Green snake and beautiful lily

The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily is an artistic fairy tale by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe published in 1795.

It is an initiatory tale about transformation that arose from the Michaelic stream and Goethe captured in artistic inspiration as an imagination and dressed into a story.

It is believed to be an inspirational connection between Rudolf Steiner and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe between incarnations.

Whereas Goethe never gave any explanations on the meaning of the fairy tale, Steiner did lecture on it extensively. Rudolf Steiner had a special connection with this fairy tale from early on in his life, already giving the first lecture about it in 1891; and gave new form to it in the first of his four Mystery Dramas, 'The portal of initiation' in 1910.

Aspects

• contextual background
  • In 1794, Goethe and Schiller were engaged in a correspondence concerning the connection of the human soul with the world of the senses on one hand and with the suprasensory on the other. While Schiller approached the question in a philosophical way, Goethe embodied his thoughts in a fantasy fairy tale.
• storyline
  • The story revolves around the crossing and bridging of a river, which represents the divide between the outer life of the senses and the ideal aspirations of the human being, or also: between the sensory physical world and the spiritual world. Lily represents the ideal world of the suprasensory that is separated from the Green Snake, or the sensory, by a river. The goal is to build a bridge across the river that will connect the sensory and the suprasensory realms, and thereby establish a new, conscious spiritual awareness. The other characters in the fairy tale - the Ferryman, the Old Woman, the Youth, the Will-o'-Wisps, and the Old Man with the Lamp represent various aspects of the soul working together to accomplish this mighty task.
• development
  • imaginations coming down from the supersensible Michaelic School, picked up by Goethe;
    • (SWCC): "that which later on was to become Anthroposophy on Earth was cast into mighty Imaginations. Drops that trickled through to the Earth made a definite impression on Goethe, coming to him in the form, as it were, of little reflected miniatures, and he elaborated these miniature pictures in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily as a a first presentation of what had been cast in mighty Imaginations in the spiritual world at the beginning of the nineteenth, indeed by the end of the eighteenth century"(1924-07-19-GA240, 1924-09-16-GA238)
    • and "my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, which in a certain respect aimed at giving dramatic form to what had thus been enacted at the beginning of the nineteenth century, became alike in outer structure to what Goethe portrayed in his Fairy Tale." (1924-07-19-GA240)
    • Frank Teichmann puts forth the hypothesis that is was Steiner himself who contributed to this 'trickling down' and inspiration of Goethe before he himself incarnated, whereas reversely Goethe influenced Steiner after his death later on. The basic idea that is sketched (and supported by quotes from Steiner) is that a soul that is connected by a strong common cause with another soul, shares interest in the activities of the other soul as the one gets incarnated and the other not yet or no longer.
      • For more on Goethe's influence after death, see also Thirty three years rhythm#1919-12-14-GA194
  • Rudolf Steiner: process of three times seven years (3x7=21) between 1889 and 1910 to develop from seeds to form (1910-10-31-GA125)

Lecture coverage and references

Overview coverage

Rudolf Steiner references Goethe's fairy tale hundreds of times in very many lectures, see o.a. some here and also here.

So as often, where to start, or how to approach this.

Coverage can be centered around, on the one hand, lectures on 'Goethe's Secret Revelation'

• 1/ 1905-02-16-GA053
• 2/ 1905-02-23-GA053
• 3/ 1905-03-02-GA053
• 4/ 1908-10-24-GA057

combined with lectures on the first Mystery Drama - The portal of initiation,

• 5/ 1910-09-17-GA125
• 6/ 1910-10-31-GA125

and furthermore the coverage in the Karmic Relationship lectures.

Reference extracts

1891-11-27

lecture on Goethe's faily-take of the Greek Snake and the Beautiful Lily

reviewed in GA051

1904-11-27-GA0XX

1905-01-26-GA053

is called 'Goethe's gospel'

1906-02-01-GA093

From the RS handbook:

The following works by Goethe are expressions of his Rosicrucian attitude:

• (1) Die Geheimnisse (The Mysteries, an unfinished poem).
• (2) The basis theme of Faust (Homunculus is the astral body, the journey to the “Mothers” is the search for the Golden Triangle and the Lost Word).
• (3) The passages in Wilhelm Meister portraying the “Journey and Transformation of the Soul” as far as the extension of consciousness to cosmic vision. (Contemplation of cosmic events. Macaria’s vision is such an act of contemplation.)
• (4) His Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily shows the alchemical initiation in the form donated by Christian Rosenkreutz (secrets of the 30th degree or, properly written, of the degree 030). The myth of Heracles contains all the secrets of the Royal Arch degree (4-th degree or degree 013).
• (5) Important aspects of Rosicrucian initiation are also to be found in the poem Pandora.

Goethe received a Rosicrucian initiation (of the true 020 degree which is read 6 x 3 degree = 18th degree (Rose Croix)) between his stays at Leipzig and Strasbourg which became fruitful only slowly and in stages (1907-05-22-GA99 and GA97-L19)

Four lectures on 'Goethe's Secret Revelation'

4/ 1908-10-24-GA057

Goethe's Secret Revelation — Esoteric

Mystery Drama - The portal of initiation

1910-GA014: The portal of initiation

1910-10-03

1910-09-17-GA125

is called 'Self-knowledge as portrayed in the Rosicrucian Mystery, The Portal of Initiation'

1910-10-31-GA125

is called 'On the Rosicrucian Mystery, The Portal of Initiation'

Those of you who were present at the performance in Munich will remember that this children's song was the prelude to the Rosicrucian Mystery. Tonight, something of a spiritual scientific nature should unfold itself to us in connection with the content of this drama and with what, one could say, has come to life in it.

If I may, I would like to touch on the long, slow spiritual path that led to this Mystery Drama. When I think about it and look at it, its origins go back to the year 1889, twenty-one years ago; it is not approximately but exactly twenty-one years that bring me back to the germinal point of this drama. In these matters, absolute exactness can be observed. The direction has been quite clear to me in which, in 3x7 years, these seeds have grown (without any special assistance, I can say, on my part), for they have led their own individual life in these 3x7 years. It is truly remarkable to follow the path of such seeds to what may be called their finished form.

Their progress can be described as a passage through the underworld. It takes seven years for them to descend; then they return, and for this they need seven more years.

By then, having reached more or less the place where they first engaged a person before their descent, they must go in the opposite direction for seven years toward the other side; one could even say, onto a higher level. After twice seven years, then, plus seven more years, it is possible to try to embody them, foreseeing that whatever has been right in their development can take on a distinct form.

If I were not convinced that within the Rosicrucian Mystery an individual organism has lived and grown for 3x7 years, I would not venture to speak further about it. I feel not only justified in speaking, however, though this is not really the question, but also in a sense obligated to speak about what lives in this Rosicrucian Mystery, not only between the lines, between the characters, in the What and the How, but what is alive in everything in the drama and what must be alive in it.

In various places since the performance of the drama in Munich, I have stated the fact that many, many things of an esoteric nature would not need to be described, that lectures would be unnecessary on my part, if only everything that lies in the Rosicrucian Mystery could work directly on your souls, my dear friends, and on the souls of others, too. I would have to use the enormous number of words necessary in my lectures and speak for days, for weeks, even for years, in order to describe what has been said and what could be said in the single drama.

Everything you find in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, which is written in a somewhat tentative style — and in esoteric matters it is certainly correct to write thus as a description of the path into higher worlds — combined with what was said in Occult Science, can be found, after all, in a much more forceful, true-to-life, and substantial form in the Rosicrucian Mystery.

The reason is that it is more highly individualized. What is said in such a book as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds about human development had to be applicable to every individual who wishes to direct his path in some way into higher worlds, applicable to each and every person. Because of this, the book takes on — even with as much concreteness as possible — a certain abstract character, or you might call it a semi-theoretical character. We must hold fast, however, to this point: human development is never merely development in general. There is no such thing as development per se, no such thing as common, ordinary, orthodox development. There is only the development of this or that particular person, of a third, fourth, or twentieth human being. For each individual in the world, there must be a different process of development.

1919-01-12-GA188

It is just these three spirits who really could give Goethe what was lacking in the intimate circle of his life at the time, but was something he had to find outside; it is just these spirits who had the strongest influence upon him. Goethe himself had nothing of Shakespeare in him, for when he came to the climax of his art he created his Natural Daughter, which certainly contained nothing of Shakespeare's art but strove after something entirely different. He could, however, develop his inmost being only by educating himself in Shakespeare. Goethe's world-outlook had nothing in it of the abstract Spinoza; what was deep within Goethe, however, as his way to God could only be reached through Spinoza. Goethe's morphology had nothing of the placing side by side of the organic being, as in the case of Linnaeus, but, Goethe needed the possibility of taking from Linnaeus what he himself did not have. And what he had to give was something new.

Thus then did Goethe develop and came to his fortieth year, brought up on Shakespeare, Linnaeus and Spinoza; and having gone through what in the way of art Italy could show him he said when there about these works of art: “Here is necessity, here is God”. And as he lived in the spirit of his epoch there took place in him in a strong but unconscious way, also, however, to a certain extent consciously, what may be called his meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold.

And now, bearing in mind his passing the Guardian of the Threshold in the early nineties of the eighteenth century, compare words sounding like prayers to Isis in ancient Egypt, reminiscent of the old Egyptian Isis, such as those in the Prose-Hymn to Nature just recited to you by Frau Dr. Steiner—compare these words in which Goethe had still a quite pagan feeling, with those that as powerful imagination meet you in The Fairy tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, there you have Goethe's path from paganism to Christianity.

But there in pictures stands what Goethe became after going through the region of the Threshold, after he passed the Guardian of the Threshold. It stands there in pictures which he himself was unable to analyse for people in intellectual thoughts, which all the same are mighty pictures. Whither are we obliged to go if we wish to understand the Goethe who wrote the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily? Consider what is written about the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily in the little book on Goethe already mentioned. (see Goethe's Standard of the Soul) When we really look at this we are confronted by the fact that Goethe created this fairy story of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily as a mighty Imagination, after passing the Guardian of the Threshold.

This fairy tale of The Green snake and the Beautiful Lily that has sprung from a soul transformed, sprang forth after the soul found the bridge from pagan experience as it still finds utterance in the Hymn in Prose. “Nature! we are surrounded and enveloped by her, unable to step out of her, unable to get into her more deeply. She takes us up unasked and unwarned into the circle of her dance, and carries us along till we are wearied and fall from her arms” . . . “Even the unnatural is Nature . . . Everything is her life; and death is merely her ingenious way of having more life . . .” and so on and so forth.

This pagan Isis mood is changed into the deep truths, not to be grasped at once by the intellect, lying in the mighty Imaginations of The Green Snake end the Beautiful Lily where Goethe set down uncompromisingly how all that man is able to find through the external science of Europe can only lead to the fantastic capers of a will-of-the wisp. He shows also, however, that what man develops within must lead him to develop the powers of his soul in such a way that the self-sacrificing serpent who sacrifices his own being to the progress of human evolution can became the model which enables the bridge to be built from the kingdom of the physical world of the senses to the kingdom of the superphysical; and between these there rises the Temple, the new temple, by means of which the supersensible kingdom may be experienced.

Certainly, in this fairy story of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily there is no talk of Christ. But just as little as Christ asked of a good follower that he should always just be saying Lord, Lord! is he a good Christian who always says Christ, Christ! The manner in which the pictures are conceived, the way the human soul is thought out in its metamorphosis in this fairy story of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, the sequence of the thoughts, the force of the thoughts—this is Christian, this is the new path to Christ. For, why is this? In Goethe's day there were a number of interpretations of this fairy tale and since then in addition to those there have been many more. We have thought to throw light on to the fairy tale from the standpoint of Spiritual Science. My dear friends, I may, (here in this circle I may venture to speak out about this) I have the right to speak about this fairy tale. It was at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century when the knot of this fairy tale untied itself for me. And I have never since forsaken the path that should lead farther and farther into the understanding of Goethe, with the help of the mighty Imaginations embodied In the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. It may be said that the intellect that leads us quite well in our search for scientific truths, this intellect that can quite well guide us in acquiring an external outlook on nature and its conditions, at this precise moment so favourable to such an outlook, when anyone wishes to understand the fairy tale, this intellect is found absolutely wanting. It is necessary here to let the intellect be fructified by the conceptions of Spiritual Science. Here you have, transformed for our age and its conditions, what is necessary to all mankind for understanding the Mystery of Golgotha.

1924-07-19-GA240

is part of the July 1924 lectures where the supersensible Michael school is described

An intense will was present in the spiritual life of Europe to take strong hold of the thoughts. And in realms above the Earth these happenings led, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to a great, far-reaching Act in the spiritual world where that which later on was to become Anthroposophy on the Earth was cast into mighty Imaginations. In the first half of the nineteenth century, and even for a short period at the end of the eighteenth, those who had been Platonists under the teachers of Chartres, who were now living between death and rebirth, and those who had established Aristotelianism on Earth and who had long ago passed through the gate of death — all of them were united in the heavenly realms in a great super-earthly cult or ritual. Through this act all that in the twentieth century was to be spiritually established as the new Christianity after the beginning of the new Michael Age in the last third of the nineteenth century — all this was cast into mighty Imaginations.

Many drops trickled through to the Earth. Up above, in the spiritual world, in mighty, cosmic Imaginations, preparation was made for that creation of the Intelligence — an entirely spiritual creation — which was then to come forth as Anthroposophy. What trickled through made a very definite impression upon Goethe, coming to him in the form, as it were, of little reflected miniatures. The mighty pictures up above were not within Goethe's ken; he elaborated these little miniature pictures in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.

Truly, it opens up a wonderful vista! The streams I have described flow on in such a way that they lead to those mighty Imaginations which take shape in the spiritual world under the guidance of Alanus ab Insulis and the others. Drops trickle through, and at the turn of the eighteenth century Goethe is inspired to write his Fairy Tale.

It was, we might say, a first presentation of what had been cast in mighty Imaginations in the spiritual world at the beginning of the nineteenth, indeed by the end of the eighteenth century.

In view of this great super-sensible Cult during the first half of the nineteenth century, it will not surprise you that my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation — which in a certain respect aimed at giving dramatic form to what had thus been enacted at the beginning of the nineteenth century — became alike in outer structure to what Goethe portrayed in his Fairy Tale.

For having lived in the super-earthly realms in Imaginative form, Anthroposophy was to come down to the Earth. Something came to pass in the super-earthly realms at that time. Numbers of souls who in many different epochs had been connected with Christianity came together with souls who had received its influences less directly. There were those who had lived on Earth in the Age when the Mystery of Golgotha took place and also those who had lived on Earth before it. The two groups of souls united in order that in regions beyond the Earth, Anthroposophy might be prepared. The individualities who, as I said, were around Alanus ab Insulis, and those who within the Dominican stream had established Aristotelianism in Europe, were united, too, with Brunetto Latini, the great teacher of Dante. And in this host of souls there were very many of those who, having again descended to the Earth, are now coming together in the Anthroposophical Society. Those who feel the urge today to unite with one another in the Anthroposophical Society were together in super-sensible regions at the beginning of the nineteenth century in order to participate in that mighty Imaginative Cult of which I have spoken.

This too is connected with the karma of the Anthroposophical Movement. It is something that one discovers, not from any rationalistic observation of this Anthroposophical Movement in its external, earthly form only, but from observation of the threads that lead upwards into the spiritual realms. Then one perceives how this Anthroposophical Movement descends. At the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries it is, in very truth, the “heavenly” Anthroposophical Movement. What Goethe transformed into little miniature images in the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily were drops that had trickled through. But it was to come down in the real sense in the last third of the nineteenth century, since when Michael has been striving — but now moving downwards from the Sun to the Earth — to take hold of the earthly Intelligence of men.

1924-09-16-GA238

.. at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century there took place in super-sensible regions what I have already described as the enactment of a great and sublime super-sensible ritual and ceremony.

In the super-sensible world at that time a cult was instituted and enacted in real imaginations of a spiritual kind. Thus we may say: At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century there hovers in the immediate neighbourhood of the physical world of sense a great super-sensible event, consisting in super-sensible acts of ritual, an unfolding of mighty pictures of the spiritual life of beings of the universe, the Beings of the Hierarchies in connection with the great ether-workings of the universe and the human workings upon earth. I say “in the immediate neighbourhood,” meaning of course, adjoining this physical world in a qualitative, not in a spatial sense.

It is interesting to see how at a most favourable moment a little miniature picture of this super-sensible cult and action flowed into Goethe's spirit. Transformed and changed and in miniature we have this picture set down by Goethe in his fairy story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily ...

1925-GA022 - Chapter 3 in Goethe's Standard of the Soul

called: 'Goethe's Standard of the Soul, as Illustrated in his Fairy Story of “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.”'

On the river stands the Temple in which the marriage of the Young Man with the Lily takes place. The ‘marriage’ with the supersensible, the realisation of the free personality, is possible in a human soul whose forces have been brought into a state of regularity that in comparison with the usual state is a transformation.

Discussion

Various notes

[1] - Rudolf Steiner's describes the first rosecrucian Mystery Play 'The portal of initiation' (1910) and the fact that initiation cannot be described theoretically or generically as abstract knowledge but it is so different for every individual human being, therefore this is an artistic approach to work on the soul in another way than the purely intellectual. However the subject is clearly initiation.

Given the deeper meaning, and the links with Goethe's fairy tale (1795) and the supersensible School of Michael, it is interesting to remark that 'The portal of initiation' - in German 'Die Pforte der Einweihung' - is the same title Franz Bardon has originally conceived for his first book. Because this title was already taken, it became not 'Die Pforte zur wahren Einweihung' but 'Der Weg zum wahren Adepten'. This has unfortunately now become known in English translation worldwide as Initiation into Hermetics (IIH).

[2] - The second seven year phase of Rudolf Steiner is characterized by looking for artistic forms for expressing spiritual truths in the age of the consciousness soul (see eg Teichmann).

Note (source tbc) that in the very first transcript of 'The portal of initiation', the names of the characters are still taken from Goethe's fairy tale, but as the fairy tale characters gradually grew into flesh-and-blood personalities for a stage play, these were given names underlining their character. The mystery drama was created my metamorphosing the original plot, but still retains many connections to the orginal fairy tale.

Related pages

• Goethe
• The Michaelic stream
• Sources of spiritual science

References and further reading

• Maximilian Rebholz
  • Goethe's Marchen (and same subtitle as below)
  • Goethes Märchen  - mit besonderem Bezug auf Rudolf Steiners Mysterendrama: "Die Pforte der Einweihung" (in 'Briefe über den Sinn des Lebens', essay No 20)
  • two different essays, original typoscripts of 26 and 44 pages respectively
• Hans Reipert: 'Goethes Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie : in den Interpretationen von Rudolf Steiner' (1973)
• Paul Marshall Allen; Joan Deris Allen: The Time Is at Hand! : The Rosicrucian Nature of Goethe's Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily and the Mystery Dramas of Rudolf Steiner (1995 or 1996)
  • contents
    1. The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily in the Life of Goethe
    2. The Goethe Fairy Tale as Foundation for the Life Work of Rudolf Steiner
    3. The Picture Language of the Goethe Fairy Tale
    4. The "Alchemical-Rosicrucian Nature" of the Goethe Fairy Tale
    5. "The Time Is at Hand" The Goethe Fairy Tale Today
    6. From the Goethe Fairy Tale to the Mystery Dramas of Rudolf Steiner
    7. The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
    8. "The Character of Goethe's Spirit as Shown in the Fairy Tale (by Rudolf Steiner)

• Frank Teichmann: 'The Origins of the Anthroposophical Society in the Light of the Ancient Mysteries' (2020 in EN, in DE 2002 as 'Die Entstehung der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft auf mysteriengeschichtlichem Hintergrund')
• Dietrich Spitta: 'Goethes Einweihung und sein Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie' (2008)

• Rudolf Steiner: 'Goethe's Spirituality as Revealed in The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily' (translated by Fred Amrine) (2018)

Illustrations

• Das Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie, with illustrations by Assja Turgenieff (1928)
• Hermann Linde: 'Imagination : Goethes 'Märchen von der grünen Schlange' verwoben mit Rudolf Steiners 'Pforte der Einweihung' in einer Folge von 12 farbigen Bildern' (1988, prev. published as 'Das Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie: verwoben mit dem Mysteriendrama "Die Pforte der Einweihung" von Rudolf Steiner: in zwölf Bildern von Hermann Linde.' in 1972)
• D.J. van Bemmelen: 'Goethes sprookje van de groene slang: twaalf aquarellen van D.J. van Bemmelen in kleuren, met toelichtende tekst in vier talen' (or in DE: 'Goethes Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der Lilie in 12 Farbenbildern) (1978)
• David Newbatt: 'Goethe's Fairy Tale set of cards' (19 illustrations)

Other (unqualified)

• wikipedia topic page
• artwork inspired on Goethe's work, eg
  • Kurt Wiesner: 'Ein Märchenspiel: nach dem Goetheschen Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der schönen Lilie : mit Scenen-Musik für Kammerorchester' (1927)
  • Giselher Klebe; Das Märchen von der schönen Lilie (1969, opera)
  • Susanne Steffen: The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily - Music for the Fairy Tale by Goethe, scored for violin, piano and bells.