DiotimosReading Desk

Main articles

Fall, original sin, and actual sin

Erbsünd; Adamischer Erbsünd; wircklichen Sünden

Erbsünd is inherited or original sin, explicitly qualified as Adamic in the later exposition.

From the book

The Sophic Hydrolith, Water Stone of the Wise

Anonymous and companion authors · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordErbsünd is inherited or original sin, explicitly qualified as Adamic in the later exposition.
  • In the Sophic HydrolithThe third part presents purification from original sin among the matters mirrored by the art.
  • In this editionThe aligned English preserves ‘original sin’ against ‘actual sins’, and ‘sinless’ against the impurities attributed to ordinary humanity.
  • A place to readThe art’s mirror is said to display purification of original sin through necessary means.

Meaning

Erbsünd is inherited or original sin, explicitly qualified as Adamic in the later exposition. The word is distinguished from wircklichen Sünden, actual sins committed in ordinary human life. Both belong to the account of human corruption, but the text does not treat inherited condition and subsequent acts as identical.

The vocabulary of filth, dregs and harmful poison provides analogies for this condition. The whole human nature is said to have been corrupted through the first parents, and later people conceived and born within that condition. These are theological descriptions in the main treatise, not diagnoses of a material toxin or claims about hereditary disease.

Use in the book

The third part presents purification from original sin among the matters mirrored by the art. It adds that this purification must be obtained through means and that human works without it are vain. The statement does not make alchemical accomplishment the cause of salvation; it anticipates the fourth part’s account of the required spiritual means.

At the beginning of that part, Adam’s punishment illustrates the usefulness of familiar images. Because he was taken from earth, his return to it makes mortality and bodily death intelligible. This reference concerns actual bodily death, not the later figurative dying to sin. Keeping the two senses distinct is essential to understanding why regeneration is discussed without pretending that human bodies become incapable of dying.

Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 23 uses the contrast between common and wholly pure gold to explain why Christ’s assumed humanity must be sinless. Ordinary humanity as corrupted by original and actual sins is not the condition of humanity there attributed to the Son. The edition’s note n104 reports the source margin’s qualification: humanity as before the Fall, an earthly Adam, distinguished from the heavenly Adam possessed by the only-begotten Son. This qualification belongs to the passage’s account and should not be flattened into the claim that Christ assumes a different species of being. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 35 then turns from Christ to recipients of salvation: cleansing and renewed perfection must come through the Holy Spirit’s rebirth, specified as holy baptism through water and Spirit. Christ’s blood washes the members and joins them to their head. The resulting body and edifice are ecclesial images, not a claim that human effort supplies a missing perfection in Christ.

Places to read

  1. Part III: benefits and their rank · unit 9The art’s mirror is said to display purification of original sin through necessary means.
  2. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 2Adam’s return to earth explains mortality and bodily death through a familiar figure.
  3. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 23Original and actual sin distinguish corrupted humanity from Christ’s sinless humanity; note n104 reports the margin’s before-the-Fall qualification.
  4. Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 35Inherited corruption is figured as poison and its cleansing assigned to regeneration through water and Spirit.

Translation

The aligned English preserves ‘original sin’ against ‘actual sins’, and ‘sinless’ against the impurities attributed to ordinary humanity. In Part IV: the spiritual comparison · unit 35 the phrase ‘as by a harmful poison’ marks the comparison; it should not be rewritten as a literal chemical explanation of the fall. The translation also retains the explicit baptismal location of rebirth, which prevents ‘purification’ from becoming an unspecified private feeling or self-directed moral improvement.

The before-the-Fall qualification is supplied in the edition’s account of the margin in note n104; it is not spelled out in the aligned running German or English paragraph. It is retained with that evidence layer identified, rather than presented as a newly collated marginal transcription.

Attested forms

Erbsünd; Adam; Fall; sterbigkeit; leiblichen Todt; erbsünd; wircklichen Sünden; sündloser; Adamischer Erbsünd; schedliches Gifft