Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 20 April 1909, Düsseldorf

19. Novalis

Outside the students of occultism, which have always existed, people who were mature enough to do so have felt clairvoyant powers within themselves; and many of these have been misjudged.

Today we shall speak of Novalis. Peculiar shear. “Hymns to the Night” - Revelations of a clairvoyant to the world.

Died March 25, 1801 at the highest point of the sun. Did not live to be 30 years old.

Abnormal event, as his whole life is. Engaged to 13-year-old girl, [the girl] dies after three years, Sophie Kühn. All the secrets of the world radiated out of her heart towards him. With her death, Novalis' soul powers were awakened, and from then on he looked into the spiritual worlds with her guidance. Our hearts ache when we see how materialistic scholarship wants to sweep away the magic breath that enveloped this wonderful relationship.

In 1772, a certain individuality enters the Hardenberg family. Father: splendid figure of German nobility. Pious, self-contained, serious.

Uncle Komtour - there he took a trip. 1790 studied [Novalis] in Jena, was supposed to write law. Schiller was teaching history at the time; a holy fire that lit through the student body at his lectures.

Fichte, who presumed to judge today's philosophers ([Fichte] physically extinguished the light and said: Now may the spiritual light shine in your soul). Novalis had feelings of the most devoted love for such teachers.

Friedrich Schlegel, who opened his eyes to the treasure trove of the spiritual Orient. Novalis became friends with him. He called philosophy a caress. Novalis - for him, the words meant something far more spiritual.

He proved to be a highly practical man at the Amtmann; Werner, the teacher of geology, geognosy.

Novalis never had any contact with the elemental spirits of the earth ... He immersed himself in mathematics up to the living comprehension of the divine linear forces with which the divine beings have drawn the structure of the world; the deity has composed this before men fill the lines with material things. Theophany, the appearance of the deity, a great poem of the deity - that was mathematics for him, Novalis.

Much of it stands before us in fragments, because it was only meant to inspire us. Much of his earlier life remained shrouded in mystery. We find wonderful germs in Novalis.

He (Rosicrucian) shows the path that [goes] through the power of meditative clear thought alongside that of direct vision.

Waking is the enjoyment of the soul
Sleeping is [soul] digestion
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