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 277

1not only of his Deity, from which he . prophesied (for that was however with him, and in the power and knowledge of the same he spake) but he prophesied of his eternal humanity. For that was not a king, who only sat there in the spirit, we could neither see him, nor converse with him ; but that is a king who sitteth in the humanity. 16. Now this king was promised of God, that he should possess the gates of his enemies, and should lead his enemies captive ; and the devils are these enemies. Now how dost thou conceive, that when this creature bound the devils at Jerusalem, and as a confined creature that did reach no further, did lead them captive, who then did bind them at Rome ? Thou sayest ; his Deity. 0 no ! that was not its office ; the devils are however in the Father's most internal root ; in his auger. A creature must only do it, who was so great as could be everywhere with the devils. 17. Therefore must Christ in his temptation overcome the kingdom of the anger, and this extern birth ; and by his entrance into death, he brake the head of the serpent, viz. the devil, and all devils, and took them captive. Thou must understand it thus ; That the inward element (which compriseth the whole body of this world) became Christ's eternal body ; for the whole Deity, in the Word and Heart of God, entered there1 uniteth or into, and * espoused itself to remain therein to all eternity ; and this same Deity became a creature,

2Ch. 23] THE PRECIOUS TESTAMENTS OF CHRIST 641 even such a creature as can be everywhere, as the Deity itself ; and this same creature hath captivated all devils in the kingdom of this world. And all men who with their mind draw near to this Christ, and desire him in right earnest, they are drawn by the spirit of the Father, (viz. of the clear and pure Deity) into the humanity of Christ, that is, into the pure element l before the Trinity. l wherein the , . -, , . , „ , . presence of And if they continue steadfast, and do not again the Trinity is i » ,-N -i • i r» 1 i M i everywhere depart from God into the desire of the devil, then manifest, the precious Pearl, viz. the light of God, is sown in their soul, which [light] attracteth to itself the precious body of Jesus Christ, with paradise, and the kingdom of heaven. And thus the right new man ( Christus) groweth on the soul in the heavenly virgin of God's wisdom, in the holy Ternary, in the kingdom of heaven. And thus such a man is, according to the new man in heaven, in the body of Jesus Christ, and as to the old earthly man, which hangeth unto the holy [man], he is in this world in the house of sin, and the Deity acteth the new humanity, and the spirit of this world the old, until he puts him off in death ; for he is a man in heaven, born in the 2 mercy of God in the body oi^BarmhertzT igkeit, merciJeSUS Christ. fulness.

318. I set you a deep consideration ; behold, how the angelical thrones and principalities 8 were in 3 sparkled, , beheld, or the beginning beheld [apprehended or aspectedj by appeared, the wisdom of God ; which aspect [manifestation or idea] the Fiat took to create ; and in the 41 642 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 23 angelical throne the infinite multiplicity, according to the eternal wisdom in the wonders of God. All which was so created in the Fiat of God, according 1 Or extract, to all the essences of the eternal l limbus of God, so that all angels, in every throne, gave their will unto the angelical throne or archangel ; as it is sufficiently to be known by the fall of Lucifer ; and also may be discerned in the regions of the kingly governments of this world ; if the devil did not so 2 agreement, destroy the right 2 union, as is very clearly to be or compact. J ° j j

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 277

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