# Faust, the Striving Human Being

## GA 272 — 4 April 1915, Dornach

### 3. Faust's Struggle for the Christ-imbued Source of Life

*after the eurythmic-dramatic presentation of the “Easter Vigil”*

Among the Easter performances that have just passed before our minds were also those that depict how a soul that is about to pass through the gate of death through its own decision is brought back into the world of earthly life through the Easter message. I believe that, of the many impressions that the Faust story can have on us, this scene must be one of the most profound. Now, after the transformation, I would like to say, after the transformation,[^1] the scene that signifies the world with its evolution, bring that you have absorbed as a prospect within the Faustian poetry into your soul, in connection with what was said here yesterday, so to speak, before the transformation, about that meaningful real vision that can arise in the human soul when it steps before the symbol of Jesus Christ resting in the tomb. Let us bear in mind that yesterday we were able to say that the sight of what is connected with human life through its development on earth in relation to the world of Lucifer and Ahriman is evoked through a corresponding spiritual contemplation or spiritual perception. Let us bear in mind that in the Faust epic we have a soul which announces itself to us immediately at the beginning of the poem as having absorbed Ahrimanic knowledge and insights. And then let us look into this soul as it struggles out of its connection with the Ahrimanic wisdom towards the — we may say from our point of view — Christ-imbued source of life: a momentous moment that is presented to us for a human soul. Let us visualize this human soul! There she stands before us with all the knowledge she has absorbed through observing the external material world and its interrelations, with the insight she has been able to gain through the instruments by which the external naturalist attempts to penetrate the interrelations of nature... And what has this soul come to with all the research that is linked to the various instruments and also to the phial containing the juices that “quickly make one drunk” for earthly life? We feel how an Ahrimanic nature already rules at the side of the Faust soul, and how this Ahrimanic nature is linked to what is earthly death. Do we not see how this human soul, filled with Ahrimanic nature, draws the result of its Ahrimanic insights? And this result of knowledge that Ahriman can give to man on earth is what is summarized in the words:

> I greet you, you only vial!  
> Which I now bring down with devotion,  
> In you I honor human wit and art.  
> You epitome of the sweet slumber potions,  
> You distillation of all deadly subtle powers,  
> Do show your favor to your master!  
> I see you, pain is alleviated,  
> I grasp you, the striving is diminished,  
> The spirit's flood tide ebbs away little by little.  
> I am expelled into the high sea,  
> The mirror tide glistens at my feet,  
> A new day beckons to new shores.

And already this soul has the vision of coming to the other shore, where it may be able to find that which it must believe it cannot find on this earth because of its ahrimanic entanglement. Already it has the vision of crossing over to the other shore:

> A chariot of fire floats, on light wings,  
> Towards me! I feel ready,  
> On a new path to penetrate the ether,  
> To new spheres of pure activity.  
> This lofty life, this divine bliss!  
> You, still a worm, and do you deserve them?  
> Yes, just turn your back resolutely  
> to the lovely sun of the earth!  
> Dare to tear open the gates,  
> before which everyone likes to sneak by.  
> Here it is time to prove by action  
> That manly dignity does not give way to the height of the gods,  
> Not to tremble before that dark cave,  
> In which the imagination condemns itself to its own torment,  
> To strive towards that passageway,  
> Around whose narrow mouth the whole of hell is aflame;  
> To take this step serenely,  
> And, even if it means flowing into nothingness,

And now that he has also taken up the other Ahrimanic instrument, he is ready to take the path over to those realms that he learned in Ahriman's school are numberless to the soul as long as it is enclosed in the earthly body. And this soul is torn out of this mood by the sound of the Easter bells and the choir of the Easter song. And so the Faust soul has lived an earthly life to now seek within the earthly body what this human soul, as a result of its seeking in the earthly body, is to carry through the gate of death, so that it can carry it up into the spiritual realm where it needs it for its further development.

What you have heard today from the first part of Goethe's “Faust”, and much of what belongs to this part, to this scene of Goethe's “Faust”, first appeared as the completed first part of the poem in 1808. But before that, in 1790, Goethe had already published “Faust, a fragment”, this fragment, which did not yet have the last Gretchen scene. But this fragment did not even have the scene that has brought the events of such significance for Faust's soul to our own soul today. In 1790, Goethe published his fragment without this Easter scene and without the monologue that leads to the deepest depths of human and spiritual experience. And at the end of the 19th century, what Goethe had finished in the 1780s, even as early as the 1770s, was discovered in the 1790s. It was then published under the tasteless title “Urfaust”. In this Urfaust, we do not find, one might say, of course, this Easter scene. Why is it not there? Yes, Goethe, who was a child of his time, had to mature in order to be able to depict the effect of the Christ impulse on Faust's soul in his own way, in accordance with his soul; he first had to mature for this. And Goethe was not ripe for it until 1790. The nineties saw the deepening of Goethe's soul, which found its reflection in the well-known “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. It falls into the time between the moment when “Faust” was published without the Easter scene and the moment when it was published with the Easter scene. Goethe's soul experienced a profound deepening through what it developed in the “Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”. And it was only through this experience that Goethe realized how he could allow the Easter experience scene to affect Faust's soul.

Now, let us look into this soul of Faust itself, and try to put ourselves in the place of the beginning of Goethe's “Faust,” which is more or less the same in the various successive publications. We know that it reads:

> I now, alas! have philosophy,  
> Jurisprudence and medicine,  
> And unfortunately also theology!  
> Thoroughly studied, with hot endeavor.  
> There I stand now, I poor fool!  
> And am as wise as before;  
> I am called Magister, even Doktor,  
> And for ten years now,  
> Up and down and hither and thither,  
> I have led my students by the nose –  
> And I see that we cannot know anything!

So he has been a lecturer for ten years. Let us assume that he entered the teaching career regularly, then we might think that he became a lecturer around the age of thirty. In fact, he has been leading his students by the nose since the age of thirty! Let us recall what I said yesterday. In the thirties, the human being will stand before the image of the Jupiter existence when he visualizes the seduction I spoke of yesterday. And a vision, a prophetic vision of this seduction, is what one has before one when one stands before Christ Jesus lying in the tomb. Do we not have this vision dramatically developed in Faust? Does he not stand before us before the Easter Mystery, and does he not stand before us, one might say, at the end of the 1830s, before the Easter Mystery? May we not assume that in his feelings, what man must feel from the Easter Mystery, rumbles like a premonition of the Jupiter experience with Lucifer and Ahriman? In Goethe's time one could not present it as one can present it now, but Goethe could present the rumbling sensation in the heart towards the Easter Mystery, and it rumbled in Faust's soul. And is it not as if Faust felt, when Mephisto-Ahriman approaches him, how his soul has fallen prey to the Ahrimanic powers? How he has to save himself from something? Yes, but from what? From what must he save himself? Can we not say that Goethe sensed something of this when, as a mature man, as a mature soul, he allowed the spirit of his own Faust to take effect on him again, as he was able to sense it in his time, of the Easter mood that we have been picturing in our minds these days, and that this gave rise to the need to insert the Easter scene into “Faust”, which did not have this Easter scene before? The “Faust” was re-written into Christian verse with the insertion of the Easter scene between the years 1790 and 1800.

So what years did Faust have to live through? Before which years of life did he shudder so much that he wanted to reach for the vial himself? Well, before the second, descending part of life, that part of life of which we have said how man, when he stands before the vision of the Jupiter existence, knows that later on he must carry to Jupiter that which the Christ can give him as provisions for the journey, because otherwise he would have to go without nourishment in the second half of life. What is Faust seeking? He seeks nourishment for the soul for the second half of life. We have all been seeking it since the time when the Mystery of Golgotha has passed over the evolution of our Earth. We are all seeking it. For that which will take physical and psychic form on Jupiter is already living in the depths of our souls, and we must all feel something of this Faustian mood. We need a power that we cannot have through that which, as human beings, only gives us freedom and thus leads us to Ahriman and Lucifer; we need a power for those impulses in us that are connected with the descending half of life. It is the power of Christ, the power of Christ, which the Christ has after he has passed through the gate of death and has not lived through in an earthly body the second half of man's life. Why did he not live through it? Because this power, which must be bestowed upon people in the second half of life, had to flow into the earth aura so that all people can find themselves through the evolution of the earth. Through the Easter mystery, that which we need to enable us to journey through our entire life on earth with our soul is resurrected. And now imagine this profound connection in Goethe's “Faust”. Faust has absorbed within himself — Goethe knew how to absorb this, because he presented it without the Easter mystery when he published his fragment without the Easter mystery — Faust has absorbed within himself what man can absorb through the connection with Lucifer and Ahriman, what gives us the possibility of a free soul. But Faust, who measures the depths of the soul, is aware that he cannot continue to live with him; he needs something else in order to live. And Goethe was ripe to show what Faust needs, what is the impulse of the Easter Mystery. Does not the Easter Mystery stand profoundly before us in what Goethe made of his “Faust” only as a fully mature man, what he could not yet have included in 1790 because he did not yet understand it?

How did the poetic idea for this poem, which takes us to such depths, come about in the young Goethe? We know that the young Goethe was deeply impressed both by the puppet show of Faust, which he saw, where the fate of Faust was simply presented through puppets, and by the folk play of “Doctor Faust”. This thoroughly popular element came before Goethe's soul. What then is this Faust? And Goethe's soul immediately realized: this Faust must be the striving human being in general, who, through his striving, can dive down into all the depths of the human soul and must find the way up to the bright heights of the spirit. That an inner path must be traversed by a human soul, the young Goethe knew that. For what is it, after all, if not a meditation that Faust experiences in his soul as he gazes at the various signs? It is a meditation that ultimately leads him to the vision of the Earth Spirit that flows through and permeates the Earth. The meditation receives the words in response:

> In the flood of life, in the storm of action,  
> I surge up and down,  
> Weaving back and forth!  
> Birth and death,  
> An eternal sea,  
> A changing weaving,  
> A glowing life,  
> So I work at the whirring loom of time  
> And weave the living garment of divinity.

Meditation and counter-meditation! It leads Faust into the depths of life, but how to get out? How to ascend to spiritual heights?

Now that we have placed ourselves before the soul, what a grandiose idea of the striving Faust in Goethe's soul arose from the puppet show and the folk play, and what form this grandiose idea took through the penetration of the Goethean soul into the mystery of the soul, we now ask ourselves: What did Goethe make of Faust throughout his life? After we have realized the magnitude of what Goethe's soul was capable of through the impact of the Faust impulse, we may well ask ourselves: What did these impressions become in artistic and poetic terms? Well, one thing I just said can help us in our quest to understand this 'Faust' in aesthetic and artistic terms as well. Goethe published a fragment that roughly concludes with the cathedral scene in 1790. What makes the “Faust” seem so grandiose to us today is not in it. He added it later, when he was in Rome. In 1787, he added what we now know as the “Witches' Kitchen”. He inserted other scenes into the manuscript at other times. The original manuscript was written and copied by someone else, and at the time the later scenes were added, Schiller himself described it as a “yellowed manuscript”. And when Schiller called upon Goethe at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century to do something to round off Faust, Goethe said that it would be difficult for him to take on the old monster Faust again and to appropriately complete what had been left unfinished for so long. Goethe was afraid of incorporating into this his “Faust” that with which he had later matured, into all that he was and had appeared by the year 1790.

And now let us look at the first part of this “Faust”. Is it not a work that we can clearly see has been patched together from what was created at different times? If people were not attached to traditional judgments, they would see in “Faust” the most magnificent poetic idea that has ever come into the world with regard to the individual human being. At the same time, they would have to admit to themselves that in terms of art and poetry, this “Faust” is the most inconsistent, that it is a thoroughly disharmonious work, into which one could still put many things that are not in it, that has cracks and fissures everywhere, that is artistically far from perfect. Goethe's great genius could only ever complete fragments of what was before his soul. And however much we may admire the magnificent beauty of individual scenes, if we are not merely attached to the traditional judgment that literary historians have passed, but if we are unbiased, we cannot deny that “Faust” as it is is not a harmonious work of art, that it is glued in many places, but shows cracks and fissures everywhere. Why is this so? At a very advanced age, Goethe once again undertook to complete the second part of his Faust, for which he already had individual scenes, to which he added what he could add in his very old age. For example: the beginning of the classical-romantic phantasmagoria, the Helena interlude, was already completed around the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, and some parts were completed earlier. And again, we have every reason not to say, as some literary historians say, that one cannot understand the second part of “Faust,” or, as a very clever man, who is by no means stupid, said, that “Faust” is “a cobbled-together, patched-up concoction of old age.” It is not! On the other hand, it is a work whose task was so great that even Goethe's rich life experience was not enough in his time to shape it. One may well have one's own opinion even about the greatest things in the world. But why is that so? Well, I have already indicated on one occasion, in a lecture series held in The Hague, that this Faust is by no means, I would say, so extraordinarily young in world history. Faust, as he lived in the folk play that Goethe saw and as he lived in the puppet show, represents the human being descending into the depths of spiritual life and the human being wanting to rise to the light of the heights; he represents him in such a way that the greatest poet of modern times needed the Easter mystery for the liberation of his soul. As he appears in the folk play, he is a combination of the external physical reality, of the Dr. Georg Faust, who lived in the second half of the Middle Ages and wandered around like a tramp; of whom Trithem of Sponheim as well as other important men who met him report, and who even had a certain respect for him, the respect that one has for a remarkable personality who, through the way he expresses himself emotionally, knows many things and is capable of many things. And it was not for nothing that this real Doctor Faust was called by the name, as I have once stated here:

Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior, fons necromanticorum, Magus Secundus, Chiromanticus Aeromanticus, Pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus.

That was the name he gave himself. Now, it was common in those days to have many titles, and a long list of similar-sounding titles could be said of Giordano Bruno and many other important minds of the Middle Ages. If today's sophisticated people may find it strange that Trithem von Sponheim and others who knew about the existence of this real Faust thought that he was in contact with demonic powers of the world and the earth and through them was able to accomplish many things, then we must remember that in Luther's time, for example, there was nothing special about telling such a story. We know how Luther himself wrestled with the devil. We know that all this was common practice, the views and stories of that time. But a feeling lived in all this, which helped to shape Faust in the popular consciousness. The feeling lived — I say the feeling and not the concept, not the idea — natural science is coming up, natural science, which brings the Ahrimanic part of real reality before the human soul. And from this arose the feeling that Faust is a personality, and always has been, who has something to do with these Ahrimanic powers. People saw, as it were, the secret spiritual connecting threads that went from the soul of Faust to the Ahrimanic powers. And they found that Faust's destiny was tied to this inclination towards the Ahrimanic powers. That the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic has to do with the entire evolution of the human soul was still sensed and felt from the remnants of ancient clairvoyance and clear-sighted knowledge. And so the Faust figure was linked to this feeling of man's connection with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers. But at the same time, this intuitive knowledge was already descending into twilight, becoming unclear. And so, one might say, the feeling arose that one could depict the striving human being with all his temptations and dangers for his soul in the figure of Faust. But how this striving of the human being is connected with Lucifer and Ahriman was no longer known exactly. It had become blurred, and that is where the tremendous vagueness came from, which one gets a sense of when one picks up the medieval Faust book, in which all that the folk character is said to have experienced is where everything is thrown together in a grotesque ragout of all kinds of adventures that the human soul experiences in its quest to master all possible demonic and elementary spirits, Ahriman and Lucifer. After they were no longer seen in their full form, after they were shattered and ground into a ragout with all possible elemental spirits of nature, the figure of Doctor Faust was now placed in this ragout in this folk book. It was only Goethe's inspired insight that was able to discern in this gruesome ragout the mighty fundamental idea and to develop it to the point of the Easter Mystery. But it is really quite interesting to observe how, I might say, Lucifer and Ahriman were gradually dismembered into such ragout pieces.

If we go back and search for the figure of Faust in ancient times, we can look in books that were written as popular books at the time and that were in the hands of all those who were dealing with matters related to such things at the time. Augustine's works were very widespread when this book was written, cobbled together, glued together. One has the feeling of a bookseller who wanted to make a book that was as thick as possible, and not as if it were from a writer or even a literary man. But he must have known his Augustine, especially the biography of Augustine. And Augustine presents himself to us in all his development in such a remarkable way. How he at first cannot understand what Christianity is in its essence, how he gradually overcomes the inner resistance that he must bring to bear on Christianity in the development of his soul, first to what can now become known to him from the Manichaean doctrine. And from a great and important man within the Manichaean sect, Augustine receives knowledge from the Manichaean bishop Faustus. And we almost sense who this Faustus senior is, in comparison to whom the Faustus I mentioned earlier calls himself Faustus junior. He is the one whom Augustine once encountered in ancient times, the one who represented something of the Manichaean doctrine as Faustus, as bishop of the Manichaeans.

But what did he represent of the Manichaean doctrine? That which is corroded by Ahriman, that which no longer allows one to see how man, with his soul, is connected to the whole cosmos, to all cosmic, all stellar impulses. One can say: Even in the Manichean Bishop Faustus, the bond of knowledge that leads up to the cosmic insights that show how the human soul is born out of the cosmos, and which one must know if one wants to understand the Easter mystery in truth, is already torn. So it could be that in the person who wrote the folk book about Doctor Faust, precisely through the figure that Augustine describes as the Manichean bishop Faustus, it could emerge in this writer and compiler through the figure of Faustus, who had fallen prey to Ahriman. But since everything had become blurred, he did not understand that it was going against Ahriman. We see the scraps of the Ahrimanic danger shimmering through the stories of the folk play, but we see nothing clear. Yet we can get a clear feeling that Faustus is to be presented as the representative of the striving human being, so that danger threatens him from the Ahrimanic side. And much of what has been added to the Faust figure as it developed up to Goethe has been added by that Manichean Bishop Faustus, Faust senior. Many chapters of the folk tale seem as if they had been copied, but badly copied, only from the book in which Augustine describes his own development and his encounter with Bishop Faustus. We can prove that the Ahrimanic trait in the Faust figure points in this direction, and that when the folk book was written only the last dark urge remained to depict the Ahrimanic elements of human nature in the Faust figure.

And now, what about the Luciferic element? How were the Luciferic elements chopped up into those ragout pieces, which were then cooked into the ragout of elemental spirits and pieces of Lucifer and Ahriman, as I just said? Yes, we have to search if we want to find the connection between Faust and Lucifer. We can also search for it historically, we don't even have to go terribly far, we just have to go to Basel, and we can find clues in Basel as to how Lucifer was chopped up into a ragout. We are told that Erasmus of Rotterdam met with Faust in Basel, where they wanted to have a meal in the college, but could not find the right food. And since Erasmus lacked something that should now taste good to him, he told Faust, who was sitting with him and wanted to eat with him, but they had nothing right. So the Faust saga tells us that Faustus was now able to suddenly bring to the table, cooked and roasted, from somewhere - we don't know where - very strange birds that were not otherwise available in Basel. So we see a scene between Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faust, in which Faust is able to present such birds, which could not be bought in Basel at the time, nor far and wide in the surrounding area, to Erasmus. What is it actually? As such, it is not at all comprehensible in the legend, one can say, completely incomprehensible, but it becomes more understandable to us if we go back and bring together what we can gain from the writings of Erasmus of Rotterdam, who himself tells us that he made the acquaintance of a certain Faustus Andrelinus in Paris. This Faustus Andrelinus was an extremely learned man, but also an extremely sensual man. At first, Erasmus became so familiar with this Faustus that he had no real taste for the sensual sides of this Faustus. But again, we hear about a meal that the two are said to have eaten together. Now, however, two learned gentlemen of the time, such as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Faustus Andrelinus – we cannot expect them to serve each other such birds and in such a way, as Faustus of Basel is said to have served them to Erasmus. So it is likely that what has been handed down to us is just a kind of, I would say, joking speech that the two exchanged at the meal. But we do get a little behind this jocular talk when we also hear within this talk that Faust – this time it is probably Faust – was not satisfied with what was served to him, and demanded something else. Faust would now like to eat, in order to particularly torment himself, strange birds and rabbits; yes, strange birds and rabbits. Erasmus initially has the idea that this must mean something. So he behaves exactly like some theosophists who reflect on what things mean. Well, then the other one says, okay, he wants to do without the rabbits. Erasmus said: Could it not mean flies and ants? He wants to do without the rabbits. But the birds really are flies, and he wants to kill himself with flies for a change. Now we are very far. Now the birds have transformed into flies through astral transformation. And in Goethe we have the god of the flies in the figure of Mephisto. All that is needed is the spirit that commands these beings, and it could conjure up these beings. And so we have built the connecting bridge from the incomprehensible Basel legend and the strange birds to the flies that simply come from the devil. And we need not be surprised that the devil presents flies to him whom he invites to the table. But what kind of soul Faustus Andrelinus has, what kind of soul he has, that much becomes clear to us when we follow Erasmus a little further on his journey in Paris. In Paris, Erasmus was not yet quite inclined to engage with this Faustus Andrelinus character. But then he has to make a trip to London. There he writes that he has now learned – truly, Erasmus, think! , that he had manners like a coarse peasant, — that he has now learned to bow and even knows how to move around on the court parquet! And, yes, Erasmus writes it, that he lives in an atmosphere where, as you come and go, you always kiss each other by mistake. One recognizes from this that he wants to meet the tastes of his Parisian friend. He writes: “Come over here.” And if the gout prevents you too much, come over through the air in the spirit chariot. That is an element for you! — One sees that Faustus has a connection with the Luciferic kind of soul tendency.

With Goethe, we then encounter how Faust carries out his seductions by seducing Gretchen and so on. Lucifer has really fallen so far from the surroundings of the Faust figure that one must already do such literary investigations if we want to state the connection of Faust with Lucifer in the Parisian Faust. But we literally see Faust standing there, Lucifer and Ahriman at his side, albeit indistinctly through the confused time, boiled down into a ragout in the folk play. Should we be surprised to find in the folk play and folk drama, and even in Marlowe's Faust, something that is a remnant of ancient beliefs, still rooted in those times when man's connection with Ahriman and Lucifer was recognized through atavistic clairvoyance? But all this has become blurred, and in the literary product of which we have spoken, it is presented in a thoroughly blurred way. Goethe sensed the deep connection. But what could Goethe not do? He could not separate Lucifer and Ahriman from each other. They merged for him into the hybrid figure of Mephisto, in whom one does not really know whether it is the devil, Ahriman, or the real Mephisto. For he has also taken upon himself what Lucifer has. Goethe receives the ragout, as it were; he senses that Ahriman and Lucifer are at work, but he cannot yet sort it out; he devours them in the occult impossibility of the figure of Mephisto, who is a hybrid of Ahriman and Lucifer. One would like to be able to name the time that Goethe looked into by getting to know the Faust book: the last darkening of an old knowledge of this matter, the dying evening twilight of the old knowledge of Ahriman and Lucifer. And Goethe's Faust is the first dawn of the as yet unascended knowledge of Ahriman and Lucifer, dark and confused in the figure of Mephisto, Ahriman and Lucifer still mixed up. But already with the need to depict what the human soul can have by allowing itself to be affected by what has flowed into the earth's aura through the Christ being having passed through the mystery of Golgotha!

The Easter Mystery appears to us as the dawn of a new era of spiritual life for humanity in Goethe's “Faust”, which, despite its grandiose nature, still has something confused about it, something of a dark, foggy dawn. It appears to us as something within this dark dawn that we can see when we climb a mountain and see the sun rise earlier than we could see it before we stood on the mountain. We feel how one of the greatest of men, in his striving for the renewal of ancient knowledge, turns his soul towards the Paschal Mystery, when we allow Goethe's Faust to take effect on us. And if we allow it to take effect on us in the right way, then we feel what can take place in the heart of one of the greatest of men when this human heart has been touched by the Paschal Mystery, as Goethe himself felt at the same time. There is also something in this intuitive presentiment of Goethe to the Easter Mystery in Goethe's anticipation of it, is something like a hint: Yes, after the dawn, into which the first dark-light rays of the Easter Mystery shine, will come the sun of a new spiritual knowledge. The human soul will rise from the grave of darkened knowledge into which it too must descend. In the course of its development, the human soul will experience the Easter Mystery, the resurrection of that which is the Christ impulse in its deep, grave-like depths, when it unites with the power that emanates from the contemplation of the Christ Easter Mystery.

So, one would like to say, we feel Goethe's call and, after letting the tragedy of the Easter mystery take effect on us, would like to transform it into the call: May spiritual knowledge appropriate to the future rise in human hearts, in human souls! May human hearts and human souls, after sensing the deepest tragedy of the Easter mystery, feel and experience its depth in their innermost being, and may they experience resurrection in themselves through Christ!

May you, today, through the words that I have taken the liberty of speaking to you, absorb something of the feeling in your soul, so that you are united here, in our building dedicated to spiritual research, so that you, through the power of your souls into the future, something of that resurrection impulse which is so powerfully illustrated in the Easter mystery, and from which we could see how the greatest spirits of that time, which has now passed away, longed for it.

Feel in “Faust” something of what the magical sound of the Easter bells can resonate in the spirit of your souls.

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[^1]: At the words “Christ is Risen,” the black color of the scene transformed into a red one.