Magia Adamica

speak very loftily on this point, and express themselves as follows. God, they say, having shut his paradise’s doors and expelled Adam, once the dearest of his creatures, nevertheless retained his former affection despite the present punishment. God is said to love his creatures because he desires their perfection, rather than because anything in them is lovable apart from their Creator. That is, he wishes them to conform to himself and be fit to receive his image or likeness, a spiritual impression of his beauty. To restore this likeness in Adam was impossible unless God took back to himself what had now fallen away from him. God had stored up such transcendent and almost incredible mercy in his secret will: he resolved to unite human nature with his own and thus rescue man from death by taking him into the Godhead, the true fountain and centre of life. This will, the Kabbalists say, was first revealed to the angels by God himself in these words: [Original marginal citation: Genesis, chapter 3, verse 22.] [New translation of the Latin:] “Behold Adam, as one of us”; [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “Behold an Adam like one of us, knowing good and evil!” They call this speech [New translation of the Latin:] “a most secret discourse held by the Creator of the world with the blessed angels in the innermost sanctuary of his divinity”; [Vaughan’s own English rendering:] “A most secret conference