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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169. Yet men cannot say that Mary was born out of a barren womb, although the body of Anna was unfruitful, which was from the counsel of God ; in that they were honest [virtuous] people, fearing God, that their tincture might not be defiled, because they were to generate that which the Lord would highly bless. God knew how to open it in due time, and that in old age, when the wanton lust (of this world from the elements) was extinguished, as in Sarah, Abraham's wife. 70. For if the soul standeth in the fear of God, then the tincture also (in which the soul springeth up) is purer ; although that be not free from the original [or inherited] sin. Thus Mary is indeed truly generated of Joachim, and Christ hath his natural soul from the tincture of Mary, yet but half; for the limbus of God was the man [or masculine seed], and therein was the chaste virgin of God in the holy Ternary, and in the holy Ternary the Trinity, the whole fulness of the Deity ; and the Holy Ghost was the work-master. 71. Here we clearly find what Christ said to his Father concerning us men, Behold the men were O ' thine, and thou hast given them to me ; and I will that they be with me where 1 am, that they may see my glory. When the Word (or Heart of God) went into the holy Ternary, there it was the Son Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 617

2of the Father, and also his servant, as Isaiah saith, and as it is in the Psalms ; for he had [united or] espoused himself * to the element, and had the l m or into, form of a servant ; but the Word which went into the [pure] element, was his Son ; and thus he took our soul upon him, not only as a brother, for the limbus of God (in the heavenly tincture) was the man, and that was our Lord ; for the whole world standeth in the might thereof, and that might shall sweep the threshing-floor of this world. And thus we are his servants, and also his brethren in respect of his mother ; but in respect of his Father we are his servants ; and before the fall we were the Father's, also till his humanity [or becoming man], though in the Word of the Promise [it was], in which the faithful entered into God.

372. Thus he is a king over the house of David eternally, and his kingdom hath no end, and he hath the throne of his father David, for this world is become his ; he is entered into this world, and hath taken possession of it ; he standeth in the holy Ternary, and in the Trinity, and also in this world ; he hath the 2 casting-shovel in his hand, a Or fan. as John the Baptist saith, the judgment is his, at which the devils do tremble. He hath the throne of David from the counsel of God ; for David was a type of him, and had the promise, and God set him upon the throne, in the promise ; for the sceptre of his kingdom was the sceptre of the faithful, who looked upon God, who was the king ; and 618 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22 so also indeed the outward kingdom was his. Thus also Christ was a king in the holy Ternary, and this world also was his own. Of the dear Name Immanuel. 73. And thus we can truly say, Immanuel, God with us, God in us. In the language of nature it soundeth right; but our tongue [we have] from 1 the outward this world doth but stammer it, and l cannot name tongue cannot . ,. , ,. .

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