Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 6 January 1909, Munich

18. On the Novalis Matinee

Retrospective memory of Marie Steiner

It was at the time when Rudolf Steiner encouraged me to step out more and more with the recitation. I was trying to get through to Novalis at the time. I told him that it would not be easy for me, that I had not yet found the key to Novalis. He advised me to put myself in the mood of the holy nuns. The nuns didn't help me. On the contrary. I didn't know what to do with them. Then suddenly it brightened up. Raphael's figures surrounded me. The child shone in his mother's arms with his worldly eyes. “I see you in a thousand images, Mary, beautifully expressed ...” A sea of sound all around, harmonies of color.

I said to Rudolf Steiner: "The nuns didn't do it. But someone else helped: Raphael. Now Novalis is completely transparent to me." A glow came over Rudolf Steiner's mild face.

A few days later, he gave us the Novalis-Raffael-Johannes-Elias secret for the first time.

Retrospective memories of Max Gümbel-Seiling

I saw and heard Marie von Sivers for the first time under the Christmas tree in the room of the Munich branch when she recited verses by Novalis, surrounded by colorful reproductions of Raphael paintings. It was around the turn of the year 1908/1909. The whole room was lined with rose-red satin, a rose cross - then still with twelve red roses - hung in the middle above the lectern, from where we had just heard through Rudolf Steiner about the entity that had incarnated as Elijah, John, Raphael and Novalis. Marie von Sivers had said to Rudolf Steiner about these karmic revelations that it was only through Raphael's art that she was able to gain a deep understanding of Novalis, and certainly for Dr. Steiner the communication of this experience was a decisive opportunity to communicate to us this karmic connection that is deeply rooted in our entire spiritual direction.