The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily

[ 1 ] If Theosophy were to claim that it is something entirely new, having only come into being in the last few decades, then it would be very easy and effective to refute it. For while it is easy for people to believe that individual, specific truths or new achievements in any field of knowledge might enrich human perception and thought as time progresses, it is not easy to believe that that which concerns the very innermost core of the human being—the primal source of human wisdom—could emerge as something entirely new at any point in time. This is simply not credible, and it is therefore only natural that such a belief—as if Theosophy could or would bring something entirely new—would arouse mistrust toward the Theosophical Movement. But ever since it first sought to influence the modern cultural movement, Theosophy has presented itself as an ancient wisdom—something that people have sought, something they have hoped to attain in the most diverse forms throughout the ages. And it has been the task of the Theosophical Movement to search within the various religious denominations and worldviews for the different forms through which people, throughout the ages, have strived to reach the source of truth. Theosophy has revealed that at various times, even in the most ancient times, the wisdom through which human beings sought to recognize their goal shared a deep kinship. And so it is, in fact. Theosophy makes us humble regarding the achievements of our own time. The well-known, thoroughly immodest saying that we have come so wonderfully far in this 19th century—this saying is subject to a peculiar qualification when we consider spiritual life in its deepest sense, throughout the centuries and millennia.

[ 2 ] However, I do not wish to take you back to those ancient times; I would like to use a modern figure to show you that those who have sought to put into practice the ancient maxim inscribed on the Greek temple with the words: “Know thyself”—that such a modern figure, who made this maxim his own, is, in essence, in complete harmony with what Theosophy describes as its teachings and worldview. This figure is none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He is undoubtedly deeply familiar not only to Germans but also to many other cultured people of our time. To a greater or lesser extent, this is true for each and every one of us. Goethe, however, is a spirit with whom one feels a very special connection. He is a spirit one can study at any point in one’s life, and one will find many things that reveal not only the great artist, the great poet with his outstanding qualities, but—if one delves deeper—one will soon be able to recognize in Goethe the great sage, such that, when one returns to him years later, one can always discover something new and fresh in him. We find that Goethe belongs to those minds that contain an infinite wealth within themselves. And when we have repeatedly added new insights to our own small store of wisdom and then return to Goethe, we are astonished and stand once more in wonder before what was previously hidden from us, because we lacked the resonance to access the realm that spoke through him. And no matter how deeply such a person has cultivated his innermost being, no matter how profound the wisdom he finds in Goethe, if he waits a few more years and immerses himself once more in his writings, he will be convinced that he finds something new, something greater—indeed, something infinite—in Goethe’s works. One never stops learning from Goethe. This is an experience shared especially by those who have trust and faith in the profound development of the human soul.

[ 3 ] It is said that Goethe provided us with a kind of modern gospel in his Faust. If this statement is to be taken seriously, then Goethe also provided us, alongside his gospel, with a kind of secret revelation, a kind of apocalypse. This apocalypse is hidden in his works; it forms the conclusion of Conversations of German Emigrants and is read by only a few. I have always been asked where this fairy tale is found in Goethe’s works. It appears in all editions of Goethe’s works and, as mentioned, forms the conclusion of Conversations of German Emigrants. In this fairy tale, Goethe has created a work of art of infinite beauty. I do not wish to destroy the immediate visual impression of the work of art by attempting here to offer an interpretation of this fairy tale. Goethe has concealed his most intimate thoughts and ideas within the “fairy tale.” He said to Eckermann in the final years of his life: “My dear friend, I want to tell you something that may be useful to you when you consider my works.” “My works will not become popular; a few individuals will understand what I meant to say, but my works will never achieve popularity.” He likely spoke this primarily with regard to the second part of Faust, meaning that those who enjoy Faust can experience a direct artistic impression. But whoever uncovers the mysteries hidden within Faust will also be able to say what lies behind these images.

[ 4 ] I do not wish to speak of the second part of Faust, but rather of the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily, in which Goethe revealed himself even more intimately than in the second part of Faust. I would like to discuss what Goethe has encoded in these remarkable images. But I would also like to discuss why Goethe used figurative language to express his most intimate thoughts. Both questions will be answered in the course of this lecture.

[ 5 ] Anyone who understands the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily knows that Goethe was a theosophist, a mystic. Goethe also embodied the wisdom and worldview that theosophy seeks to convey in a popular form; and this “fairy tale” in particular is full proof of that. It’s just that back then, in the days when Goethe spoke out, people did not—as they do today in public lectures—attempt to clothe the highest truths in words through the power of the intellect; they did not attempt to present these most intimate truths of the human soul in the same way. Those who had gained insight into such truths expressed them in figurative form, through parables. It was an ancient custom—a custom dating back to the Middle Ages—that one cannot attain the highest insights in abstract form, but that this requires a kind of immersion, a kind of initiation. And this initiation made it impossible for those who sensed that a certain mood, a kind of “breath of the soul,” was necessary to grasp such truths—truths that, in fact, cannot be perceived by the intellect alone—to speak of these higher truths. A certain mood is required, and I call this mood the “breath of the soul.” To them, the language of the intellect seemed too sober, too dry, to express the highest truths. Furthermore, they still held the conviction that whoever experiences such things must first make themselves worthy of the truth.

[ 6 ] This conviction meant that in ancient times, up until about the third century of the Christian era, the truth about the human soul and the human spirit was not presented in such a way that it could be publicly revealed; rather, anyone who was to attain the highest truths first had to be prepared to receive what was offered in the so-called mystery schools. Ultimately, these mystery schools presented everything they imparted to the initiates—whether secrets, natural laws, or cyclical laws—as something that, if expressed in dry intellectual propositions, we would recognize as sober truth; yet the student had to recognize and live it as living truth. For it is not a matter of thinking wisdom, but of living wisdom. It is not merely a matter of permeating wisdom with the fervor of the spirit, but of the human being becoming a completely different person. He had to approach the Most Holy with a certain reverence; he had to understand that truth is something divine, that it is imbued with divine cosmic blood, that it permeates our personality, that the divine world is to be revived, and that knowing means the very same thing as what is designated by the word “development.” This was to be made clear to the mystic, and he was to attain it on the stage of purification within the Mysteries. He was to cultivate a sacred reverence for the truth; he was to be detached from attachment to the sensual, from the sufferings and joys of life, from the things with which everyday life surrounds us. That which we need when we withdraw from profane life—the light of the Spirit—could only be received once those things had been laid aside. If we are worthy to receive the light of the Spirit, then we have become different; then we love the Spirit; then we love—with earnest sympathy and devotion—that which we otherwise recognized only as a shadowy existence, as an abstract reality: we love the spiritual life, which for the ordinary person is merely a thought. The mystic, however, learns to sacrifice the self that clings to the everyday; he learns not only to penetrate the truth through thought, but to live it through, to receive it as divine wisdom, as theosophy. Goethe expressed this conviction in the West-Eastern Divan:

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

[ 7 ] This is what mystics of all ages have strived for: to let the lower self die and to bring forth that which lives in the spirit. To regard the passing of sensory reality as insignificant, so that the human being may ascend into the realm of divine purposes. To die in order to become. Whoever lacks this does not know what forces resonate within our world; such a person is merely a gloomy guest on our Earth. Goethe expressed this in the West-Eastern Divan, and he also sought to portray it with great vividness in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. The transformation of the human being from one level of existence to a higher one—that was the riddle he sought to solve. The riddle: How can a person who lives in the everyday world, who can only see with their eyes and hear with their ears, how can they grasp this “die and become”? That was the question of mystics throughout the ages. This great question has always been called “spiritual alchemy”—the transformation of the human being from the everyday soul to the spiritual soul, which perceives spiritual things just as the ordinary person perceives earthly things—the table, the chair, and so on—and regards them as real. Once this alchemy had taken place within a person, the guides of the mysteries deemed him worthy to receive the highest truths. Then they led him into the Holy of Holies; then he was initiated; then he was endowed with the teachings that instruct him about the intentions of nature—the intentions that permeate the plan of the worlds. It is such an initiation that Goethe describes [in “The Fairy Tale”]: an initiation of the worthy individual into the mysteries.

[ 8 ] This is due to two reasons: First, in his youth, Goethe was just as eager to learn the secret that was then called the secret of alchemy. Between his time studying in Strasbourg and Leipzig, he had already recognized that there is a spiritual aspect to alchemy, and he knew that conventional alchemy is merely a distorted image of the spiritual one. That everything known as alchemy has been able to persist only because figurative expressions have been taken as realities. It was this alchemy of the human being—which takes place through the forces of inner life—that he meant. The guides of the mysteries also gave instructions on how this alchemy could be brought about. Since, however, they could describe this transformation of the inner human forces only allegorically through images, they spoke of one substance being transformed into another. In what they said about the transmutation of substances, they expressed what develops to a higher level in the life of the human soul—that which is transformed in a spiritual sense. What great minds have shown to people bound to everyday life in the spiritual realm, they applied to the transmutation of substances—ordinary substances and metals in retorts—and endeavored to discover what mysterious agent was meant to bring about the transmutation of matter. Goethe demonstrated in a passage from Faust what he understood about these matters. In the first part of Faust, during the walk outside the gate, he points out precisely what is false, incorrect, and petty in the overly materialistic conception of alchemy. He mocks those who, in whimsical endeavors, strive to discover the secret and, in the company of adepts and following endless recipes, mix together incompatible substances:

There was a red lion, a bold suitor,
Married in the cool waters of the lily,
And both were then, consumed by an open blaze,
Tormented as they were carried from one bridal chamber to another.

[ 9 ] What Goethe mocks here—the marriage to the lily—was precisely what he sought to illustrate in the fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily. The highest goal a human being can strive for, the highest state into which a human being should transform—Goethe denotes this with the symbol of the lily. It is synonymous with what we call the highest wisdom, so that human action penetrates to the very essence of its nature, just as a state of development has become eternity. Even if a person follows the eternal laws according to which we must fulfill the eternal laws of existence, even if they acknowledge the eternal development of their freedom, they are at a stage of development—this represents such a state of soul, such a level of knowledge—that is denoted by the symbol of the lily. This lily—the highest of the soul’s powers, the highest state of consciousness, where a human being may be free because he cannot abuse his freedom, because he can never interfere disruptively with the cycles of freedom—this content of the soul, which was imparted to the mystics in the mysteries as they were purified and transformed, has always been symbolically designated as the lily. At the same time, the lily refers to what Spinoza—where he otherwise appears sober and mathematical—expresses enthusiastically, almost poetically, at the end of his Ethics when he says that human beings have ascended into the higher spheres of existence, that they are permeated by the laws of nature. Spinoza describes this as the realm of divine love within the human soul; the realm where human beings are no longer compelled to do anything, but where everything that falls within the realm of human development occurs out of freedom and devotion, out of complete love; where every compulsion, every act of arbitrariness is transformed through spiritual alchemy, and where all action flows into the realm of freedom. Goethe described that love as the highest form of freedom—freedom from all the desires and longings of everyday life. He said:

Deep within our pure hearts, a longing stirs
To surrender ourselves willingly to something higher, purer, and unknown
Out of gratitude,
Unraveling the mystery of the eternally unnamed
We call it: to be pious! — Such a blissful height
I feel myself partaking of when I stand before her.

Before her gaze, as before the sun’s radiance
Before her breath, as before the breezes of spring
It melts, though it had long remained frozen and rigid
That self-centeredness deep in wintry tombs
No self-interest, no self-will endures
Before her coming, they have been driven away.

[ 10 ] This Spinozist love of God, which he seeks to attain through spiritual alchemy, is that with which man—the human will—is to unite. The human will, which is active at every level—this will is what has been referred to throughout history as the “lion,” the creature in which this will is stretched to its utmost, in which this will comes to life most powerfully; and thus mysticism refers to the human will as the lion.

[ 11 ] In the Persian mysteries, there were seven initiations. They are as follows: First, one became a raven; then, a secret one; then, a warrior; then, a lion. The fifth degree was the one in which a person already viewed life from the other side, where a person was born as a true human being. Therefore, the Persians call one who has transcended the stage of the lion a “Persian.” A Persian was one initiated into the fifth degree, and the Persian called one who had reached the point where his actions flowed as calmly as the sun completes its course across the vault of heaven a “Sun-walker.” And the one who performs actions out of infinite love, he calls “belonging to the degree of the Fathers.” The fourth degree was that in which man stood at a crossroads, having organized himself upward through the physical body, the etheric double—which is the bearer of the life force—and the astral body, which is subject to the laws of desire, craving, and passions. According to theosophical terminology, these three bodies constitute the lower fundamental parts of the human being; from them the lower human is born. The Persian designates as the “Lion” the one who is initiated, the one who has penetrated this connection. And here the human stands at a crossroads. Here, that which compels him to act out of nature is transformed into a free gift of love. When he ascends to the fifth degree of initiation, when he develops into the free human being who may allow himself to perform—out of free love—that which he was otherwise compelled to do. This union of the lion with the free, loving being is what alchemy designates as the mystery of human development. Goethe depicted this mystery in his “Fairy Tale.” He first showed how this being of will stands, how he is drawn into the physical world from higher spheres—spheres he himself does not know. Goethe is aware that, by virtue of his spiritual nature, the human being originates from higher spheres, that he is led over into this world, which Goethe depicts as the world of material, sensual existence. This world is the land on one bank of the river. In the “fairy tale,” however, there are two lands: one on this side of the river and one on the other side. From the land on the other side, the unknown ferryman guides people across to the land of the sensory world; and between the land of the spiritual world and that of the sensory world lies the river—the water that separates the two lands. Goethe used the image of water to denote the same thing that mystics of all ages have denoted and symbolized with it. Already in Genesis, this expression means the same thing as it does in Goethe’s work. We also find this expression in the New Testament. For example, in the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus. There it says: “Unless one is born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Goethe understood the expression “born again of water” very well, and we can see how he understood it from the “Song of the Spirits over the Waters”:

O soul of man,
How like you are to water,
O fate of man,
How like you are to the wind.

[ 12 ] The world of the soul, the world of desire and longing, the world of passions and cravings—he interposes this between our mind and our senses. These know neither good nor evil; our senses cannot err. Anyone who delves into these distinctions knows that when we study the laws of nature, we cannot speak of good and evil. When we study nature in the animal kingdom, we will find that we can speak of harmful and useful animals, but not of good and evil ones. It is only by immersing himself in the waters—in the world of the soul—that a human being becomes capable of good and evil. This world, which interposes itself between the spiritual and the sensory, is the river across which the spirit comes from unknown spheres. Having crossed the river is the innermost being of the human being, his true spiritual core—having crossed the river of passions and desires. And if he does not undergo further development, he is like a will-o’-the-wisp. This human being, who is subject to the laws that live within him—having crossed the river but not yet received the divine spark to carry him into the other world—is therefore set aside by the ferryman, who brings people across the river from the other shore into this world. No one can be ferried across by the ferryman, but everyone can be brought across. We feel ourselves brought across without any effort on our part, through the forces that lie beneath our consciousness, which precede our actions and deeds. Through such forces, we feel ourselves placed within the world of the senses, in this world. The ferryman, who has brought us over from the spiritual life beyond, has placed us in this world and can no longer bring us back to that land we must reach—the land of the beautiful lily. [The ferryman is therefore the force through which one unconsciously enters the world of the senses.]

[ 13 ] The will-o'-the-wisps want to pay the ferryman the required tribute with gold. But he demands the fruits of the earth, which they do not have; they have only gold. He, however, does not want to be paid with gold. Gold coins, he says, are harmful to the river. The river cannot tolerate such gold—that is to say, wisdom can only be paid for with the fruits of the earth. This is a profound wisdom. The gold symbolizes the power of wisdom that dwells within human beings. This power of wisdom living within a person is their guide through life. This power of wisdom asserts itself—as the power of their knowledge and intellect—when a person feels drawn into sensuality. But this wisdom is not what leads a person toward development; it is precisely this wisdom that makes them selfish and egotistical when it unites with human nature. If this power of reason, this knowledge, were to unite with what flows along in the current, then passion would stir up tremendous waves; for wherever a person does not place their wisdom in the service of selflessness but simply casts it aside and indulges their passions, there the current stirs up wild waves. It is impossible to satisfy the river with gold or with wisdom. It therefore rejects the wisdom that has not yet passed through selflessness. It casts it back into the ravines, where the deep darkness of the earth lies, where the deep chasms are. There it buries it. We will hear in a moment why he buries it. The ferryman therefore demands three heads of cabbage, three artichokes, three onions; he demands, in other words, the fruits of the earth.

[ 14 ] How can a person achieve personal development? By refining the lower driving forces of their nature; by purifying that which lives within them as sensual nature; by casting it into the stream and thereby nourishing the stream of passions. This is what Schiller so beautifully expressed in his Aesthetic Letters: Only those who have liberated their lower nature understand what it means to be free. When the outer nature—the sensual nature—has been so ennobled, having grown upward from below, that it itself strives for the good and the beautiful, because passion can no longer lead it astray, because the outer sensual nature can no longer seduce it; when we no longer throw wisdom into it, but pay for our passions with the fruits of the earth, so that our sensuality itself is absorbed by them, just as the fruits of the earth are to be absorbed by the river, then we have reached the lowest degree of initiation. This is expressed in the words [of the ferryman]:

You must know that I can only be paid with the fruits of the earth.

[ 15 ] Now the will-o’-the-wisps continue on in this world; that is to say, the human being seeks to continue on his life’s path. In this world, he encounters the green serpent, the symbol of human striving and human knowledge. This serpent had previously had a strange experience. The ferryman had previously carried the gold pieces down the river and hidden them in the crevices of the earth. This is where the serpent found them. The wisdom that propels humanity forward remains even today a hidden treasure, shrouded in mystery. That is what Goethe meant to say. Therefore, the person who wished to find this wisdom had to seek it far from all human selfishness. Then, when a person has made himself worthy to receive it, wisdom is at hand. The symbol of the human quest for knowledge—the serpent—is permeated by the gold. The gold itself is entirely permeated by wisdom and now begins to shine. Thus the serpent desires from the will-o’-the-wisps that which gives rise to pride in the selfish human being—that with which he then flaunts and boasts. This human knowledge, which is pernicious when used in the service of selfishness, is attained when the human being, like the serpent, humbly crawls along the ground and strives, bit by bit, to recognize reality. It cannot be attained when a person stands proud and upright, but only when he lives in humility, horizontal like the snake, clinging to the ground. There, the gold of wisdom finds its place; there, a person is able to imbue himself with wisdom. That is why the will-o’-the-wisps also call the snake their kinsman, saying: “/p”

Of course, we are only related in appearance

[ 16 ] — and yes, they are related; the serpent is related to the will-o'-the-wisps, and the wisdom that places itself in the service of selfishness is related to the wisdom that humbly offers itself.

[ 17 ] Now the “fairy tale” goes on to tell us that the serpent was down in the crevices of the earth and that it found something there that resembled human forms. The serpent was in a temple. This is nothing other than the symbol of the temple of mysteries of all ages. This hidden temple, which was in the chasms beneath the earth, is the symbol of the place of initiation. Here, in this temple, the serpent saw the three great priests of initiation—those priests who are endowed with the three highest powers of human nature. Theosophy calls them Atma, Budhi, Manas. Goethe refers to what Theosophy designates as Atma, Budhi, and Manas as the King of Wisdom, the King of Beauty, and the King of Strength—or the King of Will. Through these three fundamental powers of the soul, by which the human soul must be initiated, the spirit was united in the mystery temples. Goethe depicts this process in the “Fairy Tale.” Down here, in the halls of the earth, is the serpent that will shine from within because it has absorbed the gold of wisdom. And because it has absorbed it in humility, it is therefore illuminated from within. The old man with the lamp is another figure. What does he represent to us? The old man’s lamp has the property that it shines only when another light is already present. Because the serpent glows, illuminating the interior of the mystery temple with the light radiating from within itself, the old man’s light can also shine here. Goethe expresses this idea elsewhere with the words:

If the eye were not like the sun,
How could we see the light?
If God’s own power did not live within us,
How could the divine delight us?

[ 18 ] Here he expresses in poetic language what he conveys through imagery in the “Fairy Tale.” The knowledge that we in Theosophy call occult knowledge is represented by the old man with the lamp. The light does not appear to anyone who has not truly prepared themselves to receive it. It does not appear to anyone who has not worked their way up to that higher stage of development, so that their Self—their selfless nature—shines from within, meeting light with light. When these two lights—the intuitive light and the light that emanates from the personal self—shine toward one another, they give rise to what a person experiences in their transformation as spiritual alchemy; then the space around them becomes light, and they learn to recognize what the highest spiritual powers are: the gifts of the Three Kings—wisdom, beauty, and strength. The gift of the golden king is wisdom; the gift of the silver king is beauty and piety; the gift of the bronze king is strength and willpower. Only when the light meets the light—the light of the lamp, which can shine only where light already exists—can a person understand their innermost powers. Then the three kings appear in all their splendor, and at the same time the significance of the fourth king becomes clear—that king who is composed of the metals of the other three kings. He is a symbol of lower nature, in which the noble forces of wisdom, beauty, and strength interact in a disorderly and disharmonious manner, as in chaos. These three forces, which dwell in the highly developed soul, are also present in lower nature, but in a chaotic, disharmonious state. This fourth king is the realm of the present world—the chaotic intermingling of wisdom, beauty, and strength. The soul forces, which can attain the highest only through harmonious interaction, interact chaotically with one another in the present age. A voice resounds in the temple of initiation:

He's going to sit down.

[ 19 ] The chaotic confusion will have disappeared when what Goethe so ardently longs for has come to pass: that the temple will no longer stand in secret, but will rise in full daylight; that the temple will have ascended from the depths and can serve as a temple of initiation for all people; that a bridge will exist across which all people can pass back and forth. That is the time when all people will have made themselves worthy to receive the highest wisdom, the highest piety, and the highest will. Then he will have fulfilled this task: the temple will have risen above the river of passions. These passionate forces will then be so pure and noble that the highest Spirituality will be able to rise in the temple, in the bright light of day, from the stream of desires and passions. Therefore, it is necessary that humanity be filled with the “Die and Become” that Goethe so clearly depicted in the West-Eastern Divan.

[ 20 ] Goethe was repeatedly asked what the solution to the riddle was, to which he replied: “The solution to the riddle is contained within the ‘fairy tale’ itself, but not in a single word.” This can be found at the point where, during a conversation in the underground temple, we hear the snake whisper something in the old man’s ear—something we cannot hear—which Goethe uses to hint at a confidential secret. This unspoken element—that is the solution. The solution does not lie in something that can be expressed in words, but in an inner resolve. Goethe also hinted at this in the “fairy tale” itself. The serpent stated quite matter-of-factly: “I will sacrifice myself; I will purify my self through selflessness.” This is precisely what must be regarded as the deepest solution to the riddle fairy tale. It is an act, not a lesson. Until now, there were only two ways to cross the river: either at noon, when the green snake stretches across the river and forms a bridge, so that one could cross the river at noon—which means that in the present age there are moments for human beings when the sun stands at its zenith for them, when they are ripe to surrender to the higher spiritual light. Time and again, however, he is drawn down from these midday moments of life into the lower world, ravaged by passions. In such midday moments, the spiritually chosen can cross over from the shore of sensory life to the shore of the spirit.

[ 21 ] But there is another way to cross the river, namely in the evening, when the shadow of the great giant stretches across the river. The shadow of the great giant can also form a bridge across the river, but only at twilight. This shadow of the great giant—what is it? Goethe spoke in greater detail and with greater depth to his close friend about the forces he had symbolically alluded to in the “fairy tale.” When Schiller once wanted to take a trip to Frankfurt am Main and was in danger of becoming entangled in the intrigues of the time, Goethe wrote to Schiller: “I am very glad that you did not come here to the West, for the giant’s shadow might have treated you harshly.” The significance of the giant, however, is also clearly expressed in the fairy tale itself. The giant, who is weak, can do nothing. Only his shadow can form the bridge to the other shore. This giant is the raw [mechanical] force of nature. Where the light no longer shines so brightly, where the light no longer deceives, his shadow is able to lead people of raw passions across the river. These are the people who, by extinguishing their clear daytime consciousness in various states of the soul—in trance, in somnambulistic states, in states of psychic vision, and so on—seek to cross over into the realm of the spirit. In the same way, daytime consciousness was extinguished in the wild, raging actions through which the people of that time sought to penetrate the realm of freedom. People wanted to conquer the land of the beautiful lily. But only the giant’s shadow can cross over. Only precariously, in the twilight of consciousness, can a person overcome—that is, drown out—the passions when he is in an almost unconscious state, when he is not living in bright, clear consciousness.

[ 22 ] These are the two paths that lead to the other shore: the serpent during the solemn moments of midday, and the giant’s shadow in the twilight of consciousness, in trance, and so on. But one thing must be strived for here: The serpent must sacrifice itself completely; it must not merely bend over the river of passions at noon, but must serve as a bridge from one bank to the other at every hour of the day, so that not only a few are able to cross over, but all people can come and go with ease. This is the resolve of the serpent; this is the resolve Goethe has made. Goethe points to an age of selflessness, in which human beings place their strength not in the service of the lower self, but in the service of selflessness, desiring no personal gain.

No self-interest, no will of one's own lasts,
They have been driven away before their arrival.

[ 23 ] This fundamental idea of the “fairy tale” is linked to several other ideas. I cannot address all of them today; I will only briefly touch on a few.

[ 24 ] There we find the Old Man’s wife with the lamp, who is wedded to the representative of human—occult—knowledge. She guards the Old Man’s house. The will-o’-the-wisps have come to her. These will-o’-the-wisps have licked up all the gold that was on the wall, and they have immediately given back the gold with which they had enriched themselves, so that the living pug, which ate the gold, had to suffer death. The Old Woman is the power of reason that brings forth what is useful. Only when the occult power unites with that which is attached to material culture—when the highest unites with the lowest in the world—only then can the world follow its course of development. Man will not be led away from everyday life, but will purify everyday culture.

[ 25 ] People are surrounded in the world, in their homes, by what hangs on the walls as gold. Everything that surrounds him is also gold. So what surrounds him? On the one hand, it is the man of knowledge; on the other, the man of utility. He is surrounded by the entire experience of the human race. Everything that has been gathered as humanity’s experience is piled up in human science. Those who strive for it seek what is recorded in the writings. There they, as it were, extract historical wisdom. This is what surrounds man in his striving; it is what will completely permeate him. But it is useless for that which is meant to live. The living pug devours the gold and dies from it. Wisdom that reigns only as dead book learning—not brought to life by the spirit—kills everything that is alive. Only when it is reunited with the source of wisdom, with the beautiful lily, does it come back to life. That is why the old man sends the dead pug with his wife to take it to the beautiful lily. The lamp has a peculiar property: [It transforms dead animals into gemstones]; everything that is dead comes to life through it; what is alive is purified by it into crystal—bright and transparent. This transformation is brought about in human beings through knowledge, that is, through occult knowledge.

[ 26 ] Furthermore, the old woman is urged by the will-o’-the-wisps to pay her debts to the ferryman. These three fruits are the symbols of human utility, the symbols of material culture. Material culture is meant to pay this tribute to passion. Where else could the actual driving forces of lower nature come from, if not from technology, the cultivation of material culture? It is interesting that the shadow of the giant, who has just emerged from the river, takes some of the fruits of the earth away, so that the old woman has only two of each fruit instead of three. But she was supposed to have three for the ferryman and must therefore pledge herself to the river. Here something very significant occurs: she must dip her hand into the river, causing it to turn black so that it is almost no longer visible; though it is still there, it is nearly invisible. This shows us the connection between external culture and the world of the river, the world of passions. Material culture must be placed in the service of the astral and the soul. As long as human nature has not been ennobled to the point where it can be offered as a tribute to the stream of passions, technology remains indebted to the human stream. Human striving becomes invisible when it is placed in the service of human passions; invisibly, the human being works toward something whose ultimate goal cannot be seen. It is invisible, yet it exists; it is perceptible, yet not outwardly visible. Everything a person accomplishes on the path toward that great goal, until he has paid off his debt to the flow of the soul—everything he must cast into the world of passions—resembles the invisible hand of the Old Man’s wife holding the lamp. As long as the sensual nature is not completely purified—as it were, consumed by the fire of passion—it does not shine; as long as that is the case, it remains invisible. That is what upsets the Old Woman so much: she no longer gives off any radiance. One could elaborate on this in great detail. Every word is significant, but that would take us too far afield for today.

[ 27 ] So let us hurry to the great procession, where we encounter a young man who tried all too soon to embrace the beautiful lily and was thereby paralyzed in all his vital energy. Goethe says elsewhere: Whoever strives for freedom without first having freed his inner self falls even further into the snare of necessity. Whoever has not freed himself will be killed. Only those who are prepared and purified, as in the Mysteries—those who have undergone purification in the temple of the Mysteries so that they may wed the lily in a worthy manner—will not be killed. Whoever has died to the lower realm in order to be reborn in a higher sense can embrace the lily. The present is represented to us by the paralyzed youth who sought to attain the highest in the storm. Now he lamented to all whom he met that he cannot embrace the lily. Now he must be made ready, for which purpose all the forces of the human being must unite, as symbolized by the participants in the procession. The procession consists of the Old Man with the lamp, the will-o’-the-wisps, and the Lily itself. All these beautiful individual forces are thus encompassed by this procession, which is led down into the chasms of the earth to the temple of initiation. Indeed, this, too, is a profound aspect of the riddle-tale: that he has the will-o’-the-wisps unlock the temple’s gate. Selfish wisdom is not without purpose; it is a necessary transitional stage. Human egoism can be overcome by nourishing itself with wisdom, by permeating itself with the gold of genuine knowledge. Then this wisdom can serve to unlock this temple. Those who unconsciously serve wisdom in their outer selves are led to the true seats of wisdom. The scholars, who pore only over books, are the guides there. Goethe did not underestimate science; he knew that it is science that unlocks the temple of wisdom; he knew that one must examine this, judge and assimilate everything in pure knowledge, and that without this one cannot enter the temples of the highest wisdom. Goethe sought this wisdom everywhere. He considered himself worthy to recognize the highest in spiritual life through art, having passed through science. In physics, in biology—everywhere he sought knowledge. And so he also allows those who are will-o’-the-wisps to enter the temple of initiation—those who, relying on themselves, stand in a false upright posture facing the one who, through experience, has observed and can slither in like a snake. They bring about the opening of the temple, and the procession now enters the temple.

[ 28 ] Now something is happening that Goethe longed for on behalf of all humanity: The entire temple rises up from the depths of the earth. The temple can be erected above the stream of the soul, above the stream of passions and desires, only because the serpent has disintegrated into gemstones that form the pillars of a bridge. And now human beings can move freely from the sensory world into the spiritual world, and from the spiritual world freely into the sensory world. The union of the sensual human with the spiritual is achieved through the human who has become selfless, through the self-sacrifice of the serpent, which arches over the river as a bridge. The temple thus rises from the chasms of the earth and is accessible to all who cross the bridge—accessible to those in everyday vehicles as well as to pedestrians.

[ 29 ] In the temple itself, we see the three kings again. The young man, who has been purified because he has recognized the three soul powers, is endowed with these three soul powers. The golden king approaches him and says:

Recognize the Supreme;

[ 30 ] The Silver King steps toward him and says:

Let the sheep graze.

[ 31 ] In doing so, Goethe expressed a thought that lay deep in his soul, namely, the union of beauty and piety. It is the [call] found in the Bible. He addresses these words to the young man in the same spirit he expressed when he saw depictions of the Greek deities in Rome and said:

There is necessity, there is God

[ 32 ] and:

I suspect that they [the great Greek artists] followed precisely those laws that govern nature and which I am seeking to uncover.

[ 33 ] This is a personal touch by Goethe, as he portrays the Silver King as the embodiment of beauty and piety. And then the King of Strength approaches him and says:

The sword in the left hand, the right hand free.

[ 34 ] The sword should serve not for attack, but for protection. Harmony should be brought about, not strife. Following this process, the young man is initiated into the three powers of the soul. The fourth king, however, has nothing more to say; he [sinks] into himself. The temple has risen from obscurity into the bright light of day. Within the temple stands a small silver temple, which is nothing other than the transformed hut of the ferryman. It is a significant touch that Goethe allows the ferryman’s hut—belonging to the one who brings us across [from] the land of the spirit—to be transformed into pure, refined silver, so that it itself has become a small altar, a small temple, a Holy of Holies. This hut represents what is most sacred in human beings—their deepest core of being, which they have preserved as a memory of the land from which they originate, from which they have come, and to which the ferryman cannot bring them back. It [the hut] represents what existed before our evolution; it is the remembrance that we are descended from the Spirit. This remembrance stands as the Holy of Holies in the temple, in its sanctuary.

[ 35 ] The giant—that raw force of nature that lives in the natural world, a spirit that could not act on its own but only as a shadow—has been given a remarkable mission. This giant stands upright and now serves only to mark the hour. When humankind has cast off everything that belongs to its lower nature, when it has become fully spiritualized, then the raw, lower force of nature will no longer appear in its original elemental violence as a storm of the natural forces surrounding humankind. This mechanical, raw force of nature will perform only mechanical services. Humanity will always need these mechanical forces of nature, but they will no longer subjugate humanity; rather, humanity will direct them to perform their service. Humanity’s work will be the hour hand of spiritual culture, which indicates mechanical necessity regularly, just as a clock does as it ticks. The giant itself, however, will no longer be necessary.

[ 36 ] We must not approach the interpretation of the fairy tale in a pedantic manner by dissecting every single word, but rather we must empathize with what Goethe intended to convey and what he expressed through his imagery. Goethe addressed in his “Fairy Tale” what Schiller had expressed in his “Aesthetic Letters”: the union of necessity and freedom. What Schiller was able to express in his letters, Goethe was unable to capture in abstract thoughts; instead, he rendered it in the form of a fairy tale. If I wish to express these thoughts in all their vitality, then I need images—images such as those used by the ancient initiation priests in the mysteries. The initiation priest did not teach by instructing his disciples with abstract concepts, but by presenting them with the sacred Dionysian drama, by showing them the great course of human development and the resurrected Dionysus, just as he also revealed what took place invisibly within the Dionysian or Osirian dramas. Goethe, too, sought to express what lived within him through images in his drama. So let us not interpret Goethe’s fairy tale in the usual way, but rather understand it as theosophy explains this process—namely, the union of the lower nature of the human being with the higher, as the union of the physical and etheric bodies, the life force, and the passions and desires with the higher nature of the human being—the three pure spiritual soul forces, namely Atma, Budhi, Manas, which are depicted as the three kings.

[ 37 ] This is the evolution of humankind, extending into the age when every person will be able to become an initiate. Goethe sought to express this in a truly theosophical manner. Just as those mystery priests expressed their wisdom through images, so too did Goethe, in his Apocalypse, express in images what human evolution represents—what will one day be humanity’s greatest achievement: the transformation of man’s lower nature into the higher; the transformation of base metals and lower soul forces into the gold of wisdom; the transformation of that which lives in isolation into the pure, noble metal of wisdom, represented by the king, who is embodied in gold. Goethe sought to express this human alchemy, this spiritual transformation, in a somewhat different way than in his Faust. He wanted to express, in a somewhat different form, what he had veiled in the second part of Faust. Goethe was, in the true sense, a theosophist. He had grasped what it means that everything that is transitory, everything that lives in our senses, is merely a parable. But he also understood that what human beings attempt and strive for is impossible to describe, yet is attained through action; that what is inadequate is what keeps us on this side of the shore, and that it must become an event if the purpose of human development is to be fulfilled. That is why he also expressed this mystery in the “Chorus mysticus” and thus concluded the second part of Faust. This is the highest life force of humankind, symbolically represented by the beautiful lily, with which the masculine principle—the power of the will—unites. He expresses this in the beautiful closing lines of the second part of his Faust. These verses are his mystical creed, and one can only fully understand them once one has seen his innermost life unfold in the fairy tale of the green serpent and the beautiful lily. When he turned to this—he had been working on the second part of Faust since the turn of the 18th century—it was a time when his view of nature had transformed into a vision of a higher world. It is of the deepest significance if we can understand Goethe’s words in his “Testament,” in the second part of Faust. When he had completed his earthly journey and had died, that second part was found sealed in his desk. He bequeathed this book to the world as a gospel, like a testament. And this testament concludes with his mystical creed:

All that is fleeting
Is but a parable
The imperfect,
Here it becomes an event
The indescribable,
Here it is done;
The eternally feminine
Draws us upward.