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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134. There are three Witnesses to this covenant, the one is called God the Father, the other God the Son, and the third is God the Holy Ghost; 650 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 23 these are the workmasters who do the office, they baptize [or administer baptism]. But if thou filthy trimmed whore now comest thus stately, and bringest the poor soul to the covenant of Christ, and doth but stand there in pomp and bravery, and understandest very nothing of the Baptism, and dost not put up the least prayer to God, what thinkest thou ? How dost thou stand in this covenant before the Holy Trinity? Even like a swine before a looking-glass. 35. Or shall I be silent ? I must speak, for I see it ; do what thou wilt, this is the truth ; thou carriest a new-washed soul from the Baptism, but thou art a filthy swine, even in the kingdom of all 1 Or bath. the devils. But the * laver of regeneration (if thou art a beast, and far from the kingdom of God) lieth not in thee, but it lieth in the covenant of Christ. 36. But this I say, according to my knowledge, (and not out of any command), that if the parents be wicked, and indeed in the kingdom of the devil, and that they have thus begotten their fruit out of their false [or evil] essences (in which [parents] there is no faith, but only a false hypocrisy, 2 mock Christ, and yet will 2in an apish mockery be counted and yet be accounted Christians ; and as the devil oftentimes changeth Christians. t • i*. 11 M

2nimselr into the likeness oi an angel, so they also send their children with the like trimmed false angels before the covenant of Christ) ; such doing is very dangerous, which also instantly sheweth itself in the growing of the tree ; indeed the coveCh. 23] THE PRECIOUS TESTAMENTS OF CHRIST 651 nant continueth still, but there must be earnestness in avoiding of the devil. It may be, that very many ape baptized in the anger of God, because they do but contemn the covenant; and many times wicked drunken priests use it, who even stick in hell-fire over head and ears ; and therefore the covenant of grace standeth as a testimony against the l congregations of the l the heap or wicked. And that which they see and know (and do not perform it with earnest sincerity) that shall judge and condemn them.

337. Now saith reason, How is the Baptism then ? I perceive nothing but water, and words. I answer ; Hearken, beloved reason, thy outward body is in this world only, and therefore outward water is requisite. But as the hidden man Christ, with his pure element, holdeth the out-birth of this world (viz. the four elements, wherein our body consisteth) and as all is his, so he holdeth also the outward water, and baptizeth with the inward water of his element, with the water of the eternal life, [coming] out of his holy body. For the Holy Ghost in the covenant baptizeth with the inward water, and the minister baptizeth with the outward ; the outward [man] receiveth the earthly elementary water, and the soul [receiveth] the water of the washing in the regeneration. 38. The soul is washed in the holy water, and the Word is presented to it, and the soul standeth in the covenant. And now it may reach after the 652 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 23 Pearl ; although the soul be tied backward in the kingdom of this world, yet it standeth in the covenant for all that. And if, in the unfeigned faith of the parents, of the priest, and of the standers by, it be thus washed in the laver of regeneration, and so pass into the covenant, then the devil may not touch it, till [the time] that it 1 Or per- l understandeth what evil and good are, and entereth ceiveth, or . ,. , . f .,, disc«nieth. into one of them in a iree will.

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