The tale begins with two will-o'-the-wisps who wake a ferryman and ask to be taken across a river. The ferryman does so, and for payment, they shake gold from themselves into the boat. This alarms the ferryman, for if the gold had gone into the river, it would overflow. He forces the will-o'-the-wisps to agree to pay him three artichokes, three cabbages, and three onions. The ferryman takes the gold up to a high place, and deposits it in a rocky cleft, where it is discovered by a green snake. The snake eats the gold and becomes luminous, allowing him to observe an underground temple where there is an old man with a lamp which can only give light when another light is present. The snake investigates the temple and finds four kings made of metal: one of gold, one silver, one bronze, and one a mixture of all three.
Green Snake Beautiful Lily Pdf
The story then switches over to the wife of the old man, who meets a melancholy prince. He has met a beautiful Lily, but his happiness is prevented by the fact that anyone who touches her will die. The snake is able to form a temporary bridge across the river at midday, and in this way, the wife and prince come to Lily's garden, where she is mourning her fate. As twilight falls, the prince succumbs to his desire for the beautiful Lily, rushes towards her, and dies. The green snake encircles the prince, and the old man, his wife, and the will-o'-the-wisps form a procession and cross the river on the back of the snake.
The Young Man stood erect; the little canary fluttered upon his shoulder, but his mind was not yet restored. His eyes were open, but he saw, at least he seemed to look on everything with indifference. Scarcely was the wonder at this circumstance appeased, than the change which the Snake had undergone excited attention. Her beautiful and slender form was changed into myriads of precious stones. The old woman, in the effort to seize her basket, had unintentionally struck against the snake, after which nothing more was seen of the latter. Nothing but a heap of jewels lay in the grass. The old man immediately set to work to collect them into a basket, a task in which he was assisted by his wife; they then carried the basket to an elevated spot on the bank, and he cast the entire contents into the stream, not however without the opposition of his wife and the beautiful Lily, who would like to have appropriated a portion of the treasure to themselves. The jewels gleamed in the rippling waters like brilliant stars, and were carried away by the stream, and none can say whether they disappeared in the distance or sank to the bottom.
Read full description of the books: The time is at hand!: rosicrucian nature of goethe's 'fairy tale of the green snake and the beautiful lily' and the mystery dramas of rudolf steinerIn 1795 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe produced his tale of tales-The fairytale of 'The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,' an extraordinary masterwork that is unique among Goethe's works. An initiatory fable of transformation, the tale arose out of the Rosicrucian, alchemical impulses that play an important role in Faust and Goethe's other writings. Among those influenced by it was Rudolf Steiner, whose mystery dramas employ similar themes.
It is no longer difficult now to admit that we have to see another spiritual constitution in the beautiful lily than in the young man. He attains that spiritual constitution if he understands the beings of things and he raises his human existence by the fact that things coalesce in him with the beings of things in the outside world. Goethe shows representatively in the union with the beautiful lily what the human being experiences there because he outgrows himself and becomes master of the soul forces, this inner bliss, this conjointness, this mergence with things.
We know that everything that originates on the one hand from the beautiful lily, on the other hand, strives to return to her. The unknown forces that we do not master had brought us over here. We know that certain forces have brought us from the transcendent world over the border river to this world. These forces, characterized by the ferryman, however, active in the depths of the unconscious nature, cannot bring us back again, because, otherwise, the human being would return to the divine realm as the same without his work, without his assistance, just as he has come over. The forces that brought us as unaware natural forces into the realm of the striving human beings are not allowed to lead us back again.
The mermaid left her distance, and by a series of short darts camenearer still, till she stopped again about the width of a broad highroadfrom the discomforted man. He knew now that it must be truly a mermaid,for no creature but a fish could thus glide along the surface of thewater, and certainly the sleek, damp little head that lay so comfortablyon the ripple was the head of a laughing child or playful girl. A crownof green seaweed was on the dripping curls; the arms playing idly uponthe surface were round, dimpled, and exquisitely white. The darkbrownish body he could hardly now see; it was foreshortened to hissight, down slanting deep under the disturbed surface. If it had notbeen for the indisputable evidence of his senses that this lovely seathing swam, not with arms or feet, but with some snake-like motion, hemight still have tried to persuade himself that some playful girl,strange to the ways of the neighbourhood, was disporting herself at herbath. 2ff7e9595c
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