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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1Cll. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 629 in God ; and said to the devil, It is written, ihou \ shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Here the devil's pride (in the kingdom of wrath) was rightly overcome ; and the humility, the strength, and the might remained to be our Christ's ; and the soul of Christ is entered into the holy Ternary, as into the humble love, and espoused itself with the humble chaste virgin of the divine wisdom. 97. Now when the devil had lost twice, then he came at last, with his last powerful temptation, as he did also to Adam, he would give him the ivhole world, if he would fall down and worship him. The business with Adam also was about this world, he would draw this world to him, and so be like God with it, that as God had drawn this world to him, to manifest his great wonders thereO with, so the soul in Adam thought [with itself], Thou art the similitude of God, thou wilt do so too, and so thou shalt be like God ; but thereby he went forth from God into the spirit of this world. Now therefore the second Adam must hold out the standing of the first Adam, whereby it was tempted [or tried,] whether the soul would continue in the new holy heavenly man, and live in the Barmhertzigkeit [the * mercifulness] of God, 1 Or mercy. or in the spirit of this world.

298. And thus stood the soul as a valiant Champion, and said to Satan, Get thee hence, Satan, thou shouldst worship the Lord thy God, and serve him only. I have no more to do with 630 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 22 thee. There the devil, hell, and the kingdom of this world, were commanded to be gone, and the valiant Champion gat the victory ; and the devil was fain to get him gone, and the earthly [part] was overcome. And here now the noble Champion standeth upon the moon, and receiveth all might, in heaven, hell, and on earth, into his power, and ruleth (with his soul, in the holy Ternary, in this outward body) over death and life ; and here this world is become Christ's own, for he hath overcome it ; he could live in God, and needed not the earthly food nor drink. 99. And the Reader must know, that the combat (with the temptation) was held in body and soul ; and that this temptation concerneth us also ; he hath overcome for us. If we put our whole trust in him, then we have victory in him, over sins, death, hell, and the devil, and also over this world ; for he held the last victory in his death, when he brake the sword of the Cherubim, and destroyed the hell of the devil, and hath led captivity captive, that thereby thou mightest live by the death of Christ.

3100. And we see that all is true, as is above mentioned ; for when he had overcome in the temptation, and had stood forty days, then he had wholly overcome till the last victory in death, for so long Adam was in the temptation, in the 1 Viz. after Garden of Eden ; and l there he began his priestly the tempta- . .. . tion. kingdom (as a king over heaven and this world) Ch. 22] THE NEW REGENERATION IN CHRIST 631 with signs and wonders ; and in bis first miracle turned water into good wine ; he also healed the sick, made the blind to see, the lame to go, and cleansed lepers ; also he raised the dead, and shewed himself to be the true king over the 1 quick and dead, and sat upon David's throne of l over the living and promise, and was the true priest in the order of the dead. Melchisedech. All whatsoever Aaron was (in the Father's might) in a type, that this High-Priest was in virtue [and power], with deeds and wonders ; which we will clearly describe in the succeeding Book, if we live, and God shall give us leave to do it. THE TWENTY-THIRD CHAPTER Of the highly precious Testaments of Christ, viz. Baptism and his Last Supper, which he held in the Evening of Maundy-Thursday with his Disciples; which he left us for his Last [ Will], as a Farewell for a Remembrance. The most noble Gate of Christianity.

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