The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 85 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 9 (part 3)
2.) "Many a soul in her malignity would become a devil within one hour if the external life did not prevent it, so that her complete ignition cannot take place." ( Forty Questions , xvi.
12.) "In examining our own selves we find that, on the whole, the external spirit (our human nature) is very useful to us.
Many souls would become corrupted if the animal spirit did not hold captive the fire and present to the fire-spirit terrestrial, animal occupation and joy, wherein it may amuse itself until it obtains again a glimpse of its nobler image, and begins to seek for it again." ( Forty Questions , xvi.
10.) "If the matter of this world (the imagery of external nature) were broken, as it will be broken one day in the future, the soul would have stood in eternal death, in the darkness.
The beautiful creature (the living image) would then have been captured by the realm of hell, and the devil would have been triumphing over it." ( Threefold Life , viii.
38.) As the soul of man became captured by the spirit of this world, and as she allowed its tincture to enter within herself, the terrestrial qualities necessarily arose (became pre-eminently active) in him.
1 "The poor soul of Adam was made captive by the spirit and principle of this world, and allowed the tincture of this world to enter within her." ( Threefold Life , viii.
63.) p.
185 "That in which the imagination of the spirit enters becomes expressed in the corporeal form by means of the impression of the spiritual desire.
Therefore God commanded Adam, when he still was in Paradise, not to eat with his imagination from the tree of self-knowledge of good and evil, so that he should not sink into suffering and death and die to the kingdom of heaven, as has actually occurred." 1 (Baptism, i.
22.) "The terrestrial quality, which formerly was in Paradise in an unmanifested condition, manifested itself by means of the desire of the soul.
From this resulted heat and cold, the poison-life of all adversities, and the supremacy of the body, so that the beautiful image of Heaven and Paradise faded out of sight." ( Stiefel , ii.
83.) The bodies of the first human beings were of a spiritual, celestial nature; but, in consequence of eating of the forbidden fruit, they became terrestrial and material.
"God had given to man a body constituted of pure, essential power, after the nature of the soul, and which, if compared with the grossly terrestrial substance, may be looked upon as being a spiritual body." ( Mysterium , xvi.
3.) "The body of the first human beings was of a celestial kind; but when they ate of the terrestrial fruit and absorbed it into the bodies the temperature separated, and the terrestrial body became manifest according to all its qualities." ( Grace , vii.
5.) "When Eve reached out for the tree and broke the fruit, she did it through the earthly limus and through the will of the soul, which desired knowledge from the centre of nature.
In eating actually of the fruit, her body's essence, p.
186 i.e.
, the human essence, took in the essence in the tree." 1 ( Mysterium , xx.
29.) Man hereby lost the life in eternity, and became subject to death.
2 "We cannot say of man that in the beginning he was enclosed in time.
In Paradise he was embraced in eternity.
God created him in His image; but when he fell he became subject to the limitation of time." ( Grace , vii.
51.) "Time has a beginning and an end, and as the will with its desire has surrendered itself to the temporal guide, the body dies and perishes therefore likewise." ( Signature , v.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage narrates how the material/terrestrial world came into being through the soul's desire and the eating of the fruit, describing the emergence of heat, cold, and the supremacy of the body as a temporal origin narrative.
The Gnostic myth of Wisdom's prolapse from the Pleroma — her unilateral desire or error producing the Demiurge and the entrapment of divine sparks in matter.
The passage is fundamentally a narrative of the soul's unilateral desire and error (Eve reaching for the tree, the soul's desire for knowledge) producing the material/terrestrial condition and entrapment in time and death, directly paralleling the Gnostic myth of Wisdom's prolapse.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The passage explicitly centers on the transgressive act of eating from the tree of self-knowledge of good and evil against God's command, with detailed consequences of this forbidden knowing.
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The passage describes multiple non-physical dimensions (external spirit, animal spirit, fire-spirit, the spiritual/celestial body) that interpenetrate and affect the physical world, constituting a non-physical dimension of reality.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage traces a directional descent from celestial/spiritual body to terrestrial/material body, from eternity to time, from the kingdom of heaven to death — a staged process of spirit descending into matter.
The felt condition of exile from one's divine origin — Rumi's reed flute torn from its bed, Plotinus's 'we have forgotten,' the Gnostic forgetfulness; the affective wound that complements return_to_source and gives the return its motive.
[auto] The text explicitly describes Adam losing life in eternity and becoming subject to death and time due to the fall.