Fairy Tales in the Light of Spiritual Investigation

GA 62/1913-02-06/p024 ·1913-02-06 · English MediumMedium alignmentSome paragraph re-numbering between this translation and the German original — the locus may slip by a paragraph or two.
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In fairy tales we feel soul moods reverberate that do absolutely in fact take place in the depths of the soul, such that the human soul is actually not only cognizant of them in certain periods of life, but simply by virtue of being human, irrespective of being a child or an adult. Thus, every human soul can sense something re-echo of what it experiences without comprehending it—not even raising it into consciousness—connected with what in the fairy tale works on the soul as food works on the taste buds. For the soul, the fairy tale then becomes something similar to the nutritional substance as applied to the organism. It is fascinating to seek out in deep soul experiences what re-echoes in various fairy tales. It would of course be quite a major undertaking actually to examine individual fairy tales in this regard, collected as they are in such numbers. This would require a lot of time. But what can perhaps be illustrated with a few fairy tales can be applied to all of them, in so far as they are genuine.

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Cite: GA 62/1913-02-06/p024 · edition English