The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. The Riddles in Goethe’s “Faust”: Exoteric

[ 1 ] It was in August 1831 that Goethe sealed a package, handed it to his faithful secretary Eckermann, and issued a testamentary directive regarding the publication of the sealed treasure. For this package contained, in the broadest sense, the sum total of Goethe’s life’s work. It contained the second part of Goethe’s *Faust*, which was to be published only after Goethe’s death. Goethe himself was aware that he had poured the substance of his rich, far-reaching life—one that delved into the depths of human existence—into this work; and just how significant this moment was for him personally may be evident from the words he spoke at that time. He said: “Now I have truly completed my life’s work; what I do from here on out—and whether I do anything at all—is of no consequence!”

[ 2 ] When one allows such a fact to sink into one’s soul, one says to oneself: There is really no easier way to make a human life fruitful for the rest of humanity—and, what is most important, to make it consciously fruitful—in a more beautiful and harmonious way. And there is something deeply moving about following Goethe’s life from this point onward—it lasted, after all, less than a year—and letting a fact such as this sink in: that he visited Ilmenau once more and reread those beautiful verses he had written on September 7, 1783, that is, in his youth, so to speak:

Above all the peaks
There is stillness,
In all the treetops
You can barely
Feel a breath of wind;
The little birds are silent in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You, too, will rest.

[ 3 ] One might well say: Even if these verses represented a fleeting mood in his youth, they took on a new significance within the overall picture of Goethe when he reread them in his twilight years, moved to tears.

[ 4 ] Goethe’s *Faust* is truly, in literary and intellectual terms, a testament of the very highest order to humanity. What Goethe completed in 1831—after having worked vigorously on this second part of *Faust* since 1824—had actually begun in Goethe’s earliest youth. For we see how, from the beginning of the 1770s, Goethe felt within his soul what might be called the Faustian mood, and how he then began, in 1774, to write down the first parts of his *Faust*. And at the crucial moments of his life, he returned again and again to this work, which embodied his entire existence.

[ 5 ] It strikes us as curious: As he enters high society in his own way, he brings the first parts of *Faust* with him to Weimar. They do not yet appear there, of course, but because a copy of the *Faust* he brought with him at that time has been preserved by a Weimar court lady, Miss von Göchhausen, we still have today the form of *Faust* as it existed in the manuscript when Goethe arrived in Weimar. We are familiar with the version in which *Faust* was first published in 1790; and subsequently with the version that appeared in 1808 in the first complete edition of Goethe’s works. Everything we have regarding *Faust*, including that significant document that Goethe left behind as his “testament,” reveals to us the various stages of Goethe’s creative development. For it is infinitely interesting to observe how, in their very essence, these four stages of Goethe’s *Faust* creation present themselves to us in different ways, and how they represent an ascent of Goethe’s entire life’s striving.

[ 6 ] What Goethe brought with him to Weimar is a literary work of a deeply personal nature, into which he poured the moods, the stages of insight, and also the despair at that insight, as they had accompanied him during his time in Frankfurt, his time in Strasbourg, and even during his early years in Weimar, a work by a man who ardently strives for knowledge, who ardently strives to empathize with life, who has endured all the despair that a sincere and honest seeker can experience, and who has poured it all into this work. All of this is contained in the first version of *Faust*. And when *Faust* appeared as a fragment in 1790, it had been reshaped and refined by the Goethe who, driven by a longing deep within his soul, had clarified his entire striving and inner life through his contemplation of Italian nature and Italian works of art. What began as the personal work of a man tossed back and forth by life’s storms has become the work of a man who has attained a certain degree of serenity and who now has before him a perspective on life that stands before his soul in a very definite way.

[ 7 ] Then comes the period of Goethe’s association with Schiller, the time when Goethe learned to recognize and experience within himself a world that had long been latent within him—a world that can be said to be experienced by those whose spiritual eyes have opened to perceive the spiritual realm. Now the figure of Faust becomes for him a being placed between two worlds: between the world of the spiritual, toward which humanity strives through purification and ennoblement, and the world that pulls it down. Faust becomes a being placed between the world of good and the world of evil. Whereas previously in *Faust* we saw the individual’s inner struggle, we now see unfolding before our souls a great battle between the forces of good and evil over the human being, who is placed at the center of this cosmic struggle as the most worthy object for which the good and evil beings in the world are fighting. And while at the very beginning of *Faust* we are presented with a human being despairing over knowledge, we now encounter a human being placed between heaven and hell, and thus the poem is essentially elevated by one level to a higher plane of existence. It seems to us as though, in the form in which *Faust* appears to us in 1808, millennia of human development were resonating together. We are reminded of the most magnificent dramatic portrayal of human life that antiquity has produced, the Book of Job—where the evil spirit roams among humanity and then approaches God, and God says to him: “You have been roaming the earth; have you taken notice of my servant Job?” What resonates with us there echoes once more in the poetry we encounter in *Faust*. In the “Prologue in Heaven,” God converses with Mephistopheles, the emissary of the evil spirit:

[ 8 ] “Do you know Faust?” — “The doctor?” — “My servant!”

[ 9 ] This echoes what Goethe presented in order to cast his entire *Faust* enigma in the proper light—what resounds to us in the Book of Job: “Do you know my servant, Job?”

[ 10 ] Then Goethe’s entire rich life continues, deepening further into the human condition—a depth of which the world today has very little inkling. And after he had expressed in manifold ways in this or that work what he had lived through in his soul, he then, looking back on his entire life, returned to the subject once more in 1824 and now depicts Faust’s journey through the wider world—but in such a way that the second part becomes entirely a character study of inner human soul development.

[ 11 ] If we look at the first part, we must say: What is described there by a striving soul is infinitely true to life and real. Everything we encounter in the first part—especially in the sections written earliest—is imbued with a profound, profound truth of nature; yet some of what resonates there still sounds to us like a kind of theory, as if someone were speaking of things they have not yet fully experienced in their own soul.

[ 12 ] And now the second part: This is the innermost experience of one’s own soul. Here are the highest experiences of a spiritual nature, through which human beings ascend the stages of existence, penetrate the physical world, and enter the realm where the human soul unites with the spirituality of the world, merges with it, and sustains itself within the world, in which it finds at once space and light, as well as that which gives it freedom, dignity, and independence. All of this is contained in this second part of Goethe’s *Faust* as one’s own, most intimate experience.

[ 13 ] The time will come when people will view Goethe’s *Faust* quite differently than they do today, when they will better understand what Goethe meant when he said to Eckermann on January 29, 1827: “But still, everything is sensory, and, when presented on stage, it will appeal to everyone’s eyes. And that is all I intended. If only the audience takes pleasure in the spectacle, the initiated will at the same time not fail to grasp the higher meaning...”

[ 14 ] While the first part may still seem theoretical to us in some respects—not yet fully grounded in life—the second part is one of the most realistic works in world literature, one that delves deepest into reality. For everything in the second part of *Faust* has been experienced—not with physical eyes and ears, but with spiritual eyes and ears. This is also the reason why this second part has been so poorly understood. People have seen symbols and allegories in what, for the spiritual researcher—for those who can experience it in the spiritual worlds—is something far truer and more real than what external physical eyes see and external physical ears hear. Truly, one can expect much from such a work, and examining some of what lies within it will be the task of today’s and tomorrow’s lectures. Today we shall focus more on the external aspect; tomorrow we shall focus more on how Goethe’s *Faust* is, in the truest sense of the word, a depiction of an inner, esoteric view of life and the world. Step by step, we will attempt to penetrate into the inner realm and look behind the curtain behind which Goethe lived out the deepest mysteries of his life.

[ 15 ] A Faustian mood was already present in Goethe when he was a student in Leipzig. We know that during his time in Leipzig, he faced death due to an illness. Much of what can move the human soul passed through Goethe’s soul at that time. But many other things had also taken place within him. He had come to understand the way in which the external sciences view life. Indeed, in Leipzig he had paid little attention to his actual field of study; instead, he had immersed himself in various other sciences, especially the natural sciences. Goethe never lost his firm belief that it is precisely through the natural sciences that one can gain insight into the deeper mysteries of existence; yet, especially during his time in Leipzig, he found himself repeatedly confronted with despair in the face of what external science had to say and offer. In many respects, this was a tangled thicket of concepts, a fragmented observation of nature. There he could find nowhere what he had already sought as a boy, when, at the age of seven, he took a music stand, placed minerals from his father’s collection, plants, and other geological specimens on it, took a small incense stick and a magnifying glass, and then waited for morning. And when the first rays of the morning sun streamed in, he took the magnifying glass and focused the sun’s rays onto the incense stick, thereby kindling a fire on the altar he had offered to the “great God of Nature”—a fire that was to spring from the very origins and sources of existence itself. But how far removed must these sources of existence have been from what Goethe encountered in philosophy, the natural sciences, and the various branches of the pursuit of knowledge at the university! How far removed were these “sources of all life” from all such pursuits!

[ 16 ] Goethe then came to Frankfurt, where he met thoughtful people who, above all through a developed inner life, possessed a sense of the convergence of the human inner world with the spirituality that weaves through and animates the world—people who felt within themselves, in the fullest sense, what Goethe expresses with the words: “One’s own self expands into a spiritual universe.” Even back then in Frankfurt, he was overcome by the feeling: Beyond the mere pursuit of concepts! Beyond the mere material of sensory observation! There must be a path to the sources of existence! — And he came into contact with what might be called alchemical, mystical, and theosophical literature. He even conducted practical alchemical experiments himself. He recounts how he came across a work in which many at the time were seeking similar paths: Wellings’ *Opus Mago-Cabalisticum et Theosophicum*, a work that was regarded at the time as a path to recognizing the sources of existence. Gradually, he became acquainted with Paracelsus, Basilius Valentinus, and, above all, a work that, in its very nature, was bound to make a deep impression on all seekers: the *Aurea Catena Homeri*. This was a depiction of nature as the medieval mystics believed they perceived it. What Goethe encountered in these mystical, alchemical, and theosophical works must have made the same impression on him as one might make today on a similarly seeking person who, for example, picks up books by Eliphas Lévi or similarly minded thinkers. Indeed, these works must have made an even more bewildering impression on Goethe at that time, because the various writings dealing with magic, theosophy, and so on were presented in such a way that, while secrets were concealed behind the outward symbols, these secrets were, in fact, no longer understood even by those who had written the books.

[ 17 ] Because it was impossible to express its immediate grandeur and significance, what was in fact a true, ancient wisdom—something that once lived in human souls—was clothed there in an external, insubstantial guise, in all manner of physical and chemical formulas. To those who saw only what was written on the surface of the books, however, they gave the impression of being utter nonsense, and there was hardly any way at that time to get to the bottom of the mysteries and penetrate their meaning. But one must not overlook the fact that Goethe, out of the depths of his quest for knowledge, was an intuitive spirit. And so, when he opened the *Aurea Catena Homeri* and immediately beheld the first page, it must have struck him as strange to see a symbol that had a profound effect on the soul: two intertwined triangles, with the symbols of the planets wonderfully inscribed at the corners, a flying dragon winding around them in a circle, and at the bottom a strangely solidified dragon, consolidating within itself — and when he then read the words found there on the first page, describing how the fleeting dragon symbolizes the current that constantly infuses the stationary dragon with those forces flowing down from the universe, or how heaven and earth are connected—in other words, as it says there: “How the spiritual forces of heaven pour into the center of the earth.”

[ 18 ] Such mysterious symbols and words must have had a profound effect on Goethe. Those, for example, that depicted the entire history of the world, as it was said, “from chaos to what is called the universal quintessence” — a remarkable transition, expressed in strangely interlocking symbols, from chaotic matter, which is still undifferentiated, through the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms — all the way up to human beings and to those perspectives toward which humanity is evolving, in ever-increasing refinement.

[ 19 ] But there was no easy way to penetrate to the deeper meaning. And so Goethe left Frankfurt at that time in a frame of mind that might be described something like this: I have found nothing! What the natural scientists can offer me are dry, sober concepts—something from which all the true water of life has been squeezed out. Now I have been wandering about here among the various things that have come down to us from times that claimed to peer into the mysteries of life. But the path—the path is enough to drive one to despair! — Such was indeed sometimes the mood of Goethe’s soul. He was certainly not inclined, however, to engage in light speculation and superficial philosophizing, in wild symbolism and sensual interpretation, regarding what so wonderfully and presciently affected him from these old books. They looked at him with their mysteries as if they were something to which he could not find the path. For those who know Goethe’s soul, even back then there was already the seed within that soul to truly penetrate the mysteries of existence—but it was not to unfold until later. And so Goethe felt as if he had been cast aside, as if he were unworthy of entering into the mysteries of existence.

[ 20 ] He then arrived in Strasbourg. There he met people who, for one reason or another, were bound to interest him. He became acquainted with Jung-Stilling, who possessed a deeply mystical, “psychic” disposition and who, through the development of peculiar powers that otherwise lie dormant in the human soul, had gained profound insights into the hidden aspects of existence. In Strasbourg, he also met Herder, who had experienced similar states of mind and who, in moments of despair, had often gone so far as to completely reject life. In Herder, Goethe came to know a man who suffered from weariness with existence and who said something to the following effect: “I have studied extensively and have discovered many things about the connection between human activity and human striving on earth.” — Yet he could not say to himself: “I have never had even a single moment when my longing for the sources of life was satisfied!” — He was too ill for that, and so he was inclined to dismiss everything possible with bitter criticism. Nevertheless, it was Herder who drew Goethe’s attention to various depths of the mysteries of existence. In Herder, Goethe came to know a truly Faustian man. And Goethe later came to know, in his friend Merck, that aspect of the negator which does not manifest itself in mockery and scorn. Even Goethe’s mother—whom we know rejected all moralizing and criticism of others—said of Merck: “Yes, this Merck can never really leave Mephistopheles at home; we’re already used to that about him.”—In Merck, Goethe came to know a man who denied much of what is worth striving for in life.

[ 21 ] In contrast to all these impressions Goethe gained of the people of Strasbourg, it was nature—whose contemplation there—that revealed to him many of life’s mysteries. Now, we must also view Goethe as a man of penetrating, sharp intellect, not as an impractical person. As is well known, Goethe became a lawyer. He practiced law for only a short time. But anyone familiar with Goethe’s work as a lawyer or, later, as a minister in Weimar knows that he possessed an eminently practical sense. As a lawyer, he knew, on the surface, little more than the law books he had memorized, but he was a man who could decide with a quick glance on the matters before him. Such a person also knows how to sketch out the contours of life with sharp definition. Thus Goethe appears to us as someone who, on the one hand, possessed the sharpest concepts about the world, and on the other, felt in the deepest way the suffering of an unsatisfied thirst for knowledge. He appears to us as one who sought the deepest things and was rejected by them. And to this was added something else.

[ 22 ] Goethe had experienced that particular state of mind: he knew what it meant to feel guilty! He felt guilty toward the simple country girl Friederike in Sesenheim, in whom he had awakened so many hopes and emotional states, and whom he was then forced to leave. All of this intertwined in the most remarkable way within Goethe’s soul, and out of all these moods a poetic figure took shape for him, rooted in his observation of the figure who, at that time, could appear before him at every turn: the figure of Faust, that remarkable personality who lived in the first half of the sixteenth century, that Faust who later became the subject of numerous folk plays and puppet shows, who also attained literary significance through Christopher Marlowe, and who, at that time, actually became a living problem for many poets—such as Lessing, for example—and likewise for Goethe. How did it come to be that Goethe linked his own suffering and his own moods to this figure of Faust?

[ 23 ] Faust, so the story goes, lived in the first half of the sixteenth century, a time when many decisive events in history took place. If one compares this period with the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when people led a life devoted to knowledge, one finds these eras to be very different. In the twelfth century, it was possible for those minds who delved into what the times offered them to reconcile this with what they could find within their own souls. When they turned their spiritual gaze upward toward what reigned in the divine heights as the creative force of the world, and when they formed concepts about it, it was possible for them to connect this to what they knew from external natural science. What the souls came to know there was like a series of steps: below, on the lowest step, what one learns as a physicist; on the next step, what one learns about the higher mysteries of existence, about the hidden side of existence that the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear were able to perceive; and again, on the highest steps, the stages of divine existence were recognized in sublime, delicate, crystal-clear concepts—which were nonetheless full of life and had a powerful effect on the soul—and everything was interconnected.

[ 24 ] Even if we look down today with a shrug at the minds of that era, it is a path that remains unbroken throughout. If, for example, one considers the path of knowledge taken by Albertus Magnus, which begins at the very bottom of nature and ends in a contemplation of God—these are not concepts that are dry and sober, but concepts that warm the soul and illuminate the heart. By the time Faust lived, that was all gone. There were concepts, formulated by a theologian, concerning the levels of divine existence—admittedly abstract, that is, derived through thought, but dry and sober. They were concepts that one could study, into which reason and the intellect could immerse themselves. Nowhere, however, did reason find a way to connect these concepts to the living reality surrounding us, nor anywhere the means to fill the soul with light and warm the heart. And so it came to pass that the science—which had been known as mysticism, magic, and theosophy— and which dealt with things perceived by spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, was in a state of complete decline—above all because, through the printing press, much of what had previously been hidden in manuscripts was brought out into the open and taken up by minds that did not understand it, who saw in it nothing more than something they had to imitate. As a result, all sorts of humbug and nonsense were carried out in the laboratories. What should have been experienced in a spiritual way—for which what was written in the books was merely an outer form, albeit one with a deep meaning—was taken literally. People concocted all sorts of things using formulas and in retorts, and the result was that, during this period, what was called “theosophy, magic, and occultism” came alarmingly close to what is known as fraud and charlatanism.

[ 25 ] The fact is that, in a certain sense, the ascent into the spiritual worlds is fraught with danger, and that individuals whose aspirations are not pure, whose intellect and reason are not purified, and who cannot arrive at pure, senseless concepts in their thinking, can easily stumble and fall into this abyss. And so it could happen that those who still possessed some knowledge or who studied the writings of the mystics with fervent effort failed to find the path—or, precisely because they could not find it, turned to deception and charlatanism. But the opposite could also occur: that, amid many misunderstandings among the people, this quest was denounced as sorcery; that Tritheim von Sponheim, Agrippa von Nettesheim, and many others who honestly and earnestly sought spiritual forces in nature were portrayed as black magicians and charlatans—as people who had strayed from the right path laid out by the old religion.

[ 26 ] The life of the sixteenth-century Faust took place during this period—a time that many saw as the twilight of an old intellectual movement, but which was at the same time the dawn of an entirely new era, an era that would go on to produce such luminaries as Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Copernicus, and so on. Various eras are called times of transition. But of all eras, none deserves this name as much as the time of Faust.

[ 27 ] From all we know, the character of Faust was one who deeply felt the inadequacy of the scholarship of his time regarding the spiritual world. Faust had also studied theology, turned away from it, and was now searching for the sources of existence in the last remnants of medieval magic and the like. And since the character of Faust is best understood as oscillating between an honest quest for knowledge and the boundaries that blur into charlatanism, it is also better to leave him in this light and not even attempt to define him with sharp contours. For even the intellectual movement of the time did not grasp him as he truly was; rather, all the striving that existed within the people themselves was now perceived as the outer garment of this figure of Faust from the sixteenth century. Thus he appears to us in legendary form or in drama as a man who had fallen away from the old religious traditions and from theology, who had surrendered himself to a striving—as people believed from an increasingly narrow-minded perspective—that could never lead to anything good in life. Indeed, the entire worldview of the period from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century is expressed in the words that appeared about Faust in the folk book: He had placed the Holy Scriptures “for a while behind the door and under the bench—thereafter no longer wished to be called a theologian, became a man of the world, and called himself a Doctor of Medicine.”

[ 28 ] These words expressed what people thought and felt about Faust. They sensed that he was searching within his own heart for the source that led to the depths of life and its origins, and that, in his own way, he wanted to break free from the old traditions. Even what had been preserved about this figure in folk plays and puppet shows was ill-suited to convey much more than Faust’s outward appearance. But everything that remained of the Faust tradition had such an effect on Goethe that he was able to entrust to this character what lived within him as a striving for life and a thirst for knowledge. And so we see how, in the 1870s, he began to objectify himself in the figure of Faust. He deposited all that was unsatisfying, all the suffering arising from an unfulfilled thirst for knowledge, into this figure of Faust. When we consider Faust’s first monologue, we see, in the fullest sense of the word, what we characterized at the beginning of today’s reflection: We see the man who has, in the fullest sense, immersed himself in external science, who is despairing, and who is on the verge of being utterly destroyed by life, of shattering against his thirst for knowledge. We see how he seizes the old books. Goethe calls it the Book of Nostradamus, but anyone well-versed in the literature of magic—which Goethe was also familiar with at the time—will easily recognize what Goethe meant by the book in which Faust beholds the sign of the macrocosm. He has Faust say the following about it:

How celestial forces ascend and descend
And pass the golden buckets to one another!
With wings fragrant with blessing
They penetrate from heaven through the earth,
Resounding harmoniously throughout the universe!

[ 29 ] And then there is what seems to be an emotional description appended to these words—that the sight of this leaf fills him with delight; in all of this, we recognize what was influencing Goethe at that time. Such moods and visions could well pour into Goethe’s soul, and he could in turn write them down with such truthfulness when, for example, he stood before that remarkable symbol of the two intertwined triangles, and the two dragons—the upper, spiritual one, and the lower, physical one—where, at the corners of the intertwined triangles, stand the symbols of the planets, whose forces interpenetrate one another, so that one truly has before one’s eyes the golden, shining planets like golden buckets, between which flow the forces that harmoniously resound throughout the universe.

[ 30 ] When one considers such things, one sees Goethe’s soul before one, with all its deep and sincere thirst for knowledge, and one almost begins to doubt whether one should try to reduce all of this to any precise concepts or speculate at length about it. One would simply like to present such a fact to the soul, so that a soul that has a feeling for such things can derive infinite benefit from it. But anyone who knows how life develops as it passes through the various stages of life knows that, in the face of such profound inner struggles, it is justified to say: Yes, Goethe was one of those in whom the seed is first planted in the soul—a seed that can only mature and bear fruit much, much later. We see there, as it were, the seeds of what later blossomed so magnificently in *Faust*. And many who have a certain inclination toward spiritual science may also draw various lessons for life from it.

[ 31 ] Today, unfortunately, such a pursuit is taken far too superficially. Today you see people approach it hastily, and then they’re done with it very quickly once they’ve grasped a few concepts. Only the one who can look back on the time twenty or thirty years ago—when a certain aura poured into his soul, when much settled upon it, when many things came to him, and years and experiences followed—truly knows what mysteries lie there; and only thirty years later is what poured into his soul in this way ripe enough to receive even an approximate answer. We cannot look deeply enough at Goethe’s life from this particular perspective, and we see how the mood that Goethe himself was able to feel toward the “Aurea Catena Homeri,” the “golden chain of Homer,” continues to resonate; we see it expressed when he bursts out in the words of Faust: “What a spectacle!” Yes, it is a mighty spectacle when the soul immerses itself in these images without having even the faintest inkling of what they might be. It is a spectacle. But does it remain merely a hunch?

[ 32 ] Then the words “But alas! It is but a play!” inevitably follow. Goethe did not yet understand the depth of these words at that time; but intuitively, the sentiment that “All that is transitory is but a parable!” was already alive in his soul. And as if in pain, he might have said to himself when he saw those strange figures before him:

[ 33 ] No matter how artificial the figures you draw may be, they are still external symbols!

What a spectacle! But alas! It is but a spectacle!

Where can I grasp you, infinite Nature?

[ 34 ] Every turn of phrase was deeply felt: a spectacle, merely a reflection of the wider world. But he had delved into various mysteries of the natural sciences, and he had come to know what that profound experience gives a person when he must say to himself: “You have become guilty!” He had lived through that. So he could hope to feel more deeply when he contemplated the other symbols that are more closely connected to immediate human life. This mood, too, is expressed in *Faust*. The book is turned over. In place of the symbol of the great world comes the symbol of the small world—the pentagram and all that surrounds it—and before Goethe’s soul appears the magic word through which, when used correctly, certain dormant powers can be properly awakened. Yes, Goethe certainly sensed that there is such a thing as has been characterized here—that there are dormant powers in the human soul. Goethe knew that by contemplating certain symbols and ideas, a person can awaken dormant powers within themselves, enabling them to look into the spiritual world.

[ 35 ] He could believe that he was moved by what lies closest to the human soul itself—that which is expressed in the symbol of the “little world.” He has his Faust utter the words through which, indeed, when a person surrenders to them in deep, inner meditation, certain inner experiences arise; he has his Faust utter them, and the “Earth Spirit” appears—that spirit which animates the Earth and enables human beings to emerge and flourish on Earth from the general stream of life and the world. Goethe understood wonderfully how to condense into a few words precisely all that constitutes the mysteries of the Earth Spirit—this Earth Spirit, which relates to the whole Earth in much the same way as the individual human soul, the human spirit, relates to the physical body of a human being; which is, so to speak, the ruler of all natural human becoming and flourishing and of all historical development. It has no visible form, but whoever opens the spiritual eyes within themselves can encounter it, can behold it, so that they know there is such a Spirit of the Earth. Goethe characterizes what it is in such a wonderful way:

In the torrents of life, in the storm of deeds
I surge back and forth,
Weaving to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A shifting weave,
A blazing life,
Thus I create at the whirring loom of time
And weave a living garment for the Deity.

[ 36 ] One could delve into every word of this formula and would find that what Goethe describes is truly experienced by those who, through the development of their souls, ascend to the corresponding levels of existence. But what happens is something you are all familiar with: Faust does not feel—and cannot feel—up to the task of what is revealed there. He does not know the path to the mysterious depths of existence. For him, what lives and weaves “in the floods of life, in the storm of deeds” is a “terrible face.” He cannot bear it. He turns away and must hear the words:

You are like the spirit you comprehend,
Not me!

[ 37 ] Based on ancient traditions, he believed he was “an image of the deity,” and now he must tell himself: Not even you!

[ 38 ] “You are like the spirit you comprehend.” If only people could truly feel the meaning of this saying! The entire situation in the first part of *Faust* shows that Goethe felt it. A person can recognize nothing beyond what he has developed into himself. “As a man is, so is his God,” Goethe said on another occasion. And here it is as if Goethe were making a personal confession that he has not yet found the path to the sources of existence—a confession he ties into this passage of *Faust*. If we consider this very first part of *Faust*, we see how Goethe himself struggles to depict the connection between his world and the spiritual world toward which he strives. Without any real transition, the first *Faust* immediately follows with the encounter between Mephistopheles and the student. What is Mephistopheles?

[ 39 ] Anyone who knows the path into the spiritual worlds knows that this Mephistopheles truly exists as one of the two tempters whom a person encounters when he or she sets out on the path into the spiritual realm, when he or she seeks the path into the spiritual world. There are two forces or powers that a person encounters there. One force is what we call the Luciferic force, which seizes a person more inwardly, at the center of their soul, and drives their passions, instincts, desires, and so on down a notch toward the personal, toward the base. Everything that acts upon the human being himself, that seizes him in his innermost being, is the Luciferic. But because the human being has once, in the course of his development through the world, been seized by this Luciferic principle, he has been delivered into the hands of another principle. Had human beings never been seized by this Luciferic principle, the external world would never have presented itself to them in a merely material form; the external world would have appeared to them in such a way that they could have said from the outset, with regard to everything, that all that is external is an expression, a physiognomy of the spirit. Human beings would have seen the spirit behind all that is materially sensory. But as it is, because everything material has been densified by the influence of the Luciferic force, what appears to human beings in the external world as merely the mirage of something outwardly material has also become interwoven into their external perception; it is that which presents the external world to human beings in the form of Maya or illusion, as if it were not the external physiognomic expression of the spirit.

[ 40 ] Zoroaster was the first to recognize, in all its depth, this force that presents the outer world to human beings in a false form. Under the name “Ahriman,” Zoroaster was the first to depict that figure who opposes the God of Light. Zarathustra calls this adversary of the God of Light “Ahriman,” and for all those who drew upon Zarathustra’s teachings, Ahriman then became that deceptive figure who, in contrast to everything else that human beings would otherwise see with transparent spiritual clarity, is the one who permeates reality with smoke and mist, turning it into an illusion. If one were to express it particularly bluntly, this figure—the one who corrupted humanity by forcing it into the bonds of matter and deceiving it about the true nature of the material world—was called Mephistopheles. This is how the figure was named in Hebrew, where “mephiz” means “the corrupter” and “topel” means “the liar.” And this figure then made its way into the West, taking on the medieval form of Mephistopheles. There, in the *Faust* books, we see Faust confronted by this power; it is also called the “old serpent” there.

[ 41 ] Goethe came to know this Mephistopheles. The later Faust tradition was then no longer able to properly distinguish between the figures of Lucifer and Mephistopheles. After all, in the periods following the sixteenth century, people no longer had a clear conception of these figures. They no longer knew how to distinguish between Lucifer and Ahriman; everything merged into the figure of the devil or Satan. Thus, the two merged without distinction, and because people knew nothing at all about the spiritual world, they did not make any particular distinction. Goethe, however, set Mephistopheles in opposition to everything that is conveyed as a perception of the external world through the external senses and through the human intellect, which is accustomed to using a physical brain as its instrument. To him, the person who appeals solely to this capacity of the ordinary intellect was, as it were, like another “self” of the human being striving upward into the spiritual world.

[ 42 ] Thus, for Goethe, everything that—as in the case of Merck or Herder—appealed solely to reason was wonderfully embodied in the figure of Mephistopheles, who does not believe in a world of goodness or consider it meaningful or important. Within Goethe himself lay this second self, capable of going so far as to doubt the spiritual world, and Goethe sometimes felt caught in the conflict that we might call the Mephistophelean power. He felt caught between this evil power, which gnawed at his soul, and the truly sincere striving of his soul toward spiritual heights. Goethe felt these two forces within his soul. He did not yet know how to align himself with the spiritual world. He was still far removed from the experience that we later encounter in him in such a magnificent way in the second part of *Faust*.

[ 43 ] The inner man, who strives for spiritual heights but is captivated by an illusion—the one Mephistopheles leads people to believe—is confronted in the second part of *Faust*, in the scene of the “Journey to the Mothers,” Mephistopheles, the representative of everything that can be found through the intellect bound to material, external science. He stands there with the keys. Certainly, this science is good; it leads to the gate of the spiritual world. But Mephistopheles cannot enter, and he describes that into which Faust must enter as “nothing.” From what Mephistopheles says here, we hear resounding in a classically grandiose manner what the materialistic spirit of humanity still today throws in the face of those who, through spiritual science, strive to explore the fundamental foundations of existence. They say to them: You are a dreamer and a fantasist! We won’t get involved in what you, dreamer, are telling us about the spiritual foundations of things. That’s not for us! — And the spiritual scientist may quite rightly reply, just as Faust replies to Mephistopheles: “In your nothingness I hope to find the universe!”

[ 44 ] But in the experience of that youth when he “first burst forth with *Faust*,” Goethe is still far removed from such clarity of soul. At that point, he does not yet know how he should actually have Mephistopheles approach Faust. In the *Urfaust*, Mephistopheles appears as Goethe experienced him—as a force pulling one down—mocking the students in the school scene. It was only later that Goethe found the way to have Mephistopheles gradually approach Faust through his shifting forms.

[ 45 ] Then, in the scene in “Auerbach’s Cellar” where Faust is dragged down by Mephistopheles—where he plunges into the maelstrom of sensuality—we see the beginning of the path that leads Faust into sin. The fragment published in 1790 did not yet include the conclusion—the dungeon scene. Goethe had held it back. But it was already present in the first fragment: the harrowing dungeon scene. Into that—into everything we call the “Gretchen Tragedy”—Goethe placed that aspect of his life expressed in the words: “I have become guilty!” —What Goethe expresses in the first part of *Faust* is the concept of “personality.”

[ 46 ] Only Goethe, who traveled to Italy, can allow a part of the seed planted in his soul to unfold there. He finds a remarkable path on his Italian journey. It can be traced step by step. When he finally writes to his friends in Weimar: “This much is certain: the ancient artists possessed just as great a knowledge of nature and just as sure a conception of what can be imagined and how it must be imagined as Homer did. Unfortunately, the number of first-rate works of art is far too small. But when one sees even these, one has nothing left to wish for but to recognize them properly and then depart in peace. These sublime works of art have also been produced by human beings as the highest works of nature, in accordance with true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imagined falls away: there is necessity; there is God.” … “I have a hunch that they (the creators of these works of art) proceeded according to the very same laws by which nature proceeds and which I am on the trail of”— — here he shows that he is not merely the Goethe filled with an abstract longing, but that he is ready, in a devoted manner, step by step, to explore existence; that he is, in a self-sacrificing way, on the path where the mysteries of life are revealed to him.

[ 47 ] It is no wonder that people are unable to make any progress toward humanity’s great spiritual goal—a goal they seek to achieve solely through abstract striving—when they approach the highest problems of life head-on; who have no inclination to compare individual plants and animals, or bone to bone; who do not walk through the world step by step, with composure, to find the spirit in the details: for all such people, this abstract longing will also lead nowhere. Let us look at Goethe, how, on his Italian journey, he gradually comes to discover the primordial plant, how he collects stones, how he prepared himself through diligent research, how he does not seek immediately, how “one strives into the other,” but rather how he says to himself: “If you ever want to get a sense of how ‘one thing works and lives within another, how celestial forces rise and fall and pass the golden buckets to one another,’ then look at how one vertebra of the spinal cord joins another, how one bone fits against another, how one force lends a hand to another; seek the image of the greatest in the smallest!” — And already during his trip to Italy, Goethe had become a diligent student who observed everything in detail, who sought the greatest in the smallest, and who told himself: if the artist proceeds in the spirit of the Greeks—namely, “according to the laws by which nature itself proceeds”—then the divine, which is to be found in nature itself, lies within his works. — For Goethe, art is “a manifestation of secret laws of nature.” What the artist creates are works of nature at a higher level of perfection. Art is the continuation and human culmination of nature. For “since man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself once again as a whole nature, which must in turn bring forth a summit within itself. To this end, he elevates himself by imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and finally rising to the creation of the work of art.”

[ 48 ] One could say that everything in the *Italian Journey* presented itself to Goethe in sharp contours and as serene inner spiritual experiences. It was then that he took up his *Faust* again, and there we see how he attempts to connect the individual elements. But we also see how he now objectively delves into what Faust might become within the context of Nordic nature. It was particularly in Italy that it struck him how different a figure is who has been shaped by the sites of classical education. There he remarks that it is indeed strange how little one hears in Rome of ghost stories such as those found in the North. And we see how he then writes “The Witches’ Kitchen” in the Villa Borghese—like someone who has already detached himself from the whole, yet still like someone who recalls what the Earth Spirit once meant to him.

[ 49 ] Back when he first wrote about the Earth Spirit, he could only depict it in such a way that Faust turns away like a “fearfully curled-up worm.” But even the mere fact of turning away—even if one cannot yet comprehend it—remains in the soul; it continues to have an effect. It continued to have an effect on Goethe. Only those who are impatient and cannot wait for the seeds to sprout after decades—only they cannot find their way. And now, while Goethe is in Italy, he knows that even such a cringing away from the “terrible face” has its effect on the soul. Now those words arise:

Sublime Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
That I asked for. You did not in vain
Turn your face toward me in the fire.
You gave me the magnificent natural world as my kingdom,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
do you allow me merely to be a cold, marveling visitor,
but grant me to gaze into its deep bosom
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the procession of the living
past me and teach me to know my brothers
in the silent thicket, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce, toppling, strikes down neighboring branches
And crushes neighboring trunks as it sweeps downward
And the hill thunders with a dull, hollow roar at its fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Me to myself, and within my own breast
Secret, profound wonders unfold.

[ 50 ] Before Goethe lies the possibility for the human soul to expand, through its own development, into a spiritual universe. Through a devoted, serene, and resigned search, Goethe now has before his soul the fruits that first took root back then, when he encountered the spirit of the earth. This monologue in *Forest and Cave* in particular shows us what a leap forward it was until these fruits had ripened in the soul; it shows us that the seeds sown in him back then were not sown in vain after all. Like an exhortation to patience, to waiting until such seeds ripen in the soul, the fragment of *Faust* that appeared in 1790 with these passages comes before us. And now we see how Goethe gradually finds his way after being led to the “safe cave,” where the secret, profound wonders of his own heart have opened up. There he gains the perspective not to remain merely with his own suffering; there he gains the ability to rise above his own pain, to cast his intuitive gaze out into the macrocosm, to behold the struggles of the good and evil spirits, and to see humanity on the stage of their struggles. And in the 1808 edition of *Faust*, he prefaces the work with the “Prologue in Heaven”:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
A song of value in the spheres of brotherhood,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderous roar.

[ 51 ] We then see how the macrocosmic powers—the forces of the great world—battle one another. Drawing on the experiences of Goethe’s soul, we now see a remarkable light shed on the two dragons that once confronted Goethe in his youth.

[ 52 ] That is why this *Faust* is such a cosmic poem—because it contains so many admonitions, because it tells us—and these are golden words: Wait with confidence for your inner powers to unfold, no matter how long that may take! — The words that appear as the “Dedication” at the beginning of *Faust* also sound like such an exhortation, where Goethe looks back on those “wavering figures that once appeared to his dim gaze,” but which are now imbued with clarity. Now, after having had to wait so long, those friends who had taken such a lively interest back then, when he first presented *Faust* to them in its initial form, have already passed away. And as for the others who had not died, he had to tell himself that they were far, far away. Goethe had to wait for the seeds that lay within him at that time to unfold, so that now these moving words resound to us:

My sorrow resounds before the unknown crowd,
Their very applause makes my heart tremble,
And whatever else once took delight in my song,
If it still lives, wanders scattered throughout the world.

[ 53 ] It is no longer intended for those who shared his feelings in their youth; he had to wait, as the last two lines of this dedication so beautifully express: What was once real to me faded into unreality; but what remains of it—and what appeared to the external eye as unreality—is now truth to me; only now can I cast it into the forms in which it appears as truth.

[ 54 ] Thus we see how this very poem, even when viewed only superficially—as we did today—leads us into the depths of the human soul. “Faust” was begun in this kind of serialized format, with new sections constantly being inserted between the existing ones. In that form, Goethe could not convey what he had since experienced in his soul. The fact that Goethe also expressed his deepest spiritual experiences in “Faust” was the result of something else entirely.

[ 55 ] The Helena scene is among the first parts of *Faust* that Goethe wrote. But we see that it did not even make it into *Faust* in 1808. Why not? Because, as Goethe had completed *Faust* at that time, it could not be incorporated into the work. What Goethe wanted to convey through Helena was the expression of such a profound insight into the deepest mysteries of existence that the entire first part was not sufficient to accommodate it. It was only in his old age that Goethe was able to truly give form to what was, in fact, his true inner life’s work.

[ 56 ] Thus we see how his vision has expanded to encompass the macrocosmic worlds, as he expresses it in the “Prologue in Heaven.” But we also want to see how Goethe knows how to depict the path—the stages of soul experiences that lead human beings from the first steps all the way up to imaginative contemplation, where the soul, by penetrating ever deeper and deeper, bursts open the gates of the spiritual world that Mephistopheles seeks to shut. Goethe also depicts these inner experiences. Because he realistically portrays in the second part of *Faust* what the soul can experience through spiritual, esoteric training, we see in it the deepest mysteries of existence—that which, when recognized, stands before us as a Western proclamation of spiritual science in a magnificent style. One is tempted to place a work of poetry such as the *Bhagavad Gita* alongside the second part of *Faust*. Great, mighty wisdom speaks from such Eastern writings. It is as if the gods themselves were speaking to humanity and seeking to express the very wisdom from which they fashioned the world. Indeed, that is the case. But now, when we look at the second part of *Faust*, we see this wisdom brought directly to human beings themselves. We see the striving human soul rising from external sensory perception to the heights of spiritual vision; we see how the soul works its way up to true clairvoyance, there where Faust enters the spiritual world and is surrounded by the spiritual chorus:

With a resounding sound for the ears of the spirit
The new day is already dawning.
Rock gates creak and rattle,
Phoebus’s wheels roll with a crackling sound,
What a clamor the light brings!
It drums, it trumpets,
The eye blinks and the ear is astonished,
The unheard cannot be heard.

[ 57 ] up to the point where Faust becomes physically blind, so that the external world fades from his perception, and yet he must say to himself: “Yet within, a bright light shines!”—up to the point where the soul works its way up to the spheres of cosmic existence, where the spiritual worlds can be encountered in their purity, where the mysteries of the universe are revealed to the soul. This is a path that we must describe as esoteric.

[ 58 ] Tomorrow we will see how to penetrate from the outer to the inner life of Goethe’s mysteries of the world. Tomorrow we will see from what depths Goethe spoke the words that finally gave him certainty regarding all the longings, all the sufferings, and all the pains of his quest for life and knowledge:

Whoever strives with all their might,
We can save them;
And if love has truly
Touched them from above,
The blessed host will greet them
With a warm welcome.

[ 59 ] Tomorrow’s reflection will show us how Goethe solves these mysteries of existence and demonstrates how that which lives in the soul can ascend to its true home. It will provide us with an answer to what Goethe presents as his “mysteries of existence,” and to which he offers such a hopeful response at the end of the second part of *Faust*:

The noble soul is saved
From the evil of the spirit world:
Whoever strives with all their might,
We can redeem them.

[ 60 ] In this way, he tells us: Faust can be saved! And the spirits that lead people into the purely material world—and thus into destruction—shall not prevail.