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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12 wickedness, 39. And now if it entereth into the 2 evil of this world, and suffereth itself to be drawn by the devil, then it goeth away out of the covenant, and forsaketh God and the kingdom of heaven ; and there then the noble virgin of God standeth in the centre of the light of life (which instantly in the entering of the light of life yielded herself into the centre of the light of life, as a conductor and loving companion to the soul) and warneth the soul of the ungodly ways, that it should turn, and step into the covenant again. But if it do not, and that it continue in the kingdom of the devil, then she continueth standing in the centre of the holy paradise ; and she is a virgin of herself, but the soul hath afflicted her, and so they are parted ; except the soul return again, and then it will be received again by its virgin with great honour and joy. 40. And therefore it is that Christ made two Testaments, the one in the water of the eternal life, and the other in his body and blood ; that Ch. 23] THE PRECIOUS TESTAMENTS OF CHRIST 653

2(whensoever the poor soul should be defiled by the devil) it might yet in the other enter into the body of Christ again ; and if it turn with sorrow for its sins, and putteth its trust in the mercy of God again, then it steppeth again into the first covenant, and then it may come to the other Testament, and draw near to God, and then it will be received again with joy ; as Christ saith, That there is more joy in heaven for one poor sinner that repenteth, than for ninety and nine righteous that need no repentance. 41. Then saith reason, I can see nothing but bread and wine, and Christ also gave his disciples but bread and wine. I answer, As the Baptism outwardly is outward water, and the inward is the water of the eternal life, and the Holy Trinity baptizeth, as may be seen in Jordan, that three Persons appeared ; the Son of God, in the water ; the Father, in the voice of the words ; and the Holy Ghost over the water, moving upon the head of Christ ; and so all three Persons in the Deity baptized this man Christ ; thus it is also in the Supper. 42. The outward is [earthly] bread and wine, as thy outward man also is earthly ; and the inward (in his Testament) is his body and blood, and that thy inward man receiveth ; understand it aright, the soul receiveth the Deity, for *it is i the soul. spirit ; and thy [inward] new man receiveth Christ's real body and blood, not like a thought in the faith, 654 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 23

32 Or in his own way. although faith must be, but in substance, incomprehensible to the outward man. 43. Not that the holy is changed into the outward, that thou shouldst say (of the bread which thou eatest with the outward mouth, and also the wine) that the outward is the flesh and blood of 1 case, shell, Christ; No, but it is the * chest, and yet it cannot be comprehended or enclosed by the * chest, as this world cannot comprehend the body of Christ in the holy element, or as our outward body cannot comprehend the inward new [body] of the soul. Also the first Supper of Christ teacheth you this, when Christ sat with them at table, and gave them his holy hidden body and blood to eat and drink (z after a peculiar manner) under bread and wine. 44. For thou canst not say (when thou dost handle the blessed bread), Here I hold the body of Christ in my hand, I can feel and taste it : No, my friend, the outward is earthly bread, from the outward element ; and the incomprehensible in the holy element is the body of Christ, which (in this his covenant and Testament) is offered to thee under the outward bread, and that [body] thy new man receiveth ; and the old [man receiveth] the bread ; and so it is with the wine. 45. Make me no absence of the body and blood of Christ, the soul needeth not run far for it ; and besides, the body of Christ in his blood (in this Testament) is not the food of the soul ; but the mere Deity is the food of the soul ; and the body

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