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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16. The text in Moses saith he was created in the paradise in Hebron ; that is, in the gate of the deep between the Deity and the abyss of the kingdom of hell. His body was out of the [one pure] element, and his spirit was breathed into him out of the eternal mind of God the Father, from the chaste virgin of the divine wisdom and love. 7. For the element 2is without understanding, 2 As man's and that is that [which is attracted or] concreted X sphitT' in the will of God, wherein the eternal wisdom of Jading nder" God doth [sparkle or] discover itself in infinitum [infinitely], and in that spring up colours, arts, virtues, and the eternal wonders ; out of which [element] in the beginning (in the kindling of the fire in the stern fierceness) are the four elements proceeded. 8. For this is very well to be apprehended and perceived in the earth and stones, that the four elements are of one only substance, and that the earth and stones were generated in the fierceness from the kindling of the elements. For a stone is but water; and therefore we should do well to consider what kind of fierceness 372 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 1 congealed or knit. 2 Or body. 3 the four elements. 4 That which hath gone forth. 5 kindling or life. 6 Or appearance. 7 out of the heavenly extract, seed, or substantiality. there must have been, that hath l drawn the water so hard together.

29. Moreover, the issue of the four elements may be perceived in the fierceness of the fire, how instantly the strong air goeth forth from the fire ; and the stone or wood is nothing else but a 2 sulphur from the water and from the earth ; and if the tincture be consumed by the fierceness, then the [wood or stone] would come to ashes, and at last to nothing ; as indeed, at the end, this world with the four elements will come to nothing, and there shall remain nothing else of 3 them in the eternal element, but the figure and the shadow in the wonders of God. How then canst thou think that God hath created the eternal man out of the four elements, or 4 issues, which are but corruptible? 10. Yet as concerning Eve, we must acknowledge that she was created to this corruptible life, for she is the woman of this world ; and at this time it could not be otherwise. For the spirit of this world, with its 5 tincture, had overcome and possessed Adam, so that he fell down into a sleep, and could not generate out of himself the image of the virgin according to the 6 discovery of the noble and chaste virgin (the wisdom of God), which was the matrix in him, which was joined [or espoused] to him out of the heavenly 7 limbus ; where according to which (in his being overcome) the elementary woman was given to him, viz. Eve, who (in Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 373 the spirit of the world's overcoming) was figured after a bestial form.

311. But that we may, in a brief sum, give the Reader to understand what our knowledge and high 1 sense in the light of nature hath highly appre- l Or percephended, we therefore set it down thus, according to our knowledge. Adam was the image of God, according to the similitude of God, which God (the holy Trinity in one only divine substance) through the virgin of his eternal wisdom, in the wisdom had [manifested or] 2 discovered [or purposed] (in 2 foreseen or the eternal element) to have in the room of the Ie fallen devil. For his counsel (in the eternal will) must stand ; there should and must be a throne and princely region in this place, which should manifest the eternal wonders. 12. And so now God created the image, and similitude, out of the eternal element, (in which the eternal wonders are originally), and [God] breathed into him the spirit of the essences, out of his eternal original will, out of the throughbroken gate of the deep, where the wheel of the stirring and breaking - through standeth in the eternal mind, which reacheth the clear, true, and pure Deity of the Heart of God. 13. This [image] is not the Heart of God, but it reacheth into the Heart of God, and it receiveth virtue, light and joy from the Heart and light of God. For it is in the eternal will of the Father, out of which he [the Father] continually generateth 374 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17

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