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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128. And therefore instantly at the fall, the Word of God the Father (and in the Word the light) through the Holy Ghost, entered into the holy element, and into the chaste virgin of the wisdom of God, and made a precious covenant, to become a creature in this virgin, and to take away the devil's power in the anger, and to destroy his kingdom ; and this Christ would yield himself to be in the perished humanity, and with his entering into death separate the hell of the anger, and the kingdom of this world from us ; and God the Father discovered this Word (of the promised seed of the woman) instantly (after the fall) in the Garden of Eden, where instantly it gave up itself (in the eternal espousal) into the centre of the light of life, and separated all the souls of men, who have inclined themselves, and yielded themselves up to him, in the dying of their bodies, from the auger of God, and from the kingdom of this world, and brought them into him (into the pure element of the paradise) into the joy, and into the chaste Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 599 virgin of God, there to wait, till God breaketh the kingdom of this world, with the stars and elements, where then instantly the pure element shall be instead of the out-birth ; and there shall spring and grow the new body upon the soul in the holy element before God eternally.

229. Now if we [would] consider his precious incarnation [or becoming man], then we must rightly open the eyes of the spirit, and not be so earthly minded, as at present they are, in Babel ; and we must rightly consider how God is become man ; for the Scripture saith : He ivas conceived and born without sin, of a pure virgin. Here consider now, beloved mind, what kind of virgin that was, for all whatsoever is born of the flesh and blood of this world, is impure, and there can no pure virgin be generated, in this corrupted flesh and blood ; the fall of Adam destroyed all ; and it is all under sin, and there is no pure virgin generated of man's seed ; and yet this Christ was conceived and born of a pure virgin. 30. Here the learned of the schools [or universities] of this world must stand still, and the scholar (born of God) must here begin to * learn concerning i or teach. this birth ; for the spirit of this world apprehendeth no more here, this is foolishness to it ; and though he go ' very far, yet he is but in Babel, in his own " in studying the literal reason. wisdom of 31. Therefore we set it down here (according to be our knowledge) that the pure chaste virgin, mth 600 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22

3which God was born [or generated], is the chaste virgin [that is] in the presence of God, and it is an eternal virgin ; before ever heaven and earth were created, it was a virgin, and that without blemish ; and that pure chaste virgin of God put itself into 1 in Mary's Mary, in her l incarnation, and her new man was becoming to . be a human in the holy element of God; and therefore she was creature, or her becoming the blessed among all women, and the Lord was with her, as the angel said. 32. Thus now we may know, that God is all in all, and filleth all, as it is written, Am not I he that Jilleth all things ? And therefore we know, that the holy pure element in paradise is his dwelling, which is the second Principle, and is in all things, and yet the thing (as a dead dark out-birth) knoweth it [the second Principle] not, as the pot [knoweth not] its potter, so also that [thing] neither comprehendeth nor apprehendeth that [second Principle]. For I cannot say (when 1 take hold of, or comprehend anything) that I take hold of the holy element, together with the paradise and the Deity, but I comprehend the out-birth, the kingdom of this world, viz. the third Principle and the substance thereof, and I move [or stir] not the Deity therewith. And so we are to know [and understand] that the holy new man [is thus] hidden in the old, and not separated, but in the temporal death.

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