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potentialities. The second Adam resided in the sphere of Briah. Like the first Adam, this
being was androgynous and the tenth division of its body (its heel, Malchuth)
corresponded to the church of Israel that shall bruise the serpent's head. The third Adam--
likewise androgynous--was clothed in a body of light and abode in the sphere of
Yetzirah. The fourth Adam was merely the third Adam after the fall into the sphere of
Assiah, at which time the spiritual man took upon himself the animal shell or coat of
skins. The fourth Adam was still considered as a single individual, though division had
taken place within his nature and two shells or physical bodies existed, in one of which
was incarnated the masculine and in the other the feminine potency. (For further details
consult Isaac Myer.)

The universal nature of Adam is revealed in the various accounts concerning the
substances of which he was formed. It was originally ordained that the "dirt" to be used
in fashioning him was to be derived from the seven worlds. As these planes, however,
refused to give of their substances, the Creator wrenched from them by force the
elements to be employed in the Adamic constitution. St. Augustine discovered a
Notarikon in the name of Adam. He showed that the four letters, A-D-A-M, are the first
letters of the four words Anatole Dysis Arktos Mesembria, the Greek names for the four
corners of the world. The same author also sees in Adam a prototype of Christ, for he
writes: "Adam sleeps that Eve may be formed: Christ dies, that the Church may be
formed. While Adam sleeps, Eve is formed from his side. When Christ is dead, His side
is smitten with a spear, that there flow forth sacraments to form the church. * * * Adam
himself was the figure of Him that was to come."

In his recent work, Judaism, George Foote Moore thus describes the proportions of the
Adamic man: "He was a huge mass that filled the whole world to all the points of the
compass. The dust of which his body was formed was gathered from every part of the
world, or from the site of the future altar. Of greater interest is the notion that man was
created androgynous, because it is probably a bit of foreign lore adapted to the first pair
in Genesis. R. Samuel bar Nahman (third century), said, when God created Adam, He
created him facing both ways (דיו פרעופים); then He sawed him in two and made two
backs, one for each figure.

The Zohar holds the concept of two Adams: the first a divine being who, stepping forth
from the highest original darkness, created the second, or earthly, Adam in His own
image. The higher, or celestial, man was the Causal sphere With its divine potencies and
potentialities considered as a gigantic personality; its members, according to the
Gnostics, being the basic elements of existence. This Adam may have been symbolized
as facing both ways to signify that with one face it looked upon the proximate Cause of
itself and with the other face looked upon the vast sea of Cosmos into which it was to be
immersed.

Philosophically, Adam may be regarded as representative of the full spiritual nature of
man--androgynous and nor subject to decay.
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