3. Theosophy in Germany a Hundred Years Ago

This depth contains a rich and fertile occult life. And this is none other than that which once pulsated in the works of the great German mystics, Paracelsus, Jakob Böhme and Angelus Silesius. Like a hidden power, this life was contained in the worlds of thought that Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel found there. The way in which, for example, Jakob Böhme had expressed his great spiritual experiences was no longer at the forefront of the prevailing literary discussion, but the spirit of these experiences continued to live on. One can see how, for example, this spirit lived on in Herder. Public discussion led Herder, like Goethe, to the study of Spinoza. In the work which he called “God,” Herder sought to deepen the conception of God in Spinozism. What he contributed to Spinozism was nothing other than the spirit of German mysticism. One could say that, unconsciously to himself, Jakob Böhme and Angelus Silesius were his guides. It is from such hidden sources that we can explain how, in the “Education of the Human Race”, a rationalist spirit such as Lessing was, could have incorporated ideas about reincarnation. The term “unconscious” is, however, only half accurate, because such ideas and intuitions may not have been on the surface of literary discussion in Germany, but they certainly lived a full life in the most diverse “occult societies” and “fraternities”. But of the above, only Goethe can be considered as having been initiated into the most intimate life of such “fraternities”; the others had only a more superficial connection with them. Much of it found its way into their lives and work as inspiration, without their being fully aware of the real sources.