9. Interpretations of Fairy Tales

We initially have three members of the soul: the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul. Just as the eye and ear have their different relationships to the environment, so these three members of the human soul have their very specific relationships to the environment. This makes it possible for human beings in such intermediate states to perceive one or the other part of the spiritual environment, depending on which part of the soul is directed toward the spiritual environment. Let us assume that the sentient soul is directed in particular toward the spiritual environment. Then the human being sees all those spiritual beings in his environment that are intimately connected with the ordinary forces of nature, that which lives, so to speak, in the elements of nature. He does not see the play of the forces of nature itself, but he sees what lives in the play of the forces of nature, in wind and weather and in the other processes of nature. The beings that express themselves there are seen by the human being through his sentient soul. And when the sentient soul is particularly active, it is just as if the human being were still living in the time when he could not yet use his intellectual soul or his consciousness soul. Man is then transported back and sees his surroundings as he saw them in ancient times, when he did not yet know what to do with his intellectual soul and his consciousness soul. But in those ancient times, he himself was still in intimate union with the forces of nature. He himself was still embedded in all the forces of nature. He was a being consisting only of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and a sentient soul. This is how he populated the world. He could do the same things that the beings around him can do now, who live in the lower forces of nature. They appear to him as the expression of what he once was, when human beings were such that they could uproot trees in a rushing windstorm, that they could control the weather, fog, and rain. Thus, the beings around him appear to him as he himself once was in the past, when he was enormously powerful because he had not yet distanced himself so much from the forces of nature. The figures that appear to him—which are, of course, afterimages of his own form—appear to him as humans with enormous strength. These are the “giants.” In such an intermediate state, humans see the giants as real figures, and they represent a very specific type of being to them: humans with enormous strength. But the giants are stupid because they come from a time when they could not yet use the intellectual soul. They are strong and stupid.