The Origin and Goal of the Human Being
GA 53 — 23 February 1905, Berlin
Goethe's Secret Revelation II
The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
Eight days ago, I pointed out that Goethe's fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily addresses the fundamental question of how humans develop from their lower self to their higher self, and that the fairy tale is based on a grand vision of the future.
How can human beings reach the gate that leads to the spiritual realm? This was a fundamental problem for Goethe. He grasps this problem in a compelling way and attempts in various ways to describe the path of development of the human soul forces.
Starting from this broad perspective, he attempts to show in detail, as a knowledgeable and discerning person, which inner paths human beings must follow.
We have paused at the moment when the old man with the lamp and the serpent meet before the images of the kings, the representatives of the highest spiritual powers. In the temple, we recognize a symbol of the great secret schools that have always existed and still exist today. People are led into these temples, and through the teachings and instructions they receive there, if they truly apply them to themselves, they will gradually progress to the point where they can finally be initiated.
We have seen that before the kings, the serpent whispers a word into the Old Man's ear. We know that this is the solution to the riddle, the most important word, of which Goethe and Schiller said: “The solution lies in the fairy tale itself.”
The Old Man's behavior shows us that the solution lies in this word. For as soon as the serpent has spoken the word, the old man replies with the meaningful words: “The time has come!”
The serpent knows the fourth secret; that is why the old man says: “The time has come!” And when these words are later conveyed to the beautiful lily, she regards them as a ray of hope, as a sign of her redemption.
The old man returns home, where he finds his wife distraught. She tells him that two will-o'-the-wisps had been there, behaving inappropriately, licking the gold off the walls and then scattering it. The pug had eaten some of the gold and died as a result. Then the old woman had to promise to carry the blame for the will-o'-the-wisps to the river. The old man agrees to this, as the will-o'-the-wisps would occasionally prove grateful. First, he has the task of restoring order to the house; he does this by letting his lamp shine and thus covering the walls with gold again.
There seems to be a contradiction here. First, in the old man's conversation with the golden king, it says: Why do you come, since we have light? — The old man replies: You know that I am not allowed to illuminate the darkness. — Man must first acquire an inner light for himself, which he brings to the ancient wisdom; only then can it shine for him. — But then, when the old man has sunk into the west and wanders through the passages of the earth with his lamp, it says: All the passages immediately filled with gold behind him; for his lamp had the wonderful property of transforming all stones into gold, all wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones, and destroying all metals. However, in order to exert this effect, it had to shine all by itself. If there was another light beside it, it only produced a beautiful, bright glow, and all living things were always refreshed by it. — So one can understand this contradiction in that it only shines when its light is met with another light; but then, when no other light is present, it shines especially brightly and transforms everything around it: stones turn to gold, the dead pug turns to onyx. This results in a meaningful interpretation.
Now the old man says to his wife: Go to the ferryman, bring him the three fruits, and carry the dead pug to the beautiful lily; as it kills living things, so it will bring the dead back to life by its touch. - The woman sets off. The basket with the dead pug is very light; it becomes heavy when she adds the fruits. This is a significant detail.
The giant crosses her path; his shadow steals one of the fruits and eats it. The ferryman is not satisfied with the remaining fruits; he must deliver the tribute to the river within twenty-four hours. The old woman commits herself to the river and reaches her hand into it. Her hand now becomes smaller and smaller and black, and finally invisible, while it still feels as if it is there; when the woman brings the tribute, she will get her hand back.
Just as the old woman arrived, the ferryman ferried across a young man who is paralyzed. They finally both cross the bridge formed by the snake at noon into the realm of the lily. They find her surrounded by three servants playing the harp. She is wonderfully beautiful, but sad, because the bird whose song she enjoyed has fled to her from a hawk and has been killed by her touch. She is saddened by this new horror. The old woman also laments her sorrow, but at the same time announces her husband's message that it is time.
Meanwhile, the snake and the will-o'-the-wisps had also arrived. The snake comforts the beautiful lily. The old woman bitterly laments the missing fruit; but nothing that bears flowers and fruit grows in the lily's realm, so she cannot obtain them.
The time for something important seems to have come; the young man tries to embrace the lily and sinks down dead. The snake draws a magic circle around the body to protect it from the decay that would otherwise befall it when the sun goes down. Finally, as the sun sets, the “man with the lamp” arrives, brought by the hawk, as well as the will-o'-the-wisps summoned by the old woman.
Everyone prepares to do their part to bring about a harmonious solution. The will-o'-the-wisps are supposed to open the temple, but they cannot find their way to the temple themselves. The dead youth and the body of the bird are carried away, the snake spreads itself across the river; when they are all across, it declares itself willing to sacrifice itself.
The sacrifice of the snake changes all events. In the past, ancient wisdom was present in all religions given to humanity by initiates. Religions brought refreshment to the souls that joined them with vitality. The Old Man sinks toward the west; he enters the realm of humans. The serpent, the intellect that seeks enlightenment, sinks toward the east, for the spiritual light of the sun always shines from the east, bringing knowledge to the human soul.
The temple resounded, the metal statues rang out—this is an image of the state of the soul, which through sacrifice takes upon itself the laws of the spiritual world. In Devachan, everything resounds, expressing its essence in sound. In the prologue to Faust, Goethe speaks of a resounding sun in heaven—this is Devachan. “The sun resounds in the old way in brotherly spheres, singing in competition.” Goethe means the spiritual sun, for the physical sun does not resound.
As long as the intellect seeks only enlightenment, as long as it acquires more and more inner light through its striving — this can also be achieved through an increasingly enlightened mind —, the old man must have a soul light into which he can send his light if his lamp is to shine for the soul. Through the soul's willingness to sacrifice itself, enlightenment comes to it and everything is now transformed. Everything is now seen in its spiritual state, no longer in its physical state. Here, states are described that the human soul goes through in initiation.
The young man is revived by the sacrifice of the snake, but he still lacks consciousness. The snake's body disintegrates into beautiful gemstones, which the old man throws into the river. From them arises a beautiful permanent bridge to the other shore. Thus, a free passage from the realm of the sensual to that of the spiritual has now been created.
But first we must hear what happens inside the temple. The gate is opened, and again the old man says: It is time! - The temple rises above the river, the ferryman's hut forms a beautiful little temple within the other, a kind of altar. The old man becomes a young man again, and the ferryman and the old man's wife are also rejuvenated. The latter joins the three companions of the beautiful lily, thus forming the fifth in the group. In the further course of the fairy tale, the young man undergoes initiation. The three kings give him what they have to give. The bronze king gives him the sword with the words: The sword in your left hand, your right hand free! The silver king hands him the scepter, saying: Tend the sheep! — while the golden king presses the oak wreath onto his head and admonishes him: Recognize the highest! — He is gifted with strength, beauty, and knowledge.
Now the young man is not only alive, but also gifted with spirit. Before, he followed the old man with the lamp mechanically, as it were, out of the world and into the temple, which is still underground. Then the temple rises upward. The man with the lamp shines his light on the young man; he always remains at his side and finally leads him before the three kings, who present him with their gifts. It then says: “His eyes shone with an inexpressible spirit” — the initiation is complete! And now the young man is allowed to unite with the beautiful lily; he is allowed to embrace the lily in love, their marriage is consummated.
The fourth king collapses into himself after the will-o'-the-wisps have licked all the gold out of him. The giant comes over; at first the young man is dismayed, but the shadow no longer causes any harm. The giant becomes a kind of obelisk; he serves as a sundial, with artificial human figures indicating the time instead of numbers.
The bridge and temple are magnificently built, the people flock to them, the bridge is teeming with travelers, and the temple is the most visited on earth.
That is the end of the fairy tale.
This time is not the present, nor is it the past; but of a distant future of human development, when the consciousness of present-day humanity, which is entirely focused on the sensory world, will have completed the soul's journey described in the fairy tale, where human beings will have attained wisdom and initiation, which not only comprehends things but also controls them; the time when all humanity will be able to receive initiation.
What does all this mean? The old man with the lamp is, as already explained, ancient wisdom, the wisdom that works through intuition, which has the power to develop God's power, not human power, to master things, to transform all things. It imprints the spiritual upon the forces of nature. It understands how to transform stones into gold and destroy metals. These are all qualities attributed to the elixir of life of the true alchemist. This suggests a profound knowledge. Throughout the progression of events depicted in the fairy tale, Goethe envisions a future state of humanity and shows the way to achieve this state. When we observe what is happening around us, Goethe wants to say, we see the development of humanity in a state of constant transformation; nature, too, is constantly changing. It is the task of human beings to penetrate the whole of physical nature with their thoughts.
Through their progress in technology, human beings are able to transform the raw products of nature into something that serves culture. In their art, they breathe their spirit into inanimate marble. Humankind transforms nature into an artistic product; it transforms everything that nature offers it into something that bears its mark. Thus, today, nature is spiritualized by humankind in an intellectual way. Humankind becomes the creator of a higher nature.
This is the development of humanity, this alchemy: little by little, the human spirit is imprinted on everything that is inanimate. Goethe sees, in a broad perspective, a world where everything in nature will be so permeated, so transformed by the human spirit that nothing of the realm of nature will remain, but everything will be transformed by the human spirit, so that everything inanimate will be permeated by it.
This external transformation of the inanimate is represented in the fairy tale by the light that emanates from the old man's lamp and transforms the stones and metals. But when this light sinks into the human soul, it has attained a completely different power; it will extend its realm not only over the dead, but also over the living. By absorbing ancient wisdom and gaining inner knowledge, humans will become capable of attaining entirely different powers. In future times, they will not only rule over the dead; they will also gain dominion over the living. They will also transform the living through their spiritual alchemy. They will absorb the same wisdom that once created the world, the ancient wisdom of the world, and will thereby be able to transform what is dead into living things.
Thus, the wisdom will also transform the plant world, which has become woody and withered. The dying plant world will become silver, a glorious apparition. But the living, sentient, animal world takes a different path; its lower nature is sacrificed, must die in order to ascend to higher levels. What we find described by Jakob Böhme, who was well acquainted with these secrets of the alchemists, comes to pass when he says: “Death is the root of all life” and:
He who does not die before he dies,
Will perish when he dies.
And what Goethe himself puts into words:
And as long as you do not have this
This: Die and become!
You are only a dull guest
On the dark earth.
It is precisely by killing the lower self that man is able to develop his higher self. Man is only able to approach the divine when he has overcome his lower nature.
Only the prepared human being, who has undergone inner purification, catharsis, through hard trials, can grasp the divine. Therefore, the young man who approaches the lily before he is prepared and purified is killed.
Those who lift the veil of Isis, who approach the image of the gods through guilt, must perish. Only after slowly preparing themselves, only after becoming familiar with all the trials, are they able to receive the consecration, the initiation. The young man, as he first appears to us in the fairy tale, has not yet purified his inner self. When he tries to advance with such a state of mind to the realm of the spirit, he is paralyzed, and later, when he tries to force his way in, he is killed by the lily. In “Faust,” we find how Faust can advance through magic into the spiritual realm, where those who are no longer in physical existence on earth are: Paris and Helen. But he is led there by Mephistopheles, not through his own inner soul work, and he is therefore paralyzed, crippled. Only the person who, purified by suffering and pain, carried by serious will and striving, can find entry after being well prepared by the “lamp.” Only then can he hope to come to initiation.
The old man with the lamp returns to the hut. The will-o'-the-wisps have been there in the meantime. He finds his wife in great distress, for the will-o'-the-wisps have behaved improperly toward her and then licked off all the gold that had covered the walls since time immemorial. They have wantonly called her their queen, then shaken off the gold they licked from the walls. The pug has eaten it, and now lies dead. The will-o'-the-wisps are the representatives of the lower, covetous personality; they take up all the gold of knowledge wherever they find it, but in a vain, self-satisfied, self-serving attitude of mind. As a result, they cannot recognize the deep value of the gold; they do not respect it and throw it away again. They scatter their shaken-off gold to the ferryman. The ferryman is frightened by this gold, in which the greedy personality has a share. He says: the stream — pure cosmic astrality — has no use for it; it foams wildly away. But the snake transforms the gold; it serves her in her searching endeavors. She feels that she must bow her head to the earth in order to move forward. The will-o'-the-wisps may have ideas and concepts through the gold, but these are abstractions, they are rigid; the will-o'-the-wisps themselves are unproductive. The snake makes the gold valuable; it glows from within. It makes the gold fruitful; through the gold, its thinking becomes such that it can penetrate the essence of things. In the case of the will-o'-the-wisps, it merely leads to the vertical line, to a state of mind that is flickering, without inner life, losing its connection with what is below.
The animal, the pug, cannot absorb wisdom; it is killed by it. The effect of the lamp is now being tested on it. As long as it lived, the lamp did not have the ability to lead it up to God; this is only possible by killing the lower qualities. The old man with the lamp can transform the inanimate pug into a beautiful onyx. The alternation of brown and black colors in the precious stone makes it a rare work of art — but it cannot bring it to life. Wisdom alone cannot give life; other powers must also come into play. The pug can only come to life if it has passed through death. Death means the destruction of everything that is ungodly in nature, of all base desires. Goethe thus points out that animals are also in the process of evolving, even if not individual animals; the animal species is destined for perfection.
He was a theosophist; thus he knows this ancient wisdom of ascension, of the purification of all beings, which is contained at the core of all religions. The ancient wisdom of the world shines through in all religious systems; its truth shines forth in all the creeds of the various peoples of the earth. Goethe depicts this wisdom in The Old Man. But it is not enough to merely suppress base desires and passions. An even higher wisdom must come; the ancient wisdom will be replaced by an even higher wisdom. This is hinted at in what takes place in the old man's dwelling: “The fire in the hearth had burned down, the old man covered the coals with plenty of ashes, put the glowing pieces of gold aside, and now his little lamp shone again alone in the most beautiful splendor.”
The secret teaching, in which ancient wisdom is hidden, has been a treasure of humanity for many thousands of years. It was kept under the strictest secrecy; only those who were prepared were allowed to see the light of wisdom. The snake that sacrifices itself represents the higher self of man, which comes to knowledge. The lamp must not illuminate the darkness; the wisdom of the teacher must not be given to those who only want to receive it, but to those who bring their inner life to it. But this only applies to the highest enlightenment. The great teachers of humanity, the great initiates, are always active. The work of ancient wisdom always takes place, even when no other light shines, when it is not disturbed. Thus we find deep meaning in this apparent contradiction. Everything that has happened in the course of human development has happened through the working of ancient wisdom. Behind everything that has been done by human beings from culture to culture stand the administrators of this ancient wisdom, the initiates; they direct the destinies and events that take place on the outer plane of world history.
We now consider the wife of the Old Man; here we encounter a female figure. In mysticism, the various states of the human soul are represented by different female figures. The Old Woman is the state of soul of present-day humanity, which remains in sensual life. This does not denote something low; it is the general state of human beings. She is married to the Old Man with the lamp. Humanity is married to ancient wisdom. Ancient wisdom is also at work in humanity today; without it, humanity could not continue to exist. This ancient wisdom has always been connected with sensual humanity.
The woman goes to the ferryman, who represents the forces of nature. She must pay off the debt of the will-o'-the-wisps. Contemporary humanity has a debt to nature. The lower self, the human being who feels gifted only with the body, must pay tribute to the rest of nature, which also belongs to him, even if he does not feel that it belongs to him. The flickering soul life of the will-o'-the-wisps does not recognize this; they cannot grasp such concepts. But nevertheless, the law works; “they feel themselves bound to the ground in an incomprehensible way; it was the most unpleasant sensation they had ever had.” As already mentioned, the will-o'-the-wisps represent lower knowledge. The human being who is gifted with sensuality has become so only by passing through the whole of nature. This is represented in the image of the river.
The river, the flowing stream of passions, must be repaid with “earthly fruits.” The three shell-shaped fruits are the individual shells that enclose the true human being, the actual self. The self originates from the realm that lies beyond the river. In order to reach the astral realm, the river must be crossed; the shelled fruits must be paid to it. The Old Woman — the healthy, understanding human soul power — can bring the ferryman, the representative of the soul powers working unconsciously in man, the wages that are still owed, but not the whole amount; today's general consciousness is not sufficient for that. Therefore, as the Old Woman remains in debt, the sensually perceptible disappears. It can only reappear to new life by penetrating into the spiritual.
The giant has made it impossible for the Old Woman to pay her debt to the ferryman; he has stolen and consumed some of the fruit she wanted to carry to the river. Previously, when the will-o'-the-wisps asked how they could reach the realm of the beautiful lily, the snake said: "The giant can do nothing with his body; his hands cannot lift a straw, his shoulders cannot carry a bundle of rice; but his shadow can do much, indeed everything. That is why he is most powerful at sunrise and sunset, and so in the evening one need only sit on the neck of his shadow; the giant then walks gently toward the shore and the shadow carries the traveler across the water."
The will-o'-the-wisps reject the path across the snake, which wants to form a bridge over the river at midday. — What is the giant? Through the snake, the soul enters the spiritual world, which is able to cross the threshold devotedly through the development of its own soul powers, in bright, clear daytime consciousness. But there is another way, where this bright, clear daytime consciousness has dimmed, in somnambulistic states. There, the human being is powerless, without consciousness of their own. Lower forces are at work in the human being; the soul itself is without its own powers, is powerless. But even so, the human being can experience something of the spiritual world, even if it is erroneous.
Sadness reigns in the realm of the beautiful lily. The lily is deeply unhappy; at its feet lies its last joy, the canary, dead, which used to accompany the lily's songs. The lily mourns; for what the bird was to it, the memory of the sensual, is dead. But the spiritual and sensual realms belong together; harmony only exists where both interpenetrate. However, a new harmonization between the two realms is to occur; therefore, what is the memory of the sensual must pass through death in order to then “become” anew.
In the companions of the lily, we encounter three beings again. We will hear more about this next time. They complement each other with the lily. The old woman represents the present state of consciousness, the intellectual soul of man, while the lily represents the higher consciousness that man attains when he sacrifices himself like the serpent. The old woman is the bright consciousness of day, while the lily is the clairvoyant consciousness that man is to attain. Before humanity reached its present state of consciousness, there were three earlier states of consciousness, which are represented by the three companions. These are states that still occur today in trance, in certain atavisms, dreamlike, dull, but far-reaching states of consciousness. Before acquiring its present waking consciousness, the human being passed through other stages of soul consciousness in which, through being part of nature, it was given harmony between the senses and the spirit. — The three companions sleep while the transformation takes place; they live on in the new state without noticing the transformation. What the other soul forces must first acquire has already been given to them by nature.
When the temple rises, the lily will also bring the old woman with it. Human beings will then unite within themselves all five states of consciousness, those that have preceded and those that are yet to be attained. The highest consciousness that can initially be granted to man is attained by the young man in the last scene.
The hawk has killed the canary. Harmony between the sensual and the spiritual is no longer to be sought in looking back, in the memory of old human values, but in looking forward to the future. The hawk is the herald of the future, the prophetic. It catches the last rays of the setting sun with its purple breast. The sign leads the old man with the lamp, who brings about the transformation and through whom all are led to the temple of initiation. The hawk hovers above this temple and casts the light of the newly rising sun into the temple, so that it is illuminated by a heavenly glow. In this way, the hawk connects a setting world day with a newly rising world day. The hawk is that part of the human soul that senses in advance what will become reality in the future.
Initiation takes place in the temple. There it is shown how the young man is endowed with the three powers: Manas, Buddhi, and Atma. Next time we will see why Goethe represents these three powers through the three kings.
The temple used to be located in the crevices of the earth. In the past, one had to join a secret school, which operated hidden from the outside world, in order to attain the higher mysteries. But the time is coming when the temple of secret teaching will no longer rest in hidden depths, but will rise up, open and free before the whole world, accessible to all people. When will this time come? Let us think of the riddle that the serpent whispers into the ear of the old man in the underground temple; the solution to this riddle is reserved for our time. What did she say to him when he asked her what she had decided? I will sacrifice myself before I am sacrificed.
The time is coming for humanity when people will truly be ready to sacrifice themselves, to enter into the whole of nature, to feel themselves effective in the elements of the whole of nature, not in their narrow individuality; when they will be ready to give up their self as an egoistic individual self and enter into the universal self, knowing themselves to be part of the universal self. — Then the goal of humanity will be achieved, the gate to higher knowledge will open to them, as they give up everything that separates them from the rest of the world. Then the true initiation for humanity can take place.
This is the time when “there are three that rule on earth: wisdom, appearance, and power.” — So says the old man with the lamp who brings about this state. Now the initiation is described: “At the first word, the golden king stood up, at the second, the silver king, and at the third, the bronze king had slowly risen when the composite king suddenly sat down awkwardly.” The first three kings, the golden, the silver, and the bronze, are the three highest powers of man in their purity. — In these three forms, man experiences the divine within himself. Only when man can survey the powers within himself and in their worlds of origin with complete purity and sincerity is he ready for initiation. These are the pure, divine powers that are experienced in human beings as human thinking, human feeling, and human willing. The course of the fairy tale depicts the purification of these powers from the personal, the lower.
Today, all of this still lives chaotically in human beings. As long as human beings are still undeveloped, chaos reigns in the interaction of these powers. The fourth king is thus a representative of present-day humanity; but he collapses into himself, which means that this state of humanity will be replaced by the new state represented by the initiation of the young man. Everything will be transformed. Then what the hawk prophetically foretells will come to pass, as he catches the rays of the sun that will shine on the new world day: “The king, the queen, and their companions appeared in the dawning vault of the temple, illuminated by a heavenly glow”; peace will reign, the harmony that will bring rest in the universal consciousness of humanity.
The representative of humanity, the young man, is gifted with this new consciousness of humanity in the temple. He is gifted with a new life; before, he was as if mechanically guided by other forces, not his own. Now that he has gained these new powers, he can marry the beautiful lily, the clairvoyant consciousness, and the here and the beyond can be connected by the self-sacrificing serpent, which forms the foundation for the bridge on which all people can wander back and forth.
The young man receives the power to do this from the three kings. He is first led by the old man to the third, the bronze king. From him he receives the sword in a bronze sheath, which is the symbol of the highest power of man: Atma. “The sword in the left hand, the right hand free!” cries the king. In the left hand should be that which constitutes human strength, where it serves not for fighting, but only for defense. The right hand should be free for work, for all service to humanity. — The silver king endows the young man with what the Buddhi can give to man: wisdom in harmony with feeling is true human love. With this love, the young man should live among people and tend the sheep. The golden king presses the oak wreath onto the young man's head and says: “Recognize the highest!” The young man receives knowledge in its most perfect form, Manas, through the golden king. Now the marriage to the beautiful lily can be concluded, and the union is under the sign of love: “Love does not rule, but it forms, and that is more.”
The subconsciously acting soul forces — the giant — have lost their destructive power; the giant causes harm for the last time as he staggers across the bridge to the temple. He is held down to the ground and is now only a pointer to a past cycle of humanity, a colossal statue that, like a sundial, shows the passing of hours and days and cycles of humanity.
If we want to summarize what Goethe wanted to express with this fairy tale, we can say that Goethe wanted to show, in rich poetic images, the development and ultimate redemption of the individual human being and the entire human race. The fairy tale contains the secret of the passing away of the lower human being and the becoming of the higher human being, and of the state of final union with the divine, which is sought as the highest goal in all mysticism as bliss, as resting in bliss, as union with God. When this moment of sacrifice has come, when “die and become” has become a reality, then not only will the spiritual be able to become sensual, but also the sensual will be able to become spiritual. When this time has come, it will not only be possible for individual students of occultism, individual enlightened mystics, to reach the temple, but all people will walk to it, across and over, into the realm of the spirit.
Goethe alluded to this great moment in the development of humanity in his fairy tale. There is much more to say about what is contained in this fairy tale. But much can only be hinted at. And if one can otherwise say of the poet:
Whoever wants to understand the poet
Must go to the poet's land
then when we speak of Goethe, we must realize that we are applying the saying to Goethe in such a way that for Goethe, his land is the land of spiritual reality. Only those who know the mysteries and the knowledge of the mysteries can fully penetrate the rich content of this fairy tale. What has been only hinted at here, however, can serve as a guide to an ever more intimate understanding of the content of this fairy tale.