Fragmentary drafts for the first, second, fifth, seventh, eighth, and tenth images

STRADER: It seems not entirely understandable what can move me To speak with love of the mystical covenant and to defend its actions, even though I must be well aware of what mechanics means as an understanding of the interplay of forces in the universe as a whole. I must confess that it is precisely that fundamental feeling with which I feel connected to the forces Which is my own work, Has repeatedly compelled me to seek The creative power of the spirit in the natural context. One can look at the flower of a plant That one holds in one's hands, But one can only understand it When one becomes aware of how, without roots, Their essence is only appearance And not its truth. Thus all natural mechanics are only the appearance of truth And the full truth can only be found in spiritual knowledge. That is why souls must also become desolate, Those who only want to grasp things What proves to be mechanical about them. I therefore consider a science to be void That remains without ascending to spiritual knowledge. But now a thinking of the spirit Must soon lose its living essence If it is unable to drink From the fountain of life on the mystic path. If I had not felt connected with my whole soul To the essence of a mechanism of power So often, I might be able to think As that speaker who reproaches me demands. What I have always felt in my work Is a bond that unites my own soul With mechanisms of power Which sprang from this soul itself. Those who see their own soul's life Pouring into the play of forces And know themselves as soul beings beside their work, Can truly not think of the mechanism of nature As soulless. Behind all sensory existence, beings of wisdom and powers of will stand alive before him. But how little he understands of my soul, who seeks it only in my mechanisms. He knows how I think, but he does not know what I experience.