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.

primarypage 262

133. And now seeing the holy [thing] is in all places, and seeing the soul is a spirit, therefore Oh. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 601 there is nothing wanting, but that our soul comprehend the holy [thing], so that it hath that for its own, and if once it be united with that, then it attracteth [and putteth] on the pure element, wherein God dwelleth. 34. And therefore thus we say of Mary : She hath comprehended the holy heavenly eternal virgin of God, and put on the holy and pure element, [together] with the paradise, and yet was truly a virgin in this world [generated] by Joachim and Anna. But she was not called a holy pure virgin according to her earthly birth ; the flesh which she had from Joachim and Anna was not pure, without spot ; but her holiness and purity is according to the heavenly Virgin. Besides, she 1 the wisdom J . . * ofGod. brought not the heavenly virgin to her out 01 her own ability ; for the angel said to her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most high shall over-shadow thee; therefore that holy [thing] that shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God. 35. Here understand [and consider] it rightly ; the virtue [or power] is the heavenly virgin, for she is the 2 mercy of God ; and the holy [thing] a mercifulness. is the centre in that [virtue or power], and that is the eternal birth of the Holy Trinity ; and the Holy Ghost (which goeth forth out of the centre

2of God) overshadowed the humanity of Mary. Thou must not think that the corrupted humanity hath comprehended the holy Deity as its own, so 602 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22 that we might as it were say, that Mary (in her corrupted humanity) is like God : No ; the very pure element together with the paradise is inferior to God ; and though indeed we are generated out of his [power or] virtue, yet that [virtue] is substantial, and God is purely spirit ; for the name of God hath its original in the centre of the spirit, and not in the heaven ; only the light in the centre is the holy [thing], and [the light] hath Or of nature, no centre, for it is the end of l all things. 36. Therefore we say of Mary, that she hath received the heavenly pledge, which was unknown to nature, and which she (in her outward man) knew not at all, viz. the heavenly chaste virgin of God ; and in that [she received] the eternal Word of God the Father, which continueth eternally in the Father ; out of which the Holy Ghost goeth forth eternally, wherein the whole Deity is comprehended. 37. We cannot say, that the heavenly virgin of 2Barmhertz- the 2 mercy of God (viz. that which entered into

3c ' Mary out of the council of God) is become earthly ; but we say, that the soul of Mary hath comprehended the heavenly virgin ; and that the heavenly virgin hath put the heavenly new pure garment of the holy element out of the chaste virgin of God, viz. out of the [Barmhertzigkeit, mercifulness, or] mercy of God, on to the soul of Mary, as a new regenerated man ; and in that same she hath conceived the Saviour of all the world, and borne Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 60S him into this world. Therefore he said to the Jews, I am from above, but you are from beneath, and oj this world. I am not of this world. And he said also to Pilate, My kingdom is not of this world. This (night Highly to be Considered.

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.

primarypage 262

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