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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1and the virgin departed. For the lust - spirit in Adam had overcome, and therefore he sank down into a sleep. The same hour his heavenly body became flesh and blood, and his strong virtue [or power] became bones ; and then the virgin went into her ether and shadow, yet into the heavenly ether, into the principle of the virtue [or power], and there waiteth upon all the children of Adam, [expecting] whether any will receive her for their bride again, by the l new birth. » regeneration. 3. But what now was God to do ? He had created Adam out of his eternal will ; and because it could not now be, that Adam should generate out of himself the virgin in a paradisical manner, therefore God put the Fiat of the great world into the midst. For Adam was now fallen 2 home again 2 or into the to the Fiat as a half broken person. Now therefore m seeing he was half killed by his own lust and imagination, that he might live, God must help him again ; and if he be now to generate a kingdom, then there must be a woman, as all other beasts [have a female] for propagation : The angelical kingdom in Adam was gone ; therefore now there must be 3 a kingdom of this world. » Or a propa4. Then what was it that God now did with Son. 8 Adam?. Moses saith, When Adam slept .he took one of his ribs and [made or] built a woman of it, (viz. of the rib which he took from man), and closed up the place with flesh. Now Moses hath written very rightly : But who is it that can understand

215 226 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 13 him here? If I did not know the first Adam in his virgin-like form in paradise, then I had been at a stand, and should have known no other than that Adam had been made flesh and blood of a lump of earth, and his wife Eve of his rib and hard bones ; which before the time [of my knowledge] hath oft seemed very strange and wonderful to 1 expositions, my thoughts, when I have read the l glosses upon note™ar' Moses, that so [high or] deep learned men should 2 Damascene, write so of it : 2 Some of them will dare to tell of a pit in the [orient or] east country, out of which Adam should be taken and made as a potter maketh a vessel or pot. 5. If I had not considered the Scripture, which plainly saith, Whatsoever is born of flesh is flesh ; also, Flesh and Hood shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven ; also, None goeth into heaven but the Son of Man (viz. the pure virgin) which came from heaven, and which is in heaven ; which was very helpful to me [to think] that the child of the virgin was the angel, which has restored again all that which was lost in Adam, for God brought again in the woman (in her virgin-like body) the virgin child, which Adam should generate. And now if I had not considered the text in Moses, (where God saith, It is not good that man should be alone, we will make a help for him), I should 3 Or in the yet have stuck in the 3 will of the woman. v4-"Kl

3thoughts. 6. But that text saith, God looked upon all that he had made, and behold, it was all very good : Ch. 13] OF THE CREATING OF THE WOMAN 227 Now if it were good in the creation, then it must needs have become evil when God said [afterwards], It is not good for man to be alone. If God would have had them like all beasts to have a bestial propagation, he would at one and the same instant [at first] have made a man and a woman. But that God did abominate [the bestial propagation] it appeared plainly in the first child of the woman, Cain, the murderer of his brother, also the fruit [or the curse] of the earth sheweth it plainly enough. But what shall I spend the time for, with these testimonies ? The proof of it will clearly follow. And it is to be proved, not only in the Scripture, which yet maketh a cover [over it], but in all things, if we would take time to do it, and not spend our labour about vain and unprofitable things. 7. Now thus saith reason : What are then the words of Moses concerning the woman ? To which I say : Moses hath written rightly, but I (living thus * in the woman) understand it not rightly. » in the Moses indeed had a brightened [or glorified face or] transitoriness. countenance, but he must hang a veil before it, so that none could see his face. But when the 2 Son 2 the eternal > , TT. . . • • r • i n i Wisdom of oi the Virgin, wz. the virgin [wisdom] came, he the Father, looked him in the face, and put the veil away.

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