The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. Goethe's Secret Revelation: Esoteric

[ 1 ] A lecture like today’s can easily be accused of offering forced symbolic and allegorical interpretations of something a poet has created through the free play of the imagination. After all, the day before yesterday we set ourselves the task of exploring the deeper meaning of Goethe’s “fairy tale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily, as it has appeared before our eyes. Time and again, such an interpretation—or explanation, if you will—of a work of fantasy is dismissed with the words: “Oh, people are looking for all sorts of symbols and meanings that are supposed to be profound in the characters of the work.” — That is why I would like to note from the outset that what I am about to say today has nothing to do with what has, admittedly, often been done—particularly from a theosophical perspective—with regard to symbolic or allegorical interpretations of fairy tales or poetic works. And because I know that similar arguments I have presented have repeatedly been met with the objection that one should not engage in such symbolic interpretations of literary characters, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that what is to be said here must be understood solely in the following sense.

[ 2 ] Today we have before us a work of poetry, the product of an imagination that is both comprehensive and capable of penetrating to the very depths of things: the “Fairy Tale” of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. The question may well be raised: May we approach the work from any perspective and attempt to fathom the ideal and the real content of such a poetic creation?

[ 3 ] We see the plant before us. A person approaches the plant; he examines the laws, the inner regularity, according to which the plant grows and flourishes, according to which it develops its essence step by step. Does the botanist—or does anyone who is not a botanist but who conceives of the plant’s development in abstract terms—have the right to do so? Can one object to him: “The plant knows nothing of the laws you discover there; it does not know the laws of its growth and development!” — The objection that could be raised against such an interpretation of Goethe’s fairy tale would have exactly the same weight as if it were raised against the botanist or against the poet who expresses in his poetic works what he perceives in the plant; it would have exactly the same meaning and weight. I do not wish for things to be understood as if I were saying: Here we have a snake that signifies this or that; here we have a golden, a silver, and a bronze king—they signify this or that. I do not wish to interpret the fairy tale in this symbolic-allegorical sense, but rather in this way: just as the plant grows according to laws of which it, in its unconsciousness, can know nothing, and just as the botanist has the right to discover these laws of plant growth, one must also say: What is being analyzed here, the poet Goethe never needed to analyze in this way, nor did he ever bring it to the surface of his everyday consciousness. Nevertheless, it is equally true that the regularity—the real, the ideal content of the fairy tale—must be regarded in the same sense as what we find to be the laws of plant growth; that it is the same regularity according to which the plant grows, according to which it came into being, but of which it is unaware in its unconsciousness.

[ 4 ] I therefore ask that you regard what I shall take the liberty of saying as representing the meaning and spirit of Goethe’s way of thinking and imagination, and as if the one who feels, so to speak, called upon to present Goethe’s ideal worldview to you were justified — so that you may find your way to an understanding of Goethe’s worldview — to analyze the product of Goethe’s imagination, to highlight the figures, and to show the interrelationships in which he employed them, just as the botanist shows that the plant grows according to the laws he has discovered.

[ 5 ] Goethe’s psychology, or his theory of the soul—that is, what he considers to be the essence of the soul—is illustrated for us in his beautiful fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. And if we wish to reach an understanding regarding what needs to be said on this subject, it will be helpful if, in a preliminary consideration, we vividly articulate the spirit of his world of the soul. Already in the lecture the day before yesterday, it was pointed out that the worldview presented here is based on the premise that human knowledge is not to be regarded as something fixed once and for all. Indeed, the prevailing view is often: Human beings are simply the way they are today, and as they are, they can make absolute judgments about all things; they observe the world with their sense organs, grasp it in its phenomena, combine these with their intellect—which is bound to the senses—and what they arrive at through this intellectual activity, which is confined to observation, constitutes an absolute knowledge of the world that must apply to everyone. — In contrast to this—but only in a specific sense—stands the spiritual-scientific worldview represented here. It proceeds from the premise that what becomes our knowledge is always dependent on our organs and our cognitive faculties, and that we ourselves, as human beings, are capable of development; that we can work on ourselves; and that we can elevate the cognitive faculties we possess at a particular stage of our existence to a higher level. It assumes that we can cultivate these abilities, that—just as humanity has evolved from an imperfect state to its present stage—we can develop them even further, and that by elevating ourselves to higher perspectives, we must also arrive at a deeper understanding of things and a more accurate view of the world.

[ 6 ] To put it even more clearly—albeit somewhat trivially—I would say: If we set aside the evolution of humanity entirely and consider only what the people living around us are like, and then look at those people whom cultural history classifies as primitive tribes, and if we ask ourselves what they are capable of recognizing and knowing about the laws of the world around us, and compare that with what an average European, armed with a few scientific concepts, can know about the world, then we will see that a member of that primitive tribe differs quite significantly from the average European. Let us take, for example, the worldview of an Australian Aborigine and that of, say, a European monist, the latter of which derives its reality from having assimilated a body of contemporary scientific concepts. These two worldviews differ entirely.

[ 7 ] On the other hand, however, spiritual science is far from condemning the worldview of people who take a purely materialistic standpoint or declaring it invalid. Rather, these matters are viewed in such a way that, in every case, a person’s worldview corresponds to a stage of human development, and that a person is capable of enhancing the abilities inherent within them and, through this enhancement, of experiencing something different and new.

[ 8 ] It is therefore the perspective of spiritual science that human beings attain ever higher levels of knowledge by developing themselves further; and as they develop, what they experience within themselves is objective content of the world that they simply had not seen before, when they did not yet possess the ability to perceive it. Spiritual science therefore differs fundamentally from other one-sided worldviews—whether spiritualistic or materialistic—because, at its core, it does not recognize an infallible truth established once and for all, but rather only the wisdom and truth of a particular stage of development, thus adhering to Goethe’s words: “Human beings actually always have only their own truth, and yet it is always the same.” — It is always the same because what we take in through our power of cognition—the objective—is always the same.

[ 9 ] How, then, does a person come to develop the abilities and powers that lie within them? Spiritual science is, so to speak, as old as thinking humanity itself. Spiritual science has always held the view that human beings have before them the ideal of a certain perfection of knowledge toward which they strive. The principle underlying this has always been called the principle of initiation. Initiation, therefore, means nothing other than raising human capacities to ever higher levels of knowledge and thereby attaining deeper insights into the nature of the world around us. Goethe stood entirely—one may well say throughout his entire life—on this standpoint of knowledge in the process of development, on the standpoint of initiation. It is precisely this that his fairy tale shows us in the most eminent sense.

[ 10 ] We will understand each other best if we start from the perspective that is most widely held today and that stands in a certain contrast to the principle of initiation.

[ 11 ] Today, even in the broadest sense, one can hear people who reflect on such matters or believe they have an opinion on them more or less consciously taking the position that only sensory observation—or objects of sensory observation in the mind—can actually determine the truth and objective reality. You will hear this time and again: Science can only be that which is based on the objective foundation of observation. — And so often this is understood to mean merely sensory observation and the application of human reason and the power of imagination to this sensory observation. Each of you knows that the ability to form concepts and ideas is one human mental faculty among others, and likewise, each of you knows that these other mental faculties are our feeling and our willing. Thus, even from a relatively superficial perspective, one can say: Human beings are not merely thinking beings, but also feeling and willing beings. Now, those who believe they must uphold the purely scientific standpoint will say time and again: In science, only the power of imagination may play a role—never human feeling, never what we know as impulses of the will—for this would only taint what is objective and impair what the power of imagination could grasp in an impersonal way. — It is true that when a person brings their feelings, their sympathy, or antipathy into what is supposed to be the subject of science, they find things repulsive or appealing, sympathetic or unsympathetic. And where would we end up if a person were to regard their capacity for desire as a capacity for knowledge, so that they could say of things: “I want it,” or “I do not want it.” — Whether it displeases or pleases you, whether you desire it—that is of the utmost indifference to the thing itself. Just as it is true that anyone who believes they must stand on the firm ground of science can rely only on external things, so it is true that it is the thing itself that compels you to say it is red, that what you gain as a conception of the essence of the stone is correct. But it is not in the nature of the thing that it appears ugly or beautiful to you, that you desire it or do not desire it. That it appears red to you has an objective reason; that you do not want it has no objective reason.

[ 12 ] In a certain sense, modern psychology has actually gone beyond the standpoint just described. It is not my task here to argue for or against that branch of contemporary psychology which maintains: When we consider mental phenomena and the life of the soul, we must not limit ourselves merely to intellectualism; we must not view human beings solely in terms of their capacity for imagination, but must also take into account the influences of the world of feeling and will. — Perhaps some of you know that this is part of Wundt’s philosophical system, which conceives of the will as the primary source of mental activity. In a way that is fundamental in a certain respect—regardless of whether one agrees with it or not—the Russian psychologist Lossky, in his book titled *The Foundations of Intuitionism*, has pointed to the volitional aspect of human mental life. I could tell you much more if I wanted to show how the theory of the soul strives to overcome one-sided intellectualism, and if I further wanted to show you that other forces also play a role in what exists as the power of the human soul.

[ 13 ] Anyone capable of thinking more deeply will say to themselves: From this we see how unworkable the claim is that only an imagination limited to observation can lead to objective scientific results. If science itself shows that this is not possible—that the will plays a role everywhere—how, then, can you determine that something is purely objective observation? Because your will plays the trick mentioned above on you, and because your habits of thought lead you to prefer regarding only what is material as objective, and because you lack the habits of thought and feeling necessary to recognize the spiritual aspect of things as well—that is why you omit the latter from your theories. When we seek to understand the world, what matters is not the abstract ideals we set for ourselves, but what we achieve within our souls—what we are capable of.

[ 14 ] Goethe is among those who most vehemently reject the principle that knowledge is conveyed solely through the one-sided power of imagination, solely through the power of thought. This is the striking, significant fundamental trait of Goethe’s character: that he—whether expressed more or less clearly—always holds the view that the entire human soul, in all its faculties, must be at work if a person is to unravel the mysteries of the world.

[ 15 ] However, we must not be one-sided or unfair. It is certainly true, when it comes to knowledge, to object that a person’s emotions and will are faculties subject to their personal characteristics, and to say: Where would we end up if we were to regard not only what the eyes see and what the microscope reveals, but also what emotion and will tell a person, as belonging to the realm of things!

[ 16 ] But that is precisely what we must tell ourselves in order to understand someone who, like Goethe, is guided by the principle of initiation and development: that, given the average state of feeling and will in people today, they cannot in fact be used for knowledge, and that they would only lead people to absolute discord in their understanding. One person wants one thing, another wants another, depending on the subjective needs of feeling and will. But the one who stands on the ground of initiation is also clear about the fact that, of the human soul forces—thinking, imagining, feeling, and willing—in the development of the average person today, the faculty of imagination and the faculty of thinking are precisely the most advanced, and are the most inclined and suited to exclude the personal and to attain objectivity. For the faculty of the soul that finds its expression in intellectualism has already advanced so far today that when people rely on this faculty, they argue the least and agree the most on what they say. This is because people today are highly developed in terms of their powers of imagination and thought, whereas feeling and will have not yet been developed to such a degree of objectivity.

[ 17 ] If we look around in the realm of the imagination, we could also justifiably find differences. There are broad areas of the life of the imagination that provide us with completely objective truths—truths that people have recognized as such, entirely independent of external experience, and it makes no difference whether a million people judge them differently. Anyone who has experienced the reasons for this within themselves is able to assert the truth, even if a million people think otherwise. For example, anyone can find confirmation of what has been said regarding truths that relate to numerical and spatial quantities. Anyone can understand and experience that 3 times 3 equals 9, and it is true even if a million people were to contradict it. Why is this the case? Because when it comes to truths such as mathematical ones, most people have managed to set aside their likes and dislikes, their sympathies and antipathies—in short, the personal—and let the matter speak for itself. The elimination of all that is personal from thought and imagination has always been called the purification of the human soul, and this purification was regarded as the first step on the path of initiation—or, as one might also say, on the path to higher knowledge.

[ 18 ] A person who is well-versed in these matters tells himself: It is not only with regard to emotion and the will that people have not yet reached the point where personal factors no longer come into play and where they can maintain objectivity; with regard to thinking as well, most people have not yet reached the point where they can devote themselves purely to what things—or the ideas of things themselves—tell them, just as all people are able to do with mathematical concepts. But there are methods for purifying thought to such an extent that we no longer think personally, but rather allow thoughts to think within us, just as we allow mathematical thoughts to think within us. So when we have purified our thoughts of the influences of the personality, we speak of purification or catharsis, as it was called in the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries. Human beings must therefore reach the point of purifying their thinking, which then gives them the ability to grasp things objectively in thought.

[ 19 ] Just as this is possible, it is now also possible to eliminate everything personal from feeling, so that even that which in things stimulates feeling no longer speaks to the personality, no longer has anything to do with the person, sympathy, or antipathy, but evokes solely the essence of the thing, insofar as it cannot speak to the mere power of imagination. Experiences in our soul that are rooted in or arise from our emotional life, and which lead to inner insight by guiding us deeper into the essence of a thing—but which also speak to other aspects of the soul besides mere intellectualism—can be purified of the personal just as thinking can be, so that feeling then conveys precisely the same objectivity as thinking or the power of imagination can convey. This purification or development of feeling is called enlightenment in all esoteric teachings on knowledge.

[ 20 ] Every person who is capable of development and who does not pursue that development in any arbitrary way, as dictated by the intentions of the personality, must strive to allow himself to be inspired only by what lies in the essence of the thing itself. When they have reached the point where the thing in itself arouses no personal sympathy or antipathy in them, when they allow only the essence of things to speak, so that they say: “Whatever sympathies or antipathies I may have are irrelevant and must not be taken into account”—then it is inherent in the nature of the thing that a person’s thinking and action take this or that direction; then this is an expression of the innermost nature of the thing. In esoteric philosophy, this development of the will has been called perfection.

[ 21 ] When a person stands on the ground of spiritual science, he says to himself: When I have an object before me, a spiritual element lives within that object, and I can stimulate my power of imagination in such a way that the essence of things is objectively represented through my concepts and ideas. In this way, what is at work outside has, as it were, become present within me, and I have recognized the essence of the thing through my power of imagination. But what I have recognized is only a part of its essence. There is something in things that cannot speak to the imagination at all, but only to feeling—and specifically to feeling that has been purified or has become objective. — Anyone who has not already developed such a part of the essence within themselves through a cultivation of feeling cannot recognize the essence in this way. But for someone who tells himself that feeling can provide the basis for knowledge just as much as the power of imagination—feeling, not as it is, but as it can become through well-founded methods of epistemology—for such a person it gradually becomes clear that there are things that lie deeper than the power of imagination, things that speak to the nature of the soul and to feeling. Likewise, there are things that extend even down to the will.

[ 22 ] Goethe was particularly clear that this is indeed the case—that human beings possess these possibilities for development. He stood firmly on the ground of the principle of initiation, and he depicted for us the initiation of the human being—which can be attained through the development of the soul and the development of the three fundamental forces: will, feeling, and imagination—by having the representatives of these three initiations of the human being appear in his fairy tale.

[ 23 ] The Golden King represents initiation into the power of imagination; the Silver King represents initiation into the cognitive power of objective feeling; the Bronze King represents initiation into the cognitive power of the will. At the same time, Goethe emphatically pointed out to us that a person must first overcome certain things if they are to be endowed with these three gifts. The young man we met in the fairy tale is nothing other than the embodiment of the human being striving for the highest. Just as Schiller portrays man’s striving for perfect humanity in his Aesthetic Letters, Goethe presents us, in the form of the young man, with the human being striving for the highest, who initially seeks to attain the beautiful lily but who then attains inner human perfection through the three kings—the golden, the silver, and the bronze kings—bestowing it upon him.

[ 24 ] How this happens is hinted at as the fairy tale unfolds. Remember that in the underground temple, into which the serpent gazes through the earth’s crystallizing power, there was a king in each of the four corners. In the first corner was the golden king, in the second the silver king, and in the third the bronze king. In the fourth corner was a king made of a mixture of the three metals—that is, in whom these three components are so fused together that they cannot be distinguished from one another. In this fourth king, Goethe presents us with the representative of that stage of human development in which will, imagination, and feeling are blended. In other words, he is the representative of the human soul who is dominated by will, imagination, and feeling, because he himself is not master of these three faculties. In contrast, the young man—having acquired the gift of each of the kings in particular—the gift of imagination, the gift of emotional insight, and the gift of volitional insight, so that they are no longer chaotically mixed—represents that stage of knowledge which is no longer dominated by imagination, feeling, and will, but rather reigns over them. Human beings are dominated by these faculties as long as they flow chaotically through them, as long as they are not found in the soul in a pure state, each acting independently. As long as a person has not achieved this separation, they are also unable to act through their three faculties of cognition. But once they have attained this, they are no longer dominated by chaos; rather, they themselves dominate their power of imagination, which is as pure as the Golden King, so that nothing else is mixed in with it; their power of feeling is such that nothing else is mixed in with it, that it stands pure and clear like the Silver King, and is his will likewise as pure as the ore of the bronze King, so that neither imagination nor feeling dominates him and he can express himself freely in his nature—in other words, if the situation calls for grasping through imagination, or through feeling, or through the will, he is capable of making use of will, feeling, and imagination individually, then he has advanced so far beyond himself that the entire pure faculty of cognition, which confronts us in imagination, feeling, and volition, leads him to a deeper insight, so that he truly immerses himself in the stream of events, immerses himself in what things are inwardly. Of course, only experience can teach one how to immerse oneself in this way.

[ 25 ] Now that this has been stated, it will no longer be difficult to admit that, while Goethe has the young man represent the striving human being, we must see in the beautiful lily a different state of soul—the state of soul that a human being attains when the essences inherent in things dawn within the soul, and he elevates his human existence by fusing the things within himself with the essence of things in the external world. What the human being experiences in his soul by rising above himself, by becoming master of his soul’s powers, by triumphing over the chaos within his soul—what the human being experiences there, this inner bliss, this oneness with things, this merging with things—is presented to us by Goethe symbolically in the union with the beautiful lily. Beauty here is not merely artistic beauty, but a quality of the human being who has attained a certain degree of perfection in general. Thus we will now also come to understand why Goethe depicts the young man as moving on, striving toward the beautiful lily, so that all his powers initially vanish from him. Why is that so?

[ 26 ] We can understand Goethe’s portrayal of such an image if we draw on a thought he once expressed: “Everything that liberates our spirit without giving us mastery over ourselves is pernicious.” First, a person must become free, must attain mastery over his inner spiritual powers; only then can he, through true knowledge, attain union with the highest state of the soul—with the beautiful lily. But if he seeks to attain it unprepared, with powers that are not yet mature, then it robs him of his strength and has a withering effect on his soul. That is why Goethe draws our attention to the fact that the young man must seek the liberation that makes him master of his soul’s powers. The moment his soul forces no longer act chaotically within him, but stand side by side, purified and cleansed—at that moment he is ready to attain that state of the soul which is characterized or represented by the union with the beautiful lily.

[ 27 ] Thus we see that Goethe develops these various characters through his free-flowing imagination; when we regard them as depicted spiritual forces, we see that they reign and work throughout his entire soul. If we view them in this way, if we feel and perceive as Goethe, in a certain sense, felt and perceived with regard to these figures—for he does not content himself, like a poor didactic poet, with stating what this or that soul force means, but rather expresses what he himself felt—then we will recognize what is expressed to him in such poetic figures. That is why the various characters stand in such a personal relationship to one another as the soul forces of human beings stand in relation to one another.

[ 28 ] It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that it is not the case that the figures signify this or that. That is by no means the case. Rather, it is the case that Goethe feels this or that in connection with this or that spiritual force, and that his feelings then take the form of this or that figure. In this way, he created the process of the fairy tale, which is even more important than the figures themselves. Thus we see the will-o’-the-wisps and the green snake. We see that the will-o’-the-wisps come over from the other side of the river and display quite remarkable characteristics. They eagerly absorb the gold, even licking it off the walls of the old man’s room, and throw it about lavishly. This same gold, which thus appears worthless to the will-o’-the-wisps—a fact also implied by the fact that the ferryman must refuse the gold because the river would rage and is allowed to accept only fruit in payment—what effect does this gold have on the green snake’s body? After absorbing it, the snake begins to glow from within! And the plants and other things around it are also illuminated by the fact that it absorbs what, in the case of the will-o’-the-wisps, is marked by worthlessness. But a certain importance is also attributed to the will-o’-the-wisps. They know that at the decisive hour, the Old Man calls upon the will-o’-the-wisps to open the temple gate, so that the entire procession can now enter the temple.

[ 29 ] Exactly the same event that takes place here with the green serpent is found as an experience in the human soul—an experience that has been able to confront us particularly strongly in the kind of thinking we observed the day before yesterday in the conversation between Goethe and Schiller. We have seen that at the moment Schiller was speaking with Goethe about the nature of observing nature, he was still of the opinion that what Goethe had sketched with a few strokes as the “primordial plant” was an idea—something abstract—that one obtains by omitting the distinguishing features and bringing together the common elements. And we have seen that Goethe replied: “If that is an idea, then I see my ideas with my eyes!” At that moment, two entirely different realities stood in opposition to one another. Schiller truly worked his way up to Goethe’s way of perceiving the world, so that those who revere Schiller are not to be blamed for citing him as an example of that human faculty of the soul which soars in abstractions and lives primarily in the concepts of things grasped by the intellect alone. This is a particular disposition of the soul which, if a person wishes to attain a higher level of development, can under certain circumstances play a rather harmful role.

[ 30 ] There are people who are predisposed toward the abstract. When they associate this abstractness with something that confronts them as a spiritual force, it is usually the concept of unproductivity. These people are sometimes very astute; they can make sharp distinctions and combine one concept with another in a marvelous way. But it is precisely this state of mind that is often linked to a failure to receive spiritual influences—that is, inspiration.

[ 31 ] This state of mind, characterized by unproductiveness and abstractness, is represented to us by the will-o'-the-wisps. They take the gold wherever they find it; they are devoid of all inventiveness, are unproductive, and cannot grasp ideas. These ideas are alien to them. They lack the will to devote themselves selflessly to things, to stick to the facts, and to use concepts only insofar as they serve as interpreters of the facts. What matters to them is to cram their minds full of concepts and then lavishly dispense them again. They resemble a person who sits in libraries, gathers wisdom there, absorbs it, and then dispenses it in a corresponding manner. These will-o’-the-wisps are characteristic of that faculty of the soul which is never capable of grasping a single literary thought or emotional content, but which is quite capable of casting what already exists as literary history—the achievements of creative minds—into beautiful forms. Nothing is to be said here against this faculty of the soul. If a person did not possess this faculty, or if he did not cultivate it when it had been bestowed upon him in too small a measure, he would lack something that is necessary for true cognitive ability. Through the image of the will-o’-the-wisps—and through the entire context in which he has them appear and act—Goethe depicts the way in which such a faculty of the soul functions in relation to the other faculties of the soul, and how it can be both harmful and beneficial. Truly, if someone lacked this faculty of the soul and wished to ascend to higher levels of knowledge, there would be nothing that could unlock the temple for him. Goethe highlights both the advantages and, on the other hand, the disadvantages of this faculty of the soul. What is present in the will-o’-the-wisps represents precisely an element of the soul. The moment it seeks to lead an independent life in one direction or another, it becomes harmful. Out of this abstractness, it becomes a critical faculty that shapes people in such a way that, although they learn everything, they cannot develop further because they lack the productive element. Goethe, however, shows quite clearly to what extent there is also something valuable in what is represented by the will-o’-the-wisps. What they contain can also become something of value: in the snake, the gold of the will-o’-the-wisps becomes something of value insofar as it illuminates the objects surrounding the snake.

[ 32 ] What lives within the will-o'-the-wisps will, if processed in a different way, become extremely fruitful in the human soul. If a person strives not to regard what they experience in concepts, ideas, and ideal forms, not as something abstract in and of itself, but to regard it in such a way that it becomes a guide and interpreter for the realities around him—so that he adheres just as willingly and devotedly to observations as to the abstract nature of concepts—then he is, with this power of the soul, in the same situation as the green snake. Then he can fashion light and wisdom out of the merely abstract, out of mere concepts. Then it does not lead him to become a vertical line that loses all connection and relation to the plane. The will-o’-the-wisps are kin to the snake, but they belong to the vertical line. The gold pieces fall between the rocks; the snake takes them in and thereby becomes luminous within. Wisdom is absorbed by the one who approaches things themselves with these concepts.

[ 33 ] Goethe also gives us an example of how to work with concepts. Goethe has the concept of the “primordial plant.” What is it, to begin with? An abstract concept. If he were to develop it abstractly, it would become an empty construct that kills all living things, just as the gold thrown by the will-o’-the-wisps kills the pug. But consider what Goethe does with the concept of the “primordial plant.” If we follow him on his journey through Italy, we see how this concept serves merely as a guiding thread, leading him from plant to plant, from being to being. He takes the concept, moves from it to the plant, and observes how it manifests itself in this or that form, how it takes on entirely different forms in lower or higher altitudes, and so on. Now, step by step, he traces how spiritual reality or form creeps into every sensory form. He himself creeps about there like a snake in the crevices of the earth. Thus, for Goethe, the world of concepts is nothing other than that which can be woven into objective reality. For him, the snake represents the power of the soul, which does not strive egoistically toward the higher realms of existence and attempt to rise above everything, but rather patiently allows the concept to be continually validated through observation, moving patiently from experience to experience, from one lived experience to the next.

[ 34 ] When a person does not merely theorize, does not merely live within concepts, but applies them to life and to experience, then, with this power of the soul, he is in the position of the serpent. This is true in the most comprehensive sense. Whoever does not approach philosophy as a theory, but as what it is meant to be; whoever regards the concepts of the humanities as tasks for life—such a person knows that concepts, even the highest ones, are to be used in such a way that they flow into life and can be validated through daily experiences. For someone who has learned a few concepts but cannot apply them to life, the situation is similar to that of someone who has memorized a cookbook but still cannot cook. Just as gold is a means of illuminating things, so Goethe, through his concepts, illuminates the things around him.

[ 35 ] What is so instructive and magnificent about Goethe’s scholarly approach and all of Goethe’s endeavors is that the concepts and ideas he presents have a reality of their own; they act like a light, shining brightly and illuminating the objects around them. The universality in Goethe that was highlighted the day before yesterday is what ensures that, when we approach him, we never have the feeling that this is simply Goethe’s “opinion.” He stands there, and when we see him, we find only that we understand things better—things that were not so comprehensible to us before. It is precisely this that enabled him to become the unifying force between hostile brothers, as we saw the day before yesterday. If we were to discuss every detail in the fairy tale and characterize every figure, I would have to speak not for three hours but for three weeks about this fairy tale. I can therefore only point out the deeper principles in this fairy tale. Yet every detail points us toward Goethe’s way of thinking and his worldview.

[ 36 ] The spiritual powers represented by the will-o'-the-wisps, the green serpent, and the kings are located on one side of the river. On the other side dwells the beautiful lily, the ideal of perfect knowledge, perfect life, and perfect creativity. We have heard from the ferryman that he can bring the figures across from the opposite shore, but may not take anyone back again. Let us apply this to the entire disposition and refinement of our souls.

[ 37 ] We human beings find ourselves here on Earth as spiritual beings. These or those soul forces are at work within us as predispositions, as soul forces that are more or less developed. They are within us. But there is also something else living within us. Within us humans, when we truly understand ourselves, there lives the feeling, the realization, that the soul forces within us—which ultimately convey to us the essence of things—are intimately related to the fundamental spirits of the world, to the creative, spiritual powers. By longing for these creative powers, we long for the beautiful lily. Thus we know that everything which, on the one hand, originates from the beautiful lily, on the other hand strives to return to it. Unknown forces, which we do not control, have brought us across. We know that certain forces have brought us from the world beyond, across the boundary river, into this world. However, these forces—characterized by the ferryman and active in the depths of unconscious nature—cannot bring us back again; for otherwise, human beings would return to the realm of the Divine just as they came, without their own work or effort. The forces that have ferried us across—as unconscious natural forces—into the realm of striving human beings must not lead us back again. Other forces are necessary for that. Goethe knows this as well. But Goethe also wants to show how a person must begin in order to reunite with the beautiful lily.

[ 38 ] There are two paths. One leads over the green serpent; we can cross over it, and there we will gradually find the realm of the spirit. The other path leads through the giant’s shadow. We are shown that the giant, who is otherwise completely powerless, stretches out his hand at twilight, casting a shadow across the river. The second path leads across this shadow. So whoever wishes to cross over into the realm of the spirit in broad daylight must take the path provided by the serpent; whoever wishes to cross over in the twilight may take the path that leads across the giant’s shadow. These are the two paths to arriving at a spiritual worldview. The one who does not seek the spiritual world through human concepts, human ideas, or those forces characterized by worthless gold—as is the case with merely sophistical minds—and by will-o’-the-wisps, but who proceeds from experience to experience with patience and selflessness, reaches the other shore in the bright sunshine.

[ 39 ] Goethe knows that true research does not remain confined to the material world, but must cross over the boundary, the river that separates us from the spiritual realm. But there is another path, a path for less developed people who do not wish to follow the path of knowledge, a path represented by the giant. This giant is powerless; only his shadow possesses a certain power. What, then, is powerless in the true sense? Consider all the states into which a person can enter when their consciousness is subdued—such as in hypnosis, somnambulism, or even in dream states: everything that dims the clear consciousness of the day, through which a person allows lower soul forces than the clear consciousness of the day to act within them, belongs to this second path. There, as the everyday soul force wanes, the soul is led over into the true realm of the spirit. However, the soul does not become capable of crossing over into the spiritual realm on its own; rather, it remains unconscious and is led across into the realm of the spirit like a shadow. Goethe still includes everything that acts unconsciously and habitually—without the involvement of the soul forces that are active in clear waking consciousness—among the forces that are to be imagined in the shadow of the giant. Schiller, who was initiated into what Goethe meant, once wrote to Goethe during the time of the great upheavals in Western Europe: “I am glad that you have not been harshly seized by the shadow of the giant.” — What did Schiller mean by this? He meant that if Goethe had journeyed further west, he would have been swept up by the revolutionary forces of the West.

[ 40 ] Then we see that what human beings are meant to attain as the pinnacle of the development of knowledge is represented in the temple. The temple thus signifies a higher stage of human development. In the present age, as Goethe would say, the temple is something hidden; it lies beneath the narrow crevices of the earth. A soul force striving upward, such as that represented by the serpent, can only dimly sense the form of the temple. By absorbing ideals—the gold within itself—it can illuminate this form, but fundamentally, this temple can exist in the present age only as an underground mystery. By making this temple something subterranean for external culture, Goethe also points out that this mystery must be revealed to a more highly developed human being. In doing so, he points to the spiritual scientific movement that has already captured the imagination of broad masses of people today, a movement that seeks to popularize—in a comprehensive sense—the content of spiritual science, of initiation or the principle of initiation, and the content of the temple mysteries.

[ 41 ] In this truly free, Goethean sense, the young man is therefore to be regarded as a representative of aspiring humanity. That is why the temple is to rise above the river, so that not only a select few seeking enlightenment may cross back and forth, but so that all people may then cross the river on the bridge. Goethe depicted a future state in the temple of initiation above the earth, which will exist when human beings can pass from the realm of the sensual into the realm of the spiritual, and from the realm of the spiritual back into the realm of the sensual.

[ 42 ] How is this achieved in the fairy tale? By the fact that the true mystery of the fairy tale is fulfilled. The solution to the fairy tale lies within the fairy tale itself, says Schiller. But he also pointed out that the word for the solution appears in a rather peculiar way within it. You recall the old man with the lamp that shines only where there is already light. Who, then, is the old man? What is this lamp? What kind of peculiar light does it cast? The old man stands above the situation. His lamp has the remarkable property of transforming things—wood into silver, stone into gold. It also has the property of shining only where there is already a receptivity—a certain kind of light—present. When the old man enters the underground “temple,” he is asked how many secrets he knows. “Three,” replies the old man. When the Silver King asks, “Which is the most important?” he answers: “The obvious one.” And when the Bronze King asks, “Will you reveal it to us as well?”, he says, “As soon as I know the fourth.” Then the snake whispers something in the Old Man’s ear, whereupon he says, “The time has come!”

[ 43 ] What the serpent whispered into the old man’s ear is the solution to the riddle, and we must investigate what the serpent whispered into the old man’s ear. It would take us too far afield to explain in detail what the three secrets mean. I will merely hint at it.

[ 44 ] There are three kingdoms that are, so to speak, at a standstill in their development today: the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, which are closed off to human beings, who are still undergoing further development. The inner development that human beings undergo is so intense and significant that it cannot be compared to the development of the other three kingdoms of nature. The fact that a kingdom of nature has reached its present state—that it has come to a conclusion—is what lies at the heart of the mystery of antiquity; this is what explains the laws of the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. But now comes the fourth kingdom, the kingdom of humankind—the mystery that is to be revealed in the human soul. This mystery is one that the Ancient One must first experience. And how must he experience it? He knows what it consists of, but the serpent must first tell him. This suggests to us that something special must still happen to human beings if they are to reach the goal of evolution just as the other three kingdoms have done. What has happened within the very depths of the human soul—and what must happen if humanity is to reach the goal—is what the serpent whispers into the Old Man’s ear. It explains how a certain soul force must develop if a higher stage is to be attained; it declares that it has the will to sacrifice itself for this purpose—and it sacrifices itself. Until now, it has merely served as a bridge whenever an individual human being wished to cross; but now it will become a permanent bridge by disintegrating, so that humanity will have a lasting connection between this world and the next, between the spiritual and the sensual.

[ 45 ] The fact that the serpent has the will to sacrifice itself—that is what must be regarded as the condition for the unveiling of the fourth mystery. The moment the Elder hears that the serpent is willing to sacrifice itself, he can then say: “The time has come!” It is the power of the soul that clings to the external world. And the path must be taken in such a way that this power of the soul and inner knowledge do not become an end in themselves, but rather are sacrificed. This is truly a mystery, even though it is referred to as an “obvious” mystery—that is, even though it can be revealed to anyone who desires it.

[ 46 ] What is widely regarded as an end in itself—everything we can learn in the natural sciences, the humanities, history, mathematics, and all other sciences—can never be an end in itself. We can never gain true insight into the depths of the world if we regard it as something in and of itself. Only when we are always ready to take it into ourselves and regard it as a means that we sacrifice—as a bridge across which we can pass—do we arrive at true knowledge. We shut ourselves off from higher, true knowledge if we are not also willing to sacrifice ourselves. Only then will a person gain an understanding of what initiation is, when they cease to construct a worldview out of concepts derived from external sensory perceptions. They must become entirely feeling, entirely a state of soul—a state of soul that corresponds to what Goethe characterizes as humanity’s highest achievement in his *West-Eastern Divan*:

And as long as you don't have that,
This: Die and Be Reborn!
You are but a gloomy guest
On this dark earth.

[ 47 ] Die and be reborn! Discover what life has to offer; pass through it, but overcome it; transcend yourself. Let it become a bridge for you, and you will come alive in a higher life, becoming one with the essence of things, once you no longer live under the delusion that, separated from your higher self, you can exhaust the essence of things. Goethe likes to recall—when he speaks of the sacrifice of the concept and the material of the soul in order to be reborn in higher spheres, when he speaks of the deepest, innermost love—the words of the mystic Jakob Böhme, who knows this experience of the sacrifice of the serpent within himself. Jakob Böhme may well have pointed this out to him specifically and made it so clear to him that a human being can, even while in the physical body, live on into a world that one would otherwise enter only after death: into the world of the eternal, the spiritual. Jakob Böhme also knew that it depends on the human being whether he or she can glide over into the spiritual world in a higher sense. He expresses this in the saying: “Whoever does not die before he dies will perish when he dies.”—A significant statement! The person who does not die before he dies—that is, who does not develop the Eternal, the inner core of his being, within himself—will not be able, when he dies, to rediscover the spiritual core of his being within himself. The eternal is within us. We must develop it within the body so that we may find it outside the body. “Whoever does not die before he dies will perish when he dies.” The same is true of the other statement: “And so death is the root of all life.”

[ 48 ] We then see that the spiritual can only illuminate where there is already light: the old man’s lamp can only illuminate what is already illuminated. Once again, we are directed to the spiritual powers of the human being—those spiritual powers that appear to us as something special: the spiritual powers of devotion and religious dedication, which, throughout the centuries and millennia, have brought the message of spiritual worlds to those who could not seek the light through science or by any other means. The light of the various religious revelations is represented in the Elder, who possesses this light. But for those who do not meet the religious sense with a light from within, the lamp of religion does not shine. It can shine only where light already meets it. It is this light that has transformed human beings, that has transformed all that is dead into the animated and living.

[ 49 ] And then we see that, through the sacrifice of the serpent, the two realms are united. After it undergoes, so to speak, through symbolic processes, what human beings must undergo in their higher development in the esoteric sense, we see how the temple of knowledge is led across the river by all three human soul forces, how it ascends, and how each soul force performs its service. It is implied here that the soul forces must resonate in harmony, as we are told: The individual personality can do nothing; but when all work together at the right moment, when the mighty and the humble act in the right proportion to one another, then what enables the soul to attain the highest state—union with the beautiful lily—can come into being.

[ 50 ] But then the temple, too, emerges from the hidden crevices and rises to the surface for all who truly strive for knowledge and wisdom. The young man is endowed with the cognitive powers of thought and imagination by the Golden King: “Know the Highest.” He is endowed with the powers of insight through feeling by the Silver King, which Goethe so beautifully alludes to with the words: “Tend the sheep!” Art and religion are rooted in feeling, and for Goethe, the two were one and the same, even back then when he wrote about the works of art in Italy during his Italian journey: “There is necessity; there is God!”

[ 51 ] But there is also action—when a person does not use it merely to struggle for existence, but when it becomes a weapon with which to fight for beauty and wisdom. This is contained in the words the Iron King speaks to the young man: “The sword in the left hand, the right hand free!” Therein lies a whole world. The right hand free to act from the human nature of the self.

[ 52 ] And what happens to the fourth king, in whom all three elements are jumbled together? This mixed king melts into a grotesque figure. The will-o’-the-wisps come and lick the remaining gold out of him. The soul forces of the human being still wish to study what once existed in the stages of human development that have already been overcome.

[ 53 ] Let’s consider another aspect: namely, how the giant staggers along and then stands there like a statue, marking the hours. When a person has brought harmony to their life, even the subordinate elements take on significance in relation to what is meant to be methodical order. This should become ingrained like a habit. Even the unconscious will then take on a valuable meaning. That is why the giant is depicted, as it were, like a clock.

[ 54 ] The old man with the lamp is married to the old woman. This old woman represents nothing other than the healthy, sensible human spirit, which does not venture into lofty realms of intellectual abstraction but approaches everything in a sound and practical way—as, for example, in the religion represented by the old man with the lamp. It is precisely this force that can then bring the ferryman his wages: three cabbages, three onions, and three artichokes. Such a stage of development has not yet transcended temporality. The fact that it is treated in the same way as the will-o’-the-wisps is likely a reflection of how abstract minds usually look down haughtily upon people who grasp things through immediate instincts or intuitions.

[ 55 ] Every detail, every twist in this fairy tale has profound meaning, and if one were to attempt an explanation that is meant to be esoteric, one would find that one can really only describe the method of explanation. If you immerse yourself in the fairy tale itself, you will find that there is a whole world within it—far more than could be hinted at today.

[ 56 ] I would like to illustrate with two examples just how deeply Goethe’s spiritual worldview permeated his entire life, and how, even in his later years, his insights into spiritual matters remained in harmony with his earlier works. When Goethe wrote *Faust*, he had adopted a certain idea that goes back to a symbol of a deeper path of nature’s development. When Faust speaks of his father—who was an alchemist and had accepted the ancient teachings with faith, though he had already misunderstood them even back then—he says that his father had also done the thing that caused

... a red lion, a bold suitor,
Married in the balmy bath of the lily.

[ 57 ] Faust says this without realizing its meaning. But such a word can become a ladder leading up to higher stages of development. In this fairy tale, Goethe portrays the young man as a human being striving for the highest bride, and he calls that with which he is to be united the beautiful lily. You see, you can already find this lily in the first parts of *Faust*. And we also find in *Faust*—in the second part, in the *Chorus Mysticus*—that which, as the foundation of Goethe’s worldview, found expression in the fairy tale; there, where Faust stands on the threshold of the spiritual world, where Goethe professes his commitment to a spiritual worldview with monumental words. There he shows how the ascent along the path of knowledge takes place in three successive stages: namely, the purification of the imagination, the enlightenment of the feelings, and the development of the will toward pure action.

[ 58 ] What a person attains through the purification of the imagination leads him to recognize the spiritual behind everything. The sensory becomes a parable for the spiritual. He penetrates deeper in order to grasp what is still inaccessible to the imagination. He then reaches a level at which he no longer views things through the imagination, but is led into the thing itself, where the essence of things and that which cannot be described becomes a reality. And that which cannot be described—that which, as you will hear in the course of the Winter Lectures, must be conceived in a different way, that which requires one to advance toward the mysteries of the will—he designates precisely as the “Indescribable.” When a person has traveled the threefold path through imagination, feeling, and will, they unite with what is called the “Eternal Feminine” in the *Chorus Mysticus*—that which has undergone its development as the human soul, that which is depicted as the beautiful lily.

[ 59 ] Thus we see that Goethe expresses his very deepest conviction, his secret revelation, even at the very point where he brings his great poem of confession to a close, after he has risen through imagination, feeling, and will to union with the beautiful lily—to the state that finds its expression in the aforementioned passage from the *Chorus mysticus*, ‘which expresses the same thing as Goethe’s philosophy and spiritual science, and as the “Fairy Tale” also says:

All that is fleeting
Is but a parable!
That which is inadequate,
Here becomes an achievement;
That which is indescribable,
Here it is accomplished;
The Eternal Feminine
Draws us upward!