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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162. And now if we consider in our own reason, and (in the consideration of our high knowledge) Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 451 look upon what the world at Babel hath introduced in this high article [of prayer], whereof we are about to treat, in that Antichrist hath set himself therein, and shewn his great l power therein, then a Or authoour reason might well keep us back, because of the great sting and danger that might befall us from the fierce wrath of Antichrist. But seeing it appeareth to us without our knowledge, therefore we will rather obey the voice of God, than the earthly fear, in hope to be recompensed. And though it should happen that Antichrist should destroy our earthly body (which yet standeth in the permission of God, which we must not withstand), yet we will more highly esteem that which is to come, than that which is transitory, which [things to come], if we attain them, are our true native country, out of which we (in Adam) are gone forth ; and the spirit inviteth all men's attention before this glass.

263. Hitherto the honour of invocation [or worship] hath been done and afforded to the Virgin Mary, and other saints [or holy people] that have been here [in this life] ; whereas yet (in the ground of the light of nature) this command or law was not known at all, and it is most highly necessary to be known, that the ground thereof hath been taken in the confused JBabel, when men were weary of the poor Christ, who in this world had not whereon to lay his head. Then they did as Israel with Moses, who made themselves a calf to be their god, and 452 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 said : Behold, Israel, these are thy gods, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt ; and they made a calfish worship of God, for their voluptuous life, and looked no more after Moses, but said, We know not what is become of this man Moses ; and they said to Aaron, Make thou us gods which may go before us, and he made them the calf; but when Moses came and saw it, then he was wroth, and took the Tables of God and brake them, and threw them away, and said; Hearken, ye that belong unto the Lord, gird every man his sword to his side, and slay his brother, the worshippers of the calf. 64. In such a form [or condition] also is the confused Babel (in the kingdom of Christ upon earth) in the blind earnestness of man's own 1 Or in the reason, where men seek Christ in the * kingdom of bravery ancl

3glory of this this world ; whereby they could not find him, as Israel [could not find] Moses, while he was on the mount. And thereupon they have made other gods to [go before] them, and [have instituted and set up] the divine service [or worship] of God, with the richest [and most costly ornaments] and holy show ; and they continually say [in their mind], We know not what is become of this Jesus, for he is gone from us ; we will erect a divine service for him in our country, and we will make merry at it, and that shall be done according to our own will and pleasure, that we may be rich and fat with it, and refresh ourselves fully with this Jesus. Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 453

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