The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Samothracian Cabiric Mysteries: The Secret of Incarnation

based on a depiction of the “Classical Walpurgis Night”

[ 2 ] Anyone who delves more deeply into Goethe and his worldview will see, in the scene we are now presenting here—which concludes the second act of the second part of Faust and serves as the transition to Faust’s entry into ancient Greece—how deeply Goethe, through his worldview, has penetrated the spiritual essence of the universe and the mystery of humanity, insofar as this mystery of humanity is connected to the penetration into the spiritual essence of the universe. First of all, it should be emphasized that, on the one hand, what Goethe once sought to express—namely, that he had “enclosed much in mystery” within the second part of Faust—applies precisely to the deepest and most significant scenes of that part. There is much wisdom—albeit wisdom rendered with consummate artistry—in the second part of Faust. But on the other hand, everything is such that, when presented on stage, it can captivate the audience through its immediately sensory, vivid imagery.

[ 3 ] These two aspects—particularly with regard to the second part of Goethe’s Faust—must always be kept in mind when seeking to understand this work. According to Goethe, anyone who wishes to view this Faust with a naive sensibility should find joy and aesthetic pleasure in the sequence of images; while the initiate should be able to perceive profound mysteries of life within it. Now, if one begins by focusing on the imagery, this scene depicts a sea festival to which the homunculus is led by Thales. But this sea festival contains all manner of mysteries hidden within it. This sea festival is actually meant to represent the demonic—that is, spiritual—Powers inhabiting the sea. Why does Goethe, in his Faust, draw upon such demonic Powers—as they presented themselves to him in the Greek world—while seeking to lead his Faust through human development toward the highest goal of self-knowledge and self-realization? One might say that Goethe was perfectly clear that human beings could never possibly arrive at a true perception of their own nature merely by acquiring the knowledge of their senses and the intellect bound to those senses. True knowledge of humanity can only be conveyed through true spiritual insight, so that everything sought in terms of knowledge of and insight into humanity through the mere external physical world—to which the senses and the sensory intellect are directed—is not true knowledge of humanity. This is what Goethe intends to suggest by introducing the homunculus into his poetry.

[ 4 ] The homunculus arises from what Wagner can attain in terms of knowledge about human beings—knowledge he can attain through ideally conceived physical means, means so ideal that they can, of course, be regarded by ordinary scientific understanding at most as a goal, but it is inconceivable that anything could be achieved with them, either today or in the future of the Earth. Goethe posits, as it were, the hypothesis that it is possible to create a homunculus in a retort—that is, to have understood the interplay of natural forces to such a degree of perfection that one can intellectually assemble a human being from various ingredients. But no human being emerges from this process—not even if one conceives of what a human being can achieve in the physical world as the highest degree of perfection—no human being, no Homo, emerges, but only a homunculus. This homunculus, when conceived in dramatic terms, is essentially nothing other than the image that a human being can form of himself with the aid of his physical intellect, with the aid of his ordinary earthly knowledge. This image that a human being can form—which is thus a homunculus—how can it come to convey a true view of humanity? How can it come to pass that, in this view, a human being does not remain at the level of the mere homunculus, but advances toward the Homo? Goethe is clear that this can only be achieved through those insights that can be gained in a disembodied state from the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being.

[ 5 ] Goethe now attempts, in a wide variety of ways, to approach that realm into which a person must transport themselves if they wish to attain complete knowledge of humanity—that is, knowledge acquired in a bodiless state. Goethe truly wants to show that it is possible to step outside one’s body and gain insights that, as such, reveal something about the nature of the human being. Now, Goethe was by no means one of those individuals who approached questions of knowledge lightly. Throughout his entire life, Goethe strove to deepen his understanding of the soul more and more. For he was well aware that as one grows old, one does not live in vain, but that the powers of cognition also continue to increase, and that one can know more in old age than in youth. He was also well aware, however, of the problematic nature of the spiritual-soul’s existence outside the body. Therefore, he attempted in a wide variety of ways to bring this pictorial form of knowledge—which we call “imaginative”—to the human being, to his Faust. This is evident already in the “Romantic Walpurgis Night” of the first part of Faust, and again in the “Classical Walpurgis Night,” where he draws on imagery from ancient Greece, into which he wishes to transport Faust. One might put it this way: Goethe conceives that when one steps outside the body in the process of the homunculus’s transformation into the homo, into a human being, one receives imaginations that appear one way to one person and another way to another. — In the view of the ancient Greeks, these imaginations were still such that they, in a sense, approached spiritual reality. If one brings the demonic world of the ancient Greeks to mind, one can see through the lens of this traditional mythical world how, in a highly developed, atavistic form of clairvoyance, human beings truly perceived nature—from whose bosom they themselves spring forth when they are spiritually and soulfully outside their bodies. So I would like to say: Because Goethe does not wish to invent an imaginative world himself, he draws upon the Greek world in order to say that whatever a person may conceive from his ordinary knowledge remains a homunculus; one must first enter the imaginative, inspired world and so on if a person is to become a true human being. — This, of course, is a person’s initial perspective.

[ 6 ] Why does Goethe choose the Sea Festival in particular—I would say, the dream of the Sea Festival? To understand the feelings that inspired Goethe here, one must truly step back a little into the worldview of the ancient Greeks—the perspective to which Goethe himself returned when he set out to depict this “joyful sea festival.” One must realize, in fact, that for the Greeks it still meant something when a person left the land and set out into the free, open sea. The Greeks still lived in harmony with the external world, as did ancient peoples in general. Just as something took place inwardly for ancient peoples when they left the flat earth, the plain, and ascended the mountain—something that modern people experience in an abstract, prosaic way—so, too, something profound took place in the human soul when they left the land and set sail out onto the open sea. This feeling—that the open sea particularly detaches the spiritual and soul from the body—was shared by all people of the ancient peoples. Many things are connected to this feeling.

[ 7 ] Please recall the significant role that the columns of Hercules played in ancient mythology in the various depictions of the path to knowledge. It is always said that when a person has passed through the various stages of knowledge, he sails out beyond the columns of Hercules. - It was believed that he sailed out into the boundless, open sea, where he was no longer near any shores. Today, this hardly means anything to people. For the Greeks, it meant that they were actually entering a completely different world, and when they sailed beyond the columns of Hercules, they felt that they were then freed from everything that bound them to the earth—above all, from the forces of their physical bodies. Even in those earlier times, when everyday life was still experienced in a spiritual and emotional way, sailing out into the open sea was perceived as a liberation from the physical.

[ 8 ] Goethe did not write poetry like other would-be poets; rather, he wrote from a sense of the world, and when he speaks of something that transports him into the Greek world, he immerses himself in it with his whole soul. That is precisely what one would always like to call out to people who read Goethe just as they would any other poet, who have no sense at all that, when they read Goethe, they are truly being introduced into another world.

[ 9 ] Now, as the scene begins, we see the alluring sirens. Externally, Goethe depicts a scene that could just as easily be an everyday one. The alluring sirens gather flotsam, which they bring to the Nereids and Tritons. But at the same time, viewed from the other side, these alluring sirens are not only the voices of the human inner self but also of the outer world—steps of the world—because on these steps of perception, the inner and the outer converge, as I have often pointed out. It is the sounds of the sirens that lure the human soul out of its physicality and transport it into the vastness of the spiritual-soul cosmos.

[ 10 ] And now let us summarize: First, Goethe has a sea festival take place—that is, dreams that are awakened by the sea festival. Second, this sea festival takes place at night under the influence of the moon. All of this is orchestrated by Goethe to show that the point is to gain insight that is independent of the body—insight that a person would gain if, from the moment of falling asleep until waking up, they became conscious outside the body and perceived the images of that state of being into which they are then transported outside the body. And now we shall see immediately that, while Goethe, on the one hand, seeks to satisfy the trivial minds—and this is by no means meant pejoratively—by having the Sirens act as gatherers of flotsam for the Nereids and Tritons who covet such flotsam, we see how these Nereids and Tritons are on their way to Samothrace to seek out the Cabiri—indeed, to bring them to this sea festival. By having the gods of the ancient Samothracian sanctuary appear here in this scene, Goethe truly hints that he intends to touch upon the highest human and cosmic mystery here. What, then, must actually happen if the homunculus is to become Homo, if the conception of the homunculus is to become the conception of Homo? What, then, must actually happen?

[ 11 ] Now, the idea of the homunculus, which is conceived within the sensory world, must be taken out of the sensory world and transferred into the spiritual-soul world, in which the human being exists from the moment of falling asleep until waking up. The homunculus must be carried into that world—into the world of images that a person experiences when, free from the body, they are united with that existence which is spiritual and soulful. The homunculus must be carried into this world of images.

[ 12 ] When a person first forms the image of the homunculus with the help of ordinary physical perception, he must then carry this image of the homunculus into the other world—the world of imagination, inspiration, and so on. Only there can the abstract idea of the homunculus be grasped by the real forces of existence—by those forces that never come within reach of human cognition as long as a person remains confined to mere sensory perception. Everything becomes real there when one emerges from the body with the homunculus idea and carries it into the spiritual-soul world. That is where reality becomes serious. There, one must therefore approach those forces that are the true forces in relation to human origin and human becoming.

[ 13 ] In this way, however, Goethe demonstrates that he had a deep and meaningful understanding of the Cabiri of Samothrace, that he sensed these Cabiri were worshipped in ancient times as the guardians of those forces connected with the becoming of humanity, with human genesis. Goethe thus touches upon the highest realms by evoking, from the era of atavistic clairvoyance, the images of those divine powers connected with the becoming of humanity.

[ 14 ] The Greek worldview itself drew upon very ancient traditions when it spoke of the Mysteries of Samothrace. And it can be said: In contrast to all the various mental images of the gods held by the Greeks, and their mental images of the relationship between human beings and these gods—the mental images of the deities of Samothrace and the Kabiric deities permeated everything. And the ancient Greek was convinced that through what had entered Greek consciousness as a legacy of the Samothracian Mysteries, he had gained a mental image, an idea, of human immortality. The Greeks believed that they owed the idea of human immortality—that is, of humanity’s belonging to the spiritual and soul-filled cosmos—to the influence of the Samothracian Kabir Mysteries.

[ 15 ] Goethe thus seems to be saying at the same time: Perhaps the abstract human idea of the homunculus converges with the actual forces of human becoming when, in a bodiless state, the impulses are grasped that the Greeks thought were connected to their Cabiri of Samothrace. - That there was, after all, something in the Greek consciousness that could, so to speak, come alive again in Goethe precisely where he touched upon such a profound mystery—this can be seen, for example, from this and from many other things, but also from the fact that the Greeks said: Philip of Macedon found Olympias upon witnessing the Samothracian Mysteries. —- And it was in the Greek consciousness that, back then, the great Alexander resolved to descend into the earthly world to this pair of parents, when, before the Kabir gods, Philip of Macedon and Olympias found one another soul to soul. One must draw upon such mental images to bring into the soul all the awe that the Greeks truly felt—and that Goethe empathized with—when it came to the Kabiri.

[ 16 ] Viewed from the outside, they are, once again, simple sea gods. Samothrace—as the Greeks knew—had been battered, ravaged, and thrown into chaos by the most terrible, earthquake-like storms in a time that was, relatively speaking, not at all ancient. Thus, the demons of nature had raged here in such a monstrous way that it was still fresh in the historical memory of the ancient Greeks. And in the forests—the dense forests of Samothrace, which were dense at that time—the mystery of the Cabiri lay hidden. Among the various names given to the Cabiri are those in which one is called Axieros, the second Axiokersos, the third Axiokersa, and the fourth Kadmilos. There was also a vague sense that there were a fifth, sixth, and seventh. But essentially, people’s spiritual gaze was directed toward the first three Cabiri. The ancient mental images of the Cabiri were, in truth, about the mystery of becoming human. And in fact, the one who was initiated into the sacred mysteries of Samothrace was meant to come to the realization: What in the spiritual world, viewed spiritually, corresponds to what happens here on earth when, for a soul incarnating on earth, a human being comes into being and becomes a human being through the succession of generations? — In a sense, the spiritual counterpart of human birth was to be perceived in the spiritual world.

[ 17 ] Through this contemplation, Goethe believed he could transform the homunculus into a Homo in the realm of the idea. But the initiate into the Samothracian mysteries was also to be introduced to this contemplation. Now, one cannot truly perceive a human being in his essence if one conceives of him as confined within his skin, if one succumbs to the delusion that what stands before one in outward physical form is the only thing that has anything to do with the human being, when one looks at a person with one’s eyes. Whoever wishes to truly know a human being must step outside of what is enclosed within the skin and view the human being as extending throughout the entire universe. One must truly take in the spiritual continuation beyond the skin.

[ 18 ] Now, this impulse of the Greeks to view the human being from outside the body was linked to various conceptions of the gods. But all of these conceptions of the gods had, so to speak, an exoteric and an esoteric side. The exoteric aspect of human becoming—but in connection with the entire process of nature’s becoming, that is, the mystery of human becoming linked to the mystery of nature’s becoming—all these mental images were evoked when the Greeks spoke of Demeter, and later, when they spoke of Ceres or Kersa. The esoteric aspect of Ceres, of Demeter, of the world in the process of becoming, was, so to speak, the Cabiri. But one must view human beings in the right way if one wishes in any way to penetrate their mystery.

[ 19 ] To view a human being solely as he appears here in the physical world would actually mean to be deceived about him. For this human being has, first and foremost, emerged from a trinity. And it is as if three lights were to cast their glow toward a single point—or, for my sake, toward a circle—and one were to see the convergence of the three lights, yet refuse to go on to see how one, for my sake—one a yellow light, another a blue light, and the third a reddish light—converge into one; if one refuses to see this harmonious blending, how can one believe that what arises as a mixed light is a unity? Thus, one is deceiving oneself if one regards this composite product—which stands before us as a human being within its skin—as a unity. It is not a unity. And one can never penetrate the mystery of the human being if one regards it as a unity. Today, people are not aware that this is not a unity. But when atavistic clairvoyance permeated human knowledge, people were aware of this. And so the Samothracian initiates composed the human being, as it were, from what stands in the center: Axieros, and from what are the extremes: Axiokersos and Axiokersa, whose powers united with the power of Axieros. One could say: There are three—Axieros, Axiokersos, Axiokersa. These three powers flow together, forming a unity. The higher reality is the Trinity. But unity arises from this. This is what appears before the human eye.

[ 20 ] One could also put it this way: The Samothracian initiate came to know the human being as he stood before him in sensory perception, and he was told: You must subtract two extremes from this human being—Axiokersa and Axiokersos, which merely shine in. Then you may possibly retain Axieros. — So that one could also present the matter in such a way that, of the three, Axieros, in a sense, represents the human middle state, and the others—the two invisible ones—merely radiate upon him.

[ 21 ] Thus, in the Samothracian Mysteries, human beings were conceived as a trinity. Goethe asked himself: Is it perhaps possible to transform the abstract homunculus into the complete homo in the realm of ideas by drawing upon what was regarded in the Samothracian Mysteries as a mystery of humanity itself—the human Trinity? He told himself: One can arrive at this Trinity, in a way that is true to the nature of perception, only by stepping out of the body with the spiritual-soul aspect. — So he told himself.

[ 22 ] But one must always emphasize that, in terms of spiritual insight, Goethe lived, so to speak, in a state of beginnings. That is precisely what is so wonderful about Goetheanism: as I said recently, the mental image of Goetheanism is only properly understood when one conceives of it as something that must be continued, cultivated, and developed—something that leads to ever higher and higher heights. In Goethe, one simply finds the doctrine of metamorphosis from leaf to leaf, from the green leaf to the colorful flower petal and so on, or, for example, from the vertebrae to the skull bones; but that this mystery leads from one incarnation to another, from one earthly life to another—if one understands this correctly, as I have often explained to you. Therefore, while remaining entirely within Goethe’s worldview, one can ask: How might the Samothracian mystery be visualized today for the present? — The Samothracian Mystery as such, with its Kabiric representations of the mystery of the human being, is entirely in keeping with the ancient atavistic-clairvoyant worldview; but the body of knowledge that is alive in any given period of human history can be legitimately continued—it must be transformed. It is unjustified to simply want to return to the old views that existed for entirely different epochs of human history; they must be transformed. The Samothracian mystery, of course, has only historical value. Today we would say: We depict how the representative of humanity, Axieros, stands at the center; how the representative of humanity is circled by Axiokersa; how Axiokersos must today be reconnected with the earthly realm; and we have the representatives of humanity, Lucifer and Ahriman. In this we have the transformation of the sacred Samothracian mystery appropriate for the present and the coming age.

[ 23 ] One might say: If Goethe were to appear among us today and, drawing on what humanity has since achieved, were to express what transforms his homunculus into a Homo, he would point to the representative of humanity, surrounded by and locked in battle with Lucifer and Ahriman. I only ask you not to take these things in an abstract way, and certainly not to apply today’s popular method of treating them as symbols or dismissing them with a few abstract concepts. The more you feel that even in the depiction of the representative of humanity, in connection with each line of Lucifer and Ahriman, a whole world lies hidden within the mystery of humanity, the more you will reject the arrogance—the unfounded, childish arrogance—of modern humanity toward its abstract scientific concepts, and the more you expand your soul into a world in the face of this visualization of the mystery of humanity, the closer you thereby come to the mystery of humanity.

[ 24 ] Today, Spiritual Science faces opposition from many quarters. But one of its strongest enemies is humanity’s longing for abstraction—the desire to reduce everything to a few concepts. Goetheanism, intuitively, is the very opposite of this modern folly of trying to reduce everything to a few concepts. One has particular experiences in this regard. People initially join a Spiritual Science movement for a wide variety of reasons. There are many who then begin to want to abstract everything as much as possible. Human beings have seven principles—I once witnessed, oh, it was dreadful, utterly dreadful, how someone explained Hamlet by assigning one principle to Buddhi, another to Manas, and so on. This is something far worse than all external materialism. All these abstract explanations, all this symbolization of an abstract nature, is—viewed from within—far worse than all external materialism. In any case, however, we see that Goethe initially truly intends for the idea of the homunculus to lead us toward the highest human potential, by showing his Nereids and Tritons on their way to Samothrace to bring the sacred Cabiri.

[ 25 ] And so, when it comes to the Kabirs, we will have to feel what the indigenous peoples of old felt toward their divine figures. To people today, these divine figures of the indigenous peoples seem primitive: idols. These images of the gods of the indigenous peoples appear as idols to modern people because modern people have no understanding of what springs forth from the elemental forces. People today do not even rise to a truly creative level in art. They stick to the model, or judge whatever is presented to them in art by asking: “Is this lifelike?” Indeed, one often even hears the objection to a particular depiction: “That’s not natural”—because there is truly little artistic sensibility among people today. However, anyone who wishes to gain an understanding of the perhaps grotesque-looking ancient images of the gods must try to form a mental image of those beings that belong to the third elemental world, from which our world first springs forth—on the one hand, in its mineral products, and on the other, in its organic products.

[ 26 ] You know how the scene begins with the Nereids and Tritons on their way to Samothrace to bring back the Cabiri, among whom the homunculus is to be transformed into a human. Meanwhile, while the Nereids and Tritons are on their journey to Samothrace, Thales—who is to guide the homunculus toward becoming human—goes to the old sea god Nereus. “Thales, the ancient natural philosopher, is the one whom the homunculus first sought out.” Now, Goethe is neither a mystic in the pejorative sense of the word nor a mere natural philosopher when it comes to discovering reality. Therefore, Thales himself cannot help the homunculus become human. Goethe greatly admired Thales’s worldview in particular, but he does not attribute to Thales the ability or the power to advise the homunculus on how to become a human being—a real human being. One must therefore turn to a demonic power—outside the body—to the old Nereus. Goethe brings a wide variety of demonic Powers into contact with the homunculus. What kind of Power is Nereus, actually? Well, this becomes clear from the way this old man of the sea speaks in Goethe’s poetry. One might say: In a certain sense, this Nereus is indeed the wise, prophetic, yet somewhat philistine inhabitant of the spiritual world closest to humanity—the world into which a person enters when they step out of their body. —Does he know anything about how the homunculus can become Homo? Yes, you see, Nereus already possesses intellect—even to the point of prophetic clairvoyance; he wields this intellect magnificently, but the way he wields it does not truly allow him to reach the innermost being of the human being. That is why he senses how people do not hear him, do not heed his counsel. He has, so to speak, no access to the human soul. He has advised people on various matters and dissuaded them from others; he once dissuaded Paris from bringing all that misery upon Ilion. It all came to nothing. So this Nereus has simply developed human reason—which humans have already developed to a very limited, or rather, to a very high degree on the physical plane—to the utmost, because he is not at all limited to a physical body. But this reason does not really help in the transition from homunculus to homo. What Nereus has to say is not enough; it does not actually advance the homunculus’s task in any meaningful way.

[ 27 ] But Nereus says that, while he does not wish to concern himself with advising the homunculus on how to become human, he is awaiting his daughters, the Dorides, and in particular the most exquisite of them, Galatea, who is to arrive today at this sea festival, which her father is awaiting. Galatea: an imagination of the most powerful kind.

[ 28 ] Seeing connections in the world—that is what really matters. It is actually not at all easy to speak about this point, because the modern soul has a tendency to abstract everything. Anyone who looks around at these things will discover quite a lot. Certainly, there are well-meaning people who say they believe in the spirit. It’s not a bad thing if people at least believe in the spirit. But what happens when you probe deeper and ask people straight from the heart: What is your actual mental image of the spirit you believe in? What is the Spirit? — Isn’t it true that spiritualists forgo learning anything about the Spirit altogether by deluding themselves with all sorts of unspiritual notions? Spiritualism is the most materialistic doctrine that could possibly exist. Certain more finely attuned souls may well speak of the Spirit, but what exactly do they have in mind when they speak of the Spirit? That is precisely why skeptical, truly modern minds would prefer to abandon the spirit—no, I mean, of course, only in thought—to abandon the spirit in the face of what can be known in the modern sense. Read the entry on “Spirit” in Fritz Mauthner’s philosophical dictionary, and you will likely be able to attain states of your body that are not states of the mind.

[ 29 ] All this abstract talk—even when it concerns the spirit—should be overcome precisely within true Spiritual Science. Observe how, as our work in Spiritual Science progresses, our language actually becomes more elevated. We draw upon everything that can gradually lead us into the spiritual world. We do not merely speak in words, but rather employ, so to speak, a comparative method. Consider how the way Spiritual Science is presented here makes it truly comprehensible that human beings undergo a life journey here in the physical body. Read, for example, the summaries in the latest issue of Das Reich. There, it is indicated how—and through what forces—a human being, when a very small child, is most similar to the material world, how they then become more soulful in the middle of their life, how they become spiritual—though they often fail to grasp this spirit because they have not prepared themselves for it—how they become spiritual when the body decays, when the body becomes dry and sclerotic, and how the spirit then liberates itself, even in the waking state. However, a person very rarely becomes aware of what they can experience when they grow old with a certain gift—I mean, when they grow old with a spiritual gift—when they do not simply become frail in body, but when they experience the soul rejuvenating itself, rejuvenating toward the spirit.

[ 30 ] This shows that we come to realize that, of course, we cannot see the spirit in an old man or an old woman—that it is invisible. One sees the decaying body, but does not see the spirit, which becomes young and fresh; one sees the wrinkles on the fleshly cheeks but does not see the chubby cheeks of the spirit that then emerge; these are supersensible. But at least one points out where one can find the spiritual here in the world in which we go about our daily lives. And when one then says that all of nature is permeated by the spirit, one is actually asking people to create a mental image of what it would be like out there in nature—where the minerals and plants reveal the outer world—where something of the same power into which one grows as one becomes an old man or an old woman lives. You see, that is a vivid way of expressing the matter. To speak in pantheistic terms: “Out there is spirit”—that means nothing at all, because “spirit” remains merely a word. But if, rather than in a directly abstract way, one draws attention to it through the various descriptions necessary for this purpose—if one seeks out the force that grows ever greater within you as you grow old as the most intimate, most potent force of nature—then one is saying something. To place one such force alongside another and draw attention to where each force is located—that is the essential point. And so, when one turns one’s gaze toward those force impulses that are alive within the entire context—from conception through embryonic life to birth—as a physical human being comes into being here on Earth, one can bring these things to mind. The dry natural scientist—who might better be called a “nature stalker”—stops at this force, which he examines in every possible way, but he examines it in his own way; he stops there. But the one who is able to gain a view of the world from Spiritual Science knows that this force is also present in other places. Exactly the same force, only acting more rapidly, makes itself felt when you wake up in the morning; exactly the same force that leads from conception through embryonic life to birth—in a sense, in a more subtle form—makes itself felt when you transition from sleep to waking. It is exactly the same force. But this force is not only within you, deep inside you; rather, this force extends throughout the entire outer cosmos, living everywhere in things and processes.

[ 31 ] This force is the daughter of the cosmic mind. One must delve into various things that are quite unfamiliar today if one wishes to characterize these phenomena. What, in fact, does today’s natural scientist do when he seeks to uncover the physical mystery of germination? He uses a microscope; he examines under the microscope what the germ is like when it is unfertilized, when it is fertilized, and so on. He has no idea that what he is examining there in the tiniest details under the microscope is constantly unfolding before him on a macrocosmic scale. Exactly the same process that takes place, for example, in the mother’s body before conception, during conception, after conception, and then during embryonic life—exactly the same process takes place on a macrocosmic scale when the plant is planted in the earth as a seed and the earth sends forth the plant seed. The warmth of the womb is exactly the same as what the sun is out there for all the world’s vegetation. It is indeed very significant to be able to recognize that what the microscopist sees in the smallest scale can be continually observed on a macrocosmic scale out there in the world. In a sense, as we walk among the emerging plant world, we are actually walking within the world’s womb. In short, the force that underlies human becoming is present out there in the macrocosmic world; it surges through and interweaves the entire macrocosmic world. Imagine this force personified—this sacred force of human becoming grasped in its spiritual correlate outside the human body, in spirit and soul—and you have Galatea, connected to all that belongs to her, her sisters, the Dorides. In these imaginings, we are already led into a mysterious yet thoroughly real world. It is one of the most profound scenes Goethe ever wrote. And he was aware that, in one’s twilight years, one can gain a glimpse of these deepest mysteries of nature.

[ 32 ] It is profoundly significant when one considers that Goethe began writing his Faust as a young man, and that scenes such as those we are now performing were written shortly before the end of his life. For sixty years, he strove to find the way to give form to what he had conceived in his earliest youth. He draws upon everything, for his aim is to elevate the idea of the homunculus to the idea of the human being; he draws upon everything, for his aim is to portray the mystery of becoming human outside the body. He draws upon the mystery of the Kabiri; he draws upon the mystery of becoming human, as reflected in the image of Galatea. And he knows that reality is so all-encompassing and so profound that, in comparison, the imaginings one can arrive at—those awakened by the Kabir impulses and the Galatea impulse—merely flit by; that the mystery is even greater than that which can be captured.

[ 33 ] Goethe himself truly tried everything to approach the mystery of life in a vivid way. Thus, he developed his theory of metamorphosis, in which he traces the various forms in nature and how one form emerges from another. Goethe’s theory of metamorphosis must not be conceived of as a mental image. Goethe himself shows us that this is not permissible; with this theory of metamorphosis—which can only be conceived within a worldview free from the physical body—he approaches that which was felt atavistically in the ancient myth of Proteus. Perhaps Proteus, who takes on various forms in his own becoming—as you know, he demonstrates this, or we portray him in the scene as a turtle, as a human, as a dolphin: these forms stand side by side, appearing one after the other—perhaps through what Proteus experiences, we can learn from him how a homunculus can become a homo.

[ 34 ] But Goethe did sense the limitations of his theory of metamorphosis. Yes, do you think that a man of such thorough and profound insight as Goethe did not sense what followed from this fact: If you have the theory of metamorphosis, you can trace, leaf by leaf, the transformation of a plant all the way to the petal; you can also trace the transformation of the vertebral bone into the head bone, the skull bone. — But Goethe—as anyone who has worked through Goethe’s own views knows, seeing how Goethe wrestled with this subject—knew: I cannot go any further here. He sensed: There is something beyond this. — We know what it is! The head of the present-day human being is the metamorphosis of the body of the earlier human being, the human being in a previous earthly life. The rest of the human body in this earthly life becomes the head in the next earthly life. There we have the metamorphosis, the crowning achievement of metamorphosis for human life. Goethe sensed that he had made a great start with the Protean idea of metamorphosis, but that it must be further developed if one is to progress from the homunculus to the homo. He draws upon what he perceives in Proteus. But that cannot lead to transforming the idea of the homunculus into the idea of the homo. Goethe honestly portrays, in poetic terms, what he can and cannot do. One can already see deep into Goethe’s soul. It is, of course, more convenient to have a mental image of an abstract, perfect Goethe, and then tell oneself: He knew everything. — No, Goethe’s greatness lies precisely in the fact that we also come to know his limitations, since he himself admitted these limitations so honestly—as evidenced by the fact that he does not allow Proteus, as he was able to conceive him—that is, the doctrine of metamorphosis as he understood it—to offer guidance on the homunculus’s development into Homo.

[ 35 ] Goethe, however, strove in a wide variety of ways to draw closer to this process of becoming, which is the process of becoming human. For him, too, the concept of art was not what it is for so many—essentially something abstract. For Goethe, what was expressed in a work of art went hand in hand with everything that lived creatively in the world. Everything that was meant to guide him toward his longing to fathom the mystery of becoming human is demonstrated by Goethe in this scene. Just as he stood before the Greek works of art—and before the Italian works of art that brought Greek art to life for him—and said to himself: “I am on the trail of how the Greeks proceeded in creating their works of art; they proceeded according to the same forces by which nature creates”—at that moment Goethe realized: “Yes, if the artist is a true artist, then he unites himself with the very forces that create in nature; he creates his forms, he creates everything that can be created artistically, out of the very same forces that are at work in the development of plants, animals, and human beings.” — But it remains without inner knowledge. That is precisely what Goethe was also willing to admit: The creative forces can be observed, they can be felt, but one does not stand within the metamorphosis itself. — The Telchines of Rhodes make their appearance; they are such great artists that, naturally, all human art pales in comparison. They forged Neptune’s trident; they were the first to attempt to depict gods in human form—that is, to truly recreate human beings from the cosmic forces. When one practices this art of the Telchines, one is on the path to recreating the process of becoming human, but one still cannot fully grasp it. That is what Goethe means. He expresses it through Proteus, who ultimately says: “Even that does not bring one closer to the true mystery of humanity.”

[ 36 ] Goethe truly wants to evoke the sensation that these are, in fact, two worlds: the waking world of the day and the one into which one enters when one becomes disembodied—the world one would see if one were to awaken from the body while in a disembodied state during sleep, the world one sees when one is not inside the body. Goethe hints at all that he wishes to convey in this scene so subtly, so magnificently. Please, just take the part of the scene where the Dorids bring in the boatmen’s boys, and read these words. Read the words describing how the world is characterized there, how the physical world converges with the spiritual world one enters when one is free from the body: the Dorids with the physical, with the boatmen’s boys who stand here within the world. They have found one another and yet have not; humans and spirits find one another and yet do not, draw near and yet remain strangers to one another. This relationship between the physical world and the spiritual world is wonderfully hinted at in this part of the scene. Throughout Goethe’s work, there is a constant striving to show how necessary it is to transport oneself into the spiritual world if one is to achieve what transforms the homunculus into a homo, and at the same time, there is the suggestion—the subtle, intimate suggestion—of the unity and separation of the physical world and the spiritual world.

[ 37 ] One might say: Goethe sees—or allows us to see in his artistic depiction—how the homunculus could become human for the soul, if it draws near to the intimate mystery of the Cabiri, that which Nereus evokes in his daughter Galatea, that which is at work in true art, which emanates from the cosmos. But alas, it is as if one were to grasp reality in a dream, only for the dream to slip away again at once; it is as if one were to try to hold onto that which forges the spiritual world and the physical world together. But: “The gods will not allow it.” It falls apart again.

[ 38 ] This difficulty in recognizing the spirit stands as the fundamental sensation, as the fundamental impulse before the soul of the one who views this scene with true understanding. This is what then leads Goethe to bring about the powerful conclusion of this scene: the shattering of the homunculus against Galatea’s shell-drawn chariot—that shattering which is at the same time a coming into being, that ceasing to be which is simultaneously a becoming, that dissolving into the elements which is at the same time a finding of oneself in reality. We will speak of this tomorrow—of this conclusion to the scene following the performance.