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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115. But its Body (which is the true image of God, which God created) standeth before the clear Deity, and is in, and out of, the holy pure element ; and the limbus of the element (out of which the essences generate) is the paradise, a habitation of God the Holy Trinity. Thus was man an image and similitude before God, wherein God dwelleth, in which (through his eternal wisdom) he would manifest his wonders. 16. And now as we understand, that man (with the similitude wherein God dwelleth) is not merely at home in this world, much less in the stinking 1 carcase, so it is manifest (in that we are so very l cadaver, blind as to paradise) that our first parents (with c°rpse their spirit) are gone out of the heavenly paradise into the spirit of this world, where then the spirit of this world instantly captivated their body, and made it earthly, so that body and soul are perished ; and now we have the pure element no more for our body, but the issue [or out-birth] (viz. the four elements, with the dominion of the stars) and the sun only is the light of the body ; also this body doth not belong to the Deity. God doth not discover himself in the stinking carcase [or corpse], but in the holy man, in the pure image which he created in the beginning. 17. Now man being thus fallen out of the holy into the unholy, out of the image of God into the 38 594 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22

2earthly corruptibility, therefore his body stood in the corruptible death, and his soul in the eternal 1 Or averted, will of the Father, yet l turned away from the Heart of God, into the spirit of this world, captivated by the eternal darkness ; for whatsoever goeth out from God, goeth into the eternal darkness, and without the Heart of God there is no light. 18. And now there was no [remedy or] counsel for this image, except it were new regenerated by the soul, through the Heart and light of God, through which the new element before God (viz. the body of the soul) is regenerated ; or else the Deity would not, and could not dwell therein ; this, man (by his own virtue or power) was not 20rbriag»to able to 2 attain ; therefore if it was to be done, then the Barmhertzigkeit, mercifulness, or mercy of God must do it. 19. And here we give the Reader (that loveth God) to understand clearly in the great deep, what the pure element is, wherein our body (before the fall of Adam) stood, and in the new regeneration now at present standeth also therein. It is the heavenly corporeity, which is not barely and merely a spirit, wherein the clear Deity dwelleth ; it is not the pure Deity itself, but [it is] generated out of the essences of the holy Father (as he continually and eternally goeth in through the eternal gate, in the eternal mind in himself through the recomprehended will) into pass. Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 595

3the eternal habitation, where he generateth his eternal word. 20. Thus the pure element is the Barm [or warm] in the essences of the attracting to [be] the Word ; the essences are paradise, and the Barm [or warm] is the element. Thus now the Father continually speaketh the eternal Word, and so the Holy Ghost goeth forth out of the speaking, and that which is spoken forth is the eternal wisdom, and it is a virgin ; and the pure element, viz. the Barm [or warm] is her body, wherein the Holy Ghost discovereth himself through the outspoken wisdom ; and so the flash [or glance] out of the light of God in the Holy Ghost, is called hertz [or heart], this receiveth the element in the essences of paradise, that it may be substantial, and then it is called ig [or ed] ; and the strength of the Father, and the great might of the fire, goeth as a flash into the essence, and that is called keit [or ness'], like a might [or force] which presseth through, as a sound [or noise] which severeth not the substance asunder ; and this together is called Barm-hertzig-keit [warm-heart-ed-ness~], or l mercifulness, and 1 Or mercy, this standeth before God ; and God (the Holy Trinity) dwelleth therein. 21. And the virgin of the wisdom of God is the Spirit of the pure element, and is therefore called a virgin, because it is so chaste [or pure], and generateth nothing; yet as the flaming spirit in man's body generateth nothing, but openeth all 596 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22

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