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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1105. For all thrones are in God the Father, and without him is nothing ; he is the band of the eternity ; but his love in the body of Christ (as in his throne) holdeth the anger in the band of eternity (together with the devils) captive. And you must understand, that all is creaturely, his lover and also his anger ; and as is mentioned before^ so the difference [distinction or division] is a Ch. 25] CHRIST'S DEATH AND RESURRECTION 725 birth ; and so it cannot be said, that the devils dwell far from Christ, no, they are near, and yet in eternity cannot reach to him ; for they cannot see the clear Deity in the light, but are * blinded by it ; 1 AS and we shall in eternity not see nor touch them, as that see in at present we see them not, because they are in blinded by™ another Principle, and so that Principle remaineth. * 'un' 106. Thus, my dear mind, know, 2that the2 AS the sun » f-n • • i . i8 the centre

2creature of Christ is the centre of this throne, of ail that from whence every life proceedeth, viz. whatsoever and' spring is heavenly ; for in that centre is the Holy Trinity, elements!^ and not alone in this centre, but also in all angelical thrones, also in the souls of holy men ; only we must thus speak, that it may be understood. Now the body (understand the creature, the man Christ) is set in the midst of this throne, and standeth also in heaven (understand in this Principle) sitting 3 in » Or with, his throne at the right hand of God the Father. 107. The right hand of God is where the love quencheth the anger, and generateth the paradise, that must needs be the right hand of God, where the angry Father is called God in the love and light of his Heart, which is his Son ; and this bodily throne (viz. the whole body of Christ) is wholly at the right hand of God. But when it is said, at the right hand of God, then understand the most inward root of the sharp might of the Father, wherein the omnipotence consisteth, where the Father himself goeth forth into the reconceived will, into the meekness, and openeth the gate (in 726 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 25

3the dispelling of the darkness) in himself ; thus Christ is set therein, and sitteth thus at the right hand of the virtue [or power] and omnipotence, in such a manner as we cannot more highly express it with our tongue, we understand it well in the spirit ; therefore it is not needful for you to search any further into it, but only look that you attain the body of Christ, and then you have God and the kingdom of heaven; but we must write thus, because of the errors in the world, and for their longings sake that are therein. 108. But when you ask : Doth Christ sit or stand, or lie along ? Then thou ask, as if an ass should ask about his sack he carrieth, how the man made it; yet the ass must have provender given him, that he may carry the burthen the longer. Behold, Christ sitteth in himself, and standeth in himself, he needeth no chair, nor footstool ; his power is his stool, there is neither above nor beneath there. And as you see in the vision of Isaiah, that was full of eyes behind and before, above and beneath, so the body of Christ, the Holy Trinity shineth in the whole body, and needeth no sun nor daylight. THE TWENTY-SIXTH CHAPTER Of the 1 Feast of Pentecost. Of the Sending of the i Whitsuntide. Holy Ghost to his Apostles, and the Believers. The Holy Gate of the Divine Power. 1. HVTOW saith reason, if Christ ascended thus

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