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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115. The priests in Babd have after that no key to open the kingdom of heaven for thee ; thou must enter in thyself and be new-born, or else there is no remedy for thee in this world, nor in heaven; thou standest here in this [life] time, in the ground, and art a plant ; but when death cometh and cutteth down the stock, then thou art no more in the growing, but art a fruit ; and then if thou art not food for God, thou dost not belong to his table, and then God will not dwell in thee. 16. For we know that the Deity only is the virtue to the new birth, which [virtue], if thou longest for it, and desirest it with earnestness, sowest itself in thy mind, and in thy soul, out of which the new man in the life of Christ groweth, so that in this world the earthly [man] doth but hang to it. Thus the new man is in God in the life of Jesus Christ, and the old man is in this world ; of which St Paul writeth clearly in his 2 letter to the 2 Or Epistle. Romans, that if we thus live in the new birth, we live to God, but as to the old Adam, we are in this world ; where then the source of the eternal band in the soul is also changed, and the soul entereth in itself into the life of Christ, into the holy and pure element; which in some places of my 3 second book I call the Temarius » The Three Sanctus. Principles.

217. This is not according to the understanding of the Latin tongue, but according to the understanding of the divine nature ; by which words is excellently expressed the life of Jesus Christ in God the Father; as also the characters or letters themselves and the spirit in the syllables do signify ; wherein the birth [unigeniture or eternal working] of the Deity is excellently understood. Though indeed it is hidden to the historical man of 768 THE THREE PRINCIPLES V 1 Or univer- the l school of this world, yet it is wholly comprehensible sitiei. fo those that are enlightened from God, who then also understand the source [or working property] of the spirit in the letter, which at this time is not fit to be set down here, and yet it shall be brought to the understanding. 18. And there is nothing more profitable for man for his beginning to the new birth, than true, earnest, sincere repentance, with great earnest purpose and resolution; for he must press into the kingdom of heaven, into the life of Christ ; where then his Regenerator is ready, deep in his mind, in the light of life, and with desiring and earnestness helpeth [to wrestle], and so soweth himself as a grain of mustard-seed into the soul of man, as a root to a new creature. And if the earnestness in the soul of a man be great, then the earnestness in his Regenerator is also great.

319. And it is not possible to describe the New Birth in Christ fully ; for he that cometh into it, can find it only in himself by experience; there groweth another bud in his mind, another man with other knowledge, he is taught of God, and he seeth that all the labour in the history, without the spirit of God, is but a confused work of Babel. From whence strife and contention (in self -pride) come, for they aim only at pride and advancement, to recreate themselves in the lusts of the flesh, and in self. They are no shepherds or pastors of Christ, but ministers or servants of the Antichrist, they have set themselves upon Christ's throne ; but they have erected it in this world. 20. Yet the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but consisteth in power. And there is the true knowledge of God in no man, except he be regenerated in God, out of his corrupted house of sins. Where then the fierceness changeth itself into love, and he is a priest of God in the life of Jesus Christ, who always seeketh that which is in heaven in the wonders of God. And the New Man is hidden in the old man, and is not of this APPENDIX 769 world, but he is in Temario Sancto, in the holy body of Jesus Christ, understand, in the virtue of his body.

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