LukeJTM wrote: ↑Sat Apr 01, 2023 11:19 pm Hi everyone,
First of all, I know it's a different thread I am posting this in, but I appreciate the variety of responses that were given on my post about the hard problems faced in modern philosophy and science.
Now, for this thread, I would like to add in something to this thread on "Fairy Tales for the Spirit" that I believe fits in with the discussion. Although this is not specifically about a folk tale, or mythology, it still has relevance to the heart of the discussion in my opinion.
I'm not sure if anyone here has read Owen Barfield's book "Romanticism Comes of Age", he wrote a fascinating chapter on how William Shakespeare's plays express or embody the Consciousness Soul; the experiences of isolation, loneliness, materialism, loss of faith in a spiritual world, and uncertainty, are embodied very poetically within these plays. The Consciousness Soul human lives 'in the dark' and no longer feels the older instinctive promptings from the spiritual world that people seemed to have in the past. Barfield uses Shakespeare's Hamlet as the main example, providing justification for this, and justification for his claim that Shakespeare's imagination was, unconsciously, a vessel for the Consciousness Soul era (which was something only just starting to unfold at the time). This, of course, also applies to other poets and artists of that time period.
I would like to share excerpts from the book because Barfield expresses it so excellently, and also because I am not as deeply familiar with Shakespeare as he seemed to be. If anyone reading this has an opinion to share, I'd be interested to hear.
I would like to share an excerpt from one of Steiner's lectures which relates to this momentous metamorphosis of awakening in the individualized consciousness soul which we are now still very much in the midst of and struggling with. As we remember the climactic events of the 1st century this weekend, we can also take heart that they are just now beginning to bear their inner fruits for the thinking consciousness of those who are willing to bear the Cross and sacrifice the persistently nagging desire to personalize and thereby fragment the World Content. That is how we expand the confines of our current "I" to encompass broader and broader spheres of interest, motivating the desire to progressively harmonize relations of spirit, soul, and body within the Earthly and Cosmic organism.
Steiner wrote:It is not perhaps quite accurate, though not far wrong, to say that if we go very far back in evolution, human souls were not yet truly individualized; they were still entangled in the group-soul nature. This was particularly the case with the more prominent among them, so we may say that such natures as Hector or Empedocles were typical group-soul representatives of their entire human community. Hector grew out of the soul of Troy. He stands as an image of the group soul of the Trojan people in a particular form, specialized but nevertheless just as rooted in the group soul as Empedocles. When they were reincarnated in the post-Christian era, they had to face the necessity of experiencing the ego-consciousness. This passing over from the group-soul nature to the experience of the individual soul causes a mighty leap forward. It causes souls so firmly embedded in the group-soul nature as Hector to appear like Hamlet, i.e. wavering and uncertain, as though incapable of dealing with life. On the other hand it causes a soul like that of Empedocles, when it reappears in post-Christian times as the soul of the Faust of the sixteenth century, to become a kind of adventurer who is brought into various situations from which he was only with difficulty able to extricate himself, and who is misunderstood by his contemporaries and even by posterity.
Indeed, it has often been emphasized that in developments such as those here referred to, all that has taken place since the Mystery of Golgotha is not particularly meaningful. As yet everything is only at the beginning; only during the future evolution of the earth will the great impulses that may be ascribed to Christianity make themselves felt. Over and over again we must emphasize the fact that Christianity is only at the beginning of its great development. If we wish to play a part in this great development, we must enter with understanding into the ever increasing progress of the revelations and impulses which originated with the founding of Christianity. Above all we are required to learn something in the immediate future; for it does not take much clairvoyance to see clearly that if we wish for something definite to enable us to make a good beginning in the direction of an advanced and progressive understanding of Christianity, we must learn to read the Bible in quite a new way. There are at present many hindrances in the way, partly because of the fact that in wide circles biblical study is still carried on in a sugary and sentimental manner. The Bible is not made use of as a book of knowledge, but as a book of common use for all kinds of personal situations. If anyone has need of it for his own personal encouragement, he will bury himself in one or the other chapter of the Bible and allow it to work on him. This seldom results in anything more than a personal relationship to the Bible. On the other hand, the scholarship of the last decades, indeed that of virtually the whole nineteenth century, increased the difficulty of really understanding the Bible by tearing it apart, declaring that the New Testament is composed of all kinds of different things that were later combined, and that the Old Testament also was composed of many different parts which must have been brought together at different times. According to this view, the Bible is made up of mere fragments which may easily produce the impression of an aggregate, presumably stitched together in the course of time. This kind of scholarship has become popular; very many people, for example, hold that the Old Testament is combined out of many single parts. This opinion disturbs the serious reading of the Bible that must come in the near future. When such a serious way of reading the Bible is adopted, all that is to be said about its secrets from the anthroposophical viewpoint will be much better understood.