“Now when we fall asleep, our physical and etheric bodies-that is, a paternal and maternal element-are lying in bed. Our ego and astral body are in the periphery. The astral body contains what is impressed upon our feelings and our whole disposition and temperament, everything that gives us our character; and into this that endows us wit hour soul disposition there work the elemental beings who, in the course of time, bring from the ancestors to their descendants the forces that can enable them to fulfill their potential.” Rudolph Steiner, OUR CONNECTION WITH THE ELEMENTAL WORLD ; Lecture 2 Dornach, 14 November 1914
“In a personality such as Herman Grimm something quite distinctive was going on; for the influence of his immediate ancestors can be observed in him. His immediate ancestors, his father and his uncle, were the collectors of fairy tales, which they heard people telling. They would simply listen while they were being related to them, and they wrote them down. But one cannot do this unless one has an astral body which has a predisposition for having a particular inclination for this.”
“Herman Grimm has a particular way of expressing himself with a certain intellectual finesse which almost approaches spiritual science. He has this quality because there was in his family background a strong inclination towards fairy tales and towards any spirituality deriving from nature. We see how the nature spirits conveyed something to him that they allowed to continue to resound when Herman Grimm’s ego and astral body were outside his physical and ether bodies. Who was it who first told fairy tales to his father uncle with such clarity and vividness, as though intimately in tune with an elemental being? The wife of Herman Grimm’s father, in other words his mother. Herman Grimm’s mother was the enlivening element in the way that these fairy tales were transmitted. She had a particular joy in listening ot these fairy tales as they lived amongst the people, and imbibed them in such a way that the two brothers Grimm, Herman Grimm’s father and uncle, were able to write them down.”
“Who is this mother? Dorothea Grimm, whose maiden name was Wild, was from an old Bernese family. She herself was a citizen of Bern; and her ancestors had fought in the battle of Murten. All the feelings that she had acquired there among the elemental spirits then came with her to Hesse…”
“You see, what is otherwise merely recounted in the form of poetry-in the drama enacted between Faust and Mephistopheles- needs to become a fundamental aspect of future education. The prelude to such a scenario is that a people or a poet have had an intuitive sense of ‘the companion’; but ultimately everyone will have a companion who should not remain unintelligible to him, and this companion will appear most forcefully during a person’s childhood. And if adults who are responsible for education do not know how to deal appropriately with what comes to expression through children, human nature will be corrupted by a failure to understand the enchantments of Mephistopheles.”
“It is very remarkable that these characteristics can be founds everywhere in legends and fairy tales; for the structure of legends and fairy tales, which modern scholars find so difficult to understand, either has Mephistophelian or Ahrimanic tendency or else has Sphinx-like, Luciferic quality. All legends and fairy tales owe their origin to the fact that their content was originally experienced in terms of man’s relationship to either the Sphinx or Mephistopheles. Deeply hidden within legends and fairy tales we find either the theme of the riddle, the Sphinx theme, where something has to be solved and a question answered, or the theme of enchantment, where something or someone is under a spell, that is, the Mephistophelian or Ahrimanic theme. For what exactly is the Ahrimanic theme? We can recognize it when Ahriman is beside us, and we are constantly in danger of falling prey to him, of giving ourselves over to him and being unable to escape his clutches. When confronted by the Sphinx one is aware of something that invades one’s being and tears it to pieces; whereas in the face of Mephistopheles one feels that one must immerse oneself in this influence, give oneself up to it and wholly succumb to it.” Rudolph Steiner, OUR CONNECTION WITH THE ELEMENTAL WORLD ; Lecture 4 Dornach, 20 November 1914
“And what do we call it when something happens to someone who then goes on to tell others about it? It is a fairy tale. In this and in no other way have fairy tales arisen. Everything else that is said about the origin of fairy tales is sheer fantasy. All true fairy tales are proof a proof that one can have experiences outside the physical body, if the ether body has been loosened in some way and a relationship is formed with the surrounding etheric world. This is one way in which someone can enter into a relationship with the outside world his ether body.”
“But there is another way in which this can happen. A relationship can also be established with the surrounding etheric world where an activity is being undertaken in a semi-conscious state, where the ego is present only to a certain degree. This is the case with speech. When we speak, we are not so fully conscious as we think we are. It is not at all true to say that speaking is something that belongs to us, that we have in our power. Etheric forces live in speech, and much of our peaking is unconscious. The ego does not fully penetrate our speech. When we speak, our ether body is connected with the surrounding etheric world. We learn to think as individuals, but this is not the case with speech. We are taught to speak through karma, which places us in a particular life-situation. Whereas we enter into a relationship with nature spirits in abnormal conditions when our ether body has been loosened, we find that inasmuch as we speak and are not merely thinking in silence we are linked with the Folk-spirits. Thus the Folk-spirits come to dwell within our ether bodies, even though we are not conscious of this. We are just as unconscious in terms of our ego-activity of this aspect of our lives as we are of what has bee recounted to us in the form of a fairy tale.” Rudolph Steiner, OUR CONNECTION WITH THE ELEMENTAL WORLD ; Lecture 6 Dornach, 22 November 1914
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