The Rudolf Steiner Archive

16. Goethe's Secret Revelation I

The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily

[ 1 ] In this lecture and the two that follow, we will examine what might be called, in Goethe’s own words, his apocalypse, his secret revelation.

[ 2 ] We have seen the lofty circle of brothers to which Goethe considered himself to belong. It was his conviction that knowledge is not something established once and for all from a human standpoint, but that the human capacity for knowledge can develop, and that this development of the soul is subject to a law of which human beings need not be aware at first, just as a plant does not know the laws according to which it develops. The general theosophical teachings on the development of the human soul’s capacity for knowledge are entirely in accord with Goethe’s view of life. Goethe expressed this view in many ways.

[ 3 ] A question he had sought to resolve in an infinitely profound way, one he had approached as his friendship with Schiller grew ever closer—he now answered it. This bond was difficult to forge, as these two personalities stood on entirely different intellectual ground. It was not until the mid-1890s that they found common ground

[ 4 ] 220 always complemented one another. At that time, Schiller invited Goethe to contribute to Die Horen, a journal intended to make the finest products of German intellectual life accessible to the public. Goethe agreed to contribute, and his first piece in the journal was his apocalypse, his “Secret Revelation”: The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (1794/95).

[ 5 ] This concerns the broader connection between the physical and the spiritual, the earthly and the supernatural, which he sought to elucidate, as well as the path that human beings must take through their developing cognitive abilities if they wish to ascend from the earthly to the spiritual.

[ 6 ] This is a question that human beings must always ask themselves. Schiller had presented this problem in his own witty way in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.” This treatise, little known and rarely studied, is a treasure trove for anyone who sets out to unravel this mystery. Goethe was inspired by it to comment on the same question, and he did so in the fairy tale “Of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” which he later added to “Conversations of German Emigrants.”

[ 7 ] This fairy tale delves deeply into theosophy. Theosophy also teaches that the content of our soul’s knowledge is always dependent on our capacity for knowledge, and that we as human beings can continually develop this capacity to ever greater heights, so that we may gradually come to the point where the content of our soul’s knowledge is no longer subjective, but rather where we can experience an objective world within our soul. The fairy tale “Of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” illustrates the development of the human soul toward ever higher insight through the fact that all human soul forces can develop, not just the human faculty of thought alone. All soul forces, including feeling and willing, can penetrate the objective mysteries of the world. But they must learn to set aside everything personal.

[ 8 ] This fairy tale is so profound that it is worth finding a more intimate way to approach it. It leads us into the depths of Goethe’s worldview. Goethe himself told Riemer that it was like the Revelation of St. John, in that few would find the true meaning within it. Goethe poured into it his deepest insights into the human condition. He was always very reserved about it: he said that if a hundred people could be found who understood it correctly, he would provide an explanation. By the time of his death, not even a hundred had come forward with an interpretation, and the explanation was never shared. After Goethe’s death, a large number of attempts at explanation were made, which were collected by Meyer-von Waldeck. They are valuable in part as building blocks, but they are unable to fathom the deeper meaning,

[ 9 ] The question might arise: Why did Goethe embed the true secret of his life in such a fairy tale? — He himself said that he could only express himself on such a question through imagery. In doing so, he acted just as all the great teachers of humanity have done, who did not wish to teach in abstract words, but who treated the highest questions through images, in a symbolic manner.

[ 10 ] Even up until the founding of the Theosophical Society, it was not possible to convey these highest truths in any form other than figurative. This gives rise to what Schopenhauer so beautifully called the “Chorus of Spirits,” when, as through hieroglyphs, the spark is kindled in those who understand them. Since Goethe’s worldview had become entirely personal and intimate, he could express himself only in this form. Two passages in Goethe’s “Conversations with Eckermann” provide important insights into this.

[ 11 ] Later, Goethe expressed himself even more intimately in two other fairy tales, *The New Melusine* (1807) and *The New Paris* (1810). These three fairy-tale poems are the deepest expression of Goethe’s worldview. In “The New Paris,” he says at the end: “Whether I can tell you what happens next, or whether I am expressly forbidden to do so, I cannot say.” This is meant to be a hint as to the sources from which this fairy tale originates.

[ 12 ] These fairy tales are revelations of Goethe’s most intimate view of life and the world. The boys’ fairy tale, “The New Paris,” clearly points to the sources from which it originates. It begins: All the boy’s clothes fall from his body; everything that a person has acquired within the culture in which he lives falls away from him. A man, young and handsome, approaches the boy. The boy welcomes him joyfully. The man asks: “Do you know who I am?”—And the boy replies: “You are Mercury.”—“That is who I am, and I have been sent by the gods with an important mission for you!”

[ 13 ] Let us therefore regard these three fairy tales as Goethe’s most profound revelations. First, the fairy tale of “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” The tale begins in a mysterious way. We are presented with three realms: one in this world, one in the next, and between them lies the river. It depicts for us the world of body, soul, and spirit, and humanity’s path into the supersensible world. The earthly shore is the physical world; the otherworldly shore, the land of the beautiful lily, is the world of the spirit; between them lies the stream, the astral world, the world of desire.

[ 14 ] Theosophy speaks of the life of the soul in the physical world, this life, and then of Devachan, where the soul experiences itself after death, but also when, through occult development, it has already freed itself here in the physical world from all that is personal. Then it can ascend to the hereafter, to the realm of the beautiful lily; it then finds the path to the other shore, to the place toward which humanity constantly strives—the path to the homeland of its soul and spirit. The stream in between, the astral world, the stream of desires and passions that separate humanity from the spiritual world, must be overcome.

[ 15 ] A bridge is now being built across the river, and man enters the realm of the beautiful lily. This is the goal toward which man strives. Goethe was well aware of the significance of the lily in medieval mysticism. He had practically been initiated into the secrets of the mystical worldview and was familiar with the alchemical endeavors of the Middle Ages. Having recognized the depth of mysticism on the one hand, he also encountered its trivial reflection in the distorted images of literature.

[ 16 ] In the first part of *Faust*, he shows us, in a humorous way, that the problem of man’s relationship with the beautiful lily was already on his mind. In the Easter Walk—before he meets Mephistopheles—he writes of humanity’s endeavors in a distorted alchemy:

My father was a somber man of honor,
who pondered nature and its sacred circles,
with integrity, yet in his own way,
with whimsical effort;
... there a red lion, a bold suitor,
was wed in the lily’s balmy bath.

[ 17 ] This is a technical term in alchemy: the lily symbolizes Mercury. In the theosophical worldview, Mercury is the symbol of wisdom toward which humanity strives, and the lily represents the state of consciousness in which a person finds themselves when they have attained the highest level and discovered their true self. The union of the masculine and the feminine in the human soul is depicted here. “In the lukewarm bath” means, in the sense of alchemy, “freed from the fire of desires.” In Theosophy, we speak of Ahamkara, the human ego-striving that seeks to encompass the highest. This human principle, which initially strives in selfhood, is depicted in alchemy as a lion that, having been freed from selfhood, desires, and passions, is permitted to unite with the lily. Even though little was known in the Middle Ages about true alchemy, the terms had nevertheless been preserved. All higher truths stand before us in the radiance of the ether when, freed from stormy desires—from the lion of desires that have cooled in the lukewarm bath—we approach them. Then the human spirit can find the lily, the Eternal Feminine that draws us to it; it can achieve union with these truths of the spiritual worlds. This is a path that souls have always walked, in the fullest clarity. A mystic is one who strives for clarity, loftiness, and purity of vision.

[ 18 ] Wisdom must not be met with sympathy or antipathy, but only with a selfless immersion in it. Because no passion is felt regarding the truths of mathematics, no dispute over them is possible; if human emotions were taken into account, there would even be arguments over whether two times two equals four. All higher truths stand before us in the same ethereal radiance when we express this attitude. And it was this serenity in all things that Pythagoras called catharsis, purification. Goethe described this entire path with its intimate mysteries in his fairy tale, because our everyday language is truly incapable of depicting these things. Only when we succeed in depicting in vivid imagery what lives in the soul of the mystic do we also find, linguistically, the path to the highest form of human consciousness, to the lily.

[ 19 ] People take pleasure in portraying mysticism as something obscure. But the only ones who are obscure are those who cannot find the path to the heights. Free from brutal, immediate reality, in the pure heights of the ether, the mystic strives for the most precious clarity of concepts. We must first acquire the concepts that lead us into this realm of clarity. Goethe sought this realm of clarity; he strove for mathematical insight. Fifteen years ago, I found a notebook in Goethe’s estate that confirmed that Goethe continued to engage in mathematical studies even in his later years, delving into the most advanced problems. In the spirit of a true Gnostic, he also conducted his studies of nature and the human soul. From his intuitive mind, for example, came his vision of the primordial plant.

[ 20 ] But just as he was difficult to understand with regard to the primordial plant and animal, so he was even less so with regard to the life of the soul. I recall here the conversation with Schiller in Jena in 1794. Goethe expressed himself to Schiller in such a way that he said a way of viewing the world and its contents could well be found that does not, as science does, pick things apart, but rather reveals the unifying bond that underlies everything, pointing to a Higher, a Unifying Force behind all that is sensory. And Goethe drew his “primordial plant,” a form that resembled a plant but was not a living one that can be perceived by the external senses, and he said to Schiller: this is the plant-ness, the primordial plant; this is what unites plants; but this primordial plant does not live in any single plant, but in all plant beings. This is the objective essence of all plants. — In response to Schiller’s objection that what he called the “primordial plant” was an idea, he replied: “If that is an idea, I see my ideas with my eyes.” At that time, Goethe demonstrated his stance on the spiritual: for him, there exists an intuitively perceived plant that lives within every plant being. Only intuitive perception can grasp the objective reality behind all sensory phenomena; only thinking free from the senses can attain it. The will-o’-the-wisps in the fairy tale show us how thinking can develop into objectivity. Anyone who cannot rise to Goethe’s level of insight does not understand what he means; even Schiller did not fully grasp what Goethe meant at the time, but he made every effort to penetrate Goethe’s worldview. Then came the letter of August 23, 1794. That was the breaking of the ice between the two minds.

[ 21 ] Goethe has woven much of the higher spiritual insight that lived within him into this fairy tale. Let us now try to delve into the fairy tale.

[ 22 ] It is said: In the middle of the night, two will-o'-the-wisps wake the old ferryman, who is sleeping on the opposite shore—that is, in the spirit world—and ask to be ferried across. He ferries them across from the Realm of the Lily over the storm-lashed river. They behave rudely, dancing in the boat so wildly that the ferryman has to tell them the boat is capsizing. Finally, after they have reached the other bank with great difficulty, they want to pay him with many gold pieces, which they shake from themselves. The ferryman rejects them and says grumpily: “It’s a good thing you didn’t throw it into the river; it can’t tolerate gold and would have foamed wildly and swallowed you up. I must now bury the gold. But I myself can only be paid with the fruits of the earth.” - And he does not let them go until they promise him three cabbages, three artichokes, and three onions. The ferryman then hides the gold in the crevices of the earth, where the green snake dwells. It devours the gold and thereby glows from within. It can now walk in its own light and sees how everything around it is transfigured by this light. The will-o’-the-wisps meet her and say to her: You are our aunt from the horizontal line. - The will-o’-the-wisps are her cousins, who come from the vertical line. These are ancient terms, vertical and horizontal, which have always been used in mysticism to describe certain states of the soul.

[ 23 ] “How do we get to the beautiful lily?” ask the will-o'-the-wisps. “Oh, she lives on the other bank,” replies the snake. “Alas, that’s where we’ve made our home; that’s where we come from!” The snake informs them that the ferryman may bring anyone across, but no one back. - “Are there no other ways?” — “Yes, at noon I form a bridge myself,” says the green snake. But this time does not suit the will-o’-the-wisps, and so the snake directs them to the shadow of the giant, who is powerless himself but can do anything with his shadow. At sunrise and sunset, the shadow stretches across the river like a bridge.

[ 24 ] After the will-o'-the-wisps had departed, the snake sought to satisfy a curiosity that had long tormented her. During her wanderings through the rocks, she had sensed smooth walls and human-like figures, which she now hoped to recognize by her new light.

[ 25 ] She creeps through the rocks and finds a chamber where the portraits of four kings are displayed. The first of the kings is made of gold; he is adorned with an oak wreath. He asks the snake where she comes from: “From the crevices where gold dwells!” “What is more magnificent than gold?” asks the king. “Light,” replies the snake. “What is more refreshing than light?” “Conversation,” replies the snake. Then she looks at the other kings: the second is made of silver, adorned with a crown; the third is made of bronze, adorned with a laurel wreath; while the fourth, of misshapen form, is composed of all these metals.

[ 26 ] Now a bright light spreads; an old man carrying a lamp appears in the vault.

[ 27 ] “Why do you come now that we have light?” asks the Golden King. “You know that I must not illuminate the darkness.” “Is my kingdom coming to an end?” asks the Silver King. — Sooner or later — replies the Old Man. The Bronze King begins: When will I rise? — Soon — answers the Old Man. — With whom shall I unite? — asks the Silver King. — With your older brothers — says the Old Man. What will become of the youngest? — He will sit down.

[ 28 ] While these words were being spoken, the serpent looked around the temple.

[ 29 ] Meanwhile, the Golden King says to the Old Man: “How many secrets do you know?” “Three,” replies the Old Man. “Which is the most important?” asks the Silver King. “The obvious one,” replies the Old Man. “Will you reveal it to us as well?” asks the Bronze King. “As soon as I know the fourth,” says the Old Man. “What does it matter to me,” mutters the Composite King to himself. “I know the fourth,” says the Serpent, approaching the Old Man and hissing something in his ear. “The time has come!” cries the old man in a mighty voice. The temple echoes, the metal statues ring out, and in that instant the old man sinks toward the west and the serpent toward the east, each streaking with great speed through the crevices of the rocks.

[ 30 ] That, for now, is the content of the fairy tale. “The audience will learn many more things; the resolution lies within the fairy tale itself,” Schiller writes to Cotta. We have reached a point where we wish to begin with the resolution. To avoid digressing too far, we must first clarify a few ancient expressions of the secret doctrine in order to understand the imagery: for the mystic, flames signify something very specific. What, then, did Goethe depict in the flames, the will-o’-the-wisps? The flames, which are will-o’-the-wisps, symbolically represent the fire of passions, sensual desires, drives, and instincts. This is the fire that lives only in warm-blooded animals and in humans. There was once a time when humans did not yet have the form they have today. This fire did not exist before the Lemurian race; before it was incarnated in the human body, there were no desires or drives of this kind. A desiring, wishing being—that is what humans have become through their permeation with warm-bloodedness, Kamamanas. Fish and reptiles belong to the cold-blooded animals. Mysticism therefore distinguishes far more clearly than natural science between cold-blooded and warm-blooded beings.

[ 31 ] Back then, in the middle of the Lemurian epoch, there came a moment when humanity evolved from the lower to the higher. This moment is described in the myths, in the legend of Prometheus, as the bringing down of fire. It is said that Prometheus brought it down from heaven, and he was chained to the rock—the physical, mineral human body.

[ 32 ] The sum of drives, feelings, instincts, and passions—that is the fire that drives people to new “deeds.” In Theosophy, this flame is called the wellspring of human self-awareness, the ability to say “I” to oneself. Had man not come to become a flame, he would not have been able to develop self-consciousness and thus would not have been able to ascend to the knowledge of the Divine. There is a lower “I”-consciousness, self-consciousness, and a higher one. The lower nature of the drives and the higher nature of consciousness are united within man. The physical human being came into being through the permeation of his self with blood, with the flame. The fiery formations of will-o’-the-wisps reveal the welling up of self-consciousness within the instincts, desires, and passions. This is kamamana, as we say in Theosophy. Thus, the human being initially lives in the physical world, on this side of the stream.

[ 33 ] But the home of the human being, where he dwells before he is born, lies beyond the stream, in the spiritual world. The ferryman guides the human being from this spiritual world across the stream of the astral world and into physical, earthly existence. The seeking soul, however, strives ceaselessly to return to the land beyond the river; but the ferryman—Nature—cannot take it there. It is said: Even if it were to meet him on this side of the river, he would not take it across, for he is permitted to bring everyone over, but no one back. So says the serpent to the will-o’-the-wisps. Natural forces have brought human beings into the physical world through birth; if a person wishes to return to the higher worlds during their lifetime, they must do so themselves. There is a way back. The ego is capable of gathering knowledge. In occultism, knowledge is always symbolized by gold. Gold and wisdom—knowledge—correspond to one another. The gold of knowledge, that which is represented by the will-o’-the-wisps, is also possessed by the lower humanity, which becomes a will-o’-the-wisp if it does not find the right path. There is a lower wisdom that human beings acquire within the sensory world by observing the things and beings of this sensory world, forming ideas about them, and combining them through their thinking. But this is merely intellectual wisdom. The will-o’-the-wisps want to pay the ferryman with this gold, which they easily take in and just as easily cast aside. But the ferryman rejects it. Intellectual wisdom does not satisfy nature; only that gift can work in nature which is connected to the living forces of nature. Wisdom received prematurely causes the astral stream to foam; it does not accept it, it rejects it. The ferryman demands fruits of the earth as payment. The will-o’-the-wisps have never enjoyed these; they do not possess them. They have never strived to penetrate the depths of nature, yet they must still pay their tribute to nature. They must promise to satisfy the ferryman’s demand in due course. This demand consists of fruits of the earth: three heads of cabbage, three artichokes, and three large onions. What are these fruits of the earth? Goethe takes these fruits, which have shells that represent human husks.

[ 34 ] Human beings have three sheaths, three bodies: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body. Within these sheaths lives the core of the human being, the Self. In these bodies, which surround it like shells, the Self must gather the fruits of one incarnation after another. It is the fruits of the earth that it must gather. These fruits do not consist of intellectual knowledge. The ferryman demands these three shell-like bodies as a tribute to nature. Goethe subtly incorporated this teaching into his fairy tale.

[ 35 ] The gold comes to the serpent. This is the gold of true wisdom. The serpent has always been the symbol of the self that does not remain within itself, but which, through selflessness, can absorb the divine within itself and sacrifice itself; which humbly and selflessly gathers earthly wisdom by crawling through the “crevices of the earth,” which ascends to the Divine not by unfolding egoism and vanity, but by seeking to make itself like the Divine. In its selfless striving, the serpent absorbs the gold of wisdom; it permeates itself entirely with the gold, and thereby it becomes luminous from within. It becomes luminous, just as the Self does when it has worked its way up to the level of inspiration, where the human being has become inwardly luminous and radiant, and light flows toward light. The serpent notices that it has become transparent and luminous. For a long time, it had been assured that this phenomenon was possible. If it was green before, it is now luminous. The serpent is green because it is in harmony with the beings around it, with all of nature. Where this harmony lives, the aura appears in a light green hue. Green is the color in which the human aura appears when predominantly selfless, devoted striving lives in the soul. Now that it has become luminous from within, the snake sees; before, it had only groped in its striving effort. All leaves seem to be made of emerald, all flowers transfigured in the most magnificent way. She sees all things in a new, transfigured light. Things appear to us in such a radiant emerald hue when the spirit flows toward us from them, when light flows toward light.

[ 36 ] Now that she has become radiant, now that she has absorbed the higher divine nature within herself, she also finds her way to the underground temple.

[ 37 ] Deeply hidden were the places where truths were once proclaimed; deep within the caves and crevices of the earth stood the mystery temples. There, light meets light.

[ 38 ] Although the serpent had previously been forced to crawl through these abysses without light, it was able to distinguish objects by touch. Through touch, it had perceived objects that betrayed the creative hand of man, above all human figures. Now it is in possession of light, and light comes to meet it. It finds the temple and within it the four kings, and the old man with the lamp comes to meet it. The man with the lamp symbolizes ancient wisdom, the ancient wisdom of humanity, which is only light and casts no shadow, which contains something that modern science cannot comprehend. Goethe profoundly states that the lamp of the human soul shines only when it is met by another light, which the soul must generate within itself. It is the same view he expresses in the maxim he prefaced to his theory of colors, which he says are the words of an ancient mystic:

If the eye were not like the sun,
How could we see the light?
If God’s own power did not dwell within us,
How could the divine delight us?

[ 39 ] For when the serpent’s eye has become like the sun, when the light of the Divine has been kindled within the serpent, the light of the world’s ancient wisdom shines upon it.

[ 40 ] The fire of passion has been transformed into light. Fire that has been transformed into the light of wisdom out in the earthly realm can shine back upon the Bringer of Wisdom, the “Old Man with the Lamp.”

[ 41 ] As the fairy tale unfolds, we are introduced to the four kings.

[ 42 ] The serpent gazes at the four kings with amazement and awe. Awe and reverence are always the powers of the soul that propel people forward and upward. It looks first at the golden king, and he begins to speak: “Where do you come from?” “From the chasms,” replies the serpent, “where gold dwells.” “What is more magnificent than gold?” asks the king. “Light,” replies the serpent. “What is more refreshing than light?” asks the king. “Conversation,” replies the serpent. In conversation, wisdom emerges in an intimate way for humanity; this is more refreshing than the great revelation. — Does this conversation between the king and the snake not bring to mind the Platonic dialogues? There, too, the secrets of the world are revealed in just a few words, a few sentences. Goethe wishes to portray: What is found within the temple and what takes place there concerns the highest mysteries of human development.

[ 43 ] What is the alchemy by which things are thus transformed? It is initiation. Even modern evolutionary theory is based on the continuous transformation of things. The temple must first be subterranean, that is, closed to most people; but now the moment is approaching when it will open to all people. It seeks to send the gold of wisdom, now transformed into light, from person to person.

[ 44 ] Who is the Golden King, and who are the other three kings—the Silver King, the Bronze King, and the Mixed King? — The Golden King is Manas, Wisdom itself, which until now could only develop to a higher degree within the temple of the mysteries. This is the soul force that human beings can attain through purified, senseless thinking. The silver king points to an element even higher than wisdom: he is love, the creative word of the World-Buddhi, the God who shines in love. His realm is called the realm of appearance; this refers to what Christianity calls glory (Gloria in excelsis). It points to a time that will only be reached later; then Buddhi will rule over humanity. The bronze king, whom the serpent does not yet perceive at first, who appears to be of little value, is of a mighty stature, powerful to behold. He resembles a rock more than a human form. This is the king who expresses the will-like soul force that lies hidden within man. He represents Atma, that with which the striving human being is ultimately endowed, that which he ultimately finds.

[ 45 ] Goethe thus used a beautiful metaphor to describe human potential in terms of the three highest virtues that will one day be bestowed upon us. In earlier times, no one was admitted to initiation without having attained this level of maturity.

[ 46 ] Then there is a fourth king, of a clumsy appearance; he is made of a mixture of gold, silver, and bronze, but the metals do not seem to have melted together properly during casting, and nothing in him fits together with anything else. This is the soul of the undeveloped human being, who has not yet developed any higher aspirations, in whom thinking, feeling, and willing are chaotically jumbled together and “give the image an unpleasant appearance.” The power of thought, still clouded by sensory impressions; the fire of the soul, which does not unfold love but lives in desires and instincts; the disordered will of the human being—this is what the fourth king represents.

[ 47 ] Let us recall the conversation between the kings and the man with the lamp. The golden king asks the old man: “How many secrets do you know?” “Three,” replied the old man. “Which is the most important?” asked the silver king. “The obvious one,” replied the old man. “Will you reveal it to us as well?” asked the bronze king. “As soon as I know the fourth,” said the old man. “I know the fourth,” said the snake, approaching the old man and hissing something in his ear. “The time has come!” cried the old man in a mighty voice.

[ 48 ] There are three secrets—the most important is the obvious one. When that is revealed, the fourth can be known! This is the most important line in the entire fairy tale and, at the same time, the key to it—as Goethe told Schiller in a conversation. The Old Man knows three secrets; these are the secrets of the three kingdoms of nature. The kingdoms of nature have become stationary in their development. Human beings, however, continue to develop. They are able to do so because the spirit, the Self, lives within them. The three secrets known to the Old Man explain the laws of the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom. The law that must live in the human soul if it is to attain the maturity for initiation must be found by the soul itself, through its own powers. — The serpent has found it. It hisses it into the Old Man’s ear. What did the serpent say to the Old Man? That it has the will to sacrifice itself! — Sacrifice is the law of the spiritual world! - Only those for whom these insights are not an end in themselves, but who seek them in the service of humanity, can walk the path to higher knowledge. All true mystics know this path of the soul; they have all undergone this experience of the serpent’s self-sacrifice. As soon as these words: “I will sacrifice myself!”—resound in the temple, the Old Man says: “Now is the time!”

[ 49 ] The words of the Ancient One point to the distant future, when all of humanity will have reached maturity: The time has come! - Then it will be time for the temple to rise above the river, for all of humanity to partake of wisdom, to participate in the initiation that was otherwise granted only to a few in the temples and in the caves.

[ 50 ] For those who, like me, have been studying this fairy tale for twenty years, ever deeper wisdom is revealed within it; time and again, the lines point to an even deeper source. There are still rich treasures to be unearthed here; but we must unearth them. We must only be careful not to allow ourselves to do to Goethe what

[ 51 ] Goethe himself has Mephisto describe him in Faust as follows:

Whoever wishes to perceive and describe something living,
Must first seek to drive out the spirit,
Then he holds the parts in his hand,
But, alas! the spiritual bond is missing!

[ 52 ] Let us seek this spiritual bond in Goethe’s works!