The Fall of man

Jakob Boehme, the 17th century Christian mystic, suggests that when, in the Book of Genesis, Adam fell asleep (when Adam was still androgynous since Eva had not yet split from him), “he imagined himself in Nature (Physis, in Greek)”. That is to say, he imagined himself in the physical world. He dreamed of himself in material form, split into two halves. Matter slipped thus into the androgynous and spiritual Adam from the Origin as he slept. Disciples of Boehme, such as J.J. Wirz and Gottfried Arnold, would specify Adam’s “material fantasy” by saying that he had imagined himself mating “like the animals” with his “hidden wife”: that is the reason why Eve separated from him. The German theosophist Michael Hahn shared the same opinion. For him, Adam’s mistake was to feel a carnal desire towards his wife Eve, whom he would have tried to sexually possess. “If Adam had always possessed his wife spiritually – he writes–, she would never have separated from him.”