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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110. And thus yet the one must be parted from the other, viz. the kingdom of this world, which is a root, or stirrer up of the root of the fierceness, and therefore it was necessary that God should pass with the new body into the separation of the root, and of the kingdom of this world, as into the death of the fierceness, and should destroy death, and spring with its own virtue and power through death, as a flower springe th out of the earth, and so hold the inward fierceness captive l in his own l in the new body'i own virtue of the new body. *irtw or 11. And this we understand of Christ, who is truly entered in such a manner, and hath taken the strong anger (and the devil in it) captive, and hath sprung with his holy heavenly body through death, 684 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25 and hath destroyed death, so that the eternal life springeth forth through death ; and thus death was taken captive by the new eternal body, and it is an eternal imprisonment; so that an eternal life is grown in death, and the new body treadeth upon the head of death, and of the fierceness ; the property of death stand eth in the prison of the new eternal life. 12. And so the woman (in whom the eternal life springeth) standeth upon the earthly moon, and despiseth that which is earthly, for that which is earthly perisheth ; and then there remaineth (of that which is earthly) the hard [frozen] death ; 1 source, or and so now the Word of God (as a living l fountain)

2actire pro- . ° party. is entered into death, and hath generated the soul in itself, and springeth forth out of the soul through death like a new flower ; and that flower is the new body in Christ. 13. After this manner you may understand how he destroyed death, by the springing of the eternal life in the Deity through death ; and you may understand how the new body in the love of God holdeth the eternal source of the auger captive, for the love is the prison [of the anger], for the source of the anger cannot enter into the love, but continueth only by itself, as it was from eternity, and therein the devils are imprisoned ; for the light of God striketh them down, they neither can nor dare behold that light in eternity ; a Principle is between ; for the love springeth Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 685 forth in the centre of the soul, and therein the Holy Trinity appeareth, [or shineth].

314. Thus wejiave gotten a Prince of the eternal life, and we need do no more but to press in to him with a firm trust and strong belief, and then our soul receiveth his love, and springeth forth with him through death, and standeth upon that which is earthly, viz. upon flesh and blood, and is a fruit in the kingdom of God, in the body of Jesus Christ, and triumpheth over the fierceness ; for the love holdeth that captive, and that is a reproach to death ; as Paul saith, 0 Death ! where is thy sting? 0 Hell! where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, who hath given us victory. 15. And because we clearly understand and apprehend it in the spirit, therefore we are indebted to shew the light to those that apprehend it not, and do lie thus captivated in reason, and continually search into the circumstances, why it happened so [in the passion of Christ]. For reason saith, If it must needs be so, that Christ must enter into death, and destroy death, and spring up through death, and so draw us unto him, what is the cause, then, that he must be so despised, and J scourged, and crowned with a1 Or whipped, crown of thorns, and at last be crucified between heaven and earth? Could he not die some other death, and so spring through death with his heavenly body? 16. These hard points cast down all Jews, 686 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25

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