The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Mystical Insight and Spiritual Revelation of Nature: Perception of Spirits

following a eurythmic performance of Faust's Ascension

[ 1 ] We attempted to present eurythmy performances based on Goethe’s *Faust* at Easter, Pentecost, and the Feast of the Assumption. In a certain sense, it was a kind of necessity for us to complete these performances just in time for the Feast of the Assumption. You will recall that, building on the previous performances from Goethe’s *Faust*, I attempted to show how the way in which Goethe underwent his spiritual development can serve as a model to a high degree, because we can see in him how the great personality—unlike the lesser person, who often believes he has grasped something quickly—like the genius, slowly and gradually assimilates it, working his way slowly and gradually toward a perspective on a matter that can then satisfy him. How many people believe they are good Christians and understand Christianity! We have had to point out how Goethe, back when he wrote the first scenes of his *Faust*, essentially had a way of feeling that, while not anti-Christian, was, one might say, non-Christian. One need only look through what has been preserved as the—forgive me for using this tasteless title, but it has become customary—so-called “Urfaust,” and what was later published under the more appropriate title “Faust, a Fragment.”

[ 2 ] We can see from this that Goethe must have reached a fairly advanced age before he was able to infuse these things with a Christian element in such a meaningful way as he did when expressing the most secret impulses of his soul. This soul required an infinite deepening of its understanding and perception of the world. And when the fragment of *Faust* appeared in 1790, it did not yet contain that scene which Goethe was only able to write at a much more mature age—the scene in which Faust is dissuaded from the step he intends to take—suicide—by the Easter bells. It was not until his mature years that Goethe felt compelled to introduce this Christian element into the first part of his *Faust*. A genius of this caliber must live through and experience far, far more before he feels ready—in his own way—for what many others feel ready for so much sooner. And we see that Goethe truly held this view, so that he inserted something Christian, something from Christianity, into *Faust*, which he had begun in his youth—but also already in his later youth—and had carried through in certain scenes.

[ 3 ] What is characteristic here is that Goethe, in a sense, needed another push to work his way through his mode of perception and the inner workings of his feelings toward the world—I would say, through a realm of the world from which the Christian impulses had been torn away, before he could approach Christianity poetically in this new way—a way that would satisfy him in his later years.

[ 4 ] I already pointed out to you yesterday how objective and professional—to use that pedantic term—the entire structure of the final scene of *Faust’s Ascension* is. But we gain an even deeper insight into the matter when we clarify another point based on these spiritual reflections.

[ 5 ] Let’s imagine this: in a particularly suitable natural setting—a wilderness, a mountain gorge, rocks, and all sorts of things that evoke a mystical impression—we encounter a choir—we can imagine a choir of monks—that takes in, in its consciousness, what is happening. We have heard why this monastic choir is there: because Goethe, in order to ground the story in reality, needed this external consciousness as a medium to record the events connected with Faust’s soul’s ascent into the spiritual world. What is happening? The choir first draws our attention to what is taking place. We can say: This chorus perceives that which is otherwise at rest as movement. The world of the spirits of form is slowly beginning to transition into the world of the spirits of movement. That which confronts us in its elemental form becomes spiritualized as it begins to be set in motion—everything, at first, in motion:

The forest sways as it approaches,
Rocks weigh heavily upon it,
Roots cling to it,
Trunk after trunk, close together,
Wave after wave splashes...

[ 6 ] Why is that? Yes, it is because we are to be shown how, from this earthly existence—from the physical plane—a soul is to rise up into the spiritual world. A soul is to be freed from the physical plane—the physical plane is also nature—it is to be freed from nature. We now know that nature is permeated by the elemental world, that at the moment we transition from the rigid existence of nature to the elemental existence, everything is truly in motion. We cannot imagine that we could conjure up before our inner eye the mental image of Faust’s soul ascending into the spiritual worlds unless we can vividly picture before our inner eye the coming to life of nature and the soul’s release from the life of nature as it relates to Faust’s soul. For this must be said first and foremost: In contrast to so much—indeed, an infinite amount—of what is unhealthy, which is currently asserting itself in mystical-occult movements, we have, in all that may be linked to Goethe’s occultism, something thoroughly healthy, rooted in the firm ground of worldly reality. - Therefore, Goethe would be entirely incapable of presenting the spiritual world to us in any other way than by linking it to what confronts human beings on the physical plane—to nature—by showing, as it were, how nature becomes spiritualized before healthy senses. And Goethe would never have given his approval to a form of occultism that was not also intimately linked to a genuine love of knowledge and of penetrating the nature of the world.

[ 7 ] We can do an immense amount to restore our perspective on Spiritual Science if we strive to grasp the mysteries of nature. This is difficult in our time because—as had to be demonstrated yesterday in relation to research into, for example, the wisdom of the Bakis or other things that appear before our soul’s eyes in spiritual development—nature is approached in such a foolish manner. And how is it? Just as with that seemingly infinitely profound interpretation of Goethe’s eight lines, which are supposed to refer to all manner of things while in fact they refer to slippers and cigars—so it is in reality with much of what science says about nature today. You see how much of what passes for natural science today stands in exactly the same relationship to the truth as what was described to you yesterday as philological science, and how Goethe’s wisdom stands in relation to what it actually refers to. That is why it is difficult in our time, starting from science, to attain that relationship to nature that Goethe actually had. But we must strive unceasingly to shape our occultism in a thoroughly sound manner. And for our time, there is no better, no more worthy starting point than what Goethe has just contributed to occultism.

[ 8 ] We see how, in the consciousness of the chorus—which now truly immerses itself in the impersonal nature as the echo resounds—the spiritual aspect of nature breaks free. And we can now hope that the very same consciousness, which is capable of penetrating nature in such a way that everything emerges from deep within nature, will also witness the soul’s ascent. Only by first seeing it at all can one look upon it with the soul ascending in the spirit, fully immersed in real life. But how does one arrive at a vision of this spiritual world? As I mentioned yesterday: it is worthily presented to us in three stages, as we progress from the consciousness of the choir—which has a general awareness that spiritual beings are hidden within nature—to the consciousness of the Pater ecstaticus, the consciousness of the Pater profundus, and the consciousness of the Pater Seraphicus: these are successive stages of soul development. How mystical development rises from self-contemplation and the self to a perception of nature’s deeper spirituality—beyond what the Chorus can perceive—is shown to us in the transition from the Pater ecstaticus to the Pater profundus, and then, in the transition from the Pater profundus to the Pater Seraphicus, how the soul can develop healthily, can truly develop inward into the spiritual world, so that it can clearly perceive the spiritual world in its deepest depths. Goethe had received guidance on this early in his youth, when he learned of Swedenborg’s communion with the spirit world. We know that we should not place too high a value on this, but for Goethe it was a powerful inspiration. Swedenborg recounts, after all, that he communicated with spiritual beings in such a way that they came very close to his head, that they took possession of his sense organs, that, guided through his eyes, they saw the world, and—naturally—were able to convey what they heard and saw in a way entirely different from that of the human soul. Thus, through those English beings who entered his sense organs, Swedenborg experienced the spiritual world. This—the entry of spirits into the human organism—made a great impression on Goethe. So much so that, in a certain sense, it had become quite familiar to him how such a spirit interacts with the spiritual world. These things were, in general, quite familiar to Goethe. What we have not yet been able to describe here—we will do so later, once our building is complete—is the fact that the *Pater ecstaticus* hovers up and down. On May 26, 1787, Goethe wrote about Filippo Neri: “In the course of his life, the highest gifts of religious enthusiasm developed within him: the gift of tears, of ecstasy, and finally even that of rising from the ground and hovering above it, which is considered by all to be the highest.”

[ 9 ] I would like to mention this explicitly because I must tell you that Goethe did not write this unconsciously or as a mere figment of his imagination, but rather that he was very well versed in these matters—that he knew them, knew them deeply. So he does not simply have the *Pater ecstaticus* floating up and down because it occurs to him; we must bear in mind that Goethe was a man who spoke of Filippo Neri in this way. This deepens the feeling immensely. What matters far less in these matters are witty explanations; what matters far more is immersing ourselves in Goethe’s soul—how deeply he was connected, in his soul, to this ascent of the human being along this path of mystical knowledge. And then we see—as the Pater ecstaticus shows us—how the soul inwardly, in the manner of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler, or Suso, receives the divine working, so that the soul reaches the point where, with Meister Eckhart, it confesses: “It is not I, but the God within me who wills, thinks, and feels.” For as the soul ascends further, spiritual revelation in nature emerges for it from the elemental world, as we see in the Pater profundus, whose inner being expands to encompass the whole, all-pervading reality of nature.

[ 10 ] Then, having gone through this, the human soul ascends to direct communion with the spiritual world, as we see in the case of Father Seraphicus, who now truly brings into his consciousness the perception of spirits such as the blessed boys, the midnight-born, who live there as spiritual beings amidst all the spiritual activity and life that unfolds between the dwellings of the anchorites and the monks here.

[ 11 ] Thus it comes across to us very vividly—and it is the mental image of this vividness that matters—that Goethe guides Faust’s soul up into the spiritual world, but that he needs a spiritual setting to do so. We can imagine how nature first comes into motion, how elemental life rises up from nature, how the beings of nature then transition into states of consciousness that are ever higher, joining the soul in embracing spiritual beings—such as the blessed boys—and how this may also include the souls of the penitent women and even the soul of Faust himself. All of this is contained within the entire spiritual scene. And then there are continuous, wondrous escalations right up to the end, where the *Chorus mysticus* proclaims the mystery of the world, where we see how our spiritual eye is lifted up into a spiritual world. We make the ascent from standing in nature and on the solid ground of the physical plane to the spiritual worlds into which Faust’s soul is received.

[ 12 ] During Goethe’s lifetime, only the first part of *Faust*—as we know it today—had been published. Then comes the scene “Charming Countryside,” with Faust reclining on a flower-strewn lawn. Then individual parts of the “Imperial Court” scene from the first act of the second part. This includes a transition leading up to the “Classical Walpurgis Night”—though not the scene itself—and then the “Helena scene.”

[ 13 ] Even during Goethe’s lifetime, some people had been pondering how *Faust* might be brought to completion. If one traces these thoughts—and indeed, some of them were even published—one finds everywhere that people already knew: Faust’s soul must be redeemed; it must ascend into the spiritual world. But all the mental images people formed had something—one cannot put it any other way—abstractly vague, something extraordinarily vague. Goethe then said to Eckermann once that he had to call upon Christian imagery to move from the vague into what he wanted to present as a spiritual reality.

[ 14 ] And so, once again, in Goethe’s twilight years, we encounter this marvel. Consider that Goethe wrote down the entirety of the pagan, the entirety of the pre-Christian: the connection between Faust and Helen. Then again, something that is certainly not anti-Christian: the fourth act of *Faust*, in which he only, after once more immersing himself in that which is not directly influenced by Christian impulses, after he has once again wriggled his way through it—so that he might present the mystery of Faust to us in the highest sense—that only in his twilight years, having emerged from all pagan cults, must he implant Christianity into *Faust*. Goethe had to live to be eighty years old before he could say that he was capable of using Christian mental images in such a way that they serve as a garment for the path that Faust’s soul must take.

[ 15 ] It was truly Goethe who paved the way—the path we in Spiritual Science refer to as the path to understanding the Christ impulse more and more deeply. And in addition to the first steps toward understanding that we have now been able to take, many others will follow in the future—even when we are no longer here, or in subsequent incarnations. Goethe laid the foundation for what must be accomplished through Spiritual Science: connecting the penetration of reality with that which flows within our souls through the Christ impulse. And Goethe portrayed this with immense depth, yet in such a way that it is always vivid and always appropriate.

[ 16 ] There, nature stands before us. The choir of monks, which at first confronts us as a symbol of the spiritual, sees the elements emerging from nature, and spiritual-soul beings joining these elements—this comes forth from nature. Goethe already perceived this as a specifically Christian view. Christianity is not about constantly saying: Christ, Christ, and Christ again! Christianity is not about endlessly repeating Christian dogmas. It is a way of feeling, of relating to the world. And this feeling, this way of relating to the world, emerges in a wonderful way through Goethe’s portrayal. The way this sensibility permeates and weaves through the final scenes of *Faust* is Christian in the most eminent sense, and its Christian character is particularly evident to us in that the entire *Faust*—despite the fact that many fragments and parts remain unfinished—is conceived artistically on such a grand, such a monumental scale that one only gradually comes to appreciate the sheer magnitude of its artistic conception.

[ 17 ] And before us lies the vast, natural existence of the physical plane, which we see, in the true Christian sense, transitioning into the elemental and truly spiritual existence. Faust is led into this realm after he has experienced his connection with Helena and with the ancient spiritual world. There, too, we encounter spiritual beings. Helena is brought up from the underworld. Faust encounters them. She is surrounded by a chorus; twelve choral figures surround Helena. When Helena returns to the underworld, the chorus remains, and at the end of the third act, the chorus reveals itself to us as elemental beings who have not yet fully matured into humanity. And how does the chorus disappear in the third act of the second part of Goethe’s *Faust*? That is very interesting! Here, too, we are dealing with elemental beings. And as Helena disappears, so does the chorus of these elemental beings. The chorus divides into four parts. What becomes of one quarter of the chorus? Well—three members of the chorus each describe for themselves how they disappear: they disappear into nature. Where Goethe depicts the pagan, he shows us the elemental beings who stand around Helena as the Chorus of the Twelve; they now disappear—they go into nature. Can you feel how the first part of the chorus enters into nature:

We, in this whispering tremor of a thousand branches, this murmuring float,
Tempting as we dance, softly beckoning, the roots of life’s springs
Up the branches; now with leaves, now with blossoms, exuberantly
We adorn the fluttering tresses, free to flourish in the air.

[ 18 ] This means that these beings of the choir become trees, become nature. When they come toward us again, they may do so—drawing on Christian impulses—as

The forest approaches, swaying.

[ 19 ] The pagan elemental spirits disappear into nature, and they reemerge where the Christ impulse has formed a living connection with the Earth. Oh, how wonderful it is when this chorus disappears with Helena, and then—as we know from the last scene—the beings who received the Christ impulse as blessed boys emerge from nature. And consider the other part of the chorus as well:

We nestle against these rock faces, smooth as a mirror shining far and wide
moving in gentle waves, caressing them;
listening, attuned to every sound—birdsong, the whistling of flutes.

[ 20 ] Truly, these are the very same rocks into which these elemental beings have slipped, to which they then “cling,” and from which later emerge the beings of the spiritual world—those who emerge from the earth after receiving the Christ impulse.

[ 21 ] There you can see how deeply felt this poem from *Faust* is, how it contains other layers of meaning beyond those usually observed. And these layers of meaning are, after all, what really matter. Goethe was well aware of this. That he was aware of this is evident from a very specific hint that Goethe intended to give when he had not yet quite finished the third act of the second part of *Faust*. He had completed it roughly up to Helena’s disappearance and up to the “going out into nature” of these elemental choral beings—precisely up to this scene, about as far as I have just read. Then he wanted—as he did, in a certain sense, at the end of the third act—to have Mephisto emerge from Phorkyas, and now Mephisto was to articulate what Goethe had actually intended for Faust at the conclusion of his *Faust*. The fact that he had it spoken precisely through Mephisto’s mouth is due to staging considerations, because Mephisto is, in a sense, the one who ultimately brings about the third act. The third act, after all, is incorporated into *Faust* as a classical-romantic phantasmagoria. Mephisto is, in a sense, the one who introduces the third act with a kind of spiritualistic laboratory magic; he is meant to articulate what Goethe actually intends by continuing *Faust*. At a time when Goethe already recognizes that he must incorporate the Christ impulse into his work, he wants to say through Mephistopheles: Certainly, there have always been eras that recognized that spiritual existence rests at the foundation of sentient existence. We can look back to the mysticism of ancient India and ancient Egypt: there it was known and depicted that the spiritual lies at the foundation of natural existence. But it does not befit us—Goethe wanted to say—to understand this spiritual today in the same way it was understood in those ancient mystical traditions. The Christ impulse has brought something entirely new into the world, something that stands in contrast to all ancient mystical traditions and to all primeval wisdom. The old can no longer serve us. — That is what Goethe meant to say. And I do not merely assert that he intended to say it; the passage has been preserved—it is not currently included in *Faust*, but the passage has been preserved, conceived by Goethe and even annotated by his scribe with corrections that Goethe himself indicated. There, at the end of the third act, it is stated how he demands the newer Christ impulse specifically for his *Faust*, how he does not want just any ancient wisdom, but something entirely new in the spirit of the Christ impulse. For Mephisto, when he is to step forward before the audience, was to speak the following words:

Enough, you can see him,

[ 22 ] — this refers to Euphorion —

whether it’s really that much worse
than on the British stage, where a small child
gradually grows into a hero.
Here it’s even more amazing. No sooner is he conceived,
Than he is born,
He jumps, dances, and utters a dainty word.
Many criticize this,
While others think it’s not quite so simple
And that, taken at face value, there’s more to it.
One senses mysteries, perhaps even
mystifications, Indian and also
Egyptian elements, and whoever can really piece it all together,
brew it up, moving back and forth etymologically
and takes pleasure in doing so, is the right man.

[ 23 ] Goethe already senses something of those theories that were to come and that have muddled everything etymologically, but he wants nothing to do with any of them, for he has his character say here:

We say it too, and our deepest meaning will
be that of a faithful disciple of the newer symbolism.

[ 24 ] Goethe puts it this way: not Egyptian, not Indian, but “to be a faithful disciple of modern symbolism”!

[ 25 ] Then he succeeded—not merely by inserting a Christian element here and there, but by weaving the very manner in which the soul presents itself into the flow of his creative work—in this way incorporating the Christ impulse into his *Faust*. And as we see, he does just that. We see how he truly understands the path of mysticism in the progression of the three Fathers, and on the other hand, we find how he wonderfully divides the initially unified choir of angels into two groups: the choir of the younger angels and the choir of the more perfected angels. And when we read what the younger angels say and what the more perfect angels say, we again find something quite remarkable. Take, first of all, what the younger angels say:

Those roses, from the hands
of loving, holy penitent women

[ 26 ] — one must recall the preceding scene —

Helped us win the victory
And complete this noble work,
Capturing this treasure of the soul.
Evil retreated as we scattered,
Demons fled as we struck.
Instead of their usual hellish torments
The spirits felt the pangs of love;
Even the old master of Satan
Was pierced by acute torment.
Rejoice! We have succeeded.

[ 27 ] But the angels can already be seen in the preceding scenes. These are the younger angels. It is impossible to describe just how deeply one is moved when one allows the appropriateness of such a depiction to sink in. The younger angels—why the younger angels? That is to say: they are younger; they do not yet have as much connection to the earthly world.

[ 28 ] In pre-Christian times, angels are those beings who generally conceal their faces before taking on human form on Earth, and who, in pre-Christian times, do not interfere with what is happening down here on Earth. They remain high above in the spiritual spheres.

[ 29 ] Now just think how distinctive these younger angels are—those who have not yet found their place in the Christian sphere, but who are up there, who have not yet descended into the Christian sphere—how distinctive they are! Think of how the Elohim are characterized in the creation of the world. After the creation is described to us day by day, we are then told at the end: “And they saw that it was good,” or “beautiful.” The word used there is difficult to translate. This means that the Elohim are spiritual beings who first create things and then see that they were beautiful. That is what matters. These are the other kind of beings who attained perfection on the ancient Moon and are now spiritually transitioning into earthly existence—first acting, and then looking and perceiving that it has been successful. These younger angels must possess the perception of these spiritual beings; they must first state what they have done. Now they become aware that they have scattered roses from the hands of the penitent women, that they themselves have inflicted suffering upon the old master of Satan.

[ 30 ] Goethe writes so aptly that it is clear he knows: beings who have not come into contact with the Christian world only recognize the beauty and goodness of what has been done after the fact:

Those roses, from the hands
of loving, holy penitents
helped us win the victory ...

[ 31 ] The fact that victory has been won comes later. You see, I'm not just speculating!

Mist swirling around the rocky heights
I sense just now,
A spirit life stirring
Nearby.
The little clouds clear;
I see a moving host
Of blissful boys,
Freed from the earth’s burden,
Gathered in a circle,
Who delight
In the new spring and splendor
Of the heavenly world.
May he, from the very beginning,
Join them in their ever-increasing joy!

[ 32 ] The blessed boys have been there for quite some time, and they have something to do with the appearance of these angels, but the angels do not realize they are there until the entire scene is set. Goethe is fully aware of all this. They do not bear within Faust’s soul that which is connected to the earth; that must be borne by those who have become somewhat older and more mature, who have descended through the Mystery of Golgotha and have come into contact with the earthly realm.

We Are Left with a Remnant of the Earth

[ 33 ] say the more perfect angels, not the younger ones

It's embarrassing to wear,
And even if it were made of asbestos,
It's not clean.

[ 34 ] And then they explain that, through the Mystery of Golgotha, they have already gained the insight—from which the other angels turn their faces away—into how spiritual power is connected to the elements that are interwoven with the nature of earthly life. It is something truly awe-inspiring to perceive—as Goethe describes so objectively and expertly—how he knows how to correctly characterize the individual elements of the spiritual world. When one compares this to the colorful, characterless nonsense cobbled together by others who also sought to depict spirits, it sometimes seems just as if someone were trying to describe the external natural world and were to say: “Oh, I walked through woods and meadows and saw such wonderful blue roses in the meadows and such wonderful yellow chicory and such beautiful red and yellow violets and the like—none of which fits. Anyone who knows the spiritual world finds such descriptions incredibly clumsy, because nothing is right. With Goethe, everything is right! That is the essential point: to perceive not a fanciful interpretation, but to perceive how this soul is rooted in the spiritual world at the very moment when it sets out to describe, from within itself, a spiritual event—such as Faust’s ascent into the spiritual world. And in doing so, to perceive the artistic and compositional elements in the spiritual realm in the most eminent sense!

[ 35 ] I once tried to show you how, quite apart from whatever else the Gospel of John may be, there is simply something in the spirit of the Gospel of John that makes it, at the same time, one of the greatest works of art. Do you remember the Kassel cycle on the Gospel of John? Truly, such artistic endeavors—which strive for artistic perfection within the spiritual—can be found throughout *Faust*, but in such a way that what is artistic within it is, by virtue of being artistic, at the same time spiritually correct. That is what is significant. For what matters is that the world increasingly comes to realize that what is truly recognized and experienced from the spirit is the right thing, even when it is placed within the world. That which is conjured up from the spiritual realm usually appears in the world like a house of cards. But that which is truly recognized from the spiritual realm can be placed within the world,

[ 36 ] This was the goal pursued in the entire architectural design of our building: that it be truly born of the spiritual. That is why everything is feasible. It causes one even fewer qualms when people come along here and there and say: they don’t like this, and they don’t like that. There are people who find fault with this or that aspect of our building. But if one knows the world a little and realizes that—or to what extent—people belong to the chorus of those who interpret Goethe in the same way as that gentleman I told you about, then one pays no heed to all that criticism; for that gentleman, for example, who was mentioned, could say whatever he likes about our building and our way of thinking and so on—it need not impress one in the least. And that, after all, is the sort of mindset these people have. One just needs to know a little about life. But that which is born of the spirit becomes possible, since it is at once spirit and artistry.

[ 37 ] And there’s at least one more thing I’d like to point out today. Three penitent women, along with the penitent woman otherwise known as Gretchen, come toward us. Yes, an artist—a real, true artist—never does that: he never says, “Well, I want to have three penitent women appear.” Where, after all, are there three penitent women?—Of course, one can meet all sorts of people in life. There are people—really, such people—who take a rhyming dictionary and compose poetry based on it; you can look up a letter in the alphabet—whatever rhymes with it—and then comes the second line, and so on. I’ve known people like that, too. But not even the true poet—who is an artist—does that: he doesn’t just take three penitent women at random; rather, here—and this is particularly characteristic of Goethe—he once again presents one of those marvelous escalations, an instance of marvelous inner composition that is at the same time factually accurate and correct. What, then, is the purpose of these three penitent women: first Mary Magdalene, then the Samaritan woman at the well, and finally even the Egyptian Mary—what is their purpose? Well, I have already hinted at it. They are meant to show us that there is something eternal in the female nature—an “eternal, enduring star of love”—that, as Goethe intends to say, cannot, so to speak, be eroded when it unites with the female soul; even in the face of guilt, the love—the love that Christ brought—endures, even though these women were by no means exemplary in their outward lives, yet their souls were of such a nature that they were able to understand love. If this is understood correctly, then we must say: Yes, something like the Christ impulse spreads throughout the world—first it seizes what is nearest, then what is farther away, and finally what is farthest away. — And it would be wonderful if the Christ impulse of love were to spread like a wave, if it were to embrace even the guilty and outshine them, drawing ever wider circles. So, Mary Magdalene, the Jewish woman, the Hebrew, directly from the land that was intimately connected to Jesus Christ through Judaism: her immediate surroundings are embraced by Christian love. Then Christ goes out beyond the realm of Judaism, but still into the next region, to the Samaritans, who have no communal ties with the Jews: the second circle. And then he comes to the third circle. You know, the mental image of that which is conceived as very distant from Christianity is represented as Egypt: the Egyptian Mary. She comes from what lies even farther away in the pagan world—a world that is now touched in a distant way, as if pushed back by an invisible hand because of the sin of having touched the Cross, and atoning for that guilt only through forty years of penance: how far the waves of love reach out there!

[ 38 ] We truly see them, the waves of love, as they spread out, and we begin to understand something of what gradually crystallizes in Goethe’s mental image as what he ultimately calls the “Eternal Feminine”—a concept in which every trace of baseness must be removed.

[ 39 ] And what unfolds there in terms of love corresponds exactly—I would say—to the intonation, the entire manner in which Goethe put the words into his mouth. Just try to discern that wonderful intensification that lies in the unique feeling and rhythmic structure of the words:

By the love that caused tears
To flow as balm upon the feet
Of Your divinely glorified Son,
Despite the Pharisees’ scorn;
By the vessel that so abundantly
Dripped down its sweet fragrance;
By the curls that so gently
Dried the holy limbs

[ 40 ] We sense something, like a trickle nearby.

By the spring to which, long ago,
Abram once led his flock,
By the bucket that the Savior
Was allowed to touch with his cool lips;
By the pure, abundant spring,
Which now pours forth from there,
Abundant, eternally bright,
Flowing through all the worlds—

[ 41 ] Just think how this expands! With this entire mental image, we are actually in the immediate presence of the person of Christ. Then entire worlds are incorporated into our mental image of nature. And then, as we turn to the Egyptian Mary:

At that hallowed place,
Where the Lord was laid to rest;
At the arm that, from the gate,
Pushed me back in warning;

[ 42 ] The invisible, the spiritual, is immediately evoked. Yet another intensification! It is not the case that one must first use one’s intellect to determine that these three circles truly exist. One must sense them as the words are spoken. That is what is significant.

[ 43 ] And let us now consider the following. Through years of reflection, we have come to understand that, prior to the development of our Earth, there was a Saturn period, followed by a Sun period, then a Moon period, and that we are now in the Earth period. Human beings have, so to speak, experienced everything that these stages of development entailed. What, then, is the essence of these stages of development? It lies in the fact that these epochs once existed and have since passed, and that the Earth epoch has dawned. But before the Earth epoch, human beings experienced the Saturn, Sun, and Moon epochs, and they carry the effects of these epochs within themselves. If we now examine modern human beings using the methods of Spiritual Science, we find that the physical body, having acquired its initial structure on Saturn, then developed further through the Sun and the Moon until it reached the Earth, where it recently connected with cosmic forces in order to take on something new. What the human physical body has undergone through these three stages—and in doing so we touch upon the edge of a profound mystery—has, insofar as the physical body has undergone it, found its clearest expression on Earth in the constitution of the inner female organs. The inner workings of the female organism—both the physical body and everything that, in connection with the physical body, finds expression as the soul—bear the effects of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon in the most eminent sense. It is not without reason that the Bible tells us that the Elohim took dust—that is, that which had only recently come into being on Earth, just like air and water; by “dust” we mean the earthly element—to form Adam, the man. From the cosmos, the masculine is first added to the macrocosmic, which conveys the feminine from Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon. A deep mystery lies in what stands in opposition on Earth as masculine and feminine. Of course, what has just been said refers only to what expresses the masculine and feminine in the human organism. And this mystery is connected to the entire earthly world; it is connected to the abilities that are unique to the woman as a woman during Earth’s evolution—namely, that the macrocosmic aspects of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon, and is absorbed into the woman’s microcosm, whereas the macrocosm of the preceding Earth evolution is absorbed into the man’s microcosm. In a very special way, the feminine and the masculine carry the entire cosmos within themselves. And while I have often stated here that human beings in general carry the entire macrocosm within themselves, the female and male organisms carry it within themselves in different ways.

[ 44 ] A cosmic thought dawns on Goethe as he brings the penitent women closer to the Mater gloriosa. For what is the Mater gloriosa to him? She who has most purely carried over into earthly time the eternal effects of the ages of Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon; who has left them untouched by the earthly and has united herself with the macrocosm by being permitted to prepare the Christ for the Earth. The macrocosmic, the eternal aspect of the feminine, draws us upward. What draws us upward? How else could we answer this question? By repeating the *Chorus mysticus*.

[ 45 ] That is what Goethe meant—though he does not want to use a general term—that is what Goethe meant:

All that is fleeting
Is but a parable;
What is inadequate,
Here becomes fulfillment;
What is indescribable,
Here is accomplished;
The Mater Gloriosa
Draws us upward.

[ 46 ] What has been done, what has unfolded before us, draws the entire spiritual world upward at the same time.

[ 47 ] Goethe’s life poem concludes on a deeply Christian note. We will then build on these aphoristic remarks—for that is what they are meant to be—in the following.