The Life and Doctrines of Jacob Boehme · 86 of 159 · tr. Franz Hartmann
Chapter 9 (part 4)
9.) "After the fall man with his interior body lived only in time; the precious gold of heavenly corporeity, which should tincture, penetrate and bless the external body, had lost its colour." 3 ( Signature , v.
8.) Moreover, the powers of animal life have gained so much room in man, and become preponderating in him to such an extent, that in his external essence he has become an animal himself.
4 p.
187 "Man was not, like the animals, created from evil and good (out of the merely terrestrial substance).
If he had not eaten of evil and good there would not be in him the fire of the wrath; but now he has also an animal body." ( Aurora , xviii.
109.) "Before the sin the celestial image penetrated wholly the external man, clothing him with divine power.
The animal element was then not manifested in him; but when that image, formed of the celestial essence, paled and disappeared, then the poor soul, formed out of the first principle, found herself surrounded by the animal body, naked and bare." ( Mysterium , xxi.
15.) "After Adam and Eve had eaten from the tree of self-knowledge of good and evil, they soon became ashamed, because in their ethereal form there had grown up such a gross animal, made of common flesh and hard bones and animal bowels.
The animal being had swallowed up the celestial state, and arisen in them as a creature foreign to their true nature, such as they had not known heretofore." ( Mysterium , xxiii.
1.) "Let no one imagine that man before the fall had animal organs of reproduction, neither did he have bowels such as he has now.
Such uncleanliness does not exist within the Holy Trinity, nor within Paradise; it belongs to the earth.
Originally man was created an immortal being and holy, like the angels." ( Three Principles , x.
7.) "By means of the fall man, in regard to his external body, became the animal of all animals; that is to say, he became the animal image of God, wherein the word of God became manifested in an earthly manner.
Thus he became a master and king of all animals; but nevertheless p.
188 only an animal; endowed, however, with a higher intellect than the merely animal forms." ( Grace , vii.
6.) The senses of man also became of an earthly and animal nature, so that he is no longer able to perceive God and that which is divine.
1 "When man left the Paradise and entered into another generation, namely, into the spirit of this world, into the quality of the sun, the planets and elements, then his paradisiacal perception became extinct." ( Three Principles , xiv.
2.) "After the fall man became degraded to an animal state of being, so that Heaven, Paradise, and divinity became a mystery to him." ( Menschwerdung , i.
2, 14.) "The serpent (of desire) said to Eve, 'You will not die; but your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God.' It is true that her earthly eyes became opened, but her celestial eyes became closed." 2 ( Stiefel , i.
44.) Man's will and mind were captured by the spirit of this world, and are now held by one or another element, as is shown by the power of the temperaments.
"The soul entered with Adam into a strange habitation, namely, within the spirit of this world.
There are actually four dwellings in which that precious jewel is imprisoned.
Of these four there is always one especially manifest in a person, and not all four, according to the four elements which are within each man, and of which always one predominates in the life of a person.
These p.
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.
Details the eating from the tree of knowledge as the cause of shame and the emergence of the animal body.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
Describes man as the 'animal image of God' and master/king of all animals, reflecting cosmic order.
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 central theme is the fall from Paradise and the resulting exile into time and animal existence.
The doctrine — central to Eastern Orthodox and Maximian theology — that the human person is progressively transformed into a partaker of the divine nature by grace, not merely justified or united in passing ecstasy.
Describes the pre-fall state where man was created in God's image and clothed with divine power.