Focus on Creation: Hermetica

Jacob Böhme. Mysterium magnum.
Amsterdam, J. Claus and W. Lamsvelt, 1700

For Jacob Böhme (1575-1624) original man is a creature made up of matter and spirit, whose materialness is still unrelated to carnality. He never sleeps because he continually looks up towards the divine being, and so he has no need of eye-lashes. The first Adam abuses his free will by averting his eyes from the divine Unity in order to experience the essence of things himself. As a consequence he falls into matter, a fall comparable to that of the Anthropos in the Corpus Hermeticum.