Two hundred years ago, in his Faust, Goethe described something astonishingly relevant for today: the path to inner clarity must first lead us through the darkness. His story shows how we can learn to know that what truly matters is underneath the surface.
If we increase our awareness, allowing certain impressions to permeate us, they can penetrate quite deeply. After a while—a night, a week, a year, ten years—they may sometimes rise to the surface unexpectedly. An image emerges in which the elements organize themselves through their own inner forces. The image fills itself with meaning that is not imposed from outside, but is inherent in the impressions themselves and brings them together into an organic whole. Inconspicuous details can suddenly become central. This experience applies to all areas of life. Here we focus on Goethe’s Faust. The more attentively one looks at this work, the more an unexpected depth is revealed. Images emerge. Details become structural.
Reflections in the Night
At first, Faust’s story appears to be an exciting adventure of magic and tragic love. Upon closer inspection, though, it becomes clear that it is the story of a human being whose spiritual eyes are opened. Normally, one would expect that inner vision would grant access to a light-filled world illuminated by the spirit—a world in which beings of benevolent clarity appear. But with Faust, it’s something else. As soon as his spiritual eye opens, he encounters the devil, the liar. He is led into the witch’s kitchen and participates in the witches’ sabbath on Walpurgis Night. Through numerous nocturnal scenes, Faust is immersed in the dark side of the world.
Here, we are shown a world of reflections. The devil takes over Faust’s role as teacher and welcomes the student—appearing as a mirror image of him. Then, in a mirror, Faust sees his spiritual ideal, “of all the heavens the bright epitome,”1 amidst the repulsive furnishings of the witch’s kitchen. “What do I see? What heavenly form revealed / Shows through the glass from Magic’s fair dominions!” Even Gretchen, with whom he falls in love, turns out to be a reflection of this spiritual ideal. Precisely because she is only a reflection, love takes a tragic turn.
Why does the awakening of spiritual vision initially take on such a dark and tragic form? When the inner light awakens, when the force of pure thought becomes strong enough (for Faust, when he translates the Gospel of John) he sees the previously invisible darkness around him. First, the devil appears. By investigating this darkness—both personal darkness and the darkness of the world—Faust’s spiritual vision makes its first discoveries. He explores a world of night, occasionally illuminated by moonlight. It is the lower spiritual world, into which sunlight penetrates only as a reflection.
Male Evil, Female Evil
So, Faust sees Mephistopheles first and then the witch. A male and a female figure. But it is only later that Faust truly encounters two archetypes of evil, one male and one female. On a first reading, these two figures may go unnoticed. The scene takes place on Walpurgis Night. During the witches’ sabbath, all is permeated by forces of attraction and repulsion. It is a place without rest and quiet, where all is permeated by magnetic forces. There, Faust first sees Mammon and then Lilith, two figures who are especially “magnetic.”
“Has not Sir Mammon grandly lighted / His palace for this festal night?” asks Mephisto. Mammon, a male entity sometimes simply called “money,” embodies material possessions and the power associated with them—unlawful wealth. The attraction of money, of which the Gospel says: “No one can serve two masters: either he will hate one and love the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon” [Matt. 6:24].
The devil then draws Faust’s attention to Lilith: “Beware the lure within her lovely tresses, / The splendid sole adornment of her hair! / When she succeeds therewith a youth to snare, / Not soon again she frees him from her jesses.” Lilith, a female figure—an air demon and Adam’s first wife—represents a sensoriality that has detached itself from the divine. Here, too, a magnetic force is evident, but of a different kind: the attraction of sensuality. In Jewish tradition, Lilith appears as a rebellious being, sometimes even as the seductive serpent. Some medieval Kabbalistic traditions see her as the “mother of all demons” and, above all, the “queen of succubi”—those air demons who seduce men in their sleep in order to steal their seed.
Mammon and Lilith embody two central magnetic forces of today’s civilization: the attraction of money and material possessions, and the attraction of captivating sensuality. They appear to Faust while he is exploring the lower spiritual world—the “astral world,” a world that is not separate from the outside world, but rather presents its inner side. However, these two fundamental forces are also mirror images of a higher spiritual world.
Beyond the Reflections
The second part of Faust begins with the solar forces of Ariel. The elf is filled with the liberating forces of forgiveness that proceeded from Prospero, the magician in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. From then on, the solar forces determine Faust’s spiritual quest. From a nocturnal, moonlit astral world full of reflections, he passes into a solar world where primordial spirits appear, grounded in themselves.
The first being shows itself when Faust appears as Plutus during the masquerade. Like Mammon, Plutus is a symbol of wealth. But while Mammon embodies unlawful wealth acquired against God’s will, Plutus—son of Demeter—represents wealth as “prosperity” derived from nature. It is a wealth that arises in harmony with nature and rests upon generosity. Prosperity is, by its very nature, a wealth that is shared with others. A sunny wealth that spreads and gives itself away. This wealth does not lie outside Faust: he himself is this wealth. Faust is filled with this force; wealth dwells within him. He knows that all true wealth comes from within the human being. Here, the archetypal, original force of wealth shows itself on a higher spiritual plane. Every human being is a source of wealth when he finds himself and blossoms in his own force. He is no longer caught up in Mammon’s force of attraction because the wealth is within him. The appearance of Plutus reveals a being who stands above Mammon.
The second central character is Helena. Faust descends to the “Mothers” to summon her before the eyes of everyone in the Emperor’s court. Helena’s sunbeam had already been reflected in the witch’s magic mirror and on Gretchen’s forehead. Now it is no longer just the reflection but Helena herself who arises—the sunny and heavenly beauty, revelation of the spirit in the sensorial. Lilith is also a form of beauty in the sensorial, but a magnetic beauty that does not leave us free and captivates those who succumb to her. Helena leaves us free. She is the beauty that we look upon but do not possess. She is beauty as it appears in a higher world. Helena does not live in an exclusive love like Lilith, who hypnotizes, or Gretchen, who has her sights set on eternal love. Helena lives from a love for the moment, which is also a multifaceted love. She has loved many men and women. When we rise to this vast and sunny force of love—we receive nourishment simply through our contemplation of it; we claim nothing of it for ourselves; and we protect ourselves from Lilith’s grasp.
Shadows in the Land of the Sun
And yet, the story does not end here. Following the appearance of Plutus, paper money is introduced. This money flows into society—but what will the emperor do with it? This wealth can bring misfortune if it is misused and falls back under the influence of Mammon. The situation is similar with Helena: Faust is unable to persist in a pure contemplation of beauty. He falls in love with his creation and wants to seize her, to keep her for himself. He is not yet ripe for this higher realm of the spiritual world. The continuation of the story shows how Faust overcomes these two perils.
The Faust story paints two planes of spiritual vision. First, Faust opens his inner eye in the astral world and sees forces that can annihilate human beings. After experiencing a kind of inner death, his gaze opens up to the higher, sunny spiritual world. The forces of the higher world are those in which human beings find themselves. But the beings of the lower world also play an important role: since they have distanced themselves from the original gods, they are the guarantors of freedom for the human soul.
Translation Joshua Kelberman
