9. Interpretations of Fairy Tales

That is the correct beginning of a fairy tale. And every fairy tale must end with: I saw that once; and if what happened in the spiritual world has not perished, has not died, then it still lives today. That is exactly how every fairy tale must be told. You evoke the right feeling for what is being told when you always begin and end in this way. Let us suppose that someone, like our king in the second fairy tale, is looking for a wife. He is looking for a being who, as closely as possible in the human world, reflects what human beings can find as their archetype in the spiritual world, what can be found in the wise working of those powers that can be perceived through the intellectual soul. This cannot be found in outer life. Therefore, he must subordinate the outer human being to the inner human being. On the physical plane, human beings are subject to error. Therefore, he must allow the deeper forces to work if he wants to find something like this. He can do this if he puts himself, even today, into that intermediate state and brings himself into a relationship with the forces that work there. But these people who are the bearers of such forces live in seclusion, where they are not distracted by the great circumstances of life. Therefore, the king must go to his friend, the hermit who lives in poverty and solitude, but who knows the secret of the forces that bind human beings to the spiritual world, and who can give him the sprig of rosemary. And the king cannot find through any external events what can only be decided by his archetypes from the spiritual world. Therefore, he first dreams that the golden bird will come, and he remains in a kind of dream-waking state. And there, through that clear feeling of touching that one has when one is in the spiritual world, he goes through everything I have shown you. He gradually comes to discover, out of those forces that oppose human purity and human dignity, what has been preserved to this day: this pure possibility of happiness in human beings. He cannot be carried there by any of the forces that are bound to the physical world today, but only by a force that appears to him when the intellectual soul, or rather the inner soul force, is directed toward the spiritual world. This appears to him in the image of the magic horse. But this horse in the physical world is only the shadow image of the spiritual being behind it. The harmful soul forces in the physical world, these forces that are embodied in the physical world, have driven the arrow into the horse's body. But the moment these forces are removed, when it is freed from them, the power that enables the king to judge circumstances becomes active, so that if he does not look only at the outward appearance, he can find what is suitable for him. With his ordinary mind, he could travel far and wide in the world and find people here and there, but he would pass by the wife he is looking for, because he does not understand the circumstances that come into play and work against him. The former circumstances have been preserved.