Goethe Celebration

And now I will remind you briefly of what was said yesterday, of the two currents of the people. The southern current is concerned with the cultivation of the inner life, from where the spiritual world has been sought in the post-Atlantic period. This current has to struggle in particular with the opponents in one's own soul, with the repulsive hostile astral powers. These powers, which the soul must conquer within itself if it wants to find the realm of the spiritual, which is hidden by the flourishing of the soul world, this realm was symbolically expressed by the fiery dragon, by the dragon in the fire. And a whole series of world views emerged from the fact that the soul ascends into the higher world after conquering the dragon, after conquering the flaming and raging entities in and around man. In northern peoples, we find the penetration through the veil of the outer sensory world. What is effective here is what penetrates into the outer sensory world. We see another symbol emerging. If the human being wants to penetrate through what confronts him in the outer sensory world, he must confront this sensory world strongly. The way in which man must act victoriously against the external sense world, if he wants to penetrate through it into the spiritual, is shown in a poignant way in the image of the old god who sticks his hand and arm into the jaws of the wolf and loses it, so that the old European god of war Ziu is one-handed. This image, which is supposed to represent the victory over the external world, appears in the most diverse ways, in particular in that the esoterically victorious hero puts his hand into a bear's mouth, and that the blood wells out as the surplus ego. The blood is the expression of the ego, and here it is the image of excessive egoism. The dragon is the symbol for the southern view of the world; the hand thrust into the bear's mouth is the symbol for the northern view of the world. Six representatives of the southern world view sat on one side, and six representatives of the northern world view sat on the other. On one side, next to the thirteenth, above the chair was the symbol of the dragon glowing in fire; on the other side, next to the thirteenth, above the chair was the symbol of him who conquers the outer world, who puts his hand into the mouth of the bear so that blood gushes out. This is how Goethe wanted to show each of the chairs. It was a great heroic task to show how the soul, on the one hand, is to penetrate through the pile of the soul's life into the realms behind one's own soul life, and how, on the other hand, the soul is to penetrate through the carpet of the sensory world to the spiritual life outside in the world. That is why you will find these images of the carpet and the pile used here. And so we could go through line by line and find the stages that the human soul must go through to reach the point where one can speak of the human being who has become victorious by rising above himself. The purified soul of Brother Mark is led into this community; he is led into it at the moment when, in the hour of the death of the thirteenth, the twelve are united spiritually and physically. He himself, in his simplicity, should have become the leader of the twelve directions – this is what Goethe wanted to describe. He himself was an initiate who strove towards the unity of religious life, and it was this path that Goethe had set out to describe. But this description could only flourish as far as the forecourt. There, after Brother Mark has allowed the meaningful impressions to take effect on his soul, where he, in a quiet sleep, which is a clairvoyant sleep, finds himself in the world that has been released in him through the meaningful symbols, there he awakens from this clairvoyant sleep. In his awakening, he hears strange sounds, as if the harmonies of the spheres wanted to resound softly. We are given a hint of how the harmonies of the spheres move the bodies in a round dance, in that the symbolized world forces move as in a round dance to the strange music. Then the great vision of the future of humanity dawns. There are three parts to human nature; we call them spirit self, life spirit and spiritual man, or we call them manas, budhi, atma. These are the germs slumbering in our nature, these are the youthful blossoms of the human soul. If we look at them, we can say: they are present today in the germinal stage, and they will unfold in each individuality through the following earthly conditions. Today we see them as slight shadows, as the “young men” in our soul, which will emerge when we are able to look up to where the gaze can see the future of humanity. This future of humanity is before the eyes of Brother Mark. He looks into the future in which the soul forces will develop, which today are the three young men: Manas, Budhi, Atma. They flit by, but they leave behind in the soul that significant sensation which is the germ of the life of spiritual progress. For it is the peculiarity of all spiritual creations of humanity that they leave behind sensations in the soul, and the basic impulse, which represents the germ, is this: I want to participate in the spiritual development of humanity so that the spirit can flow more and more into all external bodies, so that it can descend through the instrument of the human being and inspire the material more and more deeply, then spiritualize it and, as far as it is useful, redeem it. Goethe also wanted to make such a poem of redemption out of his Good Friday poem, which describes the resurrection.