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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1of God ; your wisdom will turn to your hurt punishment. and scorn. 46 722 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25 Of Christ's Ascension into Heaven. 98. We know, when A dam had lived forty days in the paradise, then he went into the spirit of this world, whereas he should have gone into the Trinity ; for he stood in the time of the temptation, and if he had held out these forty days, then he had been fully with his soul in the light of God, and his body in Ternario Sancto [in the Holy Ternary], like this Christ. 99. For when he had conversed forty days (after his resurrection) in the proba [or trial] in this world, then he went up into a mountain, whither he had appointed his disciples to come, and went up aloft visibly with his own body which he had offered up on the cross (till a cloud came and did hide him from their sight) for a sure sign that he was their brother, and that he (in his earthly form and body) would not forsake them ; as he also said to them, Behold, I am with you to the end of the world. 100. Now then saith reason, Whither is he gone ? is he gone out of this world, aloft above the stars into another heaven ? Hearken, my beloved reason, incline thy mind to Christ, and behold, I will tell it thee ; for we see it and know it ; not I ; for when I say we, you must not barely understand it of my earthly man, for the spirit that driveth this pen is spoken of also ; therefore I write and say we, when I speak of myself, as of

2Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 723 the author ; for I should know nothing, if the spirit of knowledge did not stir it up in me, and there could bs nothing found but in such a way ; the spirit would not be in any other way, but he did hide and withdraw himself, and then my soul was very much disquieted in me, with great longing -after the spirit, till I did learn how it was. 101. Behold, that which the ancients have invented and taught, is not the ground. They took upon them to measure how many hundred thousand miles it is to Hhe heaven whither Christ » coeium Em is gone. They did it to this end, that they might 25T' be gods upon earth themselves, as their invented kingdom sheweth and declareth, which standeth merely in Babel. Behold, when we speak of the thrones, it is quite another thing than that they mean ; and their blindness and ignorance is found, though there is a spirit in their knowledge which is not so much rejected ; but that spirit is not [or cometh not] ex Ternario Sancto [out of the Holy Ternary], out of the body of Jesus Christ, but it is out of the high eternity, which flieth up above the thrones ; which may be mentioned in another place.

3102. We must continue in this throne [which is ours} What are the other thrones to me, where the principalities of angels are ? They are indeed our friends, and faithful helpers in the service of God ; we must look upon our own throne wherein we were created and made creatures, and upon our 724 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25 prince in that throne, upon God. The first purpose of God when he created us, and beheld us in the eternal band, that must stand. 103. This was the throne of Lucifer with his legions, but when he fell, he was thrust out into the first Principle ; and then the throne in the second Principle was empty. In the same Principle God created man, who should continue therein, and he was tempted, [to try] whether that were possible ; and to that end it was that God created the third Principle, in the place of this world, that man also (in the fall) might notbecome a devil, but that he might be helped again. Therefore the enmity of the devil against Christ is because he sitteth upon his royal throne, and besides holdeth him captive with his Principle. 104. Thus the place of this world (according to the heavenly Principle) is the throne and body of our Christ ; and all (whatsoever is in this world in the third Principle) is his own also ; and the devil (who dwelleth in this place in the first Principle) is our Christ's captive [or prisoner].

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