Fairy Tales in the light of Spiritual Investigation
GA 62
6 February 1913, Berlin
I. Fairy Tales in the light of Spiritual Investigation
A number of things make it seem precarious to speak about fairy tales in the light of spiritual investigation. One of them is the difficulty of the subject itself, since the sources of a genuine and true fairy tale mood have in fact to be sought at deep levels of the human soul. The methods of spiritual research often described by me must follow convoluted paths before these sources can be discovered. Genuine fairy tales originate from sources lying at greater depths of the human soul than is generally supposed, speaking to us magically out of every epoch of humanity's development.
A second difficulty is that, in regard to what is magical in fairy tales, one has to a considerable extent the feeling that the original, elementary impression, indeed the essential nature of the fairy tale itself is destroyed through intellectual observations and a conceptual penetration of the fairy tale. If one has the justified conviction in regard to explanations and commentaries that they destroy the immediate living impression the fairy tale ought to make in simply letting it work on one, then one would far rather not accept explanations in place of their subtle and enchanting qualities. These well up from seemingly unfathomable sources of the folk-spirit or of the individual human soul-disposition. It is really as though one were to destroy the blossom of a plant, if one intrudes with one's power of judgment in what wells up so pristinely from the human soul as do these fairy tale compositions.
Even so, with the methods of spiritual science it proves possible nonetheless to illumine at least to some extent those regions of the soul-life from which fairy tale moods arise. Actual experience would seem to gainsay the second reservation as well. Just because the origin of fairy tales has to be sought at such profound depths of the human soul, one arrives as a matter of course at the conviction that what may be offered as a kind of spiritual scientific explanation remains something that touches the source so slightly after all as not to harm it by such investigation. Far from being impoverished, one has the feeling that everything of profound significance in those regions of the human soul remains so new, unique and original that one would like best of all to bring it to expression oneself in the form of a fairy tale of some kind. One senses how impossible any other approach is in speaking out of these hidden sources.
It may be regarded as entirely natural that someone like Goethe who attempted, alongside his artistic activity, to penetrate deeply into the background, into the sources of existence, in having something to communicate of the soul's profoundest experiences, did not resort to theoretical discussion. Instead, having gained insight into the underlying sources, he makes use of the fairy tale once again for the soul's most noteworthy experiences. This is what Goethe did in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, wanting, in his fashion, to bring to expression those profound experiences of the human soul that Schiller set forth in a more philosophical-abstract form in his Letters Concerning the Aesthetic Education of the Human Race. It lies in the nature of what is magical in fairy tales that explanations cannot ultimately destroy their productive mood. For, whoever is able to arrive at the aforementioned sources from the standpoint of spiritual investigation, discovers a peculiar fact. (If I were to say all that I should like to say about the nature of fairy tales, I would have to hold many lectures. Hence, it will only be possible today to put forward a few indications and results of investigation.)
That is to say, whoever seeks to come to the aforementioned sources from the standpoint of spiritual research finds that these fairy tale sources lie far deeper down in the human soul than do the sources of creativity and artistic appreciation otherwise. This applies even with regard to the most compelling works of art—the most moving tragedies for instance. Tragedy depicts what the human soul can experience in connection with powers the poet tells us derive from the tremendous destiny uplifting it, while overwhelming the individual. The shock-waves of tragedy derive from this destiny, but such that we can say: The entanglements, the threads spun in the course of the tragedy and unraveled again are inherent in definite experiences of the human soul in the external world. These are in many respects hard to foresee, since for the most part we penetrate only with difficulty into the particular make up of the individual. Still, they can be surmised and fathomed in sensing what takes place in the human soul in consequence of its relation to life. In experiencing something tragic, one has the feeling, in one way or another, a particular soul is entangled in a particular destiny, as this is presented to us.
The sources of fairy tales and of the moods out of which they arise lie deeper than these entanglements of tragedy. The tragic, as well as other forms of artistic expression, results for us, we may feel, in seeing the human being—for instance at a particular age, a particular period of life—at the mercy of certain blows of destiny. In being affected by a tragedy, we necessarily assume that the human being is led to the corresponding involvements of destiny as a result of particular inner experiences. We sense the need to understand the specific human beings presented to us in the tragedy with their particular sets of experiences. A certain circumscribed range of what is human comes to meet us in the tragedy, as in other works of art.
In approaching fairy tales with sympathetic understanding, we have a different feeling than the one just described, since the effect of the fairy tale on the human soul is an original and elemental one, belonging to effects that are hence unconscious. In sensing what comes to meet us in fairy tales we find something altogether different from what a human being in a particular life situation may become involved in. It is not a matter of a narrowly circumscribed range of human experience, but of something lying so deep, and so integral to the soul, as to be “generally human.” We cannot say, a particular human soul at a particular age of life, in a certain situation, encounters something of the kind. Rather, what comes to expression in the fairy tale is so deeply rooted in the soul that we identify with it no matter whether as a child in the first years of life, whether in our middle years, or whether in having grown old.
What comes to expression in the fairy tale accompanies us throughout our lives in the deepest recesses of the soul. Only, the fairy tale is often a quite freewheeling and playful, pictorial expression of underlying experiences. The aesthetic, artistic enjoyment of the fairy tale may be as far removed for the soul from the corresponding inner experience—the comparison can be ventured—as say, the experience of taste on the tongue when we partake of food is removed from the complicated, hidden processes this food undergoes in the total organism in contributing to building up the organism. What the food undergoes initially evades human observation and knowledge. All the human being has is the enjoyment in tasting. The two things have seemingly little to do with each other in the first instance, and from how a particular food tastes, no one is capable of determining what purpose this food has in the whole life-process of the human organism. What we experience in the aesthetic enjoyment of the fairy tale is likewise far removed from what takes place deep down in the unconscious, where what the fairy tale radiates and pours forth out of itself joins forces with the human soul. The soul has a deep-rooted need to let the substance of the fairy tale run through its spiritual “veins,” just as the organism has a need to allow the nutrients to circulate through it.
Applying the methods of spiritual research that have been described for penetrating the spiritual worlds, at a certain stage one acquires knowledge of spiritual processes that continually take place quite unconsciously in the depths of the human soul. In normal everyday life, such spiritual processes unfolding in the soul's depths surface only occasionally in faint dream experiences caught by day-consciousness. Awakening from sleep under especially favorable circumstances, one may have the feeling: You are emerging out of a spiritual world in which thinking, in which a kind of pondering has taken place, in which something has happened in the deep, unfathomable background of existence. Though apparently similar to daytime experiences, and intimately connected with one's whole being, this remains profoundly concealed for conscious daily life.
For the spiritual researcher who has made some progress and is capable of initial experiences in the world of spiritual beings and spiritual facts, things often proceed in much the same way. As far as one advances, one still arrives again and again, so to speak, only at the boundary of a world in which spiritual processes approach one out of the deep unconscious. These processes, it must be said, are connected with one's own being. They can be apprehended almost the same way as a fata morgana appearing to one's spiritual gaze, not revealing themselves in their totality.
That is one of the strangest experiences—this peering into the unfathomable spiritual connections within which the human soul stands. In attentively following up these intimate soul occurrences, it turns out that conflicts experienced in the depths of the soul and portrayed in works of art, in tragedies, are relatively easy to survey, as compared to the generally-human soul conflicts of which we have no presentiment in daily life. Every person does nonetheless undergo these conflicts at every age of life.
Such a soul conflict discovered by means of spiritual investigation takes place for example, without ordinary consciousness knowing anything of it, every day on awakening, when the soul emerges from the world in which it unconsciously resides during sleep and immerses itself once again in the physical body. As already mentioned, ordinary consciousness has no notion of this, and yet a battle takes place every day in the soul's foundations, glimpsed only in spiritual investigation. This can be designated the battle of the solitary soul seeking its spiritual path, with the stupendous forces of natural existence, such as we face in external life in being helplessly subjected to thunder and lightning—in experiencing how the elements vent themselves upon the defenseless human being.
Though arising with stupendous force, even such rare occurrences of Nature experienced by the human being are a trifling matter as compared with the inner battle taking place unconsciously upon awakening. Experiencing itself existentially, the soul has now to unite itself with the forces and substances of the physical body in which it immerses itself, so as to make use of the senses and of the limbs once again, these being ruled by natural forces. The human soul has something like a yearning to submerge itself in the purely natural, a longing that fulfils itself with every awakening. There is at the same time, as though a shrinking back, a sense of helplessness as against what stands in perpetual contrast to the human soul—the purely natural, manifesting in the external corporeality into which it awakens. Strange as it may sound that such a battle takes place daily in the soul's foundations, it is nonetheless an experience that does transpire unconsciously. The soul cannot know precisely what happens, but it experiences this battle every morning, and each and every soul stands under the impression of this battle despite knowing nothing of it—through all that the soul inherently is, the whole way it is attuned to existence.
Something else that takes place in the depths of the soul and can be apprehended by means of spiritual investigation presents itself at the moment of falling asleep. Having withdrawn itself from the senses and from the limbs, having in a sense left the external body behind in the physical sense-world, what then approaches the human soul may be called a feeling of its own “inwardness.” Only then does it go through the inner battles that arise unconsciously by virtue of its being bound to external matter in life—and having to act in accordance with this entanglement. It feels the attachment to the sense world with which it is burdened as a hindrance, holding it back morally. Other moral moods can give us no conception of what thus transpires unconsciously after falling asleep, when the human soul is alone with itself. And all sorts of further moods then take their course in the soul when free of the body, in leading a purely spiritual existence between falling asleep and waking up.
However, it should not be supposed that these events taking place in the soul's depths are not there in the waking state. Spiritual investigation reveals one very interesting fact in particular, namely that people not only dream when they think they do, but all day long. The soul is in truth always full of dreams, only the human being does not notice this, since day consciousness is stronger as compared to dream consciousness. Just as a weaker light is drowned out by a stronger one, so what continually takes place in the course of waking consciousness as an ongoing dream-experience is drowned out by day consciousness. Though not generally aware of it, we dream all the time. And out of the abundance of dream experiences, of dreams that remain unconscious, presenting themselves as boundless in relation to the experiences of day consciousness, those dreams of which the human being does actually become conscious, separate themselves off. They do so much as a single drop of water might separate itself from a vast lake. But this dreaming activity that remains unconscious is a soul-spiritual experience. Things take place there in the soul's depths. Such spiritual experiences of the soul located in unconscious regions take their course much as chemical processes, of which we are unconscious, take place in the body.
Connecting this with a further fact arising from these lectures, additional light may be shed on hidden aspects of the soul-life spoken of here. We have often stressed—this was emphasized again in the previous lecture—that in the course of humanity's development on the earth, the soul-life of human beings has changed. Looking back far enough, we find that primeval human beings had quite different experiences from those of the human soul today. We have already spoken of the fact—and will do so again in coming lectures—that the primeval human being in early periods of evolution had a certain original clairvoyance. In the manner of looking at the world normal today in the waking state, we receive sense impressions from an external stimulus. We connect them by means of our understanding, our reason, feeling and will. This is merely the consciousness belonging to the present, having developed out of older forms of human consciousness. Applying the word in the positive sense, these were clairvoyant states. In an entirely normal way, in certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, human beings were able to experience something of spiritual worlds. Thus, even if not yet fully self-conscious, human beings were by no means as unfamiliar in their normal consciousness with experiences taking place in the depths of the soul, such as those we have spoken of today.
In ancient times human beings perceived more fully their connection with the spiritual world around them. They saw what takes place in the soul, the events occurring deep within the soul, as connected with the spiritual in the universe. They saw spiritual realities passing through the soul and felt themselves much more related to the soul-spiritual beings and facts of the universe. This was characteristic of the original clairvoyant state of humanity. Just as it is possible today to come to a feeling such as the following only under quite exceptional conditions, in ancient times it occurred frequently—not only in artistic, but also in quite primitive human beings.
An experience of a quite vague and indefinite nature may lie buried in the depths of the soul, not rising into consciousness—an experience such as we have described. Nothing of this experience enters the conscious life of day. Something is nonetheless there in the soul, just as hunger is present in the bodily organism. And just as one needs something to satisfy hunger, so one needs something to satisfy this indefinite mood deriving from the experience lying deep within the soul. One then feels the urge to reach either for an existing fairy tale, for a saga, or if one is of an artistic disposition, perhaps to elaborate something of the kind oneself. Here it is as though all theoretical words one might make use of amount to stammering; and that is how fairy tales arise. Filling the soul with fairy tale pictures in this way constitutes nourishment for the soul as regards the “hunger” referred to.
In past ages of humanity's development every human being still stood closer to a clairvoyant perception of these inner spiritual experiences of the soul, and with their simpler constitution people were able—in sensing the hunger described here far more directly than is the case today—to seek nourishment from the pictures we possess today in the fairy tale traditions of various peoples. The human soul felt a kinship with spiritual existence. Without understanding them, it sensed more or less consciously the inner battles it had to undergo, giving pictorial form to them in pictures bearing only a distant similarity to what had taken place in the soul's substrata. Yet there is a palpable connection between what expresses itself in fairy tales and these unfathomable experiences of the human soul.
Ordinary experience shows us that a childlike soul disposition frequently creates something for itself inwardly, such as a simple “companion”—a companion really only there for this childlike mind, accompanying it nonetheless and taking part in the various occurrences of life. Who does not know, for instance, of children who take certain invisible friends along with them through life? You have to imagine that these “friends” are there when something happens that pleases the child, participating as invisible spirit companions, soul companions, when the child experiences this or that. Quite often one can witness how badly it affects the child's soul disposition when a “sensible” person comes, hears the child has such a soul companion, and now wants to talk it out of this soul companion, even perhaps considering it salutary for the child to be talked out of it. The child grieves for its soul companion. And if the child is receptive for soul-spiritual moods, this grieving signifies still more. It can mean the child begins to ail, becoming constitutionally infirm. This is an altogether real experience connected with profound inner occurrences of the human soul.
Without dispersing the “aroma” of the fairy tale, we can sense this simple experience in the fairy tale which tells of the child and the toad, related by the Brothers Grimm.1in “Tales About Toads” They tell us of the girl who always has a toad accompany her while eating. The toad, however, only likes the milk. The child talks to the animal as though with a human being. One day she wants the toad to eat some of her bread as well. The mother overhears this; she comes and strikes the animal dead. The child ails, sickens, and dies.
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.
Let us take another fairy tale also collected by the Brothers Grimm, the fairy tale of “Rumpelstiltskin.” A miller asserts to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold and is requested to have her come to the castle, so the king can ascertain her art for himself. The daughter goes to the castle. She is locked in a room and given a bundle of straw with which to demonstrate her art. In the room she is quite helpless. And while she is in this helpless state, a manikin appears before her. He says to her: “What will you give me, if I spin the straw into gold for you?” The miller's daughter gives him her necklace and the little man thereupon spins the straw into gold for her. The king is quite amazed, but he wants still more, and she is to spin straw into gold once again. The miller's daughter is again locked in a room, and as she sits in front of all the straw, the little man appears and says, “What will you give me, if I spin the straw to gold for you?” She gives him a little ring, and the straw is once more spun into gold by the little man. But the king wants still more. And when she now sits for the third time in the room and the little man again appears, she has nothing further to give him. At that the little man says, if she becomes queen one day, she is to grant him the first child she gives birth to. She promises to do so. And when the child is there, and the little man comes and reminds her of her promise, the miller's daughter wants a postponement. The little man then says to her: “If you can tell me what my name is, you can be free of your promise.” The miller's daughter sends everywhere, inquiring after every name. In learning every name, she wants to find out what the little man's name is. Finally, after a number of vain attempts, she actually succeeds in discovering his name—Rumpelstiltskin.
With really no work of art other than fairy tales does one have such a sense of joy over the immediate picture presented, while yet knowing of the profound inner soul-experience out of which the fairy tale is born. Though the comparison may be trivial, it is perhaps still apt: Just as a person can be aware of the chemistry of food and still find a bite to eat flavorful, so it is possible to know something of the profound inner experiences of soul that are only experienced, not “known,” and that come to expression in fairy tale pictures in the manner indicated. In fact, unknowingly the solitary human soul—it is after all alone with itself during sleep, as also in the rest of life even when united with the body—feels and experiences, albeit unconsciously, the whole disparate relation in which it finds itself in regard to its own immense tasks, its place within the divine order of the world.
The human soul does indeed feel how little it is capable of in comparing its ability with what external Nature can do, in transforming one thing into another. Nature is really a great magician, such as the human soul itself would like to be. In conscious life it may light-heartedly look past this gulf between the human soul and the wise omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit of Nature. But at deeper levels of soul experience, the matter is not done away with so easily. There, the human soul would necessarily go to rack and ruin if it were not after all to feel within it a more profound being inside the initially perceptible one, a being it can rely on, of which it can say to itself: As imperfect as you now still are—this being within you is cleverer. It is at work within you; it can carry you to the point of attaining the greatest skill. It can grant you wings, enabling you to see an endless perspective spread out before you, leading into a limitless future. You will be capable of accomplishing what you cannot as yet accomplish, for within you there is something that is infinitely more than your “knowing” self. It is your loyal helper. You must only gain a relation to it. You have really only to be able to form a conception of this cleverer, wiser, more skillful being than you yourself are, residing within you.
In calling to mind this discourse of the human soul with itself, this unconscious discourse with the more adroit part of the soul, we may feel reverberating in this fairy tale of “Rumpelstiltskin” what the soul experiences in the miller's daughter who cannot spin straw into gold, but finds in the little man a skillful, loyal helper. There, deep in the substrata of the soul—in pictures, the distinctive aura of which is not destroyed through knowing their origin—the profound inner life of soul is given.
Or, let us take another fairy tale.—Please do not take it amiss, however, if I connect this with matters having an apparently personal tinge, though not at all meant in a personal sense. The essential point will become clear in adding a few observations.
In my Esoteric Science you will find a description of world evolution. It is not my intention to talk specifically about this now—that can be left for another occasion. In this world evolution our earth is spoken of as having gone through certain stages as a planet in the cosmos, comparable to human lives that follow one upon the other. Just as the individual human being goes through lives that follow each other sequentially, so our earth has gone through various planetary life-stages, various incarnations. In spiritual science, we speak, for certain reasons, of the earth as having gone through a kind of “Moon” existence before beginning its “Earth” existence, and prior to this a kind of “Sun” existence. Thus, we may speak of a Sun-existence, a planetary predecessor existence of our Earth-existence, as having been present in a primeval past—an ancient Sun, with which the earth was still united. Then, in the course of evolution a splitting off of Sun and earth took place. From what had originally been “Sun,” the moon separated itself off as well, and our sun of today, which is not the original Sun, but only a piece of it, so to speak. Thus, we may speak, as it were, of the original Sun and of its successor, the sun of today. And we may also refer to the moon of today as a product of the old Sun. If spiritual scientific investigation follows the evolution of the earth retrospectively to where the second sun, the sun of today, developed as an independent cosmic body, it has to be said that at that time, of the creatures that might have been externally perceptible to the senses, among the animals, only those existed that had developed to the stage of the fishes.
These things can all be looked up more precisely in Esoteric Science. They can be discovered only by means of spiritual scientific investigation. At the time they had been discovered and written down by me in EsotericScience, the fairy tale in question was quite unknown to me. That is the personal factor I should like to add here. I am able to establish with certainty that it was quite unknown to me, since I only later came across it in Wilhelm Wundt's Ethnic Psychology,2published in 10 volumes, 1900-1920 whose sources I only then followed up further.
Before briefly outlining the fairy tale, I should like to say one thing in advance: Everything the spiritual researcher is able to investigate in this way in the spiritual world—and the things just referred to do have to be investigated in the spiritual world, since they are otherwise no longer extant—everything investigated in this way presents a world with which the human soul is united even so. We are connected with this world in the deepest recesses of our souls. It is always present, indeed we unconsciously enter this spiritual world in normal life upon falling asleep. Our soul is united with it and has within it not only the soul's experiences during sleep, but also those relating to the whole of evolution referred to here. Were it not paradoxical, one would like to say: in the unconscious state, the soul knows of this and experiences itself in the ongoing stream issuing from the original Sun and subsequently from the daughter sun we now see shining in the sky, as well as from the moon, also a descendant of the original Sun. And in addition, the soul experiences the fact that it has undergone an existence, soul-spiritually, in which it was not yet connected with earthly matter, in which it could look down on earthly processes; for instance, on the time in which the fish species were the highest animal organisms, where the present sun, the present moon, arose and split off from the Earth. In unconscious regions, the soul is linked to these events.
We shall now briefly follow the outline of a fairy tale found among primitive peoples, who tell us: There was once a man. As a human being, he was, however, actually of the nature of tree resin and could only perform his work during the night, since, had he carried out his work by day, he would have been melted by the Sun. One day, however, it happened that he did go out by day, in order to catch fish. And behold, the man who actually consisted of tree resin, melted away. His sons decided to avenge him. And they shot arrows. They shot arrows that formed certain figures, towering one over the other, so that a ladder arose reaching up to heaven. They climbed up this ladder, one of them during the day, the other during the night. One of them became the sun, and the other became the moon.
It is not my habit to interpret such things in an abstract way and to introduce intellectual concepts. But it is a different matter to have a feeling for the results of investigation—that the human soul in its depths is united with what happens in the world, to be grasped only spiritually, that the human soul is connected with all this and has a hunger to savor its deepest unconscious experiences in pictures. In citing the fairy tale just outlined, one feels a reverberation of what the human soul experienced as the original Sun, and as the arising of sun and moon during the fish epoch of the Earth. It was in some respects a quite momentous experience for me—this is once more the personal note—when I came across this fairy tale, long after the facts I have mentioned stood printed in my Esoteric Science. Though the notion of interpreting the whole matter abstractly still does not occur to me, a certain kindred feeling arises when I consider world evolution in the context of another, parallel portrayal—when I give myself up to the wonderful pictures of this fairy tale.
Or, as a further example, let us take a peculiar Melanesian fairy tale. Before speaking of this fairy tale, let us remind ourselves that, as shown by spiritual investigation, the human soul is also closely linked to prevailing occurrences and facts of the universe. Even if stated rather too graphically, it is still nonetheless true in a certain respect, from a spiritual scientific point of view, if we say: When the human soul leaves the physical body in sleep, it leads an existence in direct connection with the entire cosmos, feeling itself related to the entire cosmos. We may remind ourselves of the relationship of the human soul, or for example, of the human “I” with the cosmos—at least with something of significance in the cosmos. We direct our gaze to the plant world and tell ourselves: The plant grows, but it can only do so under the influence of the sun's light and warmth. We have before us the plant rooted in the earth. In spiritual science we say: the plant consists of its physical body and of the life-body which permeates it. But that does not suffice for the plant to grow and unfold itself. For that, the forces are required that work on the plant from the sun.
If we now contemplate the human body while the human being sleeps, this sleeping human body is in a sense equivalent to a plant. As a sleeping body it is comparable to the plant in having the same potential to grow as the plant. However, the human being is emancipated from the cosmic order which envelops the plant. The plant has to wait for the sun to exert its influence on it, for the rising and setting of the sun. It is bound to the external cosmic order. The human being is not so bound. Why not? Because what spiritual science points out is in fact true: the human being exerts an influence from the “I”—outside the physical body in sleep—upon the plant-like physical body, equivalent to what the sun exerts on the plant. Just as the sun pours its light out over the plants, so does the human “I” pour its light over the now plant-like physical body when the human being sleeps. As the sun “reigns” over the plants, so the human “I” reigns, spiritually, over the plant-like sleeping physical body. The “I” of the human being is thus related to the sun-existence. Indeed, the “I” of the human being is itself a kind of “sun” for the sleeping human body, and brings about its enlivening during sleep, brings it about that those forces are replenished that have been used up in the waking state. If we have a feeling for this, then we recognize how the human “I” is related to the sun. Spiritual science shows us in addition that, just as the sun traverses the arc of heaven—I am of course speaking of the apparent movement of the sun—and in a certain respect the effect of its rays differs according to whether it stands in this or that constellation of the zodiac, so the human “I” also goes through various phases in its experience. Thus, from one phase it works in one way, from a different phase it works in another way on the physical body. In spiritual science one acquires a feeling for how the sun works differently onto the earth according to whether it does so, for example, from the constellation of Aries, or from the constellation of Taurus, and so on. For that reason, one does not speak of the sun in general, but of its effect in connection with the twelve signs of the zodiac—indicating the correspondence of the changing “I” with the changing activity of the sun.
Let us now take everything that could only be sketched here, but which is developed further in Esoteric Science, as something to be gained as soul-spiritual knowledge. Let us regard it as what takes place in the depths of the soul and remains unconscious but takes place in such a way that it signifies an inner participation in the spiritual forces of the cosmos that manifest themselves in the fixed stars and planets. And let us compare all this, proclaimed by spiritual science as the secrets of the universe, with a Melanesian fairy tale, that I shall again outline only briefly:
On a country road lies a stone. This stone is the mother of Quatl. And Quatl has eleven brothers. After the eleven brothers and Quatl have been created, Quatl begins to create the present world. In this world he created, a difference between day and night was still unknown. Quatl then learns that there is an island somewhere, on which there is a difference between day and night. He travels to this island and brings a few inhabitants from this island back to his country. And, by virtue of their influence on those in his country, they too come to experience the alternating states of sleeping and waking, and the rising and setting of the sun takes place for them as a soul experience.
It is remarkable what reverberates once again in this fairy tale. Considering the fairy tale as a whole there re-echoes, with every sentence, so to speak, something of world secrets, something of what, in the sense of spiritual science, the soul experiences in its depths. One then has to say: The sources of fairy tale moods, of fairy tales generally, lie in hidden depths of the human soul. These fairy tales are presented in the form of pictures, since external happenings have to be made use of in order to provide what is to be spiritual nourishment for the hunger that wells up as an outcome of the soul's experiences. Though we are far removed from the actual experiences in question, we can sense how they reverberate in the fairy tale pictures.
With this in mind, we need not wonder that the finest, most characteristic fairy tales are those handed down from former ages when people still had a certain clairvoyant consciousness and found easier access to the sources of these fairy tale moods. Further, it need not surprise us that in regions of the world where human beings stand closer to spirituality than do the souls of the Occident, for example in India, in the Orient in general, fairy tales can have a much more distinctive character.
Neither need we be surprised that in the German fairy tales that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected in the form told them by relatives and others, often simple people, we come upon accounts reminiscent of the periods of European life in which the great heroic sagas arose. Fairy tales contain attributes found in the great heroic sagas. It need not surprise us to hear that it belatedly came to light that the most significant fairy tales are even older than the heroic sagas. Heroic sagas after all show human beings only at a particular age of life and in particular situations, while what lives in fairy tales is of a generally-human nature, accompanying human beings at every age, from their first to their last breath. It need not surprise us if the fairy tale also insistently depicts, for example, what we have referred to as a profound experience of the soul, the feeling of the soul's inadequacy on awakening in regard to the forces of Nature it helplessly faces and is only a match for, if it has the consolation of knowing at the same time: Within you, there is something that transcends your personal self, and makes you in a certain respect the victor once again over the forces of Nature.
In sensing this mood, one has a feeling for why human beings so often find themselves up against giants in fairy tales. Why do these giants appear? Well, as an image, these giants arise as a matter of course from the whole tone of the soul in wanting to make its way into the body again in the morning, seeing itself confronted by the “giant” forces of Nature occupying the body. What the soul senses there as a battle, what it then feels is altogether real—not in rational terms, but as corresponds to depictions of the manifold battles of the human being with giants. When all this comes to meet it, it clearly senses how it possesses only one thing, its shrewdness, in this whole battle—in its stand in confronting giants. For, this entails the feeling: You could now reenter your body, but what are you, as against the immense forces of the universe! However, you do have something not there in these giants, and that is cunning—reason! This does in fact stand unconsciously before the soul, even if it has also to say to itself, that it can do nothing against the immense forces of the universe. We see how the soul transposes this literally into a picture in giving expression to the mood in question:
A man goes along a country road and comes to an inn. In the inn he asks for milk-soup (blancmange). Flies enter the soup. He finishes eating the milk-soup, leaving the flies. Then he strikes the plate, counts the flies he has killed, and brags: “A hundred at one blow!” The innkeeper hangs a sign around his neck: “He has killed a hundred at one blow.” Continuing along the country road, this man comes to a different region. There a king looks out the window of his castle. He sees the man with the sign around his neck and says to himself: I could well use him. He takes him into his service and assigns him a definite task. He says to him: “You see, the problem is, whole packs of bears always come into my kingdom. If you have struck a hundred dead, then you can certainly also strike the bears dead for me.” The man says: “I am willing to do it!” But, until the bears are there, he wants a good wage and proper meals, for, having thought about it, he says to himself: If I can't do it, I shall at least have lived well until then.—When the time came, and the bears were approaching, he collected all kinds of food and various good things bears like to eat. Then he approached them and laid these things out. When the bears got there, they ate until they were full to excess, finally lying there as though paralyzed; and now he struck them dead one after the other. The king arrived and saw what he had accomplished. However, the man told him: “I simply had the bears jump over a stick and chopped off their heads at the same time!” Delighted, the king assigns him another task. He says to him: “Now the giants will soon also be coming into my land, and you must help me against them as well.” The man promised to do so. And when the time approached, he again took a quantity of provisions with him, including a lark and a piece of cheese. On actually encountering the giants, he first entered into a conversation with them about his strength. One of the giants said: “We shall certainly show you that we are stronger,” taking a stone and crushing it in his hand. Then he said to the man: “That is how strong we are! What can you do as compared to us?” Another giant took an arrow, shooting it so high that only after a long time did the arrow come down again and said: “That's how strong we are! What can you do as compared to us?” At this, the man who had killed a hundred at one blow said: “I can do all that and more!” He took a small piece of cheese and a stone, spreading the stone with cheese, and said to the giants: “I can squeeze water out of a stone!” And he squashed the cheese so that water squirted out of it. The giants were astonished at his strength in being able to squeeze water from a stone. Then the man took the lark and let it fly off, saying to the giants: “Your arrow came back down again, the one I have shot, however, goes up so high that it does not come back down at all!” For the lark did not return at all. At that, the giants were so amazed, they agreed among themselves that they would only be able to overcome him with cunning. They no longer thought of being able to overcome him with the strength of giants. Nonetheless, they did not succeed in outwitting him; on the contrary, he outwitted them. While they all slept, he put an inflated pig's bladder over his head, inside which there was some blood. The giants had said to themselves: Awake, we shall not be able to get the better of him, so we shall do it while he sleeps. They struck him while he slept, smashing the pig's bladder. Seeing the blood that spurted out, they thought they had finished him off. And they soon fell asleep. In the peaceful quiet that overcame them, they slept so soundly that he was able to put an end to them.
Even though, like some dreams, the fairy tale ends here somewhat indefinitely and on an unsatisfactory note, we nonetheless have before us a portrayal of the battle of the human soul against the forces of Nature—first against the “bears,” then against the “giants.” But something else becomes evident in this fairy tale. We have the man who has “killed a hundred at one blow.” We have an echo of what lives at the deepest unconscious levels of the soul: the consolation in becoming aware of its own shrewdness over against these stronger, overwhelming forces. It is not a good thing when what has been presented artistically in pictures is interpreted abstractly. That is not at all what matters. On the other hand, nothing of the artistic form of the fairy tale is diminished if one has a feeling for the fact that the fairy tale is an after-echo of events taking place deep within the soul. These events are such that we can know a great deal about them, as much as one can come to know by means of spiritual investigation—yet, in immersing ourselves in fairy tales and experiencing them, they still remain original and elementary.
In researching them, it is certainly agreeable to know that fairy tales present what the soul needs on account of its deepest experiences, as we have indicated. At the same time, no fairy tale mood is destroyed in arriving at a deeper recognition of the sources of subconscious life. Presented only abstractly, we find these sources are impoverished for our consciousness, whereas the fairy tale form is really the more comprehensive one for expressing the deepest experiences of the soul.
It is then comprehensible that Goethe expressed in the significant and evocative pictures of the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily what he was abundantly able to experience, and which Schiller chose to express in abstract-philosophical concepts. Thus, despite having thought a great deal, Goethe wanted to say in pictures what he felt concerning the deepest underlying strata of human soul-life. And because the fairy tale relates in this way to the innermost soul, it is precisely the form most suited to the child. For it may be said of fairy tales that they have brought it about that what is most profound in spiritual life is expressed in the simplest possible form. In fact, one gradually comes to feel that in all conscious artistic life there is no greater art than that which completes the path from the uncomprehended depths of soul-life to the delightful, often playful pictures of the fairy tale.
An art capable of expressing in the most self-evident form what is hard to comprehend is the greatest and most natural art, an art intimately related to the human being. And just because, in the case of the child, the essential human being is still united in an unspoilt way with the whole of existence, with the whole of life, the child especially needs the fairy tale as nourishment for its soul. What depicts spiritual powers can come alive more fully in the child. The childlike soul may not be enmeshed in abstract theoretical concepts if it is not to be obliterated. It has to remain connected with what is rooted in the depths of existence.
Hence, we can do nothing of greater benefit for the soul of the child than in allowing what unites the human being with the roots of existence to act upon it. As the child still has to work creatively on its own physical formation, summoning the formative forces for its own growth, for the unfolding of its natural abilities, it senses wonderful soul nourishment in fairy tale pictures that connect it with the roots of existence. Since, even in giving themselves over to what is rational and intellectual, human beings can still never be wholly torn away from the roots of existence, they gladly turn again at every age to the fairy tale, provided they are of a sufficiently healthy and straightforward soul disposition. For there is no stage of life and no human situation that can estrange us altogether from what flows from fairy tales—in consequence of which we could cease having anything more to do with what is most profound in human nature or have no sense for what is so incomprehensible for the intellect, expressed in the self-evident, simple, primitive fairy tale and fairy tale mood.
Hence, those who have concerned themselves for a long time with restoring to humanity the fairy tales that had been rather glossed over by civilization, individuals such as the Brothers Grimm, understandably had the feeling—even if they did not adopt a spiritual scientific view—that they were renewing something that belongs intimately to human nature. After an intellectual culture had done its part over a period of centuries to estrange the human soul, including the soul of the child, such collections of fairy tales as those of the Brothers Grimm have quite properly found their way again to all human beings receptive for such things. In this way they have become once more the common heritage of children's souls, indeed of all human souls. They will do so increasingly, the more spiritual science is not just taken as theory, but becomes an underlying mood of the soul, uniting it more and more in feeling with the spiritual roots of its existence.3In 1856 Wilhelm Grimm wrote: “Common to all fairy tales is a residual faith reaching back into ancient times, expressing itself in a pictorial grasp of supersensible things.”
In this way, by means of the dissemination of spiritual science, what genuine fairy tale collectors, those truly receptive for fairy tales as well as those who present them have declared, will prove well-founded. This is what a certain individual, a true friend of fairy tales, often said in lectures I was able to hear.4This is in all probability a reference to Rudolf Steiner's friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer (1825-1900), professor of literature at the Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Vienna, discoverer of the Oberufer Christmas Plays, and described by Rudolf Steiner as “a researcher in the style of the Brothers Grimm.” (Document of Barr, Sept. 1907.) It is a wonderfully poetic utterance which at the same time summarizes what results from such spiritual scientific considerations as we have presented today. It may be formulated in words this man spoke—knowing as he did how to love fairy tales, collecting them, and appreciating them. He always liked to add the saying:
“Fairy tales and sagas are comparable to a good angel, granted human beings as a companion from birth on their life's wanderings, to be a trustworthy comrade throughout—offering comradeship, and making life inwardly into a truly ensouled fairy tale!”5Schröer was in turn quoting Wilhelm Grimm
Märchendichtungen Im Lichte Der Geistesforschung
Es gibt mancherlei, was es gewagt erscheinen läßt, gerade über Märchendichtung im Lichte der Geistesforschung zu sprechen. Das eine ist die Schwierigkeit des Gegenstandes, denn in der Tat müssen die Quellen in der menschlichen Seele, aus denen die Märchenstimmung, die echte wahre Märchenstimmung fließt, so tief in dieser menschlichen Seele gesucht werden, daß jene Methoden der Geistesforschung, die von mir ja immer wieder geschildert worden sind, komplizierte und lange Wege durchzumachen haben, bis gerade diese Quellen gefunden werden können. Viel tiefer als man eben meint, liegen in der menschlichen Seele die Quellen, aus denen echte, wahre Märchendichtungen fließen, wie sie als etwas Zauberhaftes aus allen Jahrhunderten der Menschheitsentwickelung zu uns sprechen.
Das zweite ist, daß man gerade dem Zauberhaften der Märchendichtungen gegenüber in einem erhöhten Maße das Gefühl hat, daß durch Betrachtungen, durch ideelles Durchdringen des Wesens des Märchens für die Seele das Elementare, der ursprüngliche Eindruck vernichtet werde, ja, das ganze Wesen der Märchenwirkung selbst. Hat man schon, und das mit vollem Recht, Erklärungen, Kommentierungen von Dichtungen gegenüber das Urteil, daß sie den unmittelbaren ästhetischen Eindruck, den unmittelbaren Lebenseindruck zerstören, den die Dichtung machen soll, wenn man sie einfach elementar auf sich wirken läßt, so sollte man noch viel mehr Erklärungen nicht gelten lassen gegenüber dem unendlich Feinen und unendlich Zauberhaften jener Dichtung, die als Märchen aus scheinbar so tiefen und scheinbar so unergründlichen Quellen des Volksgemütes oder des einzelnen Menschengemütes hervorquillt. Es ist wirklich so, als ob man die Blüte einer Pflanze zerstören würde, wenn man mit der Urteilskraft in das eingreifen wollte, was so ursprünglich aus der Menschenseele hervorquillt wie diese Märchendichtung.
Dennoch scheint es, daß es auf der einen Seite den Methoden der Geistesforschung möglich ist, wenigstens einigermaßen in jene Regionen des Seelenlebens hineinzuleuchten, aus denen Märchendichtung und Märchenstimmung hervorquillt. Auf der anderen Seite scheint eine Erfahrung auch gegen das zweite Bedenken zu sprechen. Gerade weil man die Quellen der Märchendichtung und Märchenstimmung so tief in der Seele suchen muß, kommt man, ganz erfahrungsgemäß, zu der Überzeugung, daß das, was man dann wie eine geisteswissenschaftliche Erklärung zu geben hat, doch nur etwas bleibt, was so leise die charakterisierte Quelle berührt, daß sie durch eine solche Forschung nicht nur nicht ruiniert wird, sondern im Gegenteil: das Bedeutungsvolle, Wesenstiefe in der menschlichen Seele, aus dem die Märchenstimmung quillt, liegt so, daß man das Gefühl hat, die Dinge, die da liegen, sind jederzeit für diese Menschenseele doch wiederum so neu, so individuell, so ursprünglich, daß man sie selbst am liebsten in einer Art von Märchen zum Ausdruck bringen möchte, weil man fühlt, wie unmöglich alles andere ist, um aus diesen tiefen Quellen heraus zu sprechen.
Es könnte durchaus sein, daß es eine ganz natürliche Stimmung ist, daß gerade jemand, der etwa so wie Goethe neben seiner künstlerischen Betätigung tief hineinzudringen versuchte in die Quellen und Gründe des Daseins, dann, wenn er ein tiefstes Erleben der Menschenseele zu geben hat, doch nicht zu theoretischen Auseinandersetzungen greift, doch nicht durch Forschung die Märchenquelle zerstört, sondern daß er gerade dann, wenn er in diese Quelle einen Einblick gewonnen hat, für die höchsten Aussprüche und Auslebungen der menschlichen Seele naturgemäß wieder zum Märchen greift. So hat es Goethe ja getan in seinem «Märchen» von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie, als er in seiner Art jene tiefen Erlebnisse der Menschenseele zum Ausdruck bringen wollte, die Schiller mehr philosophisch abstrakt in seinen Briefen «Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen» zum Ausdruck gebracht hat. Gerade die Natur des Märchenhaften bringt es mit sich, daß Märchenerklärung und Märchen-Verstehen wohl niemals die produktive Stimmung gegenüber dem Märchen zerstören können, denn wer vom Standpunkte der Geistesforschung zu den besagten Quellen vorzudringen versucht, der findet etwas ganz Eigentümliches. Sollte ich alles sagen, was ich gern über das Wesen des Märchens sagen möchte, dann müßte ich viele Vorträge halten. Daher wird es heute nur möglich sein, einige Andeutungen und Forschungsergebnisse zu bringen.
Wer vom Standpunkte der Geistesforschung aus zu den besagten Quellen vorzudringen versucht, findet nämlich, daß diese Quellen zur Märchendichtung eigentlich viel tiefer in der Menschenseele liegen als die Quellen der schaffenden und Geistiges genießenden Menschenseele, welche sich auslebt auch in den hinreißendsten sonstigen Kunstwerken, zum Beispiel in den erschütterndsten Tragödien. Die Tragödie bringt zur Darstellung, was dieMenschenseele erleben kann an den Mächten, von denen der Dichter sagt, daß sie herrühren von dem großen, gigantischen Schicksal, das den Menschen erhebt, indem es den Menschen zermalmt. Tragödienerschütterungen rühren her von diesem Schicksal und seiner Schilderung, aber so, daß wir sagen können: Es liegen verhältnismäßig die Verwicklungen, die Fäden, welche durch die Tragödie gesponnen und wieder entsponnen werden sollen, in gewissen individuellen Erlebnissen der Menschenseele an der Außenwelt, die gewiß in vieler Beziehung schwer zu ahnen sind, weil man nur schwer in das Individuelle der Menschenseele eindringt, die aber doch geahnt, ergründet werden können, wenn man Sinn für das hat, was in der Menschenseele durch deren Verhältnis zu dem Leben geschieht. Man hat das Gefühl, so oder so ist eine Seele in dieses oder jenes Schicksal des Lebens verstrickt, wenn sie Tragisches erlebt, wie es uns etwa dargestellt wird.
Tiefer als diese Verstrickungen des Tragischen liegen die Quellen der Märchenstimmung und der Märchendichtung. Wir fühlen, daß das Tragische und auch manches andere Künstlerische sich ergibt, wenn wir den Menschen zum Beispiel in einem bestimmten Lebensalter, in einer bestimmten Lebensperiode den oder jenen Schicksalsschlägen ausgesetzt sehen. Wir müssen voraussetzen, wenn eine Tragödie auf uns wirkt, daß der Mensch zu den entsprechenden Verwicklungen hingeführt ist durch ein individuelles Erleben, und wir haben dann das Gefühl: dieser eine Mensch, der uns da in der Tragödie vorgeführt wird mit seinen besonderen Erlebnissen, der ist es, den wir verstehen müssen. Ein gewisser umgrenzter Kreis des Menschlichen tritt uns in der Tragödie und in anderen Kunstwerken entgegen.
Wenn wir verständnisvoll an Märchendichtung und Märchenstimmung herantreten, so haben wir ein anderes Gefühl, nicht dieses eben geschilderte, weil eben die Wirkung des Märchens auf die menschliche Seele eine ursprüngliche und elementare ist, so daß sie zu den unbewußten Wirkungen gehört. Aber wenn wir versuchen, ein Gefühl von dem zu bekommen, was da vorliegt, so ist dieses Gefühl dahingehend, daß wir uns sagen können, was sich in den verschiedenen Märchen zum Ausdruck bringt, ist nicht dasjenige, in was der Mensch durch eine bestimmte Lebenssituation hineingebracht werden kann, ist nicht ein engbegrenzter Kreis menschlichen Erlebens, sondern etwas so Tiefes in den Erlebnissen der Menschenseele, daß es allgemein menschlich ist. Wir können nicht sagen, daß irgendeine Menschenseele in einem bestimmten Lebensalter, die sich in eine bestimmte Situation hineinlebt, so etwas finden kann, sondern was im Märchen zum Ausdruck kommt, wurzelt so tief in der Seele, daß der Mensch das erlebt, gleichgültig, ob er Kind im ersten Kindheitsalter ist, ob er Mensch in mittleren Jahren ist, oder ob er Greisgeworden ist.
Durch unser ganzes Leben zieht sich in den tiefsten Seelenerlebnissen dasjenige, was im Märchen zum Ausdruck kommt. Nur ist das Märchen von dem, was Erlebnis ist und als Erlebnis zugrunde liegt, ein freier, oftmals sogar spielerischer, bildhafter Ausdruck. Der ästhetische, künstlerische Genuß des Märchens ist von dem, dem das Märchen in den inneren Seelenerlebnissen entspricht, für die Seele vielleicht so weit entfernt - der Vergleich kann gewagt werden -, wie etwa das Geschmackserlebnis auf der Zunge, wenn wir eine Speise genießen, entfernt ist von den verborgenen, komplizierten Vorgängen, welche diese Speise im Gesamtorganismus durchmacht, um ihrerseits zum Aufbau des Organiismus beizutragen. Was da die Speise durchmacht, entzieht sich zunächst der menschlichen Beobachtung und Erkenntnis, und alles, was der Mensch hat, ist der Genuß im Geschmack. Beide haben zunächst scheinbar recht wenig miteinander gemein, und niemand ist imstande, aus dem, wie er eine Speise schmeckt, irgend etwas zu ergründen über die Aufgabe dieser Speise in dem ganzen Lebensprozesse des menschlichen Organismus. So ist das, was der Mensch im ästhetischen Genusse des Märchens erlebt, wohl weit, weit entfernt von dem, was in der menschlichen Seele, tief unten im Unbewußten, geschieht, wenn das, was das Märchen von sich ausströmt und ausgießt, mit der menschlichen Seele sich verbindet, weil diese Seele ein untilgbares Bedürfnis hat, durch ihre geistigen Adern den Stoff des Märchens rinnen zu lassen, wie der Organismus ein Bedürfnis hat, die Nahrungsstoffe, die Nahrungssubstanzen durch sich zirkulieren zu lassen.
Wenn man diejenigen Methoden anwendet, welche hier als die Methoden der Geistesforschung, als die Methoden des Eindringens in die spirituellen Welten geschildert worden sind, dann bekommt man auf einer bestimmten Stufe der geistigen Erkenntnis ein Wissen davon, wie fortwährend, der menschlichen Seele ganz unbewußt, geistige Prozesse sich in den Tiefen dieser Menschenseele abspielen. Im gewöhnlichen normalen Leben ist es mit diesen geistigen Prozessen, welche sich in den Tiefen der Seele abspielen, so, daß sie manchmal nur herauftauchen in leisen, auch für das Bewußtsein zu erhaschenden Traumerlebnissen. Wenn etwa der Mensch unter besonders günstigen Umständen aus dem Schlafe erwacht, kann er das Gefühl haben: Du tauchst auf aus einer geistigen Welt, in der gedacht worden ist, in der gesonnen worden ist, in der sich etwas abspielte in den tief unergründlichen Untergründen des Daseins, was zwar den Erlebnissen des Tages ähnlich ist und was innig zusammenhängt mit deinem ganzen Wesen, was aber diesem bewußten Tagesleben tief verborgen ist.
Wenn der Geistesforscher einige Fortschritte gemacht hat, ja, wenn er schon einige Erfahrungen machen kann in der Welt, in welcher geistige Wesenheiten und geistige Tatsachen sind, so geht es ihm doch oftmals ebenso. Er mag noch so weit vordringen, er kommt doch gleichsam immer wieder nur an das Ufer einer Welt, in welcher ihm geistige Vorgänge aus dem tief Unbewußten entgegenkommen, von denen er sich sagt: Sie hängen zusammen mit deinem Wesen, du kannst sie einfangen fast wie eine Fata Morgana, die vor deinem geistigen Blicke auftritt, aber sie ergeben sich dir doch nicht vollständig.
Das ist das eigentümlichste Erlebnis, das man haben kann, dieses Hineinschauen in das Unergründliche der geistigen Zusammenhänge, in denen die Menschenseele drinnensteht. Beim aufmerksamen Verfolgen gewisser intimer Seelenvorgänge ergibt sich zum Beispiel, daß diejenigen Seelenkonflikte, die der Mensch auch in den Tiefen der Seele erlebt und die er in Kunstwerken, in den Tragödien darstellt, verhältnismäßig leicht zu überschauen sind gegenüber gewissen allgemein menschlichen Seelenkonflikten, von denen das tägliche Leben eigentlich nichts ahnt, und die doch jeder Mensch in jedem Lebensalter durchmacht.
Ein solcher Seelenkonflikt, den man durch die Geistesforschung entdeckt, spielt sich zum Beispiel, ohne daß das alltägliche Bewußtsein etwas davon weiß, jeden Tag beim Aufwachen ab, wenn die Seele aus der Welt heraustritt, in welcher sie unbewußt während des Schlafes ist, wenn sie wieder untertaucht in ihren physischen Leib. Wie gesagt, das alltägliche Bewußtsein ahnt nichts davon, und doch spielt sich da als Erlebnis der Seele alltäglich auf dem Grunde dieser Seele ein Kampf ab, den man auch in der Geistesforschung nur leise erhaschen kann, ein Kampf, der alles das in sich schließt, was man nennen kann den Kampf der in sich geschlossenen, sich in sich erlebenden, einsamen und ihre Geisteswege suchenden Seele mit den gigantischen Kräften des Naturdaseins, denen wir ja im äußeren Leben gegenüberstehen, wenn wir gewissermaßen menschlich-hilflos dastehen und erleben, wie Donner und Blitz, wie die Elemente sich über den hilflosen Menschen entladen.
Aber das alles, und selbst, wenn es so gigantisch auftritt, wie manche nur seltenen elementarischen Naturerlebnisse in ihrem Verhältnis zum Menschen, ist eine Kleinigkeit gegenüber dem Kampfe, der im Unbewußten bleibt, der sich abspielt beim Aufwachen, wenn die Seele, die in sich ihr seelisches Dasein erlebt, sich nun verbinden muß mit den Kräften und Substanzen des rein natürlichen Leibes, in welchen sie untertaucht, um sich ihrer Sinne wieder zu bedienen, die von Naturkräften beherrscht werden, und um sich der Gliedmaßen zu bedienen, in denen Naturkräfte spielen. Es ist wie eine Sehnsucht der Menschenseele, in das rein Natürliche unterzutauchen, eine Sehnsucht, die sich ja bei jedem Aufwachen erfüllt, und zu gleicher Zeit ist es wie ein Zurückbeben, ein Sichhilflosfühlen gegenüber dem, was wieder als ewiger Gegensatz zur Menschenseele existiert, gegenüber dem rein Natürlichen, das in der äußeren Leiblichkeit waltet, in die hinein man erwacht. So sonderbar es klingt, daß ein solcher Kampf sich täglich abspielt auf dem Grunde der Menschenseele, so ist es doch ein Erlebnis, das an der Menschenseele eben unbewußt vorbeizieht. Wissen kann die Menschenseele nicht, was sich da vollzieht, aber sie erlebt diesen Kampf jeden neuen Morgen, und es steht jede Seele, trotzdem sie nichts davon weiß, durch alles, was sie ist, durch ihre ganzen Eigenschaften, durch ihr ganzes Wesen, durch die individuelle Nuance ihres Seins doch unter dem Eindrucke dieses Kampfes.
Ein anderes, was sich in den Tiefen der Menschenseele abspielt und durch die Geistesforschung wie erhascht werden kann, ist das, was der Moment des Einschlafens darstellt. Wenn die Menschenseele sich aus den Sinnen und aus den Gliedmaßen herausgezogen hat, wenn sie gewissermaßen den äußeren Leib in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt zurückgelassen hat, dann tritt an sie heran das, was man nennen kann ein Fühlen ihrer Innerlichkeit. Dann erst erlebt sie unbewußt die inneren Kämpfe, die sich dadurch abspielen, daß diese menschliche Seele im Leben an die äußere Materie gebunden ist und Dinge tun muß, die davon herkommen, daß sie mit der äußeren Materie verstrickt ist. Sie fühlt die Anhängsel mit der Sinneswelt, mit denen sie belastet ist, und sie fühlt diese Anhängsel als die Hindernisse, welche sie moralisch zurückhalten. Eine moralische Stimmung, von der alle äußeren moralischen Stimmungen keinen Begriff geben können, spielt sich unbewußt und nach dem Einschlafen in den Schlaf hinein in der Menschenseele ab, wenn sie mit sich allein ist. Und mancherlei andere Stimmungen gehen in der Seele gerade dann vor, wenn diese Seele leibfrei ist, wenn sie ein rein geistiges Dasein führt vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen.
Aber man darf sich nicht vorstellen, daß diese in der Tiefe der Seele sich abspielenden Ereignisse im wachen Zustande nicht da wären. Geistesforschung zeigt zum Beispiel eines als ein sehr interessantes Ergebnis. Sie zeigt, daß der Mensch nicht etwa nur dann träumt, wenn er zu träumen glaubt, sondern daß er den ganzen Tag hindurch träumt. In Wahrheit ist die Seele immer voll von Träumen, nur merkt sie der Mensch noch nicht, weil das Tagesbewußtsein gegenüber dem Traumbewußtsein das Stärkere ist. Wie ein schwächeres Licht durch die Wirkung eines stärkeren Lichtes ausgelöscht wird, so wird durch das Tagesbewußtsein das ausgelöscht, was sich gerade während des Tageslebens als ein ganz kontinuierliches Traumerlebnis immer abspielt, was immer auf dem Grunde der Seele vorhanden ist. Der Mensch träumt immer, nur ist er sich dessen nicht immer bewußt, und aus der Fülle von Traumerlebnissen, von unbewußt bleibenden Träumen, die ein Unendliches gegenüber den Erlebnissen des Tagesbewußtseins darstellen, heben sich heraus — wie sich aus einem weiten See ein einzelner Wassertropfen herausheben würde, der in der übrigen Wassermenge enthalten ist — die dem Menschen zum Bewußtsein kommenden Träume. Aber dieses unbewußt bleibende Träumen ist ein geistiges Erleben der Seele. Da gehen also Dinge, Erlebnisse auf dem Grunde der Seele vor. Geistige, tief in unbewußten Regionen gelegene Erlebnisse der Seele gehen so vor sich, wie sich im Leibe chemische Vorgänge abspielen, die im Unbewußten liegen.
Wenn wir nun mit den eben entwickelten Tatsachen eine andere zusammenbringen, die sich uns hier aus diesen Vorträgen schon ergeben hat, so wird noch ein anderes Licht geworfen auf die verborgenen Seiten des Seelenlebens, von denen eben die Rede war. Wir haben es öfter hervorgehoben, und besonders wurde es wieder gelegentlich des letzten Vortrages betont, daß sich im Laufe der Entwickelung der Menschheit auf der Erde das ganze menschliche Seelenleben geändert hat. Wenn wir weit, weit in den Verlauf der Menschheitsentwickelung zurückblicken, dann finden wir die Seele des Urmenschen mit ganz anderen Erlebnissen als die heutige Menschenseele. Wir haben schon davon gesprochen und werden in künftigen Vorträgen noch weiter davon sprechen, daß der Urmensch in frühen Zeiten der Entwickelung ein gewisses ursprüngliches Hellsehen hatte. Dasjenige Anschauen der Welt, welches heute im wachen Zustande der Seele das normale ist, wo wir die Sinneseindrücke hinnehmen durch die äußere Anregung, und wo wir durch Verstand, Vernunft, Gefühl und Wille im heutigen Bewußtsein diese Sinneseindrücke verbinden, dieses Bewußtsein ist nur dasjenige der Gegenwart. Es hat sich herausentwickelt aus älteren Bewußtseinsformen der Menschheit, die, wenn wir das Wort im guten Sinneanwenden, mehr hellseherische Zustände waren, in denen die Menschen in der Lage waren, in gewissen Zwischenzuständen zwischen Wachen und Schlafen in ganz normaler Weise von geistigen Welten etwas zu erleben, so daß der Mensch, wenn er damals auch noch nicht seiner selbst sich bewußt werden konnte, doch für sein normales Bewußtsein weniger fremd war jenen Erlebnissen, die sich in den Tiefen der Seele so abspielen, wie sie heute erwähnt worden sind.
Der Mensch sah in der Urzeit mehr seinen Zusammenhang mit der geistigen Welt außer ihm. Er sah, wie die Dinge, die sich in seiner Seele abspielen, diese tief in der Seele liegenden Ereignisse, zusammenhängen mit gewissen geistigen Tatsachen, die im Universum leben. Er sah diese geistigen Tatsachen durch seine Seele gehen, fühlte sich noch viel mehr verwandt mit den geistig-seelischen Wesenheiten und Tatsachen des Universums. Das war eine Eigenschaft des ursprünglich hellseherischen Zustandes der Menschheit. Und wie man heute nur in ganz besonderen Stimmungen das folgende Gefühl haben kann, so hatte man es in älteren Zeiten oft und oft, hatte es vielleicht nicht nur als künstlerischer Mensch, sondern als ganz primitiver Mensch.
Es kann sich ergeben, daß in den Tiefen der Seele ganz unbestimmt, so unbestimmt wie möglich, ein Erlebnis ruht, das nicht in das Bewußtsein heraufkommt, ein Erlebnis wie die eben geschilderten, das sich in den Tiefen der Seele abspielt. Es kommt gar nichts von diesem Erlebnis in das bewußte Tagesleben herein. Aber es ist etwas da in der Seele, wie im Organismus der Hunger da ist, richtig wie im Organismus Hunger vorhanden ist. Und wie man für den Hunger etwas braucht, so braucht man etwas für diese unbestimmte Stimmung, die aus dem tief in der Seele gelegenen Erlebnis stammt. Dann fühlt man sich gedrungen, zu einem entweder vorliegenden Märchen, zu einer Sage zu greifen, oder vielleicht, wenn man eine künstlerische Natur ist, selber so etwas auszugestalten, was man so empfindet, daß alle Worte, die man theoretisch brauchen kann, einem diesen Erlebnissen gegenüber wie ein Stammeln vorkommen, und so entstehen eben Märchenbilder. Dieses bewußte Erfüllen der Seele mit den Märchenbildern ist dann das, was Nahrung der Seele ist gegenüber dem Hunger, der eben charakterisiert worden ist.
Weil in älteren Zeiten der Menschheitsentwickelung jede Menschenseele noch einem hellseherischen Wahrnehmen der geistigen Innenerlebnisse der Seele näher stand, deshalb konnte unter Umständen das einfache Volksgemüt, indem es viel deutlicher, als es heute der Fall sein kann, den eben charakterisierten Hunger empfand, die Nahrung in solchen Bildern suchen, die dann durch die schaffende Menschenseele entstanden sind und die wir heute in den Märchenüberlieferungen der verschiedenen Völker haben. Verwandt fühlte sich die Menschenseele mit dem, was geistiges Dasein ist. Siefühlte mehr oder weniger bewußtdieinneren Kämpfe, die sie zu durchleben hatte, ohne sie zu verstehen, und prägte sie aus in Bildern, die daher nur eine entfernte Ähnlichkeit mit dem haben, was sich in den Untergründen der Seele abspielte. Und doch - man kann fühlen, wie ein Zusammenhang besteht zwischen dem, was sich im Märchen ausdrückt, und diesen unergründlich tiefen Erlebnissen der Menschenseele.
Ein kindliches Gemüt — die Erfahrung, das Erlebnis kann das durchaus zeigen — kommt oftmals dazu, in seinem Innern sich etwas zu erschaffen wie einen einfachen Genossen, einen Genossen, der eigentlich nur für dieses kindliche Gemüt da ist, der es aber doch begleiter, der mittut bei den verschiedensten Lebensereignissen. Wer sollte zum Beispiel nicht Kinder kennen, welche gewisse unsichtbare Freunde mit sich durchs Leben führen, Freunde, von denen Sie sich vorstellen müssen, daß sie da sind, wenn etwas geschieht, was die Kinder freut, welche teilnehmen müssen als unsichtbare Geistesgenossen, Seelengenossen, wenn das Kind dieses oder jenes erlebt? Man kann im Bereiche des menschlichen Erfahrens recht oft zu dem Erlebnis kommen, wie schlimm es auf das kindliche Gemüt wirkt, wenn dann der «verständige» Mensch kommt und hört, wie das Kind einen solchen Seelengenossen hat, und ihm nun diesen Seelengenossen ausreden möchte, es vielleicht sogar für das Kind heilsam hält, diesen Genossen ihm auszureden. Das Kind trauert um seinen Seelengenossen. Und wenn es empfänglich ist für geistig-seelische Stimmungen, so bedeutet diese Trauer noch viel mehr, kann ein Kränkeln, ein Siechwerden des Kindes bedeuten. Das ist ein durchaus reales Erlebnis, das mit tief innern Ereignissen der Menschenseele zusammenhängt.
Ohne daß wir das «Aroma» des Märchens zerstäuben, können wir dieses einfache Erlebnis fühlen im Märchen vom Kinde und der Unke, das die Brüder Grimm mitgeteilt haben. Sie erzählen uns von dem Kinde, welches immer eine Unke mitessen läßt. Die Unke genießt aber nur die Milch. Das Kind spricht mit dem Tiere wie mit einem Menschen. Da will es eines Tages, daß die Unke auch von seinem Brot mitessen soll. Da hört das die Mutter, sie kommt herzu und schlägt das Tier tot. Das Kind siecht dahin, es kränkelt und stirbt.
Wir fühlen in dem Märchen Seelenstimmungen nachschwingen, die absolut, tatsächlich in den Tiefen der Seele sich abspielen und wirklich so sich abspielen, daß die Menschenseele mit den Stimmungen nicht nur in gewissen Lebensperioden bekannt ist, sondern einfach dadurch, daß der Mensch Mensch ist, gleichgültig, ob Kind oder Erwachsener. Daher kann jede Menschenseele nachschwingen fühlen, wie das, was sie erlebt und nicht versteht, was sie gar nicht einmal ins Bewußtsein heraufbringt, zusammenhängt mit dem, was dann in den Märchen für die Seele ebenso wirkt, wie die Speise auf den Geschmack der Zunge. Und dann wird das Märchen etwas Ähnliches für die Seele, wie der Nahrungsstoff, wenn er für den Organismus verwendet wird. Reizvoll istes, in den tiefen Seelenerlebnissen das zu suchen, was dann in den verschiedenen Märchen nachklingt. Es wäre natürlich eine ganz erhebliche Aufgabe, die einzelnen Märchen, die so zahlreich gesammelt sind, wirklich gerade daraufhin zu prüfen. Das würde sehr viel Zeit in Anspruch nehmen. Aber was vielleicht an einzelnen Märchen veranschaulicht werden kann, das kann auf alle Märchen angewendet werden, die man als echte Märchen finden kann.
Nehmen wir ein anderes Märchen, das auch die Gebrüder Grimm gesammelt haben, das Märchen vom Rumpelstilzchen. Der Müller, der von seiner Tochter dem Könige gegenüber behauptet, daß sie Stroh zu Gold spinnen kann, wird vom König aufgefordert, die Tochter ins Schloß kommen zu lassen, damit man dort ihre Kunst gewahr werden kann. Die Tochter kommt ins Schloß. Sie wird in eine Kammer eingesperrt und es wird ihr, damit sie ihre Kunst zeigen kann, ein Bündel Stroh gegeben. Als sie in der Kammer ist, ist sie ganz hilflos. Und wie sie nun so hilflos ist, da erscheint vor ihr ein kleines Männchen. Das sagte zu ihr: Was gibst du mir, wenn ich dir das Stroh zu Gold verspinne? Die Müllerstochter gibt ihm ihr Halsband, und das kleine Männchen verspinnt ihr darauf das Stroh zu Gold. Der König ist darüber sehr verwundert, aber er will noch mehr haben, und sie soll noch einmal Stroh zu Gold verspinnen. Wieder wird die Müllerstochter in eine Kammer eingesperrt, und wie sie vor dem vielen Stroh sitzt, da erscheint wiederum das kleine Männchen und sagt: Was gibst du mir, wenn ich dir das Stroh zu Gold verspinne? Sie gibt ihm ein Ringlein, und es wird wiederum von dem Männlein das Stroh zu Gold versponnen. Der König aber will noch mehr haben. Und als sie nun zum drittenmal in der Kammer sitzt und das Männlein wieder erscheint, da hat sie nichts mehr, was sie ihm geben kann. Da sagt das Männlein, daß sie, wenn sie einmal Königin sein werde, ihm das erste Kind geben solle, das sie gebiert. Sie verspricht es. Und als das Kind da ist und das kleine Männchen dann kommt und sie an ihr Versprechen erinnert, da möchte die Müllerstochter Aufschub haben. Darauf sagt das Männchen zu ihr: «Wenn du meinen Namen mir nennst, dann kannst du dich von deinem Versprechen befreien.» Die Müllerstochter schickt nun überall herum. Sie will alle Namen wissen und auch jenen Namen, den das Männchen hat. Schließlich gelingt es ihr wirklich, nachdem vorher einige vergebliche Versuche gemacht worden sind, den Namen des Männchens — Rumpelstilzchen -, zu nennen.
Wirklich keinem anderen Kunstwerke als dem Märchen gegenüber hat man so sehr das Gefühl, daß man an dem unmittelbaren Bilde die innerste Freude haben und dennoch wissen kann von dem tiefinneren Seelenerlebnis, aus dem ein solches Märchen herausgeboren worden ist. Wenn auch der Vergleich trivial ist, so könnte er vielleicht doch treffend sein: Geradeso, wie ein Mensch ganz gut die Chemie der Nahrungsmittel kennen, und doch Geschmack haben kann an einem guten Bissen, so ist es auch möglich, daß man etwas wissen kann über die tiefen inneren Seelenerlebnisse, die nur erlebt, nicht «gewußt» werden, und die sich auf die angedeutete Weise in den Märchenbildern ausleben. Ja, diese einsame Menschenseele —- denn im Schlafe, aber auch während des übrigen Lebens ist sie ja doch für sich einsam, wenn sie auch mit dem Körper verbunden ist -, sie fühlt, aber unbewußt, sie erlebt und versteht es nicht, den ganzen Gegensatz, in welchem sie zu ihren eigenen unendlichen Aufgaben ist, zu ihrem eigenen Hineingestelltsein in die Welt des Göttlichen.
Wie wenig die Menschenseele vermag, das fühlt sie schon, wenn sie ihr Können vergleicht mit dem, was die Natur draußen kann, die alle Dinge ineinander verwandelt, die wirklich die große Zauberin ist, welche die Menschenseele so gern sein möchte. Im Bewußtsein mag es hingehen, leichten Herzens hinwegzukommen über diesen Abstand des menschlichen Innern gegenüber der Allweisheit und Allmacht des Geistes der Natur. Aber in den tiefen Seelenerlebnissen geht die Sache nicht so einfach ab. Da müßte die menschliche Seele zugrunde gehen, wenn sie in sich nicht doch eine noch tiefere Wesenheit in der zunächst wahrnehmbaren Wesenheit fühlen würde, eine Wesenheit, auf die sie bauen darf, von der sie sich sagen darf: Wie unvollkommen du jetzt auch noch dastehen mußt — diese Wesenheit ist klüger in dir, sie waltet in dir, sie kann dich emportragen zu höchstem Können, sie kann dir Flügel verleihen, indem du vor dir eine unendliche Perspektive ausgebreitet siehst in eine unendliche Zukunft hinein. Du wirst können, was du jetzt noch nicht kannst, denn es gibt etwas in dir, was unendlich mehr ist, als dein «Wissendes». Das ist dir ein treuer Helfer. Du mußt nur ein Verhältnis dazu gewinnen, du mußt nur wirklich einen Begriff verbinden können mit dieser in dir selber wohnenden klügeren, weiseren, geschickteren Wesenheit, als du selbst bist.
Und nun versuche man wieder, diesen Umgang der Menschenseele mit sich selbst, diesen unbewußten Umgang mit dem geschickteren Teile in der Seele sich zu vergegenwärtigen, und man versuche, nachschwingen zu fühlen in diesem Märchen vom Rumgelstilzchen, was da die Seele erlebt in der Müllerstochter, die nicht das Stroh zu Gold verspinnen kann, die aber in dem Männchen einen geschickten, treuen Helfer findet. Man hat da tief in den Untergründen der Seele liegend, in Bildern, deren Aroma nicht vernichtet wird, wenn man den Ursprung kennt, tiefinneres Seelenleben gegeben.
Oder nehmen wir ein anderes, und seien Sie mir nicht böse, wenn ich dieses andere mit gewissen Dingen verknüpfe, die vielleicht einen scheinbar persönlichen Anstrich haben, die aber durchaus nicht persönlich gemeint sind. Aber es wird sich das, um was es sich dabei handelt, erklären, wenn ich diese kleine persönliche Nuance dabei zur Geltung bringe.
In meiner «Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß» finden Sie eine Schilderung der Weltenevolution. Über diese selbst will ich jetzt nicht sprechen, das kann bei anderer Gelegenheit geschehen. In dieser Weltenevolution wird davon gesprochen, daß unsere Erde selber als Planet im Weltenall gewisse Stadien durchgemacht hat, welche wir mit den aufeinanderfolgenden Leben des einzelnen Menschen vergleichen können. Wie der einzelne Mensch durch aufeinanderfolgende Leben geht, so hat unsere Erde verschiedene planetarische Lebensstufen, Verkörperungen durchgemacht. Aus gewissen Gründen heraus sprechen wir in der Geisteswissenschaft davon, daß die Erde, bevor sie ihr «Erden»-Dasein begonnen hat, eine Art von «Monden»-Dasein durchgemacht hat, und vor diesem eine Art von «Sonnen»-Dasein; so daß wir davon sprechen können, daß ein Sonnen-Dasein als planetarisches Vorgänger-Dasein unseres Erden-Daseins in urferner Vergangenheit vorhanden war, eine uralte Sonne, die noch mit der Erde verbunden war. Dann trat im Laufe der Entwickelung eine Spaltung zwischen Sonne und Erde ein. Aus dem, was ursprünglich Sonne war, spaltete sich auch der Mond ab und die heutige Sonne, die nicht jene ursprüngliche Sonne ist, sondern gleichsam nur ein Stück davon, so daß wir von der ursprünglichen Sonne und sozusagen von ihrer Nachfolgerin, der heutigen Sonne, sprechen können. Und auch von dem heutigen Monde können wir sprechen wie von einem Erzeugnis der alten Sonne. Wenn nun die geisteswissenschaftliche Forschung im rückläufigen Anschauen die Erdenentwickelung bis zu dem Zeitpunkte verfolgt, wo sich die zweite Sonne, die jetzige Sonne, als selbständiger Weltenkörper entwickelte, so muß man sagen, daß damals unter den Wesen, die schon äußerlich sinnlich hätten wahrnehmbar sein können, in der Tierreihe nur die Wesen waren, die hinauf bis zur Anlage der Fische sich entwickelt hatten.
Diese Dinge kann man alle genauer in der «Geheimwissenschaft» nachlesen — und auch einsehen. Gefunden werden können sie allerdings bloß aus den geisteswissenschaftlichen Forschungsmethoden heraus. Damals, als sie gefunden und von mir niedergeschrieben worden sind, das heißt, gefunden wurden sie nicht, als sie gerade in der «Geheimwissenschaft» von mir niedergeschrieben wurden, aber als sie sozusagen für mich gefunden wurden und dann niedergeschrieben worden sind, da war mir — und das ist das Persönliche, was ich einfügen möchte — jenes Märchen ganz unbekannt, und ich kann es sehr genau konstatieren, daß es mir ganz unbekannt war, da ich es erst später in der «Völkerpsychologie» von Wundt fand, dessen Quellen ich dann erst weiterverfolgt habe.
Ich will nun, bevor ich das Märchen kurz skizziere, nur das eine noch vorausschicken: Alles, was so der Geistesforscher in der geistigen Welt erforschen kann — und diese Dinge, die eben angeführt worden sind, müssen ja in der geistigen Welt erforscht werden, denn sie sind ja sonst auch nicht mehr da -, alles was so erforscht wird, stellt doch die Welt dar, mit der die Menschenseele verbunden ist. Wir sind in den tiefsten Untergründen unserer Seele mit dieser Welt verbunden. Sie ist immer da, ja, wir treten sogar unbewußt in diese geistige Welt ein, wenn wir im normalen Leben in Schlaf versinken. Unsere Seele ist damit verbunden, und sie hat in sich nicht nur jene Erlebnisse, die sie während des Schlafes bekommt, sondern auch diejenigen, welche mit der ganzen Entwickelung zusammenhängen, die eben angedeutet worden ist. Wenn es nicht paradox wäre, möchte man sagen: im unbewußten Zustande weiß die Seele davon, erlebt die Seele sich selber in dem fortgehenden Strome, der da ausging von der ursprünglichen Sonne und dann von der Tochter-Sonne, die wir jetzt am Himmel erglänzen sehen, und von dem Monde, der auch die Nachkommenschaft der ursprünglichen Sonne ist. Und auch das erlebt die Menschenseele, daß sie, geistig-seelisch, ein Dasein durchgemacht hat, in welchem sie noch nicht mit der irdischen Materie verknüpft war, in dem sie aber auf die irdischen Vorgänge hinunterschauen konnte, zum Beispiel auf die Zeit, während welcher die höchsten tierischen Organismen die Fisch-Anlagen waren, wo die jetzige Sonne, der jetzige Mond entstanden und sich von der Erde abspalteten. Im Unbewußten ist die Seele mit diesen Vorgängen verknüpft.
Jetzt verfolgen wir ganz kurz und skizzenhaft ein bei primitiven Völkern sich findendes Märchen. Jene Völker erzählen: Es war einmal ein Mann. Der war aber eigentlich als Mensch von der Wesenheit des Baumharzes und konnte seine Arbeit immer nur während der Nacht verrichten, denn er würde, wenn er bei Tag seine Arbeit verrichtet hätte, von der Sonne zerschmolzen worden sein. Eines Tages passierte es ihm aber, daß er doch bei Tage ausging, um Fische zu fangen. Und siehe da, der Mann, der das Baumharz eigentlich darstellt, schmolz dahin. Seine Söhne beschlossen, ihn zu rächen. Und sie schossen Pfeile. So schossen sie Pfeile, daß diese Pfeile gewisse Figuren bildeten, sich übereinander auftürmten, und daß eine Leiter entstand bis in den Himmel hinauf. Auf dieser Leiter kletterten sie hinauf, der eine während des Tages, der andere während der Nacht. Und es wurde der eine die Sonne, und der andere wurde der Mond.
Es ist nicht meine Gewohnheit, in abstrakter Weise solche Dinge zu deuten und verstandesmäßige Begriffe hineinzubringen. Aber etwas anderes ist es, das Forschungsergebnis zu fühlen, daß die Menschenseele in ihren Tiefen verbunden ist mit dem, was in der Welt geschieht und nur geistig zu erfassen ist, daß diese Menschenseele mit alledem verbunden ist und einen Hunger hat, das, was ihre tiefsten unbewußten Erlebnisse sind, in Bildern zu genießen. Wenn man das fühlt, dann fühlt man nachvibrieren, was dieMenschenseele erlebte als die ursprüngliche Sonne und als das Entstehen von Sonne und Mond zur Fischzeit der Erde, wenn man das eben skizzierte Märchen anführt. Und es war mir in gewisser Beziehung — das ist wieder die persönliche Nuance - ein ganz gewichtiges Erlebnis, als ich, lange nachdem diese erwähnten Dinge in meiner «Geheimwissenschaft» standen, dieses Märchen entdeckte. Wenn es mir nun auch durchaus nicht einfällt, in abstrakter Weise dieses Ganze zu deuten, so verschwistert sich mir doch ein ganz bestimmtes Gefühl, das ich habe, wenn ich die Weltenevolution betrachte, mit einem anderen, wenn ich mich dann den wunderbaren Bildern dieses Märchens hingebe.
Oder nehmen wir ein anderes, ein merkwürdiges melanesisches Märchen. Erinnern wir uns, bevor wir von diesem Märchen sprechen, daran, daß die Menschenseele, wie es die Geistesforschung ergibt, eben durchaus zusammenhängt auch mit den gegenwärtigen Ereignissen und Tatsachen des Universums. Wenn das auch zu bildhaft gesprochen ist, so ist es doch geisteswissenschaftlich in einer gewissen Beziehung richtig, wenn wir sagen: Wenn die Menschenseele im Schlafe den physischen Leib verläßt, so führt sie ein Dasein unmittelbar zusammenhängend mit dem ganzen Kosmos, fühlt sich verwandt mit dem ganzen Kosmos. Es gibt eine Möglichkeit, um sich leicht an die Verwandtschaft der Menschenseele, zum Beispiel des menschlichen Ichs mit dem Kosmos zu erinnern, oder wenigstens mit etwas Bedeutungsvollem im Kosmos. Wir richten den Blick hin auf die Pflanzenwelt und sagen uns: Diese Pflanze wächst, aber sie kann nur wachsen unter dem Einfluß von Sonnenlicht und Sonnenwärme. Da haben wir vor uns in der Erde wurzelnd die Pflanze. Wir sagen in der Geisteswissenschaft: Diese Pflanze besteht aus ihrem physischen Leibe und aus dem Lebensleibe, der sie durchzieht. Aber das genügt nicht, damit die Pflanze wächst und sich entfaltet. Dazu sind die Kräfte notwendig, die von der Sonne auf die Pflanze wirken.
Wenn wir nun den Menschenleib betrachten, während der Mensch schläft, dann hat dieser schlafende Menschenleib gewissermaßen den Wert einer Pflanze. Er ist als schlafender Leib etwas Ähnliches wie die Pflanze, denn er hat die Kraft zu wachsen, welche die Pflanze in sich hat. Aber der Mensch ist emanzipiert von jener kosmischen Ordnung, in welche die Pflanze eingesponnen ist. Die Pflanze muß abwarten, damit das Sonnenlicht auf sie wirken kann, Aufgang und Untergang der Sonne. Sie ist an die äußere kosmische Ordnung gebunden. Der Mensch ist nicht an diese Ordnung gebunden. Warum nicht? Weil in der Tat wahr ist, was die Geistesforschung zeigt: daß der Mensch von seinem Ich aus - das im Schlafe außerhalb seines physischen Leibes ist, der dann wie eine Pflanze uns erscheint — dasjenige für den physischen Leib entfaltet, was die Sonne für die Pflanzen entfaltet. Wie die Sonne ihr Licht ausgießt über die Pflanzen, so das menschliche Ich, wenn der Mensch schläft, über den pflanzenähnlichen physischen Leib. Wie die Sonne über den Pflanzen, so ruht das menschliche Ich, geistig, über dem pflanzenhaften schlafenden physischen Leib. Verwandt mit dem Sonnen-Dasein ist das Ich des Menschen. Ja, das Ich des Menschen ist selber eine Art Sonne für den schlafenden Menschenleib, bewirkt sein Gedeihen während des Schlafes, bewirkt, daß diejenigen Kräfte ausgebessert werden können, die während des Wachens abgenützt worden sind. Wenn wir das empfinden, dann merken wir, wie das menschliche Ich verwandt ist mit der Sonne. Wie die Sonne, das zeigt uns dann die Geisteswissenschaft immer mehr und mehr, über das Himmelsgewölbe hinzieht — ich spreche natürlich von der scheinbaren Bewegung der Sonne -, und wie in einer gewissen Beziehung die Wirksamkeit ihrer Strahlen sich ändert, je nachdem die Sonne vor diesem oder jenem Sternbild des Tierkreises steht, so durchläuft auch das menschliche Ich verschiedene Phasen seiner Erlebnisse, so daß es von der einen Phase so, von der anderen Phase anders auf den physischen Leib wirkt. Man fühlt in der Geisteswissenschaft die Sonne anders auf die Erde wirken, je nachdem sie zum Beispiel das Sternbild des Widders, das Sternbild des Stiers und so weiter bedeckt. Man spricht daher nicht von der Sonne im allgemeinen, sondern von der Wirkung der Sonne von den zwölf Sternbildern aus, meint aber immer den Durchgang der Sonne durch die zwölf Tierkreisbilder — und weist dann hin auf die Verwandtschaft des sich verändernden Ichs mit der sich wandelnden Sonnenwirkung.
Nehmen wir nun alles, was hier nur skizziert werden konnte, was aber in der «Geheimwissenschaft» weiter ausgeführt ist, als etwas, was als geistig-seelische Erkenntnis gewonnen werden kann; betrachten wir es als das, was sich also auf dem Grunde der Menschenseele abspielt und unbewußt bleibt, aber sich so abspielt, daß es ein innerliches Sich-Miterleben mit den geistigen Kräften des Kosmos bedeutet, die sich in den Fixsternen und Planeten ausleben, und vergleichen wir alles dieses, was uns die Geisteswissenschaft als die Geheimnisse des Universums kündet, mit einem melanesischen Märchen, das ich wieder nur kurz skizzieren will:
Auf der Landstraße liegt ein Stein. Dieser Stein ist die Mutter von Quatl. Und Quatl hat noch elf andere Brüder. Nachdem die elf anderen Brüder und Quatl geschaffen sind, beginnt Quatl die gegenwärtige Welt zu schaffen. In dieser Welt, die er damals geschaffen hat, kennt man noch nicht den Unterschied von Tag und Nacht. Nun erfährt Quatl, daß irgendwo eine Insel ist, auf der ein Unterschied ist zwischen Tag und Nacht. Er reist nach dieser Insel und bringt einige Wesen von dieser Insel in sein Land zurück. Und durch den Einfluß dieser Wesen auf die Wesen in seinem Lande kommen seine Wesen in den Wechselzustand von Schlaf und Wachen, und Aufgang und Untergang der Sonne spielt sich für sie seelisch ab.
Es ist merkwürdig, was wieder in diesem Märchen nachvibriert. Wenn man das ganze Märchen vor sich hat, so vibriert gleichsam in jedem Satze etwas nach von dem, was mit den Weltgeheimnissen zusammenhängt, wie etwas vibriert von dem, was die Seele im Sinne der Geisteswissenschaft in ihren Tiefen erlebt. Ist es dann nicht so, daß man sagen muß: Die Quellen der Märchenstimmung, der Märchendichtung liegen in den Tiefen der Menschenseele! Diese Märchen sind als Bilder dargestellt, weil äußere Vorgänge zu Hilfe genommen werden müssen, um das zu geben, was wie eine geistige Nahrung für den Hunger sein soll, der aus den charakterisierten Erlebnissen quillt. Wir müssen auch sagen: Ja, wir sind weit entfernt von den Erlebnissen, aber wir können die Erlebnisse in den Märchenbildern nachschwingen fühlen.
Wenn wir uns das vor Augen halten, brauchen wir uns nicht mehr darüber zu verwundern, daß uns die schönsten, die charakteristischsten Märchen gerade aus jenen älteren Zeiten bekannt und von diesen her überliefert sind, als die Menschen noch ein gewisses hellseherisches Bewußtsein hatten und daher leichter zu dem kommen konnten, was die Quellen dieser Märchenstimmung und Märchendichtungen sind, und wir wundern uns weiter nicht, daß in den Gegenden der Erde, wo die Menschen in ihren Seelen noch den geistigen Quellen näherstehen als etwa die Seelen des Abendlandes, zum Beispiel in Indien, im Morgenlande überhaupt, die Märchen einen noch viel ausgeprägteren Charakter haben können.
Dann wundern wir uns aber auch nicht, daß wir in den deutschen Märchen, die Jakob und Wilhelm Grimm in der Gestaltung sammelten, wie sie sie hören konnten von Verwandten oder anderen, oft einfachen Menschen, Darstellungen wiederfinden, die an jene Zeiten des europäischen Lebens erinnern, in denen auch die großen Heldensagen entstanden sind, und daß die Märchen Züge enthalten, die wir auch bei den großen Götter- und Heldensagen finden. Wir wundern uns auch weiter nicht, wenn wir hören, daß sich nachträglich herausgestellt hat, daß die bedeutsamsten Märchen noch älter sind als die Heldensagen, weil die Heldensagen doch nur den Menschen in einem gewissen Lebensalter und in einer bestimmten Situation zeigen, während das, was im Märchen lebt, allgemein menschlich ist, mit der Menschenseele vom ersten bis zum letzten Atemzuge geht, den wir tun, durch alle Lebensalter. Und wir wundern uns nicht, wenn das Märchen auch zum Beispiel dasjenige ins Bild drängt, was als ein tiefes Erlebnis der Seele genannt worden ist, jenes Sich-unangemessen-Fühlen der Seele im Aufwachen den Naturkräften gegenüber, denen man hilflos gegenübersteht, und denen man nur dann gewachsen ist, wenn man in der Seele zugleich den Trost hat: in dir gibt es etwas, was über dich hinausgeht und dich in einer gewissen Beziehung wieder zum Sieger über die Naturkräfte macht.
Wenn man diese Stimmung fühlt, dann fühlt man auch, warum im Märchen so oft Riesen auftreten, mit denen der Mensch zu tun hat. Warum treten diese Riesen auf? Ja, diese Riesen entstehen ganz selbstverständlich als Bild aus der Stimmung heraus, welche die Seele hat, wenn sie sich wieder am Morgen in ihren physischen Leib hineinbegeben will und sich nun den für die Menschenseele «riesenhaften» Naturkräften gegenüber sieht, die den Leib einnehmen. Was die Seele da als Kampf fühlt, was sie da empfinden kann, das ist ganz richtig — aber nicht verstandesgemäß begrifflich —, wie es der Menschenseele entspricht, in den mannigfaltigen Kämpfen des Menschen mit Riesen dargestellt. Die Seele fühlt, wenn das alles vor sie hintritt, wie sie in diesem ganzen Kampfe und der ganzen Stellung den Riesen gegenüber nur eines hat, ihre Schlauheit. Denn das gehört dazu, so zu fühlen: Du könntest jetzt in deinen Leib hinein, aber was bist du gegenüber den ganzen riesigen Kräften des Universums! Etwas hast du jedoch, was da, in diesen Riesen, nicht drinnen ist: das ist die Schlauheit, der Verstand! Das steht unbewußt doch vor der Seele, wenn sie sich auch sagen muß, daß sie nichts gegen die riesenhaften Kräfte des Universums vermag, und wir sehen förmlich, wie sich die Seele dahinein versetzt, wenn sie im Bilde die eben charakterisierte Stimmung ausdrückt:
Da ist ein Mensch, der zieht die Landstraße entlang und kommt an ein Wirtshaus. In dem Wirtshause läßt er sich eine Milchsuppe geben. Die Fliegen fliegen in die Suppe hinein. Er ißt die Milchsuppe aus und läßt die Fliegen übrig. Dann schlägt er auf den Teller und zählt die Fliegen, die er getötet hat, und renommiert: Hundert auf einmal! Der Wirt hängt ihm eine Tafel um: Der hat Hundert auf einmal erschlagen. Nun geht dieser Mensch weiter die Landstraße entlang, kommt in eine andere Gegend, und dort schaut ein König zum Fenster seines Schlosses hinaus. Er sieht diesen Menschen mit der Tafel umgehängt und sagt sich: Den kann ich gut brauchen. Er nimmt ihn in seine Dienste und überträgt ihm eine ganz bestimmte Aufgabe, Er sagt ihm: Sieh einmal, da kommen immer ganze Rotten von Bären in mein Land herein. Wenn du Hundert auf einmal erschlagen hast, dann kannst du mir sicher auch die Bären erschlagen. Der Betreffende sagt: Ich will es schon tun! Aber er will noch, solange die Bären noch nicht da sind, einen guten Lohn und ordentliches Essen haben, denn er bedenkt sich und meint: Wenn ich es nicht kann, so habe ich doch bis dahin gut gelebt. — Als nun die Zeit kommt, wo die Bären heranrücken, sammelt er alle möglichen Nahrungsmittel und sonstige gute Dinge, welche die Bären gerne essen. Nun zieht er den Bären entgegen und legt die Sachen aus. Die Bären kommen heran und fressen so lange, bis sie ganz vollgefressen sind, daß sie wie gelähmt daliegen, und nun erschlägt er einen nach dem anderen. Der König kommt dann und sieht, was er geleistet hat. Der Mensch aber sagt: Ja, ich habe die Bären einfach über den Stock springen lassen und habe ihnen dann dabei die Köpfe abgeschlagen! Der König ist davon sehr erbaut und überträgt ihm eine andere Aufgabe. Er sagt ihm: Sieh, jetzt werden auch die Riesen bald wieder in mein Land kommen, und du mußt mir auch gegen sie helfen. Der Mensch versprach es. Und als die Zeit herankam, nahm er wieder eine Menge guter Nahrungsmittel mit, aber auch eine Lerche und ein Stück Käse. Er traf dann auch wirklich die Riesen und ließ sich zunächst mit ihnen auf ein Gespräch über seine Stärke ein. Der eine Riese sagte: Wir wollen es dir schon zeigen, daß wir stärker sind. Und er nahm einen Stein und zerrieb den Stein in seiner Hand. Dann sagte er zu dem Menschen: So stark sind wir! Was willst du gegen uns? Der andere Riese nahm einen Pfeil, schoß ihn ab und schoß so hoch, daß der Pfeil erst nach langer Zeit wieder herunterkam, und sagte: So stark sind wir! Was willst du gegen uns? Da sagte der Mann, der die Hundert auf einmal erschlagen hatte: Das alles kann ich noch viel besser! Er nahm ein kleines Stückchen Käse und einen Stein und versuchte, den Stein mit dem Käse zu umschmieren und sagte zu den Riesen: Ich kann aus dem Stein Wasser herauspressen! Und zerdrückte den Käse, so daß Wasser herausspritzte. Die Riesen waren erstaunt über die Kraft, daß er Wasser aus dem Stein herauspressen konnte. Dann nahm der Mensch die Lerche und ließ sie fliegen und sagte dann zu dem Riesen: Dein Pfeil ist zurückgekommen, mein Pfeil aber, den ich abgeschossen habe, geht so hoch, daß er überhaupt nicht wieder zurückkommt! Denn die Lerche kam nicht zurück. Da waren die Riesen so erstaunt, daß sie sich einig waren, daß sie ihn nur mit List überwinden könnten; denn daß sie ihn mit der Riesenstärke überwinden könnten, daran dachten sie schon nicht mehr. Dagegen gelang es ihnen nicht, den Menschen zu überlisten, sondern er überlistete sie. Als sie alle miteinander schliefen, stülpte er sich eine aufgeblasene Schweinsblase über den Kopf, in derem Innern etwas Blut war. Die Riesen sagten sich: Wachend werden wir ihn doch nicht überwinden können, daher wollen wir ihn schlafend überwinden. Als er nun schlief, schlugen sie auf ihn los und schlugen die Schweinsblase ein, und als sie das Blut herausspritzen sahen, dachten sie, sie hätten ihn schon überwunden. Und sie schliefen bald ein. Und in der Ruhe, die dann über sie kam, schliefen sie so stark, daß er sie im Schlaf überwinden konnte.
Trotzdem hier das Märchen, wie manche Träume, unklar und wenig befriedigend ausklingt, so haben wir darin doch das vor uns, was den Kampf der Menschenseele gegen die Naturkräfte darstellt, erst gegen die «Bären», dann aber geht es über in den Kampf gegen die «Riesen». Aber noch etwas anderes sehen wir in diesem Märchen. Wir haben den Menschen, der die Hundert auf einmal erschlagen hat, so vor uns, daß wir nachvibrieren fühlen, was im tiefsten Unbewußten der Seele lebt: daß er durch seine Schlauheit immer getröstet werden kann über die stärkeren Kräfte, die er als riesenmäßige empfinden muß. Es ist nicht gut, wenn man das, was künstlerisch in Bildern verarbeitet ist, ganz abstrakt und in einzelnen Zügen deutet. Darauf kommt es gar nicht an. Denn nichts wird zerstört an der Märchengestaltung, wenn man fühlt, daß das Märchen so das Nachklingen ist von tiefen in der Seele sich abspielenden Vorgängen. Diese Vorgänge sind wiederum so, daß wir viel, viel wissen können, so viel man durch Geistesforschung nur von ihnen wissen kann, und dennoch: wenn man in sie wieder und wieder verstrickt wird, wenn man sie so erlebt, dann sind sie doch ursprünglich und elementar. Und kein Wissen, wenn es sonst vorhanden ist, zerstört das Vermögen, dasjenige, was man so in den Tiefen der Seele erlebt, in Märchenstimmung hineinzubringen.
Daher ist es ganz gewiß für die Forschung reizvoll, zu wissen, wie man im Märchen das vor sich hat, was die Seele braucht wegen ihrer tiefsten Erlebnisse in der angedeuteten Weise. Zu gleicher Zeit wird keine Märchenstimmung zerstört, denn gerade der, welcher vielleicht in Anlehnung an das Wesen des Märchens zu einem tieferen Hineinschauen in die Quellen des unterbewußten Lebens kommt, findet in diesen Quellen etwas, das für das Bewußtsein verarmt, wenn es nur abstrakt dargestellt wird, und er findet eigentlich, daß die Darstellung im Märchen wirklich die umfassendere ist für das Tiefste der seelischen Erlebnisse.
Man begreift dann, daß Goethe das, was er reich erleben konnte und was Schiller in abstrakt-philosophischen Begriffen ausdrückte, in den vielsagenden und vieldeutigen Bildern des «Märchens» von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie ausdrückte. Also in Bildern wollte Goethe, trotzdem er viel gedacht hat, das aussprechen, was er über das Tiefste in den Untergründen und in dem Unterbewußtsein des menschlichen Seelenlebens empfand. Und weil das Märchen so mit dem Innersten der Seele zusammenhängt, mit dem, was so tief mit dem Innersten der Menschenseele zusammenhängend ist, deshalb ist das Märchen gerade diejenige Form der Darstellung, die für das kindliche Gemüt am angemessensten ist. Denn man darf vom Märchen sagen, es habe es dahin gebracht, das Allertiefste im geistigen Leben in der allereinfachsten Weise zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Man empfindet eigentlich nach und nach, daß es in allem bewußten künstlerischen Leben keine so große Kunst gibt als die Kunst, die den Weg vollendet von den unverstandenen Tiefen des Seelenlebens zu den reizvollen, oftmals spielerischen Bildern des Märchens.
Wenn man das Schwerstverständliche in den selbstverständlichsten Formen auszudrücken vermag, dann ist das größte Kunst, natürlichste Kunst, wesenhaft mit dem Menschen zusammenhängende Kunst. Und weil im Kinde die menschliche Wesenheit in einer noch ursprünglicheren Art mit dem Gesamtdasein, mit dem Gesamtleben zusammenhängt, deshalb braucht auch das Kind als Nahrung für seine Seele das Märchen. Freier noch kann sich im Kinde das bewegen, was geistige Kraft darstellt. Das kann noch nicht, wenn die kindliche Seele nicht veröden soll, in die abstrakten theoretischen Begriffe eingesponnen werden. Das muß noch zusammenhängen mit dem, was in den Tiefen des Daseins wurzelt.
Daher tun wir dem Kinde für die Seele keine größere Wohltat, als wenn wir auf seine Seele wirken lassen, was so Menschen-Wurzeln mit Daseins-Wurzeln zusammenbringt. Weil das Kind noch an der eigenen Gestaltung schöpferisch tätig sein muß, weil es noch die gestaltenden Kräfte selbst für sein Wachstum, für die Entfaltung aller seiner Anlagen hervorbringen muß, deshalb empfindet es so wunderbare Nahrung für seine Seele in den Bildern des Märchens, in denen es wurzelhaft mit dem Dasein zusammenhängt. Und weil der Mensch, selbst wenn er sich dem RationalistischVerstandesmäßigen hingibt, doch nie von des Daseins Wurzeln losgerissen werden kann, und weil er, wenn er gerade am meisten dem Leben hingegeben sein muß, am intimsten mit des Daseins Wurzeln zusammenhängt, deshalb kehrt er, wenn er nur gesunden, geradsinnigen Gemütes ist, in jedem Lebensalter freudig zum Märchen zurück. Denn es gibt kein Lebensalter, es gibt keine menschliche Lage, die uns demjenigen entfremden könnte, was aus dem Märchen strömt, weil wir aufhören müßten mit dem Tiefsten, was mit der Menschennatur zusammenhängt, wenn wir keinen Sinn mehr für das hätten, was sich von diesem Sinn der Menschennatur, der so unverständlich ist für den Verstand, ausdrückt in den selbstverständlichen Märchen und in der selbstverständlichen, einfachen, primitiven Märchenstimmung.
Daher kann man es begreifen, daß Menschen, die sich lange Zeit damit befaßt haben, der Menschheit die etwas durch die Kultur übertünchten Märchen wiederzugeben, Menschen wie zum Beispiel die Brüder Grimm, wenn sie sich auch nicht geisteswissenschaftlich zu der Sache stellen, doch aber aus der ganzen Art, wie sie mit den Märchen lebten, die sie aus der Volkskultur heraufholten, die Empfindung hatten, daß sie der Menschheit etwas gaben, was innig zu dieser Menschennatur gehört. Dann begreift man es auch, daß, nachdem eine Verstandeskultur durch Jahrhunderte so manches getan hat, um die Menschenseele und auch die Kindesseele dem Märchen zu entfremden, solche Märchensammlungen wie die der Brüder Grimm wieder bei allen Menschen Eingang gefunden haben, die für so etwas empfänglich sind, und daß sie wieder Gemeingut gerade der Kinderseele geworden sind, aber wohl auch Gemeingut aller Seelen, und dies namentlich immer mehr und mehr werden, je mehr die Geisteswissenschaft nicht nur Theorie sein wird, sondern Stimmung der Seele, jene Stimmung, welche die Seele immer mehr und mehr zusammenführen, gefühlsmäßig zusammenführen wird mit ihren geistigen Wurzeln des Daseins.
So wird gerade durch die Verbreitung der Geisteswissenschaft das bewahrheitet, was echte Märchensammler, echte Märchenerfühler und Märchendarsteller wollten, und was ein Mann, der selber ein tiefer Freund der Märchendarstellung war, oftmals in Vorträgen sagte, die ich hören durfte, wiederholend ein schönes dichterisches Wort, in das wir zusammenfassen können, was sich auch aus der geisteswissenschaftlichen Betrachtung des Märchens ergibt, wenn wir sie im heutigen Sinne anstellen. Wir können es zusammenfassen in die Worte, die eben in seinen Vorträgen jener Mann sprach, der Märchen zu lieben verstand, der Märchen zu sammeln verstand, der Märchen zu würdigen verstand und deshalb immer gern an das Wort anknüpfte: Märchen und Sagen sind wie ein guter Engel, der von Geburt an, von Heimat wegen dem Menschen mitgegeben wird auf seiner Lebenswanderung, damit er ihm ein vertraulicher Genosse durch diese ganze Lebenswanderung hindurch sei und ihm dadurch, daß er ihm diese Genossenschaft bietet, erst das Leben zu einem wahrhaft innerlich beseelten Märchen macht!
Fairy Tale Poetry in the Light of Spiritual Research
There are several reasons why it may seem risky to discuss fairy tale poetry in the light of spiritual research. One is the difficulty of the subject matter, for indeed the sources in the human soul from which the fairy tale mood, the genuine, true fairy tale mood flows, must be sought so deeply in the human soul that the methods of spiritual research, which I have described again and again, have to go through complicated and long paths before these very sources can be found. Much deeper than one might think lie in the human soul the sources from which genuine, true fairy tale poetry flows, as something magical that speaks to us from all centuries of human development.
The second thing is that, precisely because of the enchantment of fairy tales, there is a heightened feeling that contemplation, that idealistic penetration of the essence of the fairy tale, destroys the elemental, the original impression on the soul, indeed the whole essence of the effect of the fairy tale itself. If one already has, and quite rightly so, explanations and commentaries on poetry that destroy the immediate aesthetic impression, the immediate impression of life that poetry is supposed to make when one simply allows it to have its elemental effect on oneself, then one should accept even fewer explanations for the infinitely subtle and infinitely enchanting nature of that poetry which, as fairy tales, springs from seemingly so deep and seemingly so unfathomable sources of the folk spirit or the individual human spirit. It is really as if one were to destroy the blossom of a plant if one were to intervene with one's power of judgment in what springs so originally from the human soul as this fairy-tale poetry.
Nevertheless, it seems that, on the one hand, the methods of spiritual research make it possible to shed at least some light on those regions of the soul from which fairy tale poetry and fairy tale moods spring forth. On the other hand, experience also seems to speak against the second concern. Precisely because the sources of fairy tale poetry and fairy tale atmosphere must be sought so deep in the soul, experience shows that one comes to the conviction that what one then has to give as a spiritual-scientific explanation remains only something that touches the characterized source so gently that it is not only not ruined by such research, but on the contrary: the meaningful, essential depth in the human soul from which the fairy-tale mood springs is such that one has the feeling that the things that lie there are at any time so new, so individual, so original for this human soul that one would like to express them oneself in a kind of fairy tale, because one feels how impossible everything else is in order to speak from these deep sources.
It could well be that it is a completely natural mood that someone like Goethe, who, in addition to his artistic activities, tried to delve deeply into the sources and reasons for existence, does not resort to theoretical debates when he has a profound experience of the human soul to convey, does not destroy the source of fairy tales through research, but that, precisely when he has gained insight into this source, he naturally resorts to fairy tales again for the highest expressions and manifestations of the human soul. This is what Goethe did in his “fairy tale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily, when he wanted to express in his own way those deep experiences of the human soul that Schiller expressed more philosophically and abstractly in his letters “On the Aesthetic Education of Man.” It is precisely the nature of fairy tales that explains and understanding fairy tales can never destroy the productive mood towards fairy tales, for anyone who tries to penetrate to the sources in question from the standpoint of spiritual research will find something very peculiar. If I were to say everything I would like to say about the nature of fairy tales, I would have to give many lectures. Therefore, today it will only be possible to offer a few hints and research findings.
Anyone who attempts to penetrate these sources from the standpoint of spiritual research will find that these sources of fairy tale poetry actually lie much deeper in the human soul than the sources of the creative and spiritually appreciative human soul, which also finds expression in the most captivating works of art, for example in the most harrowing tragedies. Tragedy depicts what the human soul can experience in the forces that the poet says originate from the great, gigantic fate that elevates human beings by crushing them. Tragic shocks arise from this fate and its depiction, but in such a way that we can say: relatively speaking, the entanglements, the threads that are to be spun and unspun again through the tragedy, in certain individual experiences of the human soul in the outside world, which are certainly difficult to guess in many respects, because it is difficult to penetrate the individuality of the human soul, but which can nevertheless be guessed at and fathomed if one has a sense of what happens in the human soul through its relationship to life. One has the feeling that, in one way or another, a soul is entangled in this or that fate of life when it experiences tragedy, as is presented to us, for example.
Deeper than these entanglements of tragedy lie the sources of fairy-tale mood and fairy-tale poetry. We feel that tragedy and many other artistic elements arise when we see people exposed to this or that stroke of fate at a certain age or in a certain period of life, for example. When a tragedy affects us, we must assume that the person has been led to the corresponding entanglements through individual experience, and we then have the feeling that this one person, who is presented to us in the tragedy with his or her particular experiences, is the one we must understand. A certain limited circle of humanity confronts us in tragedy and in other works of art.
When we approach fairy tale poetry and fairy tale atmosphere with understanding, we have a different feeling, not the one just described, because the effect of fairy tales on the human soul is a primal and elementary one, so that it belongs to the unconscious effects. But when we try to get a feeling for what is there, this feeling is such that we can say to ourselves that what is expressed in the various fairy tales is not something that can be brought about in human beings by a particular life situation, is not a narrowly defined circle of human experience, but something so deep in the experiences of the human soul that it is universally human. We cannot say that any human soul at a certain age, who finds themselves in a certain situation, can find something like this, but what is expressed in fairy tales is so deeply rooted in the soul that people experience it, regardless of whether they are children in early childhood, people in middle age, or the elderly.
Throughout our entire lives, what is expressed in fairy tales runs through our deepest soul experiences. Only fairy tales are a free, often even playful, pictorial expression of what is experience and underlies experience. The aesthetic, artistic enjoyment of fairy tales is perhaps as far removed from the soul as the inner soul experiences to which fairy tales correspond — the comparison can be made — as the taste experience on the tongue when we enjoy a meal is distant from the hidden, complicated processes that this food undergoes in the entire organism in order to contribute to the building of the organism. What the food undergoes is initially beyond human observation and knowledge, and all that humans have is the enjoyment of the taste. At first glance, the two seem to have very little in common, and no one is able to deduce anything about the role of food in the overall life process of the human organism from the way they taste it. Thus, what humans experience in the aesthetic enjoyment of fairy tales is far, far removed from what happens in the human soul, deep down in the unconscious, when what the fairy tale exudes and pours out connects with the human soul, because this soul has an irrepressible need to let the substance of the fairy tale flow through its spiritual veins, just as the organism has a need to let the nutrients, the food substances, circulate through itself.
If one applies the methods described here as the methods of spiritual research, as the methods of penetrating into the spiritual worlds, then at a certain level of spiritual knowledge one gains an understanding of how spiritual processes are constantly taking place in the depths of the human soul, completely unconsciously. In ordinary, normal life, these spiritual processes that take place in the depths of the soul sometimes only emerge in quiet dream experiences that can be glimpsed by the consciousness. If, for example, a person awakens from sleep under particularly favorable circumstances, they may have the feeling that You emerge from a spiritual world in which thoughts have been thought, in which reflections have been made, in which something has taken place in the deep, unfathomable depths of existence, something that is similar to the experiences of the day and is intimately connected with your whole being, but which is deeply hidden from this conscious daily life.
When the spiritual researcher has made some progress, indeed, when he has already had some experiences in the world in which spiritual beings and spiritual facts exist, he often feels the same way. No matter how far he may advance, he always seems to arrive only at the shore of a world in which spiritual processes from the deep unconscious come to meet him, about which he says to himself: They are connected with your being, you can capture them almost like a mirage that appears before your spiritual gaze, but they do not reveal themselves to you completely.
This is the most peculiar experience one can have, this looking into the unfathomable spiritual connections in which the human soul is embedded. When attentively following certain intimate soul processes, it becomes apparent, for example, that the soul conflicts that human beings experience in the depths of their souls and that they depict in works of art and tragedies are relatively easy to grasp compared to certain general human soul conflicts of which daily life actually has no inkling, and which yet every human being goes through at every age of life.
One such soul conflict, which can be discovered through spiritual research, takes place every day upon waking, for example, without everyday consciousness being aware of it, when the soul emerges from the world in which it is unconscious during sleep and re-enters its physical body. As I said, everyday consciousness has no inkling of this, and yet every day, at the bottom of the soul, a struggle takes place as an experience of the soul, which even spiritual research can only faintly glimpse, a struggle that encompasses everything that can be called the struggle of the self-contained, self-experiencing, lonely soul seeking its spiritual paths with the gigantic forces of nature, which we face in our outer life when we stand there, humanly helpless, so to speak, and experience how thunder and lightning, how the elements unleash themselves upon helpless human beings.
But all this, even if it appears as gigantic as some rare elemental experiences of nature in their relationship to human beings, is a trifle compared to the struggle that remains unconscious, that takes place upon awakening, when the soul, which experiences its spiritual existence within itself, must now connect with the forces and substances of the purely natural body, into which it submerges itself in order to make use of its senses again, which are governed by natural forces, and to make use of its limbs, in which natural forces play. It is like a longing of the human soul to immerse itself in the purely natural, a longing that is fulfilled every time we wake up, and at the same time it is like a recoiling, a feeling of helplessness in the face of what again exists as an eternal contrast to the human soul, in the face of the purely natural, which reigns in the outer physicality into which one awakens. As strange as it may sound that such a struggle takes place daily at the bottom of the human soul, it is nevertheless an experience that passes unconsciously by the human soul. The human soul cannot know what is taking place there, but it experiences this struggle every new morning, and every soul, even though it knows nothing of it, is nevertheless under the impression of this struggle through everything it is, through all its characteristics, through its whole being, through the individual nuance of its existence.
Another thing that takes place in the depths of the human soul and can be glimpsed through spiritual research is what happens at the moment of falling asleep. When the human soul has withdrawn from the senses and the limbs, when it has, so to speak, left the outer body behind in the physical-sensory world, then what can be called a feeling of its inner nature approaches it. Only then does it unconsciously experience the inner struggles that arise from the fact that this human soul is bound to external matter in life and must do things that come from its entanglement with external matter. It feels the attachments to the sensory world with which it is burdened, and it feels these attachments as obstacles that hold it back morally. A moral mood, of which all external moral moods can give no conception, takes place unconsciously and after falling asleep in the human soul when it is alone with itself. And many other moods take place in the soul precisely when this soul is free of the body, when it leads a purely spiritual existence from falling asleep to waking up.
But one must not imagine that these events taking place in the depths of the soul are not there in the waking state. Spiritual research shows, for example, one very interesting result. It shows that human beings do not only dream when they believe they are dreaming, but that they dream throughout the whole day. In truth, the soul is always full of dreams, but humans do not yet notice this because daytime consciousness is stronger than dream consciousness. Just as a weaker light is extinguished by the effect of a stronger light, so too is that which is constantly happening during daily life as a continuous dream experience, which is always present at the bottom of the soul, extinguished by daytime consciousness. People are always dreaming, but they are not always aware of it, and from the abundance of dream experiences, of dreams that remain unconscious, which represent an infinity compared to the experiences of daytime consciousness, the dreams that come to human consciousness stand out — just as a single drop of water would stand out from a vast lake, contained in the rest of the water. But these dreams that remain unconscious are spiritual experiences of the soul. So things, experiences, take place at the bottom of the soul. Spiritual experiences of the soul, located deep in unconscious regions, take place in the same way that chemical processes take place in the body, which lie in the unconscious.
If we now combine the facts just developed with another that has already emerged from these lectures, a different light is cast on the hidden aspects of the soul life that we have just been discussing. We have often emphasized, and it was particularly emphasized again in the last lecture, that in the course of humanity's development on earth, the entire human soul life has changed. When we look far, far back into the course of human development, we find that the soul of primitive man had completely different experiences than the human soul of today. We have already spoken about this and will speak further about it in future lectures, that primitive man in the early stages of development had a certain original clairvoyance. The way of seeing the world that is normal today in the waking state of the soul, where we receive sensory impressions through external stimulation and where we connect these sensory impressions through understanding, reason, feeling, and will in today's consciousness, is only the consciousness of the present. It has developed from older forms of consciousness in humanity which, if we use the word in the positive sense, were more clairvoyant states in which people were able, in certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, to experience something of the spiritual worlds in a completely normal way, so that even though people at that time were not yet able to become conscious of themselves, they were less alien to their normal consciousness than to the experiences that take place in the depths of the soul, as mentioned today.
In primeval times, human beings saw more clearly their connection with the spiritual world outside themselves. They saw how the things that take place in their souls, these events lying deep within the soul, are connected with certain spiritual facts that live in the universe. They saw these spiritual facts passing through their souls and felt even more closely related to the spiritual and soul entities and facts of the universe. This was a characteristic of humanity's original clairvoyant state. And just as today one can only have the following feeling in very special moods, in earlier times one had it often and often, perhaps not only as an artistic person, but as a completely primitive person.
It may happen that in the depths of the soul, quite indeterminately, as indeterminately as possible, there lies an experience that does not rise to consciousness, an experience like those just described, which takes place in the depths of the soul. Nothing from this experience enters conscious daily life. But there is something there in the soul, just as hunger is present in the organism, just as hunger is present in the organism. And just as one needs something for hunger, one needs something for this vague mood that comes from the experience deep in the soul. Then one feels compelled to turn to an existing fairy tale or legend, or perhaps, if one is of an artistic nature, to create something oneself that expresses what one feels, so that all the words one might theoretically use seem like stammering in comparison to these experiences, and thus fairy tale images arise. This conscious filling of the soul with fairy tale images is then what nourishes the soul in the face of the hunger that has just been characterized.
Because in earlier times of human development, every human soul was still closer to a clairvoyant perception of the spiritual inner experiences of the soul, the simple folk mind, feeling the hunger just described much more clearly than is possible today, was able to seek nourishment in such images, which were then created by the creative human soul and which we have today in the fairy tale traditions of various peoples. The human soul felt a kinship with what spiritual existence is. It felt, more or less consciously, the inner struggles it had to go through without understanding them, and expressed them in images that therefore bear only a distant resemblance to what was taking place in the depths of the soul. And yet—one can sense a connection between what is expressed in fairy tales and these unfathomably deep experiences of the human soul.
A childlike mind—experience can certainly show this—often creates something within itself like a simple companion, a companion who is actually only there for this childlike mind, but who nevertheless accompanies it and participates in the most diverse events of life. Who, for example, does not know children who carry certain invisible friends with them through life, friends whom you have to imagine are there when something happens that makes the children happy, who have to participate as invisible companions of the spirit, companions of the soul, when the child experiences this or that? In the realm of human experience, one can often see how badly it affects the child's mind when the “understanding” adult comes along and hears that the child has such a soul mate, and now wants to talk the child out of this soul mate, perhaps even considering it beneficial for the child to talk them out of this companion. The child mourns the loss of its soulmate. And if it is receptive to spiritual and emotional moods, this grief means even more, it can mean that the child becomes ill or infirm. This is a very real experience that is connected with deep inner events in the human soul.
Without detracting from the “flavor” of the fairy tale, we can feel this simple experience in the fairy tale of the child and the toad, as told by the Brothers Grimm. They tell us about the child who always lets a toad eat with him. But the toad only enjoys the milk. The child talks to the animal as if it were a human being. One day, the child wants the toad to eat some of its bread too. The mother hears this, comes over and kills the animal. The child wastes away, becomes ill and dies.
In this fairy tale, we feel the resonance of moods that are absolutely, truly present in the depths of the soul and that really occur in such a way that the human soul is familiar with these moods not only in certain periods of life, but simply because human beings are human beings, regardless of whether they are children or adults. Therefore, every human soul can feel how what it experiences and does not understand, what it does not even bring to consciousness, is connected with what then has the same effect on the soul in fairy tales as food has on the taste of the tongue. And then the fairy tale becomes something similar for the soul as food is when it is used by the organism. It is fascinating to search for what resonates in the various fairy tales in the deep experiences of the soul. It would, of course, be a considerable task to examine the individual fairy tales, which have been collected in such large numbers, with this in mind. That would take a great deal of time. But what can perhaps be illustrated in individual fairy tales can be applied to all fairy tales that can be found to be genuine.
Let us take another fairy tale, also collected by the Brothers Grimm, the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin. The miller, who claims to the king that his daughter can spin straw into gold, is asked by the king to bring his daughter to the castle so that her art can be witnessed there. The daughter comes to the castle. She is locked in a chamber and given a bundle of straw so that she can demonstrate her skill. Once she is in the chamber, she is completely helpless. And as she stands there helpless, a little man appears before her. He says to her, “What will you give me if I spin this straw into gold for you?” The miller's daughter gives him her necklace, and the little man spins the straw into gold. The king is very surprised, but he wants more, and she has to spin straw into gold again. Once again, the miller's daughter is locked in a chamber, and as she sits in front of the pile of straw, the little man appears again and says, “What will you give me if I spin this straw into gold for you?” She gives him a little ring, and once again the little man spins the straw into gold. But the king wants even more. And when she sits in the chamber for the third time and the little man appears again, she has nothing left to give him. So the little man says that when she becomes queen, she must give him the first child she bears. She promises to do so. And when the child is born and the little man comes and reminds her of her promise, the miller's daughter wants to have a delay. The little man says to her, “If you tell me my name, you can be freed from your promise.” The miller's daughter sends messengers everywhere. She wants to know all names, including the name of the little man. Finally, after several unsuccessful attempts, she succeeds in naming the little man—Rumpelstiltskin.
There is really no other work of art besides fairy tales that gives one such a feeling of immediate joy and yet allows one to understand the deep inner experience that gave birth to such a fairy tale. Even if the comparison is trivial, it may still be apt: just as a person can be well versed in the chemistry of food and still enjoy a good bite to eat, so it is also possible to know something about the deep inner experiences of the soul that can only be experienced, not “known,” and that are expressed in the fairy tale images in the manner suggested. Yes, this lonely human soul—for in sleep, but also during the rest of life, it is lonely in itself, even if it is connected to the body—feels, but unconsciously, experiences, and does not understand the whole contradiction in which it is to its own infinite tasks, to its own being placed in the world of the divine.
The human soul already senses how little it is capable of when it compares its abilities with what nature outside can do, which transforms all things into one another, which is truly the great sorceress that the human soul so longs to be. In consciousness, it may be possible to lightly overcome this distance between the human inner being and the omniscience and omnipotence of the spirit of nature. But in the deep experiences of the soul, things are not so simple. The human soul would perish if it did not feel within itself an even deeper essence than the one initially perceptible, an essence on which it can rely, of which it can say to itself: However imperfect you may still be now, this essence is wiser within you, it reigns within you, it can carry you to the highest abilities, it can give you wings, so that you see an infinite perspective spread out before you into an infinite future. You will be able to do what you cannot do now, for there is something within you that is infinitely more than your “knowledge.” This is your faithful helper. You only have to establish a relationship with it, you only have to be able to connect a concept with this entity within yourself that is smarter, wiser, and more skilled than you are.
And now try again to visualize this interaction of the human soul with itself, this unconscious interaction with the more skilled part of the soul, and try to feel, in this fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin, what the soul experiences in the miller's daughter, who cannot spin straw into gold, but who finds a skilled, faithful helper in the little man. Deep in the depths of the soul, in images whose aroma is not destroyed when one knows their origin, there is a deep inner soul life.
Or let's take another example, and please don't be angry with me if I link this other example to certain things that may seem personal, but are by no means meant to be personal. But what this is all about will become clear when I bring this little personal nuance to bear.
In my “Outline of Esoteric Science,” you will find a description of world evolution. I do not want to talk about that now; that can be done on another occasion. In this world evolution, it is said that our Earth itself, as a planet in the universe, has gone through certain stages, which we can compare to the successive lives of the individual human being. Just as the individual human being goes through successive lives, so our Earth has gone through various planetary stages of life, incarnations. For certain reasons, we speak in spiritual science of the Earth having gone through a kind of “moon” existence before it began its ‘Earth’ existence, and before that a kind of “sun” existence; so that we can say that a solar existence existed in the distant past as the planetary predecessor of our Earth existence, an ancient sun that was still connected to the Earth. Then, in the course of development, a split occurred between the sun and the earth. From what was originally the sun, the moon also split off, and the present sun, which is not that original sun, but only a piece of it, so that we can speak of the original sun and, so to speak, its successor, the present sun. And we can also speak of the present moon as a product of the old sun. When spiritual scientific research looks back at the development of the Earth up to the point in time when the second sun, the present sun, developed as an independent world body, it must be said that at that time, among the beings that could already have been perceptible to the external senses, the only beings in the animal series were those that had developed up to the stage of fish.
All these things can be read about in more detail in “Occult Science” — and also understood. However, they can only be found through spiritual scientific research methods. At the time when they were found and written down by me, that is, they were not found when I wrote them down in “Occult Science,” but when they were found for me, so to speak, and then written down, I was completely unfamiliar with that fairy tale — and that is the personal aspect I would like to add — and I can state very precisely that it was completely unknown to me, as I only found it later in Wundt's “Völkerpsychologie” (Ethnopsychology), whose sources I then pursued further.
Before I briefly outline the fairy tale, I would just like to say one thing: Everything that spiritual researchers can explore in the spiritual world—and the things that have just been mentioned must be explored in the spiritual world, because otherwise they are no longer there—everything that is explored in this way represents the world with which the human soul is connected. We are connected to this world in the deepest recesses of our soul. It is always there; indeed, we even enter this spiritual world unconsciously when we fall asleep in normal life. Our soul is connected to it, and it contains not only the experiences it has during sleep, but also those connected with the whole development that has just been indicated. If it were not paradoxical, one might say: in the unconscious state, the soul knows about this, the soul experiences itself in the continuing stream that emanated from the original sun and then from the daughter sun, which we now see shining in the sky, and from the moon, which is also the offspring of the original sun. And the human soul also experiences that, spiritually and soulfully, it has gone through an existence in which it was not yet connected with earthly matter, but in which it could look down on earthly events, for example, on the time when the original sun was still shining in the sky. has gone through an existence in which it was not yet connected with earthly matter, but in which it could look down on earthly events, for example, on the time when the highest animal organisms were fish, when the present sun and moon came into being and separated from the earth. In the unconscious, the soul is connected with these events.
Now let us briefly sketch a fairy tale found among primitive peoples. Those peoples tell the story: Once upon a time there was a man. But he was actually a human being made of tree resin and could only do his work at night, because if he had done his work during the day, he would have been melted by the sun. One day, however, he went out during the day to catch fish. And lo and behold, the man, who actually represented tree resin, melted away. His sons decided to avenge him. And they shot arrows. They shot arrows in such a way that these arrows formed certain figures, piled up on top of each other, and created a ladder up to the sky. They climbed this ladder, one during the day and the other during the night. And one became the sun and the other became the moon.
It is not my habit to interpret such things in an abstract way and to introduce intellectual concepts. But it is something else to feel the result of research, that the human soul is connected in its depths with what happens in the world and can only be grasped spiritually, that this human soul is connected with all this and has a hunger to enjoy its deepest unconscious experiences in images. When you feel this, you feel the after-vibration of what the human soul experienced as the original sun and as the emergence of the sun and moon during the Piscean age of the earth, when you cite the fairy tale just outlined. And in a certain respect — this is again a personal nuance — it was a very significant experience for me when, long after these things had been written in my “Secret Science,” I discovered this fairy tale. Even though I cannot interpret this whole thing in an abstract way, a very specific feeling I have when I look at the evolution of the world is connected to another feeling I have when I immerse myself in the wonderful images of this fairy tale.
Or let us take another, a strange Melanesian fairy tale. Before we talk about this fairy tale, let us remember that, as spiritual research shows, the human soul is indeed connected with the present events and facts of the universe. Even if this is too pictorially expressed, it is nevertheless spiritually scientific in a certain sense when we say: When the human soul leaves the physical body during sleep, it leads an existence directly connected to the entire cosmos, feeling related to the entire cosmos. There is a way to easily remember the relationship between the human soul, for example the human ego, and the cosmos, or at least something meaningful in the cosmos. We turn our gaze to the plant world and say to ourselves: this plant grows, but it can only grow under the influence of sunlight and solar heat. There we have the plant rooted in the earth before us. In spiritual science we say: this plant consists of its physical body and the life body that permeates it. But that is not enough for the plant to grow and develop. For this, the forces that act on the plant from the sun are necessary.
If we now consider the human body while a person is asleep, then this sleeping human body has, in a sense, the value of a plant. As a sleeping body, it is similar to a plant, for it has the power to grow that the plant has within itself. But human beings are emancipated from the cosmic order in which plants are entangled. Plants must wait for the sunlight to act upon them, for the sun to rise and set. They are bound to the external cosmic order. Human beings are not bound to this order. Why not? Because what spiritual research shows is indeed true: that human beings, from their ego — which is outside their physical body during sleep, which then appears to us like a plant — develop for the physical body what the sun develops for plants. Just as the sun pours its light over the plants, so the human ego, when the human being sleeps, pours its light over the plant-like physical body. Just as the sun rests over the plants, so the human ego rests spiritually over the plant-like sleeping physical body. The human ego is related to the existence of the sun. Yes, the human ego is itself a kind of sun for the sleeping human body, causing it to flourish during sleep, causing those forces that have been worn down during waking to be repaired. When we feel this, we realize how the human ego is related to the sun. Spiritual science shows us more and more how the sun moves across the sky — I am speaking, of course, of the apparent movement of the sun — and how, in a certain sense, the effectiveness of its rays changes depending on whether the sun is in front of this or that constellation of the zodiac, so too does the human ego pass through different phases of its experiences, so that it affects the physical body differently in one phase than in another. In spiritual science, one feels the sun acting differently on the earth, depending on whether it covers, for example, the constellation of Aries, the constellation of Taurus, and so on. Therefore, one does not speak of the sun in general, but of the effect of the sun from the twelve constellations, always referring to the passage of the sun through the twelve signs of the zodiac — and then pointing to the relationship between the changing self and the changing effect of the sun.
Let us now take everything that could only be outlined here, but which is further elaborated in “The Secret Science,” as something that can be gained as spiritual-soul knowledge; let us consider it as that which takes place at the bottom of the human soul and remains unconscious, but takes place in such a way that it means an inner experience of the spiritual forces of the cosmos, which are expressed in the fixed stars and planets, and let us compare all this, which spiritual science reveals to us as the mysteries of the universe, with a Melanesian fairy tale, which I will again only briefly outline:
There is a stone lying on the country road. This stone is the mother of Quatl. And Quatl has eleven other brothers. After the eleven other brothers and Quatl are created, Quatl begins to create the present world. In this world that he created at that time, people do not yet know the difference between day and night. Now Quatl learns that somewhere there is an island where there is a difference between day and night. He travels to this island and brings some beings from this island back to his country. And through the influence of these beings on the beings in his country, his beings enter into the alternating state of sleep and wakefulness, and the rising and setting of the sun takes place for them in their souls.
It is strange what resonates in this fairy tale. When you have the whole fairy tale in front of you, something vibrates in every sentence, as it were, that is connected with the mysteries of the world, just as something vibrates from what the soul experiences in its depths in the sense of spiritual science. Is it not then necessary to say that the sources of the fairy-tale mood, of fairy-tale poetry, lie in the depths of the human soul? These fairy tales are presented as images because external events must be used to provide what is intended as spiritual nourishment for the hunger that springs from the experiences described. We must also say: Yes, we are far removed from these experiences, but we can feel them resonating in the images of the fairy tales.
If we keep this in mind, we need no longer be surprised that the most beautiful, the most characteristic fairy tales are known to us precisely from those older times and have been handed down from them, when people still had a certain clairvoyant consciousness and could therefore more easily access the sources of this fairy-tale mood and fairy-tale poetry, and we are not surprised that in those parts of the world where people are still closer in their souls to the spiritual sources than, for example, the souls of the West, for example in India, in the Orient in general, fairy tales can have an even more pronounced character.
Then we are also not surprised that in the German fairy tales collected by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, as they heard them from relatives or other, often simple people, we find representations that remind us of those times in European life when the great heroic sagas also arose, and that the fairy tales contain features that we also find in the great sagas of gods and heroes. Nor are we surprised to hear that it has subsequently been discovered that the most significant fairy tales are even older than the heroic sagas, because the heroic sagas only show people at a certain age and in a certain situation, whereas what lives in fairy tales is universally human, accompanying the human soul from the first to the last breath we take, through all stages of life. And we are not surprised when fairy tales also bring to the fore, for example, what has been called a profound experience of the soul, that feeling of inadequacy of the soul upon awakening to the forces of nature, which one faces helplessly and which one can only cope with if one has the comfort in one's soul that there is something within you that transcends you and, in a certain sense, makes you the victor over the forces of nature once again.
When one feels this mood, one also feels why giants appear so often in fairy tales, with whom humans have to deal. Why do these giants appear? Yes, these giants arise quite naturally as an image from the mood that the soul has when it wants to enter its physical body again in the morning and now finds itself confronted with the forces of nature that are “giant” for the human soul and that occupy the body. What the soul feels as a struggle, what it can perceive there, is quite correct — but not in an intellectual, conceptual way — as it corresponds to the human soul in the manifold struggles of humans with giants. When all this comes before it, the soul feels that in this whole struggle and in its whole position vis-à-vis the giants, it has only one thing: its cunning. For it is part of this feeling: you could now enter your body, but what are you compared to all the gigantic forces of the universe! However, you have something that is not present in these giants: that is cunning, the intellect! This stands unconsciously before the soul, even though it must tell itself that it can do nothing against the gigantic forces of the universe, and we can literally see how the soul transports itself there when it expresses the mood just characterized in the image:
There is a man walking along the country road who comes to an inn. In the inn, he orders a bowl of milk soup. Flies fly into the soup. He eats the milk soup and leaves the flies. Then he taps on the plate and counts the flies he has killed, boasting: A hundred at once! The innkeeper hangs a sign around his neck: He killed a hundred at once. Now this man continues along the country road, comes to another area, and there a king looks out of the window of his castle. He sees this man with the sign around his neck and says to himself: I can use him. He takes him into his service and assigns him a very specific task. He says to him: Look, there are always whole packs of bears coming into my country. If you can kill a hundred at once, then you can surely kill the bears for me.“ The man says, ”I'll do it!“ But while the bears are not yet there, he wants a good wage and decent food, because he thinks to himself, ”If I can't do it, at least I will have lived well until then." When the time comes for the bears to arrive, he gathers all kinds of food and other good things that bears like to eat. Now he goes out to meet the bears and lays out the food. The bears come and eat until they are so full that they lie there as if paralyzed, and now he kills them one by one. The king then comes and sees what he has done. But the man says: Yes, I simply let the bears jump over the stick and then cut off their heads! The king is very impressed and gives him another task. He says to him: Look, now the giants will soon come back to my country, and you must also help me against them. The man promised to do so. And when the time came, he again took a lot of good food with him, but also a lark and a piece of cheese. He then actually met the giants and first engaged them in a conversation about his strength. One giant said: We will show you that we are stronger. And he took a stone and crushed it in his hand. Then he said to the man: “This is how strong we are! What can you do against us?” The other giant took an arrow, shot it, and shot it so high that the arrow took a long time to come back down, and said: “This is how strong we are! What can you do against us?” Then the man who had killed a hundred at once said: “I can do all that much better!” He took a small piece of cheese and a stone and tried to smear the stone with the cheese and said to the giants: “I can squeeze water out of the stone!” And he crushed the cheese so that water squirted out. The giants were amazed at the power with which he could squeeze water out of the stone. Then the man took the lark and let it fly and said to the giant: Your arrow has come back, but my arrow, which I shot, goes so high that it will never come back! For the lark did not return. The giants were so amazed that they agreed that they could only overcome him with cunning; for they no longer thought that they could overcome him with their giant strength. However, they did not succeed in outwitting the man, but he outwitted them. When they were all asleep, he put an inflated pig's bladder over his head, inside which was some blood. The giants said to themselves: We will not be able to overcome him while he is awake, so we will overcome him while he is asleep. When he was asleep, they attacked him and burst the pig's bladder, and when they saw the blood spurting out, they thought they had already overcome him. And they soon fell asleep. And in the calm that then came over them, they slept so soundly that he was able to overcome them in their sleep.
Even though the fairy tale, like some dreams, ends unclearly and unsatisfactorily, we still see in it the struggle of the human soul against the forces of nature, first against the “bears,” but then it turns into a struggle against the “giants.” But we see something else in this fairy tale. We have before us the man who slew a hundred at once, so that we feel the vibrations of what lives in the deepest unconscious of the soul: that through his cunning he can always be comforted by the stronger forces that he must perceive as gigantic. It is not good to interpret what is artistically rendered in images in a completely abstract way and in individual features. That is not what matters. For nothing is destroyed in the fairy tale's design when one feels that the fairy tale is the echo of deep processes taking place in the soul. These processes are such that we can know a great deal about them, as much as can be known through spiritual research, and yet, when we become entangled in them again and again, when we experience them in this way, they are still primal and elemental. And no knowledge, even if it is otherwise available, destroys the ability to bring what we experience in the depths of our soul into the atmosphere of fairy tales.
Therefore, it is certainly appealing for research to know how fairy tales provide what the soul needs for its deepest experiences in the manner suggested. At the same time, no fairy-tale atmosphere is destroyed, because it is precisely those who, perhaps drawing on the essence of fairy tales, gain a deeper insight into the sources of subconscious life who find in these sources something that is impoverished for the consciousness when it is presented only in abstract terms, and they actually find that the presentation in fairy tales is really the more comprehensive one for the deepest soul experiences.
One then understands that Goethe expressed what he was able to experience richly and what Schiller expressed in abstract philosophical terms in the meaningful and ambiguous images of the “fairy tale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily. So, despite having thought a great deal, Goethe wanted to express in images what he felt about the deepest layers and the subconscious of the human soul. And because fairy tales are so closely connected with the innermost depths of the soul, with what is so deeply connected with the innermost depths of the human soul, fairy tales are precisely the form of representation that is most appropriate for the child's mind. For it can be said of fairy tales that they have succeeded in expressing the deepest aspects of spiritual life in the simplest way possible. One gradually comes to feel that in all conscious artistic life there is no greater art than the art that completes the journey from the misunderstood depths of the soul to the charming, often playful images of the fairy tale.
If one is able to express the most difficult to understand in the most natural forms, then that is the greatest art, the most natural art, art that is intrinsically connected with human beings. And because in children the human essence is connected in an even more original way with the whole of existence, with the whole of life, children also need fairy tales as nourishment for their souls. What represents spiritual power can move even more freely in children. If the child's soul is not to become barren, this cannot yet be woven into abstract theoretical concepts. It must still be connected with what is rooted in the depths of existence.
Therefore, we do the child no greater service for the soul than when we allow its soul to be influenced by what brings together human roots with the roots of existence. Because the child still has to be creatively active in shaping its own being, because it still has to produce the creative forces for its own growth and for the development of all its abilities, it finds such wonderful nourishment for its soul in the images of fairy tales, in which it is rooted in existence. And because human beings, even when they devote themselves to rationalism and intellectualism, can never be torn away from the roots of existence, and because when they are most devoted to life, they are most intimately connected with the roots of existence, they return joyfully to fairy tales at every age, provided they are of a healthy, straightforward disposition. For there is no age, there is no human situation that could alienate us from what flows from fairy tales, because we would have to cease to be connected with the deepest part of human nature if we no longer had any sense of what is expressed in the self-evident fairy tales and in the self-evident, simple, primitive fairy-tale mood, which is so incomprehensible to the intellect.
It is therefore understandable that people who have long been concerned with restoring to humanity the fairy tales that have been somewhat obscured by culture, people such as the Brothers Grimm, for example, even if they do not approach the matter from a spiritual scientific point of view, but from the whole way in which they lived with the fairy tales they brought up from folk culture, had the feeling that they were giving humanity something that belongs intimately to human nature. Then one also understands that, after a culture of the intellect has done so much over the centuries to alienate the human soul and also the child's soul from fairy tales, fairy tale collections such as those of the Brothers Grimm have once again found their way into the hearts of all people who are receptive to such things, and that they have once again become common property, especially for the child's soul, but also common property of all souls, and this will become more and more the case the more spiritual science becomes not only theory, but a mood of the soul, that mood which will bring the soul more and more together, emotionally together with its spiritual roots of existence.
Thus, it is precisely through the spread of spiritual science that what genuine fairy tale collectors, genuine fairy tale feelers, and fairy tale performers wanted is being realized, and what a man who was himself a deep friend of fairy tale performance often said in lectures that I was privileged to hear, repeating a beautiful poetic phrase in which we can summarize what also results from the spiritual scientific consideration of fairy tales when we apply it in today's sense. We can summarize it in the words spoken in his lectures by that man who knew how to love fairy tales, who knew how to collect fairy tales, who knew how to appreciate fairy tales, and who therefore always liked to refer to the saying: Fairy tales and legends are like a good angel who, from birth, is given to man by his homeland on his journey through life, so that he may be a trusted companion throughout this entire journey and, by offering him this companionship, make life a truly soulful fairy tale!