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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15. We must conceive, that there 'was then a > Before the very pleasant habitation upon the earth ; for all cursethe fruits did grow [spring and bud] out of the hidden element, (through the fierceness of the four elements); and although the four elements had also their fruits, yet man should not (but the beasts of the field should) have eaten thereof. But now when the Lord cursed the earth, then the element withdrew from the root of the fruit, (for God's cursing is nothing else, but his flying from a thing) ; and thus God's holiness is flien from the root of the fruit, and so the root' [of the fruits] remaineth in the four elements, in the out-birth ; and Adam and Eve were also fallen 2 thereinto.' • into the four And thus now like came to like; his body elements' also was become earthly, and must turn to earth again. ^ 6. But that God said, Thou shalt turn to earth from whence thou wast taken, that is aJso very true; but the understanding is [hidden] in the word, and the earthly veil hangeth before it, we must look under the veil. For Adam was taken out of the earth, not out of the four issuings of the elements, [but he was] an extract out of the element, which qualified [or mingled] with the th. But when he fell into the four elements en he became earth, as also fire, air, and water. And now what should the bestial man do [with] the heavenly paradisical fruit ? He could not 3 eat 3 Or eDJoy it. it ; and therefore God doth not cast his heavenly

2426 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 18 kingdom to beasts and swine, but it belongeth to angels. 7. So also it is very clear and manifest, that before the curse there grew not such venomous [or poisonous] thorns and thistles, and poisonous fruits ; and if God had not cursed the earth (from the [one] element) then no beast should have been so fierce and [mischievous or] evil ; for God said, Let the earth be cursed for thy sake. From whence now is also arisen the disobedience of the beasts towards man, and the wildness [or flying in their face], as also that they are so [cruel], fierce, [mischievous] and evil, and that man must hide himself from their fierce rage [and fury] ; whereas God (in the creation) gave all into his power, all beasts of the field should be in subjection under him, which now is quite contrary ; for man is become a wolf to them [in devouring the beasts], and they are [like] lions against him, and there is mere enmity , against one another ; he can scarce order the tame beasts, much less the wild. 8. And we are to know, that there was a great difference in the beasts before the curse ; for some (viz. the tame ones) were very near akin to the element, with whom man should have had joy and delight ; on the contrary, some, viz. the wild ones, which fly from man, [were very near akin] to the 1 the wonder- f our elements ; for the l causes of those wonders stuck wholly in the essences, and they were very

3than another, well known and seen in the light of the life in the Ch. 18] PROMISED SEED OF THE WOMAN 427 knowledge of the 1 virgin. There is nothing so1 Or divine . ., . wisdom. deep that man cannot search into, and see it most 2 assuredly, if he do but put away the. veil, and look « infallibly. (through the tables 8 graven through) with * Joshua, * Or trans- & parent law. into the Promised Land. 4 Or Jesus. 9. And God said, In the sweat of thy 5face, 6 Or brows. thou shalt eat thy bread till ihou turn to earth again. Here now all is clear [and manifest] in the light ; for he had lost the heavenly fruit, which grew for him without labour [or toil of his] ; and now he must dig and delve in the earth, and sow and plant, and so in the four elenients must get fruit, in cares, labour, toil, and misery. For while the element, or the virtue [or power] out of the element, sprang forth through the earth, there was so long a continual lasting root to the fruit ; but when the element (by the curse) withdrew, then the 6 congealed death, frailty, and transitory fading, 6 Or frozen. was in the root, and they must now continually be 'planted acrain : Thus the turmoilinsr life of man took » or transplanted. beginning, wherein we must now 8 bathe ourselves. „ Or swelter

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