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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1his Heart and Word from eternity ; and l his essences, which, in the element of his body (viz. [in the element] 2 of ignorance in the eternal wonders of God) now breathed into him, they (in respect of the high triumphing light, out of the Heart and light of God) were paradise ; his meat and drink was paradise, out of the 3 element, in his will ; whereby then he drew the virtue (of the eternal wonders of God) into him, and generated the noise [voice], sound, or the eternal hymn of the eternal wonders of God, out of himself before the will ; and all this stood before the chaste, high, noble, and blessed virgin (the divine wisdom), in a pleasant sport, and was the right paradise. 14. But now, what this is, my pen cannot describe. I rather long after it, to comprehend it more in perfection, and to live therein; which we here in the light of nature (in the gate of the deep) 4 know and behold ; but we cannot raise our threefold mind into it, till our 5 rough garment be put off, and then we shall behold it without molestation. 15. But because the four elements went forth now further out of the [one] element, and made, with the quintessence of the stars, and with the heart of the essences, viz. the sun, the third Principle, wherein also the great wonders stood ; and because there was no creature found that could manifest those [wonders], but only that image and similitude of God, viz. man, who had the chaste virgin (the wisdom of God) in him ;

2Ch. 17] OF THE FALL OF ADAM AND EVE 375 therefore the spirit of this world pressed so hard upon the image, for the virgin, that it might manifest its wonders, and did possess man ; from whence he first gat the name Mensch [man] as a mixed person. 16. But when the wisdom of God saw that man, from the spirit of the world, came to lust, to mingle himself with the four elements, then came the commandment and said, Thou shalt not eat of the knowledge of good and evil. Now the knowledge of good and evil is not manifest in the paradise, and in the kingdom of heaven, but only in * the issue * the four . _ elements that out of the element, in the nerceness, there only are gone forth standeth the knowledge of evil manifest ; and there inward one only the essences are capable of being kindled, and so therein death sticketh ; of which God said, When thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die. 17. God intended that the body which he would get from the infection of the four elements, must die ; and it did also presently (in his tender 2 virgin mind) die to the paradise, and gat the a virgin-like, mind of this world, wherein sticketh nothing but °r patching and piecing, as also frailty, and at last death. 18. But that the four elements, with the sun and stars, had such power to press upon Adam,

3and to 3 infect him, the cause of it was, because he 8 Or poison was extracted out of them, viz. out of the element; and had (in the originality) all the three kingdoms (all three Principles) in him ; and therefore it was 376 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 17 that he must be tempted whether he could stand in the paradise (in the kingdom of heaven) ; and there both heavenly, and also earthly fruit was set before him. 19. For the Tree of Temptation was earthly, (as nowadays all the trees are) : all the others were paradisical, from which Adam could eat paradisical virtue in his mouth, and had no need of stomach and guts ; for they [the trees] were like his body, 1 one pure and [like] the l element, and the Tree of Temptation was like the four elements. 20. But that Moses presseth so hard upon it, and saith, God created man of a lump of earth ; there the veil is before his face, so that the earthly man cannot look him in the face ; indeed he was rightly a lump of earth, and earth, when he had eaten earthly fruit, which God did forbid him ; but if Adam (before the fall) had been of the earth earthly, then God would not have forbidden him the earthly fruit ; as also, if he had been created out of the earthly element, wherefore did not the earthly element put its clothes upon him instantly with a rough skin ? Wherefore did that [earthly element] leave man naked and bare ? And when it had plainly possessed him, yet it left him naked.

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