The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Fairy Tales in the Light of Spiritual Research

[ 1 ] There are many reasons why it might seem daring to speak specifically about fairy-tale poetry in the light of spiritual research. One reason is the difficulty of the subject matter, for in fact the sources within the human soul from which the fairy-tale mood—the genuine, true fairy-tale mood—flows must be sought so deep within that human soul that the methods of spiritual research, which I have described time and again, must follow complicated and lengthy paths before these very sources can be found. Much deeper than one might think, the sources from which genuine, true fairy-tale poetry flows lie within the human soul—poetry that speaks to us as something magical from every century of human development.

[ 2 ] The second point is that, precisely when confronted with the magical quality of fairy-tale poetry, one has a heightened sense that reflection—that is, an intellectual penetration into the essence of the fairy tale—destroys for the soul the elemental, the primal impression; indeed, it destroys the very essence of the fairy tale’s effect itself. If one has already—and quite rightly so—judged explanations and commentaries on literary works to destroy the immediate aesthetic impression, the immediate impression of life, that the work is meant to evoke when one simply allows it to take effect in its most elemental form, then one should reject even more so any explanations that do not do justice to the infinitely subtle and infinitely enchanting nature of that poetry which, as a fairy tale, springs forth from seemingly so deep and seemingly so unfathomable sources of the folk spirit or the individual human spirit. It is truly as if one were to destroy the blossom of a plant were one to attempt to intervene with one’s power of judgment in that which springs so naturally from the human soul as this fairy-tale literature.

[ 3 ] Nevertheless, it seems that, on the one hand, the methods of spiritual research are capable of shedding at least some light on those regions of the soul from which fairy-tale poetry and the fairy-tale atmosphere spring. On the other hand, experience also seems to speak against the second objection. Precisely because one must seek the sources of fairy-tale poetry and the fairy-tale mood so deeply within the soul, one arrives—based entirely on experience—at the conviction that whatever one then offers as a spiritual-scientific explanation remains merely something that touches the described source so gently that it is not only not ruined by such research, but on the contrary: the profound, essential depth within the human soul from which the fairy-tale mood springs is such that one has the feeling that the things lying there are, at any given moment, so new, so individual, so original to the human soul that one would oneself prefer to express them in a kind of fairy tale, because one feels how impossible it is to speak from these deep sources in any other way.

[ 4 ] It may well be that it is a perfectly natural inclination for someone—much like Goethe, who, alongside his artistic pursuits, sought to delve deeply into the sources and foundations of existence—to refrain from resorting to theoretical discourse when he has a profound experience of the human soul to convey, does not destroy the source of fairy tales through research, but rather that, precisely when he has gained insight into this source, he naturally turns once more to fairy tales to express the highest utterances and experiences of the human soul. This is precisely what Goethe did in his “fairy tale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily, when, in his own way, he sought to express those profound experiences of the human soul that Schiller had articulated in a more philosophically abstract manner in his letters “On the Aesthetic Education of Man.” It is precisely the nature of the fairy-tale that ensures that explaining and understanding fairy tales can never destroy the creative spirit toward them; for whoever attempts to penetrate these sources from the standpoint of spiritual research will discover something quite unique. If I were to say everything I would like to say about the essence of the fairy tale, I would have to give many lectures. Therefore, today it will only be possible to offer a few insights and research findings.

[ 5 ] Anyone who attempts to delve into the aforementioned sources from the perspective of spiritual research will find that these sources of fairy-tale poetry actually lie much deeper within the human soul than the sources of the creative and spiritually appreciative human soul, which also finds expression in the most captivating works of art, such as the most harrowing tragedies. Tragedy brings to life what the human soul can experience in the forces that the poet says stem from the great, gigantic fate that elevates humanity by crushing it. The emotional upheavals of tragedy arise from this fate and its depiction, but in such a way that we can say: The entanglements, the threads that are to be spun and unspun through the tragedy, lie in certain individual experiences of the human soul in relation to the external world—experiences that are certainly difficult to fathom in many respects, because it is hard to penetrate the individuality of the human soul, yet which can nevertheless be sensed and fathomed if one has a sense of what happens within the human soul through its relationship to life. One has the feeling that, in one way or another, a soul is entangled in this or that fate of life when it experiences tragedy, as it is portrayed to us, for example.

[ 6 ] Deeper than these entanglements of the tragic lie the sources of the fairy-tale atmosphere and fairy-tale poetry. We sense that the tragic—and indeed many other artistic elements—arise when we see people, for example, at a certain age or during a certain period of their lives, exposed to this or that stroke of fate. When a tragedy moves us, we must assume that the character has been led to the corresponding entanglements through individual experience, and we then have the feeling: this one person, presented to us in the tragedy with his or her particular experiences—it is this person whom we must understand. A certain, circumscribed sphere of humanity confronts us in tragedy and in other works of art.

[ 7 ] If we approach fairy-tale poetry and the atmosphere of fairy tales with understanding, we have a different feeling—not the one just described—because the effect of the fairy tale on the human soul is a primal and elemental one, so that it belongs to the realm of unconscious influences. But when we try to get a sense of what is at work here, we can say that what is expressed in the various fairy tales is not something into which a person can be drawn by a specific life situation; it is not a narrowly defined sphere of human experience, but rather something so deep within the experiences of the human soul that it is universally human. We cannot say that any human soul at a certain age, finding itself in a particular situation, can discover such a thing; rather, what is expressed in the fairy tale is rooted so deeply in the soul that a person experiences it, regardless of whether they are a young child, a person of middle age, or an elderly person.

[ 8 ] What is expressed in fairy tales runs through our entire lives in the deepest experiences of the soul. However, the fairy tale is a free, often even playful, pictorial expression of what is experienced and lies at the root of that experience. The aesthetic, artistic enjoyment of the fairy tale is perhaps as far removed from that which the fairy tale corresponds to in the inner experiences of the soul—to venture a comparison— as the taste experience on the tongue when we enjoy a meal is removed from the hidden, complex processes that this food undergoes throughout the entire organism in order to contribute, in turn, to the organism’s development. What the food undergoes there initially eludes human observation and understanding, and all a person has is the pleasure of the taste. At first glance, the two seem to have very little in common, and no one is able to deduce anything about the role of a particular food in the entire life process of the human organism simply from the way it tastes. Similarly, what a person experiences in the aesthetic enjoyment of a fairy tale is indeed far, far removed from what takes place in the human soul, deep within the unconscious, when what the fairy tale radiates and pours forth connects with the human soul—because this soul has an irrepressible need to let the substance of the fairy tale flow through its spiritual veins, just as the organism has a need to let nutrients and food substances circulate through itself.

[ 9 ] When one applies the methods described here as the methods of spiritual research—the methods of penetrating the spiritual worlds—one gains, at a certain stage of spiritual insight, an understanding of how spiritual processes are constantly taking place in the depths of the human soul, entirely unconsciously to the human being. In ordinary, everyday life, these spiritual processes taking place in the depths of the soul sometimes surface only in faint dream experiences that can be glimpsed even by the conscious mind. When, for example, a person awakens from sleep under particularly favorable circumstances, they may have the feeling: You are emerging from a spiritual world in which thoughts were formed, in which reflections took place, in which something unfolded in the deep, unfathomable depths of existence—something that, while similar to the experiences of the day and intimately connected with your entire being, remains deeply hidden from this conscious daily life.

[ 10 ] Even when the spiritual researcher has made some progress—indeed, even when he is already able to gain some experience in the world of spiritual beings and spiritual realities—he often finds himself in the same situation. No matter how far he may advance, he always seems to return, as it were, to the shore of a world in which spiritual processes from the depths of the unconscious come toward him, and of which he says to himself: “They are connected to your being; you can grasp them almost like a mirage that appears before your spiritual gaze, but they do not reveal themselves to you completely.”

[ 11 ] This is the most extraordinary experience one can have: this glimpse into the unfathomable spiritual interconnections within which the human soul is embedded. For example, when closely observing certain intimate soul processes, it becomes apparent that those inner conflicts which a person experiences even in the depths of the soul—and which they portray in works of art and in tragedies—are relatively easy to grasp compared to certain universal human soul conflicts of which daily life is actually unaware, and which yet every person goes through at every stage of life.

[ 12 ] Such a conflict of the soul, as revealed by spiritual research, takes place, for example—without the everyday consciousness being aware of it—every day upon waking, when the soul steps out of the world in which it resides unconsciously during sleep, as it submerges once more into its physical body. As mentioned, everyday consciousness is completely unaware of this, and yet, as an experience of the soul, a struggle takes place daily at the very core of that soul—a struggle that even spiritual science can only faintly perceive— a struggle that encompasses everything that can be called the struggle of the self-contained, self-experiencing, solitary soul—seeking its spiritual path—against the gigantic forces of natural existence, which we face in our outer life when we stand, so to speak, humanly helpless, and experience how thunder and lightning, how the elements, unleash themselves upon the helpless human being.

[ 13 ] But all of this—even when it appears as colossal as some of the rare, elemental experiences of nature in relation to human beings—is a trifle compared to the struggle that remains in the unconscious, the one that takes place upon waking, when the soul, which experiences its spiritual existence within itself, must now connect with the forces and substances of the purely natural body into which it immerses itself, in order to make use once more of its senses—which are governed by natural forces—and to make use of its limbs, in which natural forces are at work. It is like a longing of the human soul to immerse itself in the purely natural—a longing that is, after all, fulfilled with every awakening—and at the same time, it is like a recoiling, a feeling of helplessness in the face of what once again exists as the eternal opposite of the human soul—in the face of the purely natural, which reigns in the outer physicality into which one awakens. As strange as it may sound that such a struggle takes place daily at the very depths of the human soul, it is nonetheless an experience that passes the human soul by unconsciously. The human soul cannot know what is taking place there, but it experiences this struggle every new morning, and every soul—even though it knows nothing of it—is nonetheless under the influence of this struggle through everything it is, through all its qualities, through its entire being, and through the individual nuance of its existence.

[ 14 ] Another phenomenon that takes place in the depths of the human soul—and which spiritual science can, as it were, catch a glimpse of—is the moment of falling asleep. When the human soul has withdrawn from the senses and the limbs, when it has, so to speak, left the outer body behind in the physical-sensory world, it is then approached by what might be called a sense of its inner self. Only then does it unconsciously experience the inner struggles that arise from the fact that this human soul is bound to external matter in life and must do things that stem from its entanglement with external matter. It feels the attachments to the sensory world with which it is burdened, and it feels these attachments as the obstacles that hold it back morally. A moral state of mind—of which no external moral state can give even a faint idea—unfolded unconsciously within the human soul after falling asleep, when the soul is alone with itself. And various other states of mind take place in the soul precisely when it is free from the body, when it leads a purely spiritual existence from the moment of falling asleep until waking up.

[ 15 ] But one must not imagine that these events, which take place in the depths of the soul, do not exist in the waking state. Spiritual research, for example, reveals a very interesting finding. It shows that a person does not dream only when he believes he is dreaming, but that he dreams throughout the entire day. In truth, the soul is always full of dreams; it’s just that people do not yet notice them because waking consciousness is stronger than dream consciousness. Just as a weaker light is extinguished by the effect of a stronger light, so too is that which is constantly taking place during waking life—as a continuous dream experience—extinguished by waking consciousness; this is what is always present at the depths of the soul. A person is always dreaming, but they are not always aware of it; and from the abundance of dream experiences—from dreams that remain unconscious, which are infinite in comparison to the experiences of waking consciousness—there emerge—just as a single drop of water would emerge from a vast lake, contained within the rest of the water—the dreams that come into a person’s consciousness. But this dreaming that remains unconscious is a spiritual experience of the soul. Thus, things and experiences take place at the depths of the soul. Spiritual experiences of the soul, situated deep within unconscious regions, unfold in the same way that chemical processes take place within the body, processes that lie within the unconscious.

[ 16 ] If we now combine the facts we have just discussed with another that has already emerged from these lectures, a different light is shed on the hidden aspects of the life of the soul that we have just been discussing. We have emphasized this on several occasions, and it was particularly stressed again in the last lecture, that in the course of humanity’s development on Earth, the entire human soul life has changed. If we look far, far back into the course of human development, we find that the soul of primitive man had experiences quite different from those of the modern human soul. We have already spoken of this, and will speak of it further in future lectures: in the early stages of development, primitive man possessed a certain primal clairvoyance. The way of perceiving the world that is normal today in the waking state of the soul—where we receive sensory impressions through external stimuli, and where we connect these sensory impressions through intellect, reason, feeling, and will in our present-day consciousness—is merely the consciousness of the present. It has evolved from older forms of human consciousness which, if we use the word in the positive sense, were more clairvoyant states in which people were able, in certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, to experience something of the spiritual worlds in a completely normal way, so that even though people at that time could not yet become self-aware, was nevertheless less alien to those experiences that take place in the depths of the soul, as mentioned today.

[ 17 ] In prehistoric times, human beings were more aware of their connection to the spiritual world outside themselves. They saw how the processes taking place within their souls—these events lying deep within the soul—were connected to certain spiritual realities that exist in the universe. They saw these spiritual realities passing through their souls and felt an even stronger kinship with the spiritual and soul-related beings and realities of the universe. This was a characteristic of humanity’s original clairvoyant state. And just as today one can experience the following feeling only in very special moods, so in earlier times people experienced it time and again—perhaps not only as artists, but as entirely primitive human beings.

[ 18 ] It may happen that, in the depths of the soul—in a completely indeterminate way, as indeterminate as possible—there lies an experience that does not rise into consciousness, an experience like those just described, one that takes place in the depths of the soul. Nothing at all from this experience enters into conscious daily life. But there is something there in the soul, just as hunger is present in the body—just as hunger truly exists in the body. And just as one needs something to satisfy hunger, so one needs something to satisfy this vague mood that stems from the experience lying deep within the soul. Then one feels compelled either to turn to an existing fairy tale or legend, or perhaps, if one is of an artistic nature, to create something oneself that expresses what one feels—so much so that all the words one might theoretically need seem like stammering in the face of these experiences, and this is how fairy-tale images come into being. This conscious filling of the soul with fairy-tale images is then what nourishes the soul in the face of the hunger that has just been described.

[ 19 ] Because in earlier periods of human development, every human soul was still closer to a clairvoyant perception of the soul’s inner spiritual experiences, therefore, under certain circumstances, the simple folk mind—by feeling the hunger just described much more clearly than is possible today—could seek nourishment in such images as were then created by the creative human soul and which we have today in the fairy-tale traditions of various peoples. The human soul felt a kinship with what spiritual existence is. It sensed, more or less consciously, the inner struggles it had to endure, without understanding them, and expressed them in images that therefore bear only a distant resemblance to what was taking place in the depths of the soul. And yet—one can sense a connection between what is expressed in fairy tales and these unfathomably deep experiences of the human soul.

[ 20 ] A child’s mind—as experience and personal observation can certainly show—often creates within itself something like a simple companion, a companion who is really there only for that child’s mind, but who nevertheless accompanies it and takes part in the most varied events of life. Who, for example, does not know children who carry certain invisible friends with them through life—friends whom you must imagine are there whenever something happens that delights the children, friends who must participate as invisible spiritual companions, soul companions, whenever the child experiences this or that? In the realm of human experience, one quite often encounters how badly it affects a child’s mind when a “rational” person comes along, hears that the child has such a soul companion, and then tries to talk the child out of believing in this soul companion—perhaps even believing it would be beneficial for the child to do so. The child mourns the loss of its soul companion. And if the child is receptive to spiritual and soulful moods, this grief means much more; it can lead to the child becoming ill or wasting away. This is a thoroughly real experience connected to deep inner processes of the human soul.

[ 21 ] Without spoiling the “magic” of the fairy tale, we can sense this simple experience in the story of “The Child and the Toad,” as told by the Brothers Grimm. They tell us about a child who always shares his meal with a toad. But the toad only enjoys the milk. The child speaks to the animal as if it were a human being. Then one day, the child wants the toad to share in his bread as well. The mother hears this, comes over, and beats the animal to death. The child wastes away, grows sick, and dies.

[ 22 ] In fairy tales, we sense the resonance of soul states that take place absolutely and truly in the depths of the soul—and they unfold in such a way that the human soul is familiar with these states not only during certain periods of life, but simply by virtue of being human, whether child or adult. Therefore, every human soul can feel a resonance—how what it experiences and does not understand, what it does not even bring to consciousness, is connected to what then affects the soul in fairy tales just as food affects the taste of the tongue. And then the fairy tale becomes something for the soul similar to nourishment when it is utilized by the organism. It is fascinating to seek out in the deep experiences of the soul what then resonates in the various fairy tales. It would, of course, be a very considerable undertaking to examine the individual fairy tales—of which so many have been collected—specifically for this purpose. That would take a great deal of time. But what can perhaps be illustrated using individual fairy tales can be applied to all fairy tales that can be identified as genuine fairy tales.

[ 23 ] Let’s take another fairy tale that the Brothers Grimm also collected: the tale of Rumpelstiltskin. The miller, who tells the king—at his daughter’s urging—that she can spin straw into gold, is ordered by the king to bring his daughter to the castle so that her skill can be witnessed there. The daughter arrives at the castle. She is locked in a room and given a bundle of straw so that she can demonstrate her skill. Once she is in the room, she is completely helpless. And just as she is feeling so helpless, a little man appears before her. He says to her, “What will you give me if I spin this straw into gold for you?” The miller’s daughter gives him her necklace, and the little man then spins the straw into gold for her. The king is very amazed by this, but he wants even more, and he demands that she spin straw into gold once more. Once again, the miller’s daughter is locked in a room, and as she sits before the great pile of straw, the little man appears again and says, “What will you give me if I spin this straw into gold for you?” She gives him a little ring, and once again the little man spins the straw into gold. But the king wants even more. And when she is sitting in the room for the third time and the little man appears again, she has nothing left to give him. So the little man says that if she ever becomes queen, she must give him the first child she bears. She promises to do so. And when the child is born and the little man comes and reminds her of her promise, the miller’s daughter asks for a reprieve. Then the little man says to her, “If you tell me my name, you can be released from your promise.” The miller’s daughter now sends word far and wide. She wants to know every name, including the name of the little man. Finally, after several unsuccessful attempts, she succeeds in naming the little man—Rumpelstiltskin.

[ 24 ] Truly, with no other work of art besides the fairy tale does one have such a strong sense that one can derive the deepest joy from the immediate image and yet be aware of the profound inner spiritual experience from which such a fairy tale was born. Even if the comparison is trivial, it might nevertheless be apt: just as a person can be quite knowledgeable about the chemistry of food and yet still savor a delicious bite, so too is it possible to know something about the deep inner experiences of the soul—experiences that can only be lived, not “known”—and which find expression in the images of fairy tales in the manner described. Yes, this solitary human soul—for in sleep, but also throughout the rest of life, it is after all solitary in itself, even though it is connected to the body—it feels, though unconsciously; it experiences and does not understand the entire contrast in which it stands in relation to its own infinite tasks, to its own placement within the world of the divine.

[ 25 ] The human soul already senses how little it is capable of when it compares its abilities to those of nature outside—which transforms all things into one another and is truly the great enchantress that the human soul so dearly wishes to be. In consciousness, it may be possible to lightly brush aside this gulf between the human inner self and the omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit of nature. But in the deep experiences of the soul, things are not so simple. The human soul would perish if it did not sense within itself, within the initially perceptible essence, an even deeper essence—an essence on which it can rely, of which it can say to itself: No matter how imperfect you may still appear—this essence is wiser within you; it reigns within you; it can lift you up to the highest ability; it can give you wings as you see an infinite perspective spread out before you into an infinite future. You will be able to do what you cannot yet do, for there is something within you that is infinitely more than your “knowing self.” This is your faithful helper. You need only establish a relationship with it; you need only truly be able to form a concept of this wiser, more prudent, and more skilled essence dwelling within you—one that is greater than you yourself.

[ 26 ] And now let us try once more to visualize this interaction of the human soul with itself—this unconscious interaction with the more skillful part of the soul— and try to sense the resonance in this fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin—what the soul experiences in the miller’s daughter, who cannot spin straw into gold but who finds a skilled, faithful helper in the little man. There, lying deep in the recesses of the soul, in images whose essence is not destroyed once one knows their origin, lies a deeply inner soul life.

[ 27 ] Or let’s take another example—and please don’t be upset with me if I link this other example to certain things that may seem personal at first glance, but are by no means meant personally. However, what this is all about will become clear once I bring this small personal nuance into play.

[ 28 ] In my book *Outline of Esoteric Science*, you will find a description of the evolution of the worlds. I do not wish to discuss this now; that can be done on another occasion. In this evolution of the world, it is explained that our Earth itself, as a planet in the universe, has passed through certain stages that we can compare to the successive lives of an individual human being. Just as the individual human being goes through successive lives, so has our Earth passed through various planetary stages of life, or incarnations. For certain reasons, we speak in spiritual science of the fact that, before the Earth began its “Earth” existence, it underwent a kind of “lunar” existence, and before that, a kind of “solar” existence; so that we can speak of a solar existence as the planetary predecessor to our Earth existence in the distant past—an ancient Sun that was still connected to the Earth. Then, in the course of evolution, a separation occurred between the Sun and the Earth. From what was originally the Sun, the Moon also split off, as did the present-day Sun—which is not that original Sun, but, so to speak, only a part of it—so that we can speak of the original Sun and, so to speak, of its successor, the present-day Sun. And we can also speak of the present-day Moon as a product of the ancient Sun. Now, when spiritual scientific research, through retrospective observation, traces the Earth’s development back to the point in time when the second sun—the present-day sun—developed as an independent celestial body, it must be said that at that time, among the beings that could already have been perceptible to the external senses, the only ones in the animal kingdom were those that had developed up to the level of fish.

[ 29 ] All of these things can be read about in more detail in *The Secret Science*—and also understood. However, they can only be discovered through the research methods of the spiritual sciences. Back then, when they were discovered and written down by me—that is to say, they were not discovered at the very moment I wrote them down in *The Secret Science*, but rather when they were, so to speak, discovered for me and then written down— at that time—and this is the personal note I would like to add—that fairy tale was completely unknown to me, and I can state with absolute certainty that it was completely unknown to me, since I only encountered it later in Wundt’s *Ethnopsychology*, whose sources I then went on to investigate further.

[ 30 ] Before I briefly outline the fairy tale, I would just like to preface it with this one point: Everything that a spiritual researcher can investigate in the spiritual world—and these things that have just been mentioned must indeed be investigated in the spiritual world, for otherwise they would no longer be there—everything that is investigated in this way represents the world with which the human soul is connected. We are connected to this world in the deepest recesses of our soul. It is always there; indeed, we even enter this spiritual world unconsciously when we fall asleep in our normal lives. Our soul is connected to it, and it contains within itself not only the experiences it has during sleep, but also those connected to the entire process of development that has just been outlined. If it were not paradoxical, one might say: in the unconscious state, the soul knows of this; the soul experiences itself within the flowing stream that originated from the primordial Sun and then from the daughter-Sun, which we now see shining in the sky, and from the Moon, which is also a descendant of the primordial Sun. And the human soul also experiences that, spiritually and soulfully, has undergone an existence in which it was not yet linked to earthly matter, but in which it could look down upon earthly processes—for example, upon the time during which the highest animal organisms were in their fish-like forms, when the present sun and moon arose and separated from the Earth. In the unconscious, the soul is connected to these processes.

[ 31 ] Now let us briefly and sketchily trace a fairy tale found among primitive peoples. These peoples tell the story: Once upon a time, there was a man. But he was actually, in essence, made of tree resin and could only ever work at night, for if he had worked during the day, he would have been melted by the sun. One day, however, he happened to go out during the day to catch fish. And lo and behold, the man, who was actually made of tree resin, melted away. His sons decided to avenge him. And they shot arrows. They shot the arrows in such a way that they formed certain shapes, piled up on top of one another, and created a ladder reaching all the way up to the sky. They climbed up this ladder—one during the day, the other during the night. And one became the sun, and the other became the moon.

[ 32 ] It is not my habit to interpret such things in an abstract way or to introduce intellectual concepts into them. But it is something else entirely to sense the finding of research—that the human soul, in its depths, is connected to what is happening in the world and can only be grasped spiritually; that this human soul is connected to all of this and has a hunger to savor, in images, what constitutes its deepest unconscious experiences. When one feels this, one senses the reverberations of what the human soul experienced as the primordial sun and as the emergence of the sun and moon during the Earth’s “Age of Pisces,” when one cites the fairy tale just outlined. And in a certain sense—this is again a personal nuance—it was a very significant experience for me when, long after the things I mentioned had been included in my *Secret Science*, I discovered this fairy tale. Although it does not occur to me at all to interpret this whole thing in an abstract way, a very specific feeling I have when I contemplate the evolution of the world is closely linked to another feeling I experience when I immerse myself in the wonderful images of this fairy tale.

[ 33 ] Or let us consider another, a curious Melanesian fairy tale. Before we discuss this fairy tale, let us recall that, as spiritual research reveals, the human soul is indeed closely connected to the present events and realities of the universe. Even if this is expressed in rather figurative terms, it is nevertheless correct from a spiritual scientific perspective, in a certain sense, to say: When the human soul leaves the physical body during sleep, it leads an existence directly connected to the entire cosmos and feels a kinship with the entire cosmos. There is a simple way to recall the kinship of the human soul—for example, of the human “I”—with the cosmos, or at least with something significant within the cosmos. We turn our gaze to the plant world and say to ourselves: This plant grows, but it can only grow under the influence of sunlight and solar heat. There, before us, rooted in the earth, is the plant. In spiritual science, we say: This plant consists of its physical body and the life body that permeates it. But that is not enough for the plant to grow and develop. For this, the forces acting upon the plant from the sun are necessary.

[ 34 ] If we now consider the human body while a person is asleep, this sleeping human body has, in a sense, the value of a plant. As a sleeping body, it is similar to a plant, for it possesses the power to grow that the plant has within itself. But the human being is emancipated from that cosmic order in which the plant is bound. The plant must wait for the sunlight to act upon it—the rising and setting of the sun. It is bound to the external cosmic order. Human beings are not bound to this order. Why not? Because what spiritual research reveals is indeed true: that from the perspective of the “I”—which, during sleep, is outside the physical body, which then appears to us like a plant—the human being unfolds for the physical body what the sun unfolds for plants. Just as the sun pours its light over the plants, so does the human “I,” when the human being sleeps, over the plant-like physical body. Just as the sun rests over the plants, so does the human “I,” spiritually, rest over the plant-like, sleeping physical body. The human “I” is akin to the existence of the sun. Indeed, the human “I” is itself a kind of sun for the sleeping human body; it brings about its flourishing during sleep and enables the restoration of those forces that have been depleted during wakefulness. When we sense this, we realize how the human “I” is akin to the sun. Just as the sun—as spiritual science shows us more and more—moves across the celestial vault—I am, of course, speaking of the apparent motion of the sun— and just as, in a certain sense, the effect of its rays changes depending on whether the sun is positioned in front of this or that constellation of the zodiac, so too does the human “I” pass through various phases of its experiences, so that it affects the physical body differently in one phase than in another. In spiritual science, one senses the sun acting differently upon the Earth depending on whether, for example, it is passing through the constellation of Aries, the constellation of Taurus, and so on. One therefore does not speak of the Sun in general, but of the Sun’s effect as it moves through the twelve constellations; however, one always refers to the Sun’s passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac—and then points out the connection between the changing ego and the shifting effect of the Sun.

[ 35 ] Let us now take everything that could only be outlined here—but which is elaborated further in *The Secret Science*—as something that can be gained as spiritual-soul knowledge; let us regard it as that which thus takes place in the depths of the human soul and remains unconscious, yet unfolds in such a way that it constitutes an inner sharing in the spiritual forces of the cosmos, which manifest themselves in the fixed stars and planets; and let us compare all of this—what spiritual science reveals to us as the mysteries of the universe—with a Melanesian fairy tale, which I will again only briefly outline:

[ 36 ] There is a stone on the country road. This stone is Quatl’s mother. And Quatl has eleven other brothers. After the eleven other brothers and Quatl were created, Quatl began to create the present world. In this world, which he created back then, people did not yet know the difference between day and night. Now Quatl learns that somewhere there is an island where there is a difference between day and night. He travels to this island and brings some beings from it back to his land. And through the influence of these beings on the beings in his land, his beings enter the alternating state of sleep and wakefulness, and the rising and setting of the sun takes place for them on a spiritual level.

[ 37 ] It is remarkable what continues to resonate in this fairy tale. When one has the entire fairy tale before one, something related to the mysteries of the world resonates, as it were, in every sentence—just as something resonates from what the soul experiences in its depths, in the sense of spiritual science. Must we not then say: The sources of the fairy-tale mood, of fairy-tale poetry, lie in the depths of the human soul! These fairy tales are presented as images because external events must be employed to provide what is meant to be spiritual nourishment for the hunger that wells up from the experiences depicted. We must also say: Yes, we are far removed from these experiences, but we can feel their resonance reverberating within the images of the fairy tales.

[ 38 ] If we keep this in mind, we need no longer be surprised that the most beautiful and most characteristic fairy tales are known to us and have been handed down to us precisely from those earlier times, when people still possessed a certain clairvoyant awareness and were therefore better able to tap into the sources of this fairy-tale atmosphere and fairy-tale poetry, nor are we surprised that in those regions of the world where people’s souls are still closer to the spiritual sources than, say, the souls of the West—for example, in India and the East in general—fairy tales can take on an even more distinctive character.

[ 39 ] Then we should not be surprised, however, that in the German fairy tales—which Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected in the form in which they heard them from relatives or other, often simple people—we find depictions that recall those times in European life when the great heroic sagas also arose, and that the fairy tales contain features that we also find in the great myths of gods and heroes. Nor are we surprised when we hear that it has subsequently become clear that the most significant fairy tales are even older than the heroic sagas, because the heroic sagas, after all, only depict people at a certain age and in a specific situation, whereas what lives on in fairy tales is universally human, accompanying the human soul from our first to our last breath, through all stages of life. And we are not surprised when the fairy tale also brings to the fore, for example, what has been called a profound experience of the soul—that sense of the soul feeling out of place upon awakening in the face of the forces of nature, which one faces helplessly, and which one can only overcome if one simultaneously has the comfort within the soul that: there is something within you that transcends you and, in a certain sense, makes you once again the victor over the forces of nature.

[ 40 ] When you sense this mood, you also understand why giants appear so often in fairy tales, and why humans have to deal with them. Why do these giants appear? Indeed, these giants arise quite naturally as an image from the mood the soul experiences when it seeks to re-enter its physical body in the morning and is confronted with the forces of nature—which are “gigantic” to the human soul—that occupy the body. What the soul feels there as a struggle, what it can experience there, is quite correct—though not in an intellectual, conceptual sense—and corresponds to the human soul as depicted in humanity’s manifold struggles with giants. When all this presents itself to the soul, it feels that in this entire struggle and in its entire stance against the giants, it possesses only one thing: its cunning. For it is part of this feeling: You could now enter your body, but what are you compared to all the gigantic forces of the universe! Yet you do have something that is not present within these giants: that is cunning, the intellect! This stands unconsciously before the soul, even as it must tell itself that it is powerless against the colossal forces of the universe, and we can literally see how the soul places itself within this scene when it expresses the mood just described in the image:

[ 41 ] There is a man walking along the country road who comes to an inn. At the inn, he orders a bowl of milk soup. Flies fly into the soup. He finishes the milk soup, leaving the flies behind. Then he slaps the plate and counts the flies he has killed, boasting, “A hundred at once!” The innkeeper hangs a sign around his neck that reads: “He killed a hundred at once.” Now this man continues along the country road, comes to another region, and there a king is looking out the window of his castle. He sees this man with the sign hanging around his neck and thinks to himself: I could really use him. He takes him into his service and assigns him a very specific task. He says to him: “Look, whole packs of bears are constantly coming into my kingdom. If you’ve killed a hundred at once, then you can surely kill the bears for me, too.” The man replies: “I’ll certainly do it!” But while the bears aren’t there yet, he wants a good wage and plenty to eat, for he thinks to himself: “If I can’t do it, at least I’ll have lived well until then.” — When the time comes for the bears to approach, he gathers all kinds of food and other good things that the bears like to eat. Then he goes out to meet the bears and lays out the food. The bears come over and eat until they’re so stuffed that they lie there as if paralyzed, and then he kills them one by one. The king then arrives and sees what he has accomplished. But the man says: “Yes, I simply made the bears jump over the stick and then chopped off their heads while they were doing so!” The king is very impressed by this and assigns him another task. He says to him, “Look, the giants will soon be coming back into my land, and you must help me against them as well.” The man promised to do so. And when the time came, he again took a lot of good food with him, but also a lark and a piece of cheese. He then actually encountered the giants and first engaged them in a conversation about his strength. One of the giants said, “We’ll show you that we’re stronger.” And he picked up a rock and crushed it in his hand. Then he said to the man, “This is how strong we are! What can you do against us?” The other giant took an arrow, shot it off, and sent it so high that the arrow didn’t come back down for a long time, and said, “This is how strong we are! What can you do against us?” Then the man who had slain a hundred at once said, “I can do all that much better!” He took a small piece of cheese and a stone, tried to smear the cheese over the stone, and said to the giants, “I can squeeze water out of this stone!” And he squeezed the cheese so that water spurted out. The giants were amazed at his power—that he could squeeze water out of the stone. Then the man took the lark and let it fly, and said to the giant, “Your arrow has come back, but the arrow I shot goes so high that it won’t come back at all!” For the lark did not return. The giants were so astonished that they agreed they could only defeat him through trickery; for they no longer even considered the possibility of overcoming him with their giant strength. However, they did not succeed in outwitting the man; rather, he outwitted them. While they were all asleep, he pulled an inflated pig’s bladder over his head, inside which was a little blood. The giants said to one another: “We won’t be able to defeat him while he’s awake, so let’s defeat him while he’s asleep.” So when he was asleep, they attacked him and punctured the pig’s bladder, and when they saw the blood spurting out, they thought they had already defeated him. And they soon fell asleep. And in the calm that then came over them, they slept so soundly that he was able to defeat them in their sleep.

[ 42 ] Even though this fairy tale, like some dreams, ends on an unclear and somewhat unsatisfying note, it nevertheless presents us with the struggle of the human soul against the forces of nature—first against the “bears,” but then shifting to the struggle against the “giants.” But we see something else in this fairy tale as well. We are presented with the man who slew a hundred at once in such a way that we feel the resonance of what lives in the deepest unconscious of the soul: that through his cunning, he can always find solace in the face of the stronger forces, which he must perceive as gigantic. It is not good to interpret what is artistically rendered in images in a completely abstract way or in isolated details. That is not the point at all. For nothing in the structure of the fairy tale is destroyed when one senses that the fairy tale is thus the lingering echo of deep processes taking place within the soul. These processes, in turn, are such that we can know a great deal—as much as can be known about them through spiritual research—and yet: when we become entangled in them again and again, when we experience them in this way, they remain primal and elemental. And no knowledge, even if it exists, destroys the ability to bring what is experienced in the depths of the soul into the mood of a fairy tale.

[ 43 ] It is therefore certainly fascinating for researchers to understand how fairy tales present, in the manner suggested, precisely what the soul needs in light of its deepest experiences. At the same time, the fairy-tale atmosphere is not destroyed, for it is precisely the person who, perhaps drawing on the essence of the fairy tale, gains a deeper insight into the sources of subconscious life who finds in these sources something that is impoverished for consciousness when presented only abstractly; and this person actually finds that the portrayal in the fairy tale is truly the more comprehensive one for the deepest aspects of the soul’s experiences.

[ 44 ] One then comes to understand that Goethe expressed—through the evocative and multifaceted imagery of the “fairy tale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily—what he had experienced so richly and what Schiller had articulated in abstract philosophical terms. Thus, despite his deep thinking, Goethe sought to express through imagery what he sensed about the deepest recesses of the human soul’s innermost being and subconscious. And because the fairy tale is so closely connected to the innermost depths of the soul—to that which is so profoundly linked to the very core of the human soul—the fairy tale is precisely the form of expression most suited to the child’s mind. For one may say of the fairy tale that it has succeeded in expressing the very deepest aspects of spiritual life in the simplest possible way. One actually comes to realize, little by little, that in all of conscious artistic life there is no greater art than the art that completes the path from the incomprehensible depths of the soul’s life to the enchanting, often playful images of the fairy tale.

[ 45 ] If one is able to express the most difficult concepts in the most self-evident forms, then that is the greatest art, the most natural art—art that is intrinsically connected to humanity. And because in a child, the human essence is connected in an even more primordial way to existence as a whole, to life as a whole, that is why the child, too, needs the fairy tale as nourishment for its soul. What constitutes spiritual power can move even more freely within the child. If the child’s soul is not to become barren, it must not yet be entangled in abstract theoretical concepts. It must still be connected to that which is rooted in the depths of existence.

[ 46 ] Therefore, we do the child no greater service for the soul than when we allow that which brings together the roots of humanity with the roots of existence to work upon its soul. Because the child must still be creatively active in shaping itself, because it must still bring forth the formative forces itself for its growth and for the unfolding of all its faculties, it finds such wonderful nourishment for its soul in the images of the fairy tale, in which it is deeply rooted in existence. And because human beings, even when they devote themselves to the rational and intellectual, can never be torn away from the roots of existence, and because they are most intimately connected to the roots of existence precisely when they must be most devoted to life—that is why, provided they have a healthy, upright disposition, they joyfully return to fairy tales at every stage of life. For there is no stage of life, no human situation, that could alienate us from what flows from the fairy tale, because we would have to sever ourselves from the very depths of human nature if we no longer had a sense for what is expressed—through this sense of human nature, which is so incomprehensible to the intellect—in the self-evident fairy tales and in the self-evident, simple, primitive fairy-tale atmosphere.

[ 47 ] It is therefore understandable that people who have long been engaged in restoring to humanity the fairy tales that have been somewhat obscured by culture—people such as the Brothers Grimm, for example—even if they do not approach the matter from a humanities perspective, nevertheless, from the very way they lived with the fairy tales they drew from folk culture, felt that they were giving humanity something that is intimately part of human nature. Then one also comes to understand that, after a culture of the intellect has done so much over the centuries to alienate the human soul—and the child’s soul as well—from fairy tales, such collections of fairy tales as those of the Brothers Grimm have once again found their way into the hearts of all people who are receptive to such things, and that they have once again become the common heritage of the child’s soul in particular, but also the common heritage of all souls, and will become so more and more as spiritual science ceases to be merely theory and instead becomes a mood of the soul—that mood which will increasingly unite the soul, emotionally, with its spiritual roots of existence.

[ 48 ] Thus, it is precisely through the spread of the spiritual sciences that what genuine fairy tale collectors, true fairy tale enthusiasts, and fairy tale performers sought is being realized, and what a man—who was himself a profound lover of fairy-tale performance—often said in lectures I had the privilege of hearing, repeating a beautiful, poetic phrase that sums up what also emerges from the spiritual-scientific examination of the fairy tale when we approach it in today’s sense. We can summarize it in the words spoken in his lectures by that man who knew how to love fairy tales, who knew how to collect them, who knew how to appreciate them, and who therefore always liked to refer to this phrase: Fairy tales and legends are like a guardian angel who, from birth and by virtue of one’s homeland, is bestowed upon a person on their life’s journey, so that he may be a trusted companion throughout this entire journey and, by offering this companionship, transform life itself into a truly inwardly inspired fairy tale!