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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1express the it according to our understanding. I1 or 1m is the name. ' Heart of God in the holy Ternary, for it is conceived [or comprehended], as thou mayest understand it, in the conception [or comprehending, or expressing] of the word. Ma is his entering into the humanity in the soul ; for that word [or syllable] presseth out from the heart ; and we understand that he conceived [or comprehended] the heart (viz. the virtue of the Father) in the soul, and goeth with the word [or syllable] nut aloft, which signifieth his ascension into heaven, as to his soul. El is the name of the great angel, which with the soul triumph eth above the heaven, not only in the heaven, but in the Trinity. 74. For the word Himmel [heaven] hath another meaning in the language of nature. The syllable Him goeth out from the heart (viz. out of the virtue of the Father) or out of the essences of the soul, and putteth forth upwards into the holy Ternary ; and then it compresseth it with both the lips, and bringeth the angel's name downwards Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 619 (viz. the syllable Mel) which signifieth the humility of the angels, that they do not exalt their heart in pride, flying into the Trinity ; but as Isaiah saith, that they cover their faces in humility (before the holy God) with their icings, and continually cry, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord 1 of hosts. l Zebaoth.

275. So now you understand that this angel is greater than any angel in heaven, for he hath a heavenly human body, and hath a human soul, and hath the eternal heavenly bride, the virgin of wisdom, and hath the holy Trinity ; and we can truly say [he is] a Person in the holy Trinity in heaven, and a true man in heaven, and in this world an eternal king, a Lord of heaven and earth. 76. His name Jesus sheweth it more properly in the language of nature ; for the syllable Je is his humbling [in-coming] out of his father, into the humanity; and the syllable sus is the bringing in of the soul above the heaven, into the Trinity ; as the syllable sus indeed presseth aloft through all. 77. Much more is understood in the name Christus, which comprehendeth not his incarnation, but goeth (as a man [that is] born) through death ; for the syllable Chris presseth through the death ; and the syllable tus signifieth his strong might, in that he thus goeth forth from death, and presseth through ; and it is very properly understood in the word, how he severed the kingdom of this world and the angelical man asunder, and continueth in 620 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22 God, in the angelical man, for the syllable tus is pure without death.

378. Though indeed here we shall be as one that is dumb to the world, yet we have written it for ourselves, for we understand it very well ; and it is plain enough to the tree of the lily. But that the Person of Christ, with his deeds and essence, might be rightly demonstrated to the Reader, that he might apprehend it aright, I therefore direct him to the temptation of Christ in the wilderness after his baptism ; whereat thou shouldst open thine eyes, and not speak like the spirit in Babel, which saith, We know not what his temptation was. And lay the fault upon the devil, that he was so impudent to presume to tempt Christ ; saying, moreover, We ought not to dive into it, [nor be so inquisitive about it], we will let that alone till we come thither [into the other life], and then we shall see what it is. Besides, they forbid him that hath eyes to see, none must search into it, [if they » do] they are called enthusiasts, and are cried out upon for novelists [such as broach new opinions and pretend to new lights] and for heretics. 79. 0 ye blind wolves of Babel, what have we to do with you ? We are not generated from your the schools * kingdom. Why will you rend and tear our dear sities. Immanuel out of our hearts and eyes, and so would 8 Or heresy, make us blind ? Is it a 2 sin for us to enquire after God our salvation, and after our true native country? Sure it is much more 2sin to hearken Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 621

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