The whole scene, third Act

MARY:
I bring you the child,
It needs a word
From your mouth.

BENEDICTUS:
My child, from now on
You shall come to me every eveningAnd receive from me
The word that shall guide you
Into the realm of sleep.
Is that what you want?

CHILD:
I want it so very much.

BENEDICTUS:
For this evening,
Fill your mind,
Until sleep envelops you,
With the power of the word:
The forces of light carry me
To the house of the spirit.
(Child exits.)

MARY:
And now that this child's destiny
Is to flow into the future
In the shadow of your fatherly grace,
It is also time that, questioning,
That soul approaches the guide,
Who has become his mother,
If not through blood ties,
Then through the powers of fate.
You showed me the way
That I should lead him
From that day on
When I found him
Left at my door
By his unknown mother.
And miraculously
The rules by which I
Was allowed to guide him for years
In accordance with your wisdom.
The powers of his soul
And also of his body,
Which lay dormant in his being,
Came to light.
It seemed as if your instruction
Had sprung from those realms
In which the child's soul dwelt
Before it built its bodily shell.
As adults, we saw human hope,
Which shone brighter with each new day.
As adults, we saw the hope of humanity,
Which shone brighter with each new day.
You know how difficult
It was for me to win
The child's affection at first.
He grew up in my care,
And it was nothing more than habit
That first bound his soul to mine.
It stood by me, feeling
That I provided it with the means
For the growth of body and soul.
So it was that your wisdom
Worked only for itself
And my mind worked no differently
Than as the instrument of wisdom.
The time came when
The child's heart awoke
To love for its nurse.
An external cause brought
The change in this life.
The seer entered our circle.
The child liked to be around her,
And many beautiful words
It learned under her spell.
Then there came a moment
When enthusiasm seized
This wondrous woman,
And the child could see
The light glimmering in her eyes.
Shaken to the core
The young soul felt itself.
She came to me with her fear.
From that hour on
The child was devoted to me
With warm love.
But since conscious feeling
And not just instinct
Received the gifts of life from me.
And the warmer the young heart
Trembled when his gaze
Met mine,
Your words of wisdom lost
Their rightful fruitfulness.
Much that had previously matured in the child
Was bound to wither away.
And so it seemed that this being
Was repeating what had proved so terrible In the friend.
I seem more and more
To be a dark mystery to myself.
You cannot defend me Against the anxious question of life:
Why do I ruin friends and children
You cannot defend me
From the anxious question of life:
Why do I corrupt my friend and child,
When lovingly I attempt
To perform on them
The work that only spiritual wisdom
Allows the heart to recognize as good.
You have often pointed me
To that lofty truth,
That appearances spread
On the surface of our lives.
But I must have clarity,
If I am to bear this fate,
Which is cruel and does evil.

BENEDICTUS:
Here, in this circle,
A knot is forming
From the threads
Which karma spins
In the becoming of worlds.
O friend, your sufferings
Are not only the consequence of your own fate.
When I had climbed the step
To be able to live
In those primeval realms,
Where high spirits weave
The web of worldly existence,
A divine being came to me,
Who was to descend
Into the realms of Earth and dwell
In the flesh of a human being.
At this turning point in time
Our human karma demands this.
A great step in the course of the world
Is only possible when gods
Endure the fate of humans.
The eyes of the spirit can unfold,
Which germinate in human souls,
Only when a god has planted the seed
In a human body.
But I was given the task
Of finding that human being
Who in his own being
Was to be the bearer of God.
So I was to connect
The deeds of heaven
With a human being.
My spiritual eye searched.
It fell upon you.
Your life had prepared you
To be a mediator of salvation.
In many lives you had
Acquired receptivity
For all that is great,
That live in human hearts.
The noble essence of beauty,
The highest demand of virtue,
You carried as a spiritual inheritance
In your tender soul.
And what your eternal self
Brought into existence through birth,
Became ripe fruit
In your young years.
You did not ascend too early
To steep spiritual heights,
And so you did not develop
The urge to enter the realm of spirits,
Before you had fully grasped
The innocent joys of the senses.
Your soul learned to recognize
Earthly love and earthly wrath,
When all spiritual inquiry
Was still far from your thoughts.
Enjoying beautiful nature,
Picking the noble fruits of the arts
Was the richness of your life.
You were allowed to laugh cheerfully,
As only children laugh,
Who had never been touched
By the shadows of life.
You learned to recognize human happiness
And to lament suffering
In times
When even your ancestors
Had no inkling to question
The origin of happiness and suffering.
A soul of such disposition
Enters earthly existence
As the ripe fruit of many lives,
And its childishness is blossom,
Not root of the spiritual being.
Only such a soul could
Be chosen by me
As the bearer of the god Whom fate
Has determined To be the active force
For our human world.
And now recognize why
Your being transforms into its opposite image
If it wants to
Pour itself into other beings.
The spirit within you works
In everything that can ripen in humans
As fruit
For the realm of eternity.
It will kill many things
In the realm of temporal existence.
But victims of its death,
They will scatter seeds
In their deepest essence
Of the higher life that
Blooms from lowly dying.

MARIA:
So that is how it is with me.
You solve the dark riddle of my life.
And I sense clarity
In that twilight
Which at this hour
Seizes my soul.
Yes, clarity, I feel it,
But I curse it, this clarity,
And I curse you,
Who shaped me into a tool
For your wild arts.
Until this hour,
I have never doubted
Your spiritual greatness,
But this one moment is enough
To topple in my heart
The throne I built for you,
And as creatures of hell,
I recognize your gods.
I must seduce others,
Because you seduced me first.
I want to flee from you
To distant places, where
The voice that was once
The herald of salvation to me
Will not die away.
I know that there are distant places
Where my ears cannot hear
The false doctrine of God,
Which your lips proclaim —
But these distant places must be so close
That my curses can still reach you.
The warmth of my own blood,
You have stolen it from me,
To give to your false god,
What must have been mine.
Oh, this warmth of blood,
It will burn you
At the root of your hellish arts.
I had to believe your deception,
And so that I could,
You created me yourself
As a deception.
I saw how the powers of my being
So often changed into their opposite;
So change what love
My heart turned to you,
Now into wild hatred's fire.
I hate Satan's powers.
But I will strive
That love for his ferocity
Awakens in me,
And I will make a pact
With the most hideous of spirits,
To find such fire
That will burn you
With all your hellish arts.
I fly... ah — —
(Falls down.)

BENEDICTUS:
My son, you too are approaching
Decision and fulfillment.
In this hour,
The voice and also the feeling die within you.
You saw your dear friend
Flee from us with wild words.
The soul soars in the heights;
Only the mortal image of your friend
Spoke at that moment.
This shell had to be abandoned
By the noble being herself,
So that the adversary
Who wants to destroy me
The work that is incumbent upon me
For the future of mankind
For the future of humanity
And also for this human being.
And if I could hold
The curses and imprecations,
Yes, even those she spoke,
As realities
Even for just a few seconds,
All my wisdom
Would immediately vanish into nothingness.
And that curse,
Which she has placed upon me,
Seems to you like a dagger
That pierces your own heart.
You must choose.
In this hour, you may
Follow her and bind yourself
To delusion and delusional beings.
I must not prevent you.
I cannot prevent you.
But know that she who just cursed
Was not the beloved being
To whom you have been attached until now.
The terrible hour had to come for her too,
When the shell of her being
Was penetrated
By Lucifer's deceit,
And his dark power
And his dark power,
She cursed in the noblest human body.
The friend who was given
To you in her,
In this hour
Left the shell of the gods.
She should recognize
What humans can become,
Even if the fullest measure of nobility
Lives in them,
The self leaves the shell.
They become Lucifer's prey.
But this noble human being
The essence of the self
Will never see it disappear.
But in order to find completely
The essence of God within,
She had to see all the depths
Into which a human being
Is capable of plunging. —
The God within them will live
In the most sublime depths of the soul,
Since the eyes of their spirit
Recognize in the body itself
The dark guardian of hell.
And should they be spared
The cruelly dark moment,
They would never have been allowed
To ascend to the heights of the gods
And bring the blessings of the gods
Down to the valley of the earth.
But you, my son,
Have seen what is temporal
In that being To whom all your love shines
Fall into darkness.
Because gods spoke to you
From their mouths, you had to
Hear the prince of hell himself
From this voice as well.
You will now surely find
The way to her true nature.
What flowed from her in light
Became darkness within you.
So let it flow, too,
What as darkness from her
Has just revealed itself to you,
And it will turn back
The ruin she brought you,
Into blessing, and what of death
She brought to your soul,
Will be life to you,
When you see it shining back
At her death —.
Here
In this circle
A knot is formed from the threads
That karma spins
In the becoming of the world.
Do you have the strength in this hour
To seek your friend
Through the deception of her counter-image,
Will keep your self
In your own being.
Ignite your full power
With words that sound to you
Through my mouth
From the highest heights of the spirit.
They will carry your soul
To the free heights of the gods:
The essence of light, it shines
Through the vastness of space.
The blessing of love, it warms
The succession of times.
And messengers of the spirit
Marry the light
Of love's soulfulness.
And longing must grant
The favor of the noble two;
It draws forth
Power and strength;
And wisdom unites with them
And in many ways
Allows the image of man to be formed.

O spirits, speak
Into this man's dead soul
And awaken it from its nothingness
To a new zest for life.

His thoughts rise
Into primordial depths —
What he thought as shadows,
What he experienced as phantoms,
Floats away from the world of forms,
From whose abundance
People thinking
Dream in shadows —
From whose abundance
People seeing
Live in phantoms.