of 2 Or compre- the Son ; but these could not 2 reach the earnestrising again, ness of the coming again of the body out of the grave ; but the Word must become man, if man must rise again out of the grave. It [the covenant] ransomed the soul indeed, so that it could stand before the Father (in the gate of the corruptibility) in the fire of the sharpness, but not in the pleasant joy, before the light of the holy Trinity ; and besides, it could not bring the new body forth out of the element, for it was defiled too much with sin.

235. Thus in that fore-mentioned year, the angel Gabriel came, being sent of God the Father to Nazareth, to a poor (yet chaste and modest) virgin, called Mary, (her name signifieth plainly, in the language of nature, A redemption out of the valley of misery ; and though it be plain, that Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OP THE WOMAN 439 we are not born of the high l schools, with 2 many » universities, languages, yet we have the language of nature in our school of wonders [or miracles], fixed [stedfast, i or perfect], which the 3 Master of Art, in his 3 Or learned Pontificalibus, will not believe), and he greeted her * through God, and brought the eternal B com- 4 Or from. tmand of the Father out of his will, and said to B Or messagem her, 6 Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, thou 6 Luke i. 'J8-35 38 blessed among women : And when she looked upon him, she was terrified at his saying, and [considered] in her thoughts what manner of salutation this was. And the angel said to her, Fear not, Mary, thou hast found grace with God ; behold, thou shalt 7 conceive in the womb [or body] and ? be impregbear a Son, whose name thou shalt call Jesus; he n' shall be great, and be called the Son of the Most High, and God the LORD will give unto him the throne of his Father David, and he shall be king over the house of Jacob eternally, and of his kingdom there will be no end. Then said Mary to the angel, How shall that come to pass, since

3I know not a manf And the angel answered her, and said, The Holy Ghost will come upon thee, and the virtue [or power] of the Most High will overshadow thee, therefore also that Holy One, that shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God. Then said Mary, Behold! I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as thou hast said ; and the angel departed from her. Now when this command [or message] from God 440 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 1 the spirit, of the soul. 2 Or being. the Father came, then the nature of the spirit of the soul in Mary was astonished, as the text saith ; for l it was stirred by a precious Guest, who went into a wonderful lodging [or inn]. 36. But the Reader must not here understand it, as if the Word for this incarnation at this time did first come down, out of the highest heaven above the stars, hither beneath, and became man, as the world teacheth in blindness. No ; but the Word, which God spake in paradise to Adam and Eve, concerning the Treader upon the Serpent, (which imaged [or imprinted] itself in the door of the light of life, 2 standing in the centre of the gate of heaven, and waiting perceptibly in the minds of the holy men, even till this time) that same Word is become man ; and that same divine Word is again entered into the virgin of the divine Wisdom, 8 Or joined to. which was given to the soul of Adam 3 near the Word, to be a light, and a 4 handmaid as to the Word.

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