Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 15 May 1909, Oslo

20. About Novalis

[In] the last third [of the] eighteenth century [the] coloring of intellectual life [was] very different in the north and south of Germany. On the one hand, Wolffian philosophy, which, despite its merits, lacked the spirit of theosophy.

Hamann (friend of Herder ), who wrote [gap in the transcript]

Herder himself had an inkling of the metamorphoses of spiritual truth. Herder wrote in his book on the Hebrew document (?) [gap in transcript]

Felt the creation of the world anew in every sunrise. His spirituality stood in sharp contrast to embodied rationalism and especially to Kant.

There were echoes of Jakob Böhme's philosophy in many circles and schools, from which many things flowed in which the Rosicrucian wisdom poured in, see for example Lessing's “Education of the Human Race”: "Is not all eternity mine®, he exclaimed as a testament. - So in northern Germany.

In southern Germany it was quite different, especially in Württemberg. The deeply inspired personality Bengel (inspired by higher individuals) became the spiritual teacher of Christoph Oetinger. They called their theosophy Philosophia sacra.

1772 - not everyone could have understood his writings, but much spiritual life had flowed out of them.

“On the harmony of sounds” was then written by Fricker. Swedenborg was also inspired by Fricker.

Novalis [was] born in this milieu, where both currents flowed together. Born in Franconia. Schelling and Hegel were also South Germans. There was a monastery in Tübingen: the center where what flowed as spiritual wisdom in the south was poured into philosophy.

Hölderlin and Oetinger also lived there. Theosophy lived in the conversations of these men.

In central Germany, Markus Völker (central light who knew everything for himself) rejected everything that was a logical connection because he was clairvoyant.

Twelve years before Oetinger's death, Novalis was born. His life: A memory of earlier lives. At that time, the streets of Jena were filled with philosophical conversations. Fichte was right to say: What you are as a philosopher depends on what kind of personality you are. [Fichte had] an understanding of symbolism: he extinguished two candles, the light before the lecture. A solemn atmosphere emanated from him and Schiller to Novalis.

In Leipzig he got to know Schlegel.

Gnosis, called Mathesis, because it was as securely based as mathematics. This mathematics became a great poem for Novalis. He was able to fill the lines with spiritual life and love; like a great divine world poem of numbers and forms.

Novalis says: Sleeping is soul digestion. Waking: enjoyment of the soul.

Geognosy: Today something abstract, like the earth's bone system. How man does not understand the bones without their connection to the whole human being. Novalis therefore calls Goethe an anthropognost.

If our soul were elastic enough [then] man would always feel himself in the spiritual world. Wise difference between old and new initiation.

First: physical body weakened. Second: Spirit strengthened. Askesce - characteristic of the old and new initiation.