42. Blood is a Very Special Fluid

GA 68b/1906-11-30/p004 ·1906-11-30 · English HighHigh alignmentThis translation's paragraph count matches the German original — the locus maps cleanly to the same paragraph in DE.
Record: listeners' notes. Written from listeners' notes, summaries, or memory rather than a shorthand transcript. The wording is the note-taker's as much as Steiner's: weigh a single striking phrase here far more cautiously than the same phrase in a stenographic volume, and do not rest an argument on one word. Evidence: «Da keine professionellen Stenogramme vorliegen, handelt es sich oftmals um notizenhaft festgehaltene Zusammenfassungen oder Berichte.» (Since no professional shorthand transcripts exist, these are often summaries or reports kept in the form of notes.). The publisher's description of the volume, as mirrored on AnthroWiki (GA 68b). The translation is the maintainer's, not a published one.

Faust enters into a pact with the emissary of hell; Goethe took this motif, like the material of the Faust saga in general, from German legends. The fact that Faust, the representative of humanity striving for the highest, should sign over his soul with blood is already known in the oldest Faust books – as early as the sixteenth century. He has to cut his hand, dip the pen into the blood, write his name, and then the words are said to have appeared in the coagulated blood: “Man, escape” — and yet blood should be something that Mephisto could not stand? On the contrary, it must be something very precious to him; that is Goethe's opinion of this passage in his great poem. From the standpoint of spiritual research, we can approach the significance of blood for life by considering the question: What actually is this blood? — This question is not to be treated scientifically; from the standpoint of spiritual science, we can look more deeply into the nature of man. We see the undercurrent of this saying for the entire historical development of man, so that we can at least answer the question in a certain direction. In doing so, we want to start from a saying that comes from an ancient teacher of the Egyptian secret schools, Hermes Trismegistus:

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Cite: GA 68b/1906-11-30/p004 · edition English