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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14-*l with his body, which he 2 offered up on 2 sacrificed. the cross, when was he glorified in his body ? Or how is his body now ? Is it now as his disciples saw him ascend into heaven ? My beloved reason, my earthly eyes see it not, but the spiritual [eyes] in Christ see it very well. The Scripture saith, He is 3 glorified, and Lord over all ; but we will 3 ciarified or open to you the gate of the great wonders, that you may see what we see. 2. Behold, * when God the Father had brought 4 Exodus xxiv. Israel into the wilderness to mount Sinai, and would give them laws, in which they should live, then he commanded Moses to come up the mountain to the Lord, and the rest of the elders must stay afar off, and the people below the mountain ; and Moses went up the mountain alone to the Lord, and there appeared the brightness [or glory] of the Lord, and on the seventh 727 728 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 26 1 became bright, and did shine day he called Moses, and spake with him concerning all the laws. And the countenance of Moses was 1 glorified from the Lord, so that he could stand before him, and speak with him. Thus also the man Christ, in Ternario Sancto, [in the holy Ternary], when he was ascended into his throne, was glorified on the ninth day in the Holy Trinity.

23. Understand it aright ; his soul in the creature was not first glorified, but his whole body, or princely throne ; there went forth out of the centre of the Holy Trinity the Holy Ghost, as you see clearly, that those (who had put on the spirit of Christ) were highly enlightened ; for the Holy Ghost went forth from the centre of the Trinity into the whole holy element, and did flow 2 Barmhertz- into the 2 mercy of God ; and as he triumphed in fulness. l ' the body of Jesus Christ, so also in his disciples, and in the believers. 4. There were opened all the doors of the great wonders, and the Apostles spake with the languages of all nations ; and so it may be seen clearly, that the spirit of God had opened all the centres of all essences, and spake out of them all ; for Christ was the Lord, and the Heart of all essences, and therefore the Holy Ghost went out of all essences, and filled the essences of all men who turned their ears with a desire to it, and in that he pressed into all ; and every one heard (out of his own essences and language) the spirit of God speak out of the disciples ; and the Holy Ghost was born in the Ch. 26] OF THE FEAST OF PENTECOST 729

3bodies of all their hearers, who had but an earnest desire to it, and they were all filled ; for the spirit of God pierced through into their hearts, as he pressed forth out of the centre of the Trinity into the whole body and princely throne of Jesus Christ, and filled all outwardly in the clarity [or glory]. 5. Thus all the holy souls were filled, so that their whole body in the essences was made stirring from the exceeding precious virtue [or power], which went forth in the wonders in power and in l deeds that were done there. And here is set *• Or miracles, before us the virtue [or power] of the Father in the fire, in his severe omnipotency on mount Sinai, also the still loving virtue of the Son of God in the love and mercy ; for we see that we could not all live in the Father (in the source of the fire),' and therefore Moses brake the Tables, and the people fell away from God. 6. But now when the meekness was in the Father, then the love held the anger captive, and [the love] went out of the source of the Father, (and that was the Holy Ghost), in the wonders. There stood the highly worthy heavenly virgin of the wisdom of God, in her highest ornament, with her garland of pearls ; there stood Mary in Ternamo Sancto, of which the spirit (in the ancients) hath spoken wonderfully. And here Adam was brought into paradise again. 7. And now if we will speak of the glorification of Christ, and of his body, which he visibly (and in

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