The Fall and the First Instruction

It is the settled opinion of the Hebrews that, before Adam’s Fall, a fuller and more abundant communion existed between heaven and earth, God and the elements, than exists in our days. But through the first man’s transgression, Malkuth, the Kabbalists say, was cut off from the Ilan. A breach was made between the two worlds and their channel of influences interrupted. Malkuth is the invisible archetypal moon, by which our visible celestial moon is governed and impregnated. Perhaps, indeed, the spots and darkness we now see in this planet’s body followed this withdrawal of divine light from lower things; and not in her alone, but around the sun too, as the telescope has disclosed. Thus, they say, God withdrew himself from creatures to punish Adam’s sin, so that they no longer received the same abundance of influences as before. For the archetypal moon, placed in the heavens, Haschamaim, to receive and convey down the

influx of the six higher invisible planets, was, as the Jews affirm, either separated from the Ilan or had her breasts so sealed that she could not dispense her milk to lower things in that happy original abundance. But rather than dwell long on this point, let us hear the Kabbalist state it clearly and appropriately. [Original marginal citation: Porta Lucis.] [New translation of the Latin:] “At the beginning of the world’s creation, the divine indwelling descended into lower things. While the divine indwelling was below, heaven and earth were found united; the springs and channels operated in perfection, and were drawn from the higher to the lower, and God was found filling above and below. The first Adam came and sinned: the descents were destroyed, the channels broken, the watercourse ceased, the divine indwelling ceased, and the fellowship was divided.”

[Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “At the beginning of the world’s creation, God descended and dwelt with things here below. When the divine habitation was below, heaven and earth were found united; the vital springs and channels were perfect and flowed from the higher world to the lower, and God was found filling all things above and beneath. Adam, the first man, came and sinned, whereupon the descents from above

were restrained, their channels broken, and the watercourse ceased. The divine indwelling ceased, and the fellowship was divided.”

So far my rabbi. Now, since I have promised Scripture to support my Kabbalah, I shall submit the tradition to Moses; truly that rabbi is on my side too, for I read in Genesis: [Original marginal citation: chapter 3, verse 17.] “To Adam he said: Because you have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it, cursed is the ground for your sake. In sorrow you shall eat from it all the days of your life. It shall bring forth thorns and thistles for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken: dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” This is the curse, and Adam felt it so keenly that he acquainted his descendants with it. For Lamech, prophesying about his son Noah, says: [Original marginal citation: chapter 5, verse 29.] “This same shall comfort us concerning our work and the toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord has cursed.” This was indeed fulfilled in some sense after the Flood, as the same Scripture tells us: [Original marginal citation: chapter 8, verse 25.] “And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake.” Here we must consider two things:

first, the curse itself, and then its extent. To show the nature of the curse and what it was, you must know that good is essentially light, and evil darkness. Evil, properly speaking, is a corruption that immediately takes place upon the removal of good. Thus, when God removed his candlestick and light from the elements, matter’s darkness and cold at once prevailed. The earth approached its first deformity and consequently became less fruitful and alive. Heaven and hell—that is, light and darkness—are the two extremes that consummate good and evil. But some intermediate blessings merely lead towards or prepare for heaven, their final perfection. Such were the blessings God recalled upon the first man’s transgression. Again, some evils are merely degrees leading towards their final extreme, or hell. Such was the curse or evil that followed the transgression. Thus our Saviour comprehends the inhabitants of light and darkness under these ideas of blessed and cursed: “Come, you blessed,” and “Go, you cursed.” In a word, the curse was simply the repeal of an act, or a withholding of blessings that God, from his sheer goodness, had previously communicated to

his creatures. In this way I conceive a very fair and complete harmony between Moses and the Kabbalists. But, passing over their testimony, great and exalted though it is, we need not lack an angel’s testimony on this point. For the teacher of Esdras, among his other mysterious instructions, also gives this doctrine: [Original marginal citation: chapter 7, verses 11, 12 and 13.] “When Adam transgressed my statutes, what is now done was then decreed. Then the entrances of this world were made narrow, full of sorrow and toil: they are few and evil, full of dangers and very painful. But the entrances of the older world were wide and secure, and brought forth immortal fruit.” So much for the curse itself. Now for its extent. It was principally intended for man, who alone caused it, but extended to the elements in relation to him and for his sake. Had God excluded him from Eden while leaving the earth in its original glories, he would merely have turned him out of one paradise into another. Therefore he fits the dungeon to the slave, and sends corruptible man into a corruptible world. In truth, neither man nor earth suffered alone in this curse: all other creatures suffered too. For God says to the serpent, “You are cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field,” so that

cattle and beasts were also cursed in some measure, but this serpent above them all. The Apostle agrees in his Epistle to the Romans, where he says: [Original marginal citation: chapter 8, verse 20.] “The creature was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope; for the creature itself shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of God’s children.” By “the creature” he understands the lower species, rather than man: he distinguishes them from God’s children, although he grants both the same liberty. This is still clearer in the following verses, where he distinguishes man from the whole creation: “For we know,” he says, “that the whole creation groans and labours together in pain until now. Not only they, but we ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan within ourselves, awaiting adoption: the redemption of our body.” Here we see the Spirit’s firstfruits referred to man. Why should some second, subordinate fruits not belong to creatures generally? As they were cursed for man’s sake in his Fall, so it seems they will also be blessed for his sake in his restoration. But enough of this. Let us now sum up and

consider the various hardships to which our first parent was subject, for these will be useful later. First, he was expelled from God’s presence and exposed to the Devil’s malice and temptations. He was changed from good to bad, from incorruptible to corruptible: “In the day you eat from it,” Scripture says, “you shall surely die.” He was excluded from a glorious paradise and confined to a base world whose sick and infected elements, conspiring with his own nature, assisted and hastened the death already beginning to reign in his body. Heaven mourned over him; so did the earth and all her offspring around him. He regarded himself as a felon and murderer, guilty of the curse and corruption that followed in the world because of his Fall, as we have sufficiently proved from Mosaic and Kabbalistic traditions. He was ignorant, and therefore without hope of eternal life; as for this present temporal life, he did not know how to provide for it. The rudiments of farming were not yet known. There was neither house nor plough, nor any manual art that makes up worldly provision. He was exposed to violent rains and winds, frost and snow: deprived, in a word, of all comforts spiritual