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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1wise, neither can it be otherwise. working. 11. Now the Father is greater than all, and the Son in him is greater than all, and his 4 mercifulness 4Barmhertzigis also greater than all ; and the [one pure] element consisteth in his 4 mercifulness, and is as great as God ; only, it is generated of God, and is substantial, and it is under [or inferior to] God, and so therein is the Temarius Sanctus, with the wisdom of God in the wonders ; for all wonders are manifested therein, and that is the heavenly body of Christ, with our (here assumed) soul in it, and the whole fulness of the Deity is in the centre therein ; and thus the soul is environed with the Deity, and eateth of God, for it is spirit. Thus, my beloved soul, if thou art regenerated in Christ, then thou puttest on the body of Christ, [which is] out of the holy element, and that giveth thy new 638 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 23 body food and drink ; and the spirit of this world in the four elements giveth our old earthly [body earthly meat and drink that is earthly and elementary].

212. Thus understand and know this precious depth ; as Christ made a covenant with us, in the Garden of Eden, that he (as above mentioned) would thus become man, so also after he had laid off that which was earthly, he made a covenant with us, and hath appointed his body for food, and his blood for drink ; and the water of the eternal life (in the originality of the Deity) for a holy baptism, and commanded that we should use it till he come again. 13. Now thou wilt say, What did Christ give to his disciples in his Last Supper, when he sat with them at table ? Behold, the Deity is not comprehensible [or circumscriptive], and the holy body of Christ is also not measurable (it is creaturely indeed, but not measurable); he gave them his holy heavenly body, and his holy heavenly blood, for food and for drink, as his own words import. Dost thou say, How can that be ? Then tell me, how it can be that the holy element hath put on this world, and hath another Principle in the body of this world1? That holy element is the heavenly body of Christ. Thus he gave them outward bread and outward wine in the kingdom of this world, and therewith his holy heavenly body in the second Principle, which compriseth the outward, and likeCh. 23] THE PRECIOUS TESTAMENTS OF CHRIST 639 wise his heavenly blood, wherein the heavenly tincture and the holy life consisteth.

314. Now saith. reason, That was another body, in another blood, and not his own creaturely body. Prithee, reason, tell me, how can it be another body ? Indeed it is in another Principle, but of no other creature. Did not Christ say, / am not of this world ? And yet he was really, according to the outward man, of this world. Or dost thou understand it only of his Deity ? What becomes then of his eternal humanity, according to which he was a king of the promise upon the throne of David "? If the promise had been able to ransom us, then the work need not have followed ; and Moses likewise had been able to have brought the people of Israel into the true promised land ; which verily Joshua (who was a type of this Christ) could not do, but he brought them only into the land of the heathen, where there was continually war and strife ; and it was only a valley of misery. 15. But xthis Christ sitteth upon the throne of * Joshua and David, upon the throne of the promise ; like as mg* David was an outward king, and in his spirit a prophet before God, and so sat outwardly as a champion in the world, and inwardly as a 2 priest 2 One copy before God ; who prophesied of this Christ that he should come, and commanded all doors to be set open, and all gates to be lifted up on high, that this King of Glory might enter in. Thus he speaketh 640 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 23

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