Lecture IV
Faust and the “Mothers”
Dornach 2nd November, 1917
My dear friends,
What I am
going to speak about this evening I should like to link on to
the scenes we have just witnessed. And what can be said in
this regard will fit in well with the whole course of our
present considerations.
Now I have
often spoken here before about the importance of the
‘Mothers scene’ in the second part of Goethe's
“Faust”; this scene, however, is of such a nature
that one can repeatedly return to it because through its
significant content, apart from the aesthetic value of the
way in which it is introduced into the poem, it really
contains a kind of culminating point of all that is spiritual
in present day life. And if this ‘Mothers scene’
is allowed to work upon us, we shall well be able to soy that
it contains a very great deal of all that Goethe is wishing
to indicate. It comes indeed out of Goethe's immediate soul
experiences just as on the other it throws light on the
significant, deep knowledge that we are obliged to recognise
in him if we are to have any notion at all of what is meant
by this scene where Faust is offered by Mephistopeles the
possibility of descending to the Mothers. If we notice how,
on Faust's reappearing and coming forth from the Mothers, the
Astrologer refers to him as ‘priest’, and that
Faust henceforward refers to himself as ‘priest’,
we have to realise that there is something of deep import in
this conversion of what Faust has been before into the
priest. He has descended to the Mothers: he has gone through
some kind of transformation. Leaving aside what one otherwise
knows of the matter and what has been said by us in the
course of years, we need reflect only upon how the Greek
poets, in speaking of the Mysteries, refer to those who were
initiated as having learnt to know the three world-Mothers
— Rhea, Demeter and Proserpina. These three Mothers,
their being, what they essentially are — all this was
said to be learnt through direct perception by those
initiated into the Mysteries in Greece.
When we dwell
upon the significant manner in which Goethe speaks in this
scene, and also upon what takes place in the next, we shall
no longer be in any doubt that in reality Faust has been led
into regions, into kingdoms, that Goethe thought to be like
that kingdom of the Mothers into which the initiate into the
Greek Mysteries was led. By this we are shown how full of
import Goethe meaning is.
And now
remind yourselves of how the moment Mephistopheles mentions
the word ‘Mothers’ Faust shudders, saying what is
so full of meaning: “Mothers, Mothers! How strange that
sounds!” And this is all introduced by Mephistopheles'
words “It is with reluctance that I disclose the higher
mystery.” Thus it is really a matter here of something
hidden, a mystery, that Goethe, in this half secret way,
found necessary to impart to the world in connection with the
development of his Faust.
We must now
ask, and are able to do so on the basis of what we have been
considering during these past years, what is supposed to
happen to Faust in the moment that this higher mystery is
unveiled before him? Into what world is he led? The world,
into which he is led, the world he now enters, is the
spiritual world immediately bordering on our physical
one.
Please
remember clearly how I have already said that the crossing of
the threshold into this world beyond the border must be
approached in thought with great caution. As I said, this is
because between the world that we observe with our senses and
understand with our intellect, and that world from which the
-physical one arises, there is a borderland as it were, a
sphere where one may easily fall into deception and illusion
when not sufficiently developed and prepared. It might be
said that only in the world comprehended by the senses are
there definite forms, definite outlines and boundaries. These
do not exist in the world that is on other side of the
border. This is something that it is very difficult to got
the modern materialistic intellect to grasp — that in the
moment that the threshold is passed everything is in constant
movement, and the world of the senses rises out of all this
continual movement like petrified forms.
It is into
this world so penetrated by movement — the imaginative world
— that Faust is now transplanted; transplanted,
however, by an external cause end not by gradual painstaking
meditation. The cause comes from without. It is
Mephistopheles, the force of evil working into the physical,
who takes him over to the other world.
And now there
is something to which we must be very much alive to if we are
not to develop errornous opinions in this sphere. We, in
anthroposophical circles, are seeking knowledge of the
spiritual world. And everything said in the book
“Knowledge of the Higher Worlds,”
and other books of
that nature, about the exercises for gaining admittance into
those worlds, goes no farther than the means by which
this knowledge may be obtained. And here, as far as the
present time and necessity are concerned in the giving out of
these things to the world, it goes without saying that a halt
must be made. Anyone wishing to advance beyond this, will
come to the sphere that can be called the sphere of action in
the supersensible world. This must be left to each
individual. When he has once found the security of knowledge,
he himself must undertake the action. But in what is meant to
proceed between Faust and Mephistopheles this is not the
case. Faust has actually to produce the departed Paris and
Helen; therefore he does not only have to look into the
spiritual world, he does not have to be an initiate only, but
a magician, and must accomplish magical actions. It very
clearly shown here in the way this scene is handled by Goethe
how deeply familiar he was with certain hidden things in the
human soul. The state of Faust's consciousness has to be
changed. But at the same time he has to be given power to act
out of supersensible impulses.
In his
connection with Faust, Mephistopheles, in his capacity as an
ahrimanic force, belongs to our world of the senses, but as a
supersensible being. He has been transplanted. He has no
power over the worlds into which Faust is now to be
transplanted. They really do not exist for him. Faust has to
pass over into a different state of consciousness that
perceives, beneath the foundation of our world of the senses,
the never-ceasing weaving and living, surging and becoming,
from which our sense-world is drawn. And Faust is to become
acquainted with the forces that are there below.
The
‘Mothers’ is a name not without significance for
entering this world. Think of the connection of the word
‘Mothers’ with everything that is growing,
becoming. In the attributes of the mother is the union of
what is physical and material with what is not. Picture to
yourselves the coming into physical existence of the human
creature, his incarnation. You must picture a certain process
that takes place through the interworking of the cosmos with
the mother-principle, before the union of the male and female
is consummated. The man who is about to become physical
prepares himself beforehand in the female element. And we
must now make a picture of this preparation that is confined
to what goes on up to the moment when impregnation takes
place — all therefore that takes place before
impregnation. One has a quite wrong and materialistically
biassed notion if one imagines that there lie already formed
inthe woman all the forces that lead to the physical human
embryo. That is not so. A working of the cosmic forces of the
spheres takes place; into the woman work cosmic forces. The
human embryo is always a result of cosmic activity. What is
described in materialistic natural science as the germ-cell
is in a certain measure produced out of the mother alone, but
it is a counterpart of the great cosmic germ-cell.
Let us hold
this picture in mind — this becoming of the human
germ-cell before impregnation, and let us ask ourselves what
the Greeks looked for in their three mothers, Rhea, Demeter
and Proserpina. In these three Mothers they saw a picture of
those forces that, working down out of the cosmos, prepare
the human cell. These forces however do not come from the
part of the cosmos that belongs to the physical but to the
supersensible. The Mothers Demeter, Rhea and Proserpina
belong to the supersensible world. No wonder then that Faust
has the feeling that an unknown kingdom is making its
presence felt when the word ‘Mothers’ is
spoken.
Now think, my
dear friends, what Faust really has to experience, If it were
purely a matter of imaginative knowledge he would only need
to be led into the normal state of meditation but, as has
been said, he has to accomplish magical actions. For that it
is necessary that the ordinary understanding, the ordinary
intellect, with which men perceives the world of the senses,
should cease to function. This intellect begins with
incarnation into a physical body and ends with physical
death. And it is this intellect in Faust that must be
damped-down, clouded. He has to recognise that his intellect
should cease to work. He must be taken up with his soul into
a different region. This naturally should be understood as a
significant factor in Faust is development.
Now how does
the matter appear from Mephistopheles' point of view? We must
understand that there is danger in the fact that it is
Mephistopheles who has to transform Faust's state of
consciousness. And it gives the former himself a sense of
uneasiness; in a certain way it becomes dangerous for him
also. What then are the possibilities? They are twofold.
Faust may acquire the new state of consciousness, learn to
know the other world from which be can draw upon miraculous
forces, and go to and fro from one world to the other, thus
emancipating himself from Mephistopheles for he would then
learn to know a world where the latter had no place. With
that he would, become free from Mephistopheles. The other
possibility would be that all might go very badly and Faust's
intellect become clouded. Mephistopheles really puts himself
in a very awkward situation. However, he has to do something.
He has to give Faust the possibility of fulfilling his
promise. He hopes that in some way or another the matter may
arrange itself, for he wants neither of the alternatives. He
does not want Faust to grow away from him nor does he wish
him to be completely paralysed.
I ask you to
think over this and then to remember that it is all this that
Goethe wants to indicate. In this scene of Faust: he wishes
to point out to the world that there is a spiritual kindom,
and that here he is showing the way in which man can relate
himself to it. This is how things are connected.
Since the
beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the knowledge of
these things has to a great extent been lost. I have told you
that Goethe applied the knowledge he had. personally received
through great spiritual vision. The whole connection with the
Mothers had entered into Goethe;s soul when he read Plutarch,
the Roman story-teller whom Goethe read, speaks of the
Mothers; and the following particular scene in Plutarch seems
to have made a deep impreression on Goethe. The Romans were
at war with Carthage. Nicias is in favour of the Romans and
wishes to seize the town of Engyon from the Carthaginians; he
is therefore to be given over to the Carthaginians. Sc he
feigns madness and runs through the streets crying “The
Mothers — the Mothers are pursuing me!” From this
you may see that in the time of which Plutarch writes this
relation of the Mothers is brought into connection not with
the normal understanding of the senses, but with a condition
of man when this normal understandin is not present. It is
beyond all doubt that what Goethe read in Plutarch stirred
him to bring to expression in his “Faust” this
idea of the Mothers.
We also find
mention in Plutarch of how the world has a triangular form.
Now naturally these words ‘the world has a triangular
form’ must not be taken in a heavy literal sense, for
the spatial is but a symbol of what has neither time nor
space. Since we live in space, spatial images must be used
for what is nevertheless beyond image, time or space.
Thus Plutarch
gives the picture of a triangular world. Thisthe whole world
(see diagram). According to Plutarch in the centre of this
triangle that is the w0rld, the field of truth is found (see
red in diagram). Now out of this whole world Plutarch
differentiates 183 worlds. 183 worlds, so he says, are in the
whole circumference; they move around, and in the middle is
this resting field of truth. This resting field of truth
Plutarch describes as being separated by time from the
surrounding 183 worlds — sixty on on each of the three
sides of the triangle and one at each angle makes 183. When,
therefore, you take this imagination of Plutarch's, you have
a world considered as consisting of three parts and in the
cloud formation around it the 183 worlds welling and surging.
That is at the sane time the imagination for the
“Mothers.” The number 183 is given by
Plutarch.
Thus
Plutarch, who in a certain sense held sway over the mystery
wisdom, quoted the remarkable number 183. Let us now reckon
how many worlds we get if we make a correct
calculation up to the time of Plutarch's world. We must do so
in the following way: —
First the entire world
happenenings
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1
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This divides itself up for us so
that we have as complete woldd-evolutions Saturn. Sun
and Moon
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3
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But each of these worlds, Saturn,
Sun and Moon, are again divided in the same way as our
Earth. We divide our Earth into:
- The Polaric Period,
- The Hyperborean Period,
- The Lemurian Period,
- The Atlantean Period,
- The Post-Atlantean Period — in all seven.
And each of these seven periods we again divide into
the Indian, the old Persian, the Egyptian, the
Greco-Latin, the present one and two to follow. If we
take this for Saturn, Sun and Moon.
And in each of the three we have
successive worlds built up thus
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49 49 49
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After these three successive worlds
we still have to add the Earth that has not yet
completed its development. The polaric 7, Hyperborean 7,
Lemurian 7(21), the Atlanteen 7
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28
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179
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We have now completed Atlantis.
Plutarch lived in the fourth epoch, of Post-Atlantis,
so that we must add
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4
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183
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You see how
when we apply our own way of reckoning and correctly
calculate the separate divisions and the whole world, as they
have made their evolutions up to the time of the fourth
Post-Atlantean epoch when Plutarch lived, we can truthfully
say that we get 183 worlds.
Moreover,
when we take our Earth upon which we are still evolving, and
about whichwe cannot speak as of something completed, and
when we look from this Earth to Saturn, Sun and Moon, there
we find the “Mothers” that figure in another form
in the Greek Mysteries under names Proserpina,Demeter, and
Rhea. Foe all the forces that are in Saturn, Sun and Moon are
still working — working on into our own time. And those
forces that are physical are but the shadow, the image, of
what is spiritual. Everything physical is a mere picture of
the spiritual.
Consider
this. If you do not take simply its outward, gross physical
body, but its forces, its impulses, the Moon with its forces
is at the same time in the Earth. The being of the Moon
belongs to the being of the Earth. If you only want a
realistic picture, you need to imagine it thus. Here is the
Earth (see diagram); here you have a shaft connected with the
Moon, and the Moon is turned round on it The shaft, however,
has no Physical existence. And all that is Moon-impulse is
not only here in the Moon but this shere penetrates the
Earth.
We now ask
whether these forces thus related to the Moon have a real
existence anywhere. The Greeks looked upon them as
mysterious, as very full of mystery. And our modern destiny
is connected with the fact that these forces no longer retain
their character as mysteries but have been made available for
all. If we only concentrate on this one thing, on these
forces that are connectted with the Moon — then we have
one of the Mothers. What is this one Mother? We shall best
approach the answer to this question in the following
way.
In order to
have a picture let us take any river — say the Rhine.
What is the actual Rhine? On reflection — I have
already spoken of this here — no one is really able to
say what the Rhine is. It is called the Rhine. But what
actually is it when we look into the matter? Is it the water?
But in the next moment that has flowed away water has water
has taken its place. It flows into the North Sea and other
water and follows it, and that goes on continuously. Then
what is the Rhine? Is the Rhine the trough, the bed? But no
one believes that, for were the water not there no one would
think of the bed as the Rhine. When you use the word
‘Rhine’ you are not referring to anything really
there but to something in a constant state of metamorphosis
— which however, in certain sense does not change. If
we picture this diagrammatically (see diagram) and assume
that this is the Rhine and this the water that flows into it
— well, now, this water is always evaporating and
ascending again.
If you
consider that all rivers belong to one another, you will have
to take into your calculations that the water evaporates and
falls again. To a certain extent the water that flows from
its source down to its mouth always comes over again from the
same reservoir in its rising and flowing down. The water
completes its circulation here. But this water is divided up
an extended over the surroundings; naturally you cannot
follow the course of each drop. All the water that belongs to
the earth, however, must be considered as a whole. The
question of rejuvenating water does not come into
consideration here, This is what happens where the water is
concerned.
Something the
same happens with the air, and in yet another case. If you
have a telegraph station here and here another, you know that
it is only a wire that connects them. The other connection is
set up by means of the whole earth, the current goes down
into the earth. Here is the place where it is earthed. The
whole goes through the earth.
Now if you
make a picture of these two things you have the water, the
running water that spreads itself out and sets itself in
circulation; and if on the other hand you imagine the
electricity spreading itself out down in the earth, then you
have two things at different poles — two opposed
realities. I am only indicating here, for you can piece it
together yourselves out of any elementary book on physics.
But we are led to the conclusion that in electricity you have
under the earth the opposite of what goes on above the earth
in the circulation of the water.
What is there
under the earth ruling as the being of electricity is
Moon-impulse that has been left behind. It definitely does
not belong to the earth. It is impulse remaining over from
the Moon and was spoken of as such by the Greeks. And the
Greeks still had knowledge of the relation between this
force, distributed throughout the whole earth, and the
reproductive forces. And there is this relation with the
forces of growth and of increase. This was one of the
‘Mothers.’
Now you can
imagine that all these premontions of mighty connections did
not arise before Faust merely as theories, but he felt
himself obliged to seek out — to enter right into these
impulses. Knowledge of this force was first of all given to
those being initiated into the Greek Mysteries, this force
together with the two other Mothers. The Greeks held all that
was connected with electricity in secret in the Mysteries.
And herein is where lies the decadence of the future of the
earth — of which I have already spoken from another point
of view — that these forces will be made public. One of
these forces has already become so duting the fifth
post-Atlantean epoch — electricity. The others will be
known about in the decadence of the sixth and seventh
epochs.
All this,
even in the decadent new secret societies, is still among the
things about which their conservative members will not speak.
Goethe quite rightly judged it fit to give out knowledge of
these things in the only way possible for him in that age. At
the same time, however, you have one of the passages from
which you can see how the great poet Goethe did not simply
write as other poets write, but that each word of his bore
its special impress and had its appointed place.
Take for
example the relation of the Mothers to electricity. Goethe
belongs to those who treat of such things out of a thoroughly
expert knowledge.
“Do you now see what one
possesses in it?
The key will ferret out the proper place.
Follow it up, it leads you to the Mothers.”
And Faust:
“To the ‘Mothers’.
That strikes me always like a shock!”
as if he had received an electric shock.
This is written with intention — not haphazardly. In
this scene nothing in connection with the matter in question
is haphazard.
Mephistopheles gives Faust a picture of what he is to find as
the impulses of the 183 worlds. This picture works in Faust's
soul as it should work, for Faust has gone through many
things that bring him near the spiritual worlds. On that
account these things already affect him.
This is what
I wanted chiefly to dwell upon, my dear friends, hew Goethe
is wishing to set forth the most significant matters in this
Mothers scene. And by all this you can see from what a what
worlds of different consciousness — Faust has to bring
Paris and Helen. Because Goethe is dealing with something of
such supreme significance, what is spoken in this scene is
actually different from what it appears at first sight. What
Faust brings with him from these worlds — what I have
already referred to — is recognised by th others who
have assembled a for a kind of drama. What makes them see it?
It is half suggested: but by whom? By the Astrologer; and for
that he has been chosen as astrologer. His words possess
suggestive power. This is clearly expressed. These
astrologers had an inherent art of influencing through
suggestion, not the best kind of suggestion but an ahrimanic
one. What then is our Astrologer actually doing as he stands
among these courtiers, who really are not pictured as being
particularly bright, — What is he doing? He is putting
into them by suggestion what is necessary for all that has
arisen as a special world through faust's changed
consciousness to become present in their minds. Remember what
I showed you, what I once said to you, that nowadays it can
be actually proved that spoken words produce a trembling in
certain substances. You will surely find it in one or another
of the lectures I have previously given here. I have wanted
to remark upon this to show you how today the real nature of
the conjuration scene can be demonstrated by experiment. Out
of the smoke of the incense and the appropriate accompanying
word is really developed what Faust brings for his
consciousness out of quite another world. But this must be
brought to the minds of the courtiers and made fully clear to
them through the suggestive power of the Astrologer. What
then does he do? He insinuates. He has the task of
insinuating all this into the courtiers' ears. But
insinuation is devil's rhetoric. So that through the words
‘insinuation is devil's rhetoric’ the devilish
nature of the astrologer's art is brought home to us. That is
the one meaning of the sentence. The other is connected with
what actually happeens on the stage. The devil sits in the
prompter's box making his insinuations from there.
Here you have
a very prototype of a sentence signifying two different
things. You have the purely scenic sipificance of the devil
himself sitting, insinuatign from the prompter's box, and the
reality of this — the Astrologer insinuating to the
Court. In the ay he does this it is a devilish art. Thus, if
you go to work in the right way, you will find many sentences
here with double meaning. Goethe employs this ambiguity
because he wishes to represent something that actually
happened but did not do so purely in a course-grained,
material fashion. It can be performed thus, but its reality
has nothing to do with the physical. Goethe, however, wanted
to portray something that actually happened and was moreover
an impulse in modern history and played a part there. He did
not intend that something of this kind was simply to be
performed, ha meant to show that these impulses had already
flowed into modern history, were already there, were working.
He wanted to represent a reality, and to say that, in what
has been developing since the sixteenth century, the devil
has definately plaed a part. If you take this scene seriously
you will got the two sides of the matter, and you will
realise how Goethe knew that spiritul beings were playing
into historic processes. And at the end you come to what I
have so often indicated, namely, that Faust is not yet
sufficiently developed to bring the matter to a conclusion,
that he has not derived the possibility of entering other
worlds from the right source but from the power of
Mephistopheles. All this is what forms the last part of the
scene.
I shall add
more to this tomorrow and bring our considerations further.
But you have seen enough to know that in what Goethe wishes
to say much of what we have been studying lately receives new
light.
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