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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123. And now because the devil had so highly triumphed, and had man in the eternal prison, therefore it was now permitted to the spirit of this world, that they (viz. the Pharisees, who lived only according to the spirit of this world) all of them might do and bring to pass whatsoever the devil had brought into the essences, in the Garden of Eden ; and there all was turned into a substance, and to an essential work, for a terrible example to Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 689 [shew] us, that all (whatsoever we suffer to come into the soul, and fill the soul full of, with a total will) standeth in the figure, and must come to light at the judgment of God. 24. For when Adam went out of the angelical form into the fierceness of the form of the serpent, then the devils mocked him ; and that mocking must at this time be essentially [or actually done] upon the outward man Christ ; and the devil's fatted swine (the high-priests) must have their pleasure upon him. 25. And so when Adam went out of the angelical form and property into the fourth form, then all the fierce [wrathful] essences fell upon him, and

21 wrought in him, and scourged him exceedingly. J qualified or But the Word of God in the promise mitigated S that again, though indeed we must still feel it enough ; if thou hast any reason, consider it. And now the outward man Christ underwent this pain also outwardly, when he was scourged ; for all the inward forms, which the man Christ must bear inwardly for our sakes, which caused him to sweat drops of blood, they stood also outwardly on his body, to shew that the outward man in this outward world stood and dwelt in such a source [property or condition]. 26. And as Adam (in pride) desired the kingdom of this world, and would be like God in it, and wear the crown of this world, so must Christ wear a crown of thorns, and must endure to be mocked 44 690 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25 by it, as a false king ; for so the devils also did to Adam, when they had set the crown of folly upon him with the kingdom of this world. 27. And as Adam (after his entrance into the spirit of this world) must have his essences broken, (when the woman was made out of him, and a rib was broken from his side for a wife), so must blood flow out of all the essences of Christ in his scourging, and his side must be opened with a spear, that therein we may behold the broken man within us, which the devil had mocked ; thus this Christ must bear the reproach for us in his body.

328. And as Adam went out from the eternal day into the eternal [dark] night, wherein the anger of God was, so this Christ must be bound in a dark night, and be led before the angry murderers, who all opened their jaws, and would pour out their fury upon him. 29. And as Adam in confidence of himself (desiring to be high and wise like God himself) went into the spirit of the fierce source [or property] in this world, so the second Adam must endure all mocking, torment, and pain to be 1 who were inflicted upon him from the wise l scribes, that we learned in the . . Scriptures, might see that in our greatest art (which we suppose to have from the schools and universities in this world) we are but fools, and that such wisdom is but folly before God ; and our own opinions and conceits stick therein, as in Adam, who thought he could not now fail, he was become Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 691 lord therein [viz. in his self- wisdom], and he was but a fool. Thus also, when we fall from God, and rely upon our own reason, we are [but] fools. 30. How will ye then (0 antichristian fools) bind us to your art, that we should turn away from the Heart of God, to behold your invented fables and fopperies ? Whereas in your wisdom of this world ye are but fools, as Adam also was when he drew away his spirit from the Heart of God. The

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