II. Mephistopheles and Earthquakes

GA 107/1909-01-01/p004 ·1909-01-01 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
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The figure of Mephistopheles which will be our starting-point to-day, is familiar to you all from Goethe's Faust. You know that Mephistopheles is a Being—we shall not enter to-day into the question of how far the poetic presentation tallies with the occult facts—a figure who appears in the drama as the seducer and tempter of Faust who, in a certain respect, may be thought of as the representative of man aspiring to reach the heights of existence. In lectures on Goethe I have also indicated what spiritual vistas are revealed in the scene of the “Passage to the Mothers”, where Mephistopheles holds in his hand the key giving access to the dark, nether region where the Mothers dwell. Mephistopheles himself may not enter this region. He merely indicates that in this mysterious realm there is no difference between “below” and “above”:

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Cite: GA 107/1909-01-01/p004 · edition English