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.

primarypage 237

1of heaven was not assisting in him, and that he merely out of his own might and power made 3 the heaven, himself such an upright [honest] man; for 3it was in the wrestling, and overcame the anger. For man is weak and 4 ignorant, and can do little by his own power [or ability], 6yet he hath the imagination, and the choosing, or the free yielding [to a thing], where then the maker is ready beforehand, which maketh him [to be] according as his lust [or desire] is ; as it is to be seen by Adam, for when he longed and lusted in the spirit of this world, there instantly the maker was present, and made (of an angelical image) a man. 76. The lust [or longing desire] is the introduc- « Or of. ing 6 into a thing, and out of the lust cometh the form [or image] of the lust, viz. a body, and the source [or active quality] of sins sticketh therein ; and you may more easily hinder the lust, than break the body, which is very hard ; therefore it is good to turn away the eyes, and then the 7 the kindling 7 tincture goeth not into the essences by which the into the issu- spirit is impregnated ; for the lust indeed is not en the mind wholly, but they are sisters ; for when Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVE*S GOING OUT OF PARADISE 537 the lust impregnateth the mind, then it is already a half l substance, and there must necessarily * Or body. follow a breaking, or there cometh to be a whole substance, and an essence of a thing.

277. Now Abel is the first Christian Church in patience, which God established, that the Cainish church should be converted by Abel ; he hath not therefore so rejected the Cainish church, that he would have no member out of it. Understand it thus : The true Christian Church standeth like a sheep among wolves ; though indeed we are men and not wolves, but in mind and in figure. 2 It teacheth the wicked ; and if he be converted, then it hath gained him, and he is figured into an image [of God] ; and thereby joy is caused among the angels of God, that the kingdom of heaven hath the victory. 78. Or dost thou suppose, that the word in Daniel is nothing, concerning the angel Gabriel, who said, s that the prince in Persia withstood him 3 Dan. x. one and twenty days, and that our prince Michael came to help him ? Thereby it may be seen how the princes and throne-angels strive against the kingdom of the fierce wrath, and assist men ; the cause whereof is this : The devil awakeneth the anger against men ; and the angels of God (viz. the throne-princes) keep it back, because God 4 yet 4 Notwith- .,, ,, M standing the Wllleth not evil. devil's atir79.' We are especially to observe in Cain and "™kemn°g of Abel, what their purpose was. Cain was a plough538 THE THREE PRINCIPLES [Ch. 20

3man [or tiller of the ground], and Abel was a shepherd [or keeper of sheep]. Abel relied upon the blessing of God towards his flock, to maintain himself by the blessing of God. Cain relred upon his own labour, to maintain himself by his own skill and industry. Eve took part with Cain, and Adam with Abel] for Eve counted him to be the prince on earth, to whom the kingdom did belong, and supposed that he (as a champion) would chase and hunt away the devil ; although she knew 1 the devil. l him not. 80. But if men search very deep, this [that followeth they will find] is the very ground. Eve was the child in the matrix of Adam, which Adam (if he had not been overcome) should have generated out of himself, in great modesty [purity] and holiness ; but because Adam's matrix was impregnated from the spirit of this world, therefore God must frame a fleshly woman out of it, which afterwards (in her first fruit) became lustful, and infected from the devil, as well as the limbus in Adam. 81. And therefore they also generated such a towardly child that looked only after covetousness ; as Eve also did, who would be like God ; and surely Adam had some mind that way, or else he would not have entered into the spirit of this world. 82. And such also now was their son Cain ; he supposed that he was lord on earth ; and therefore Ch. 20] ADAM AND EVfi's GOING OUT OF PARADISE 539

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.

primarypage 237

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