Then Satan caused them to slip therefrom, that is, He led them to slip from their station in Paradise into the abyss of nature by seducing [them] with carnal pleasures and [the prospect of] their permanence for them; and brought them out of what they were in, of bliss and everlasting ease. It is said that while they were gazing around in the Garden a peacock surprised them appearing before them on the walls of the Garden. Eve drew close to it and Adam followed, whereupon Satan whispered to them from behind the wall. It is also said that he used a serpent that was scaling the [walls of the] Garden by holding onto its tail in order to climb into the Garden. The former [report] indicates that he used the passions as a means [to seduce them] from outside the Garden; the latter [an indication] of his use of anger, while his scaling the wall of the Garden is an indication that anger is closer to the spiritual horizon and the space occupied by the heart than passion; and We said, 'Go down, that is, We compelled them to go down to the lower aspect, which is the corporeal world; some of you an enemy to the other, a circumstantial qualification of [their] state, binding to that [descent], for the descent to this world, which is the lower aspect, requires that whatever is demanded in it be of a partial nature, given the confines of matter, restricted and unable to support more than one sharing in it, so that whenever one person acquires it, another is deprived of it and denied it. Thus enmity and hatred afflicts them [in this world] in contrast to universal demands. The plural form of address [some of you] is used because the address is directed to the [human] species, since the root always subsumes its branches; and in the earth, that is, in this aspect, a dwelling, a settling, shall be yours, and enjoyment for a while', that is, until their disengagement [from matter] upon voluntary death or the termination of their share through natural death and the arrival of the resurrection, be it the minor or the major one.
