Lecture VI

And now let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle, battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born, they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe.