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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1puffed-up kingdom of this world and the devil will menury life * , , , in the le»rntd. set themselves against it, as raging dogs, but the smell of the lily will make 6 him faint ; and so now • we will speak as a child. 30. The 'minister (in a brotherly Christian 8 office) of the covenant and Testament of Christ, taketh water, and (upon the commandment of Christ in his covenant and Testament) sprinkleth 648 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 23 [or poureth] it upon the head of the infant, in the name of the covenant, and in the name of the Holy Trinity, of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost ; this was the command of Christ, and therewith he hath set up his covenant with us, as it is a Testament which he afterwards confirmed with his death, and we must do it also, and not leave it undone ; it is not in the l liberty of a Christian's or free-will. . . ., . „ will to do it, or leave it undone ; but it he will be a Christian, he must do it, or else he contemneth his Testament, and will not come to him. 31. For the Testator standeth in the covenant, and saith, Come ; and whosoever doth not desire to come, goeth not in to him. Therefore it lieth not in our high knowledge, for he standeth in his covenant ; and the child that is newly born is as acceptable to him, as an old sinful man that repenteth and steppeth into his covenant. For it lay not in us that he became man, and received us into his love, but it lay in his love, in his

22 Barmhertz- 2 mercy ; for we knew nothing of him, nor did we igkctt, mercifulness. know whether we could be helped or no ; but he 3 Or into. alone chose us, and came to us out of grace, 3in our humanity, and took pity on us ; and so also the covenant of his promise was a covenant of grace, and not out of our foreknowing or merit. And therefore whosoever teacheth otherwise is in Babel, and confoundeth the covenant of Christ. 32. For Christ said also, Let little children come to me, for to such belongeth the kingdom of God. Ch. 23] THE PRECIOUS TESTAMENTS OF CHRIST 649

3Say not, What doth Baptism avail a child, which understandeth it not ? The matter lieth not in our understanding, we are altogether ignorant concerning the kingdom of God. If the child be a bud, grown in thy tree, and that thou standest in the covenant, wherefore bringest thou not also thy bud l into the covenant ? Thy faith is its * Or in. faith, and thy confidence towards God in the covenant is its confidence. It is indeed thy 2 essences, - o children -and generated from thy soul. And thou art to branches. know, according to its exceeding worth, if thou art a true Christian, in the covenant of Jesus Christ, that thy child also (in the kindling of its life) passeth into the covenant of Christ, and though it should die in the mother's womb, it would be found in the covenant of Christ. For the Deity standeth in the centre of the light of life ; and so now if the tree stand in the covenant, then the branch may well do so. 33. But thou must not omit baptism for all that ; for when the child is born into the world, then it is severed from its tree, and is in this world, and then itself must pass into the covenant, and thou must with thy faith present it, and with thy prayer give it to God, in his covenant ; there needeth no 3pomp about it, that doth dishonour 3 bravery, . . . . sumptuousthe covenant ; ]t is an earnest thing. ness, or

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