Reflections on Esaias Stiefel's Booklet: On the Threefold State of Man and His New Birth

37. Therefore we must consider man rightly / what he is / and not make an earthly animal out of him / and also out of his earthly part no angel: but he is created according to the earthly realm / as according to the third principium / into the wonders / that he should reveal the wonders in figures / for to this he has the inner spirit from the first principium / but he should not rule with it / and also not with the outer / but surrender himself to the Holy Spirit in the second / and in the outer life be as a child in the mother's womb.

38. For the Spirit of God had the outer realm in itself as if swallowed up / just as the light swallows the dark night / so that one does not see it. But through his imagination the formative power of the will into earthliness, the earthliness and the dark world became revealed in him / for the soul-fire imagined according to earthliness / and introduced earthly craving into itself: Thus the soul-fire began to burn in earthly torment / and was revealed in earthliness / where the earthly shape should not have been revealed.

39. And thus the soul also lusted to eat of evil and good / as of evil / poisonous / grim property from the dark world's essence / as of lies / deceit / and falsity / in which torment it lived in God's wrath and in the dark world.

40. For the outer earthliness originates in the creation from the dark world's essence / and not alone this / but also from the heavenly. This God forbade Adam / he should not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil / otherwise he would die to paradise / as to the Divine essence.

41. For the heavenly pure element with Divine essence greened through all fruits created for man / and he should eat in a magical effortless/will-based way / in his mouth was the separation / that the heavenly swallowed the earthly / just as the day the night: as we then know / that our life which we now lead / must go into a transmutation / because God's