Goethe’s Alchemical Story, Part I:
The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
We shall understand the world when we understand ourselves; for it and we are inseparable halves of one whole.
Novalis
Before I dive into the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily I want to say a few words about alchemy and the way Goethe interpreted it. If you’re familiar with Carl Gustav Jung’s take on alchemy, then Goethe’s version will sound similar, although the Fairy Tale was written more than 200 years earlier. Neither one was looking for a way to change base metals into gold. Many ancient alchemists were indeed interested in the transmutation of various substances and made important discoveries which chemistry later confirmed. But the Philosopher’s Stone – the miraculous elixir that would guarantee eternal life and transform anything into gold, had allegorical rather than literal meaning for the true adept. What changed during the various stages of the Work was the practitioner. Goethe’s scientific writings and experiments always stress this important truth: the observer and the observed are intricately connected. The aim of alchemy, then, is to correct the misconception that the observing individual is a discrete, separate entity observing a multitude of discrete, separate objects.
If you’d like to read the Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, you can find it here.
Goethe’s Tale is an elaborate allegory about transformation, the unification of polarities, and the discovery of a new realm of freedom and love. It utilizes some of alchemy’s most profound symbols like death and rebirth, the sacred marriage, and the uroboros. It follows the quest of the alchemist seeking to penetrate the secrets of nature, to transform the faculties of the soul, and to bridge the inner and outer worlds. Written in 1795 and later included with other stories and anecdotes in Conversations of German Emigrants, it arouse from Goethe’s correspondence and conversations with Schiller in connection with Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, written for the literary periodical Die Horen in 1774.
The narrator in The Conversations of German Immigrants introduces it as a story “which will remind you of everything and nothing” , and the many interpretations which followed soon after its publication caused Goethe to comment that it is “at once meaningful and meaningless”, leaving the individual reader in complete freedom to choose the meaning of its images. As there is therefore no right or wrong way to interpret the tale, I feel safe to approach it like a true fairy tale, where the various figures and components are symbols for different developmental stages of the human soul. While there are many ways to explain the Fairy Tale, it is crafted with utmost precision; no figure, image, or even word is arbitrary. Every element, in its carefully chosen place, interacts with and influences its other parts. Thus, it is reminiscent of alchemical texts with their precise depictions of stages of transformation. Similarly, their deliberate obscurity leads us beyond the intellect which is incapable of reaching the deeper, imaginative levels of the soul; like a koan, in a way.
First Episode
At the beginning of the story we find ourselves on the bank of a great, swollen river which separates two domains: the realm of the Beautiful Lily and the realm of the Green Snake. Right away, we are introduced to two regions of our experience which are divided from each other and which form a polarity: the sense-perceptible, finite, outer world of matter (the realm of the Snake), and the inner, individual world of thoughts, the mind (the realm of the Lily). Equally, we are reminded of opposites such as conscious and unconscious, life and death, light and dark, male and female. In alchemical writings, these opposites are symbolized by the Two Contraries: King and Queen, Sol and Luna, gold and silver, mercury and sulfur.
The river which divides these two regions is at the same time the means for potential reunification. In fact, every set of polarities contains and is contained by its overarching unity. Day and night, inner and outer world are distinct and different manifestations of one totality. The actualization of this potentiality is the goal of the alchemist. But before the two realms are rightfully joined, each suffers from the lack of qualities from the other. Any living creature that Lily touches has to die, and she waits with great longing for the deliverance from her isolation. One-sided rationality and knowledge lack the warmth of the living world, and the illuminating power of reason only becomes effective when it is in rightful relation to nature and the sense-perceptible.
When the story opens, it is as yet impossible to cross the river on one’s own, and everybody wanting to get to the other side needs to be helped across. We meet the first of such assistants in the person of the ancient Ferryman, reminiscent of Charon, the ferryman of Greek mythology. However, in Goethe’s story, the Ferryman can only take passengers from the supersensible to the sensible world, which reminds us of Lethe, the river of forgetfulness.
Two individuals wake the Ferryman and demand impatiently to be taken to the other shore. They are will-o’-the-wisps; nervous, restless, somewhat irreverent young gentlemen who almost cause the boat to capsize with their wild antics, despite the old man’s warnings. The literal translation for the German word Irrlichter -- erring lights -- is more expressive of these two characters. Irren means to err, to lead astray, while irr can also mean madness. Their frivolous and playful nature suggests the immature seeker for wisdom, we are reminded of a person fascinated by superstition and ungrounded, confused thoughts; a theme which rings through the other stories of the Conversations as well.
As the further development of the story will reveal, the two will-o’-the-wisps who as yet possess little wisdom, are the catalysts or unintentional initiators of the important events that will come to pass; it is therefore fitting that they should appear right at the beginning. Once on the other shore, these two do not bother to ask what their payment should be. Instead, they shake themselves and scatter pieces of gold all over the floor of the boat. If the alchemical gold can be understood as the highest symbol for successful transformation -- the Philosophers’ Stone -- then the pieces which the Wisps throw around are hardly of this quality. As we later hear, they can easily absorb and disperse gold, but it is of no use to them, it remains undigested. It’s of no use to the Ferryman, either. He asks for that which can be true nourishment: Fruits of the Earth. The Wisps are to bring three cabbages, three artichokes, and three large onions.
Many of the events of the story are related to the number three: a prophecy has to be repeated three times, the Prince receives three gifts, the Old Woman meets with three calamities, etc. The three vegetables signify the three stages of a plant: root or bulb (onion), leaf (cabbage), and flower (artichoke), and can be related to will, feeling, and thinking.
The Lights haste away on their business, and the Ferryman proceeds to dispose of the gold pieces; he finds a cleft in some rocks, and throws the gold into a deep chasm. This wakes up the Green Snake who quickly swallows all the pieces of gold and becomes transparent and luminous. The Snake greatly delights in her new-found radiance which makes the grass and leaves around her sparkle like emeralds. Eager to find more of this precious gold, she sets out to find its source, and soon meets the two Wisps who, despite their haste, have made no progress in their errand. They shake themselves two more times, and she quickly swallows the scattered gold pieces, thereby greatly increasing her shining beauty. There is a progression from the scatterbrained Whisps who, as we are told, prefer to travel at night and generally shun the daylight, to the more awake soul-condition of the Snake which may be likened to normal ego-consciousness.
In gratitude for the gold, the Snake promises to grant any favor the Will-o’-the-wisps might wish. They demand to be taken to the palace of the Fair Lily, which in fact is the aim of their errand. With dismay they hear that she dwells on the other side of the river, from where they had just come -- true to their name, they have erred, and true to their character, they blame the river for keeping them from their goal. The Ferryman cannot take them back, but there are two other possibilities to cross the river: one is offered by the Snake who daily at noon transforms herself temporarily into a bridge; the other way makes use of a peculiar feature of the Giant who lives close by. His body has no power, but his shadow is strong enough to carry anything. At sunrise and sunset he can easily take passengers across. There are thus three ways of crossing, none of them permanent: the Ferryman who lives in the realm of the Lily, representative of spiritual soul faculties; the Snake, symbolizing normal consciousness, and the Giant who stands for the unconscious, uncontrolled and impulsive forces of the will. As long as these forces remain unintegrated, the gulf between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit cannot be bridged.
Since the Wisps dislike the daylight, they leave the Snake who in turn proceeds to examine a subterranean Sanctuary which she had discovered long ago, but was never able to see. Now, with her capacity to shine, she hopes to illuminate what she could only feel before.
There are four great statues of kings in this Sanctuary. The Golden King represents Wisdom, the one of Silver Beauty, and the King of Bronze Strength -- the attributes of the Masonic Temple of Human Love. These attributes symbolize the highest achievement of knowledge, feeling, and will. The fourth king is made of a mixture of gold, silver, and bronze, but the metals have not fully combined and he has a rather unpleasant appearance. He resembles humans who are easily swayed by their likes and dislikes, who have no control over their cravings and desires, and whose thinking is muddled.
Soon after the Snake entered the Sanctuary, another figure appeared: the Old Man with the Lamp, the archetypal figure of the guardian and bearer of spiritual wisdom. We may assume that he knows all mysteries, and even the further progression of the story, because he takes on a role of leadership; however, he keeps his knowledge to himself, never imposing it on the decisions of the other characters. His Lamp has peculiar powers of its own: it only shines when another light is present, reminding us of Goethe’s aphorism: “If the eye were not sun-like, it could never behold the sun; if God’s own power was not within us, the divine would not delight us”. The light of wisdom and knowledge can only shine when it is met by the desire of the soul for illumination. The other ability of the Lamp transforms everything to a higher degree of perfection: it changes stone into gold, wood into silver, and dead animals into precious stones.
This is reminiscent of the transformative powers of the Philosophers’ Stone. Jung calls it “... the light, the central mystery of philosophical alchemy. Almost always it is personified as the ‘filius’, or is at least mentioned as one of his outstanding attributes”. The Silver King asks the Old Man which is the most important of the three secrets he knows, to which he answers: “The open one” -- the manifest, the mysteries of the sensory world. The fourth secret is known by the Green Snake, and when she whispers it into his ear, he exclaims: “The time is at hand!” The Snake’s secret is the key to the further unfolding and fulfillment of the story.
Second Episode
The second part opens with the return of the Old Man to his wife whom he finds in a state of great agitation. She had let the two Will-o’-the-wisps in the house, who flattered her into paying their debt to the Ferryman; but they also licked off all the gold which had covered the walls of her cottage. Before leaving, they shook off a shower of gold pieces, and her dog was killed, because it ate one piece.
The Old Man is not perturbed, undoubtedly because of his deeper insight into the necessity of these events. Calmly he restores order: the light of his Lamp gilds the walls and turns the lifeless body of the dog into a beautiful piece of onyx stone. He advises the Old Woman to put the vegetables, together with the onyx dog, into a basket, and to first pay the debt to the Ferryman. Then she is to cross the river into the realm of the Lily and offer her the onyx dog as a gift. Lily’s power to vitalize dead objects will restore the dog to life. Thus, the Man with the Lamp sends a message to her: she should take heart because her deliverance is near, and the time is at hand.
On her way to the river, the Old Woman crosses the path of the Giant. Oblivious to the portent events going on around him, his shadow takes one of each of the vegetables and eats them up. The Ferryman is not content with what the Old Woman brings him, as he has to give the river its share; he makes her pledge her debt to the river by dipping her hand into the water. This results in the third calamity happening to her this day: to her great concern, her hand turns black immediately, and starts to shrink. We are reminded of the nigredo, the black, first stage of the alchemical work. Death and putrefaction are the necessary preliminary conditions for rebirth and new life; dissolution has to precede unification (Solve et Coagula). The allusion to the nigredo, to which the death of the dog can be counted as well, will be further taken up with the death of the Young Prince whom the Old Woman meets next on the river bank.
Actually, his melancholy condition reveals that he has already progressed quite far into the stage of nigredo, as melancholy is a synonym for it. He has lost crown, scepter, and sword because of his unhappy love for the Lily Maiden. He is the prototype of the striving soul who has to forego all attachment to his ego: “In contradistinction to the modern prejudice that self-knowledge is nothing but a knowledge of the ego, the alchemists regarded the self as a substance incommensurable with the ego, hidden in the body, and identical with the image of God” (Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis). We might also see in the Prince an alter-ego of Goethe himself, who suffered from depression and melancholy until his journey to Italy which he experienced as a period of profound rebirth.
The Old Woman joins the Prince who also wishes to visit the Lily; as they approach the river, they are amazed by the new splendor of the bridge formed by the Snake. Her transformation which began when she ingested the pieces of gold, has changed what used to be jasper and agate into emerald, chrysopras, and chrysolite -- all synonyms used for the Philosophers’ Stone. With her radiant colors, she also reminds us of the peacock stage, the cauda pavonis, which sometimes appeared before the albedo or white stage: “The exquisite display of colors in the peacock’s fan heralds the imminent synthesis of all qualities and elements, which are united in the ‘rotundity’ of the philosophical stone” (Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis).
After the two wanderers have gone across the glorious bridge, the Snake resumes her normal shape and joins them. Soon they enter the garden of the Lily where the story reaches its central focus in the meeting of the two young people. The Fair Lily, sitting under some trees and singing to her harp, delights with her beauty and grace the eyes, ears, and heart of the Old Woman, her first visitor. However, Lily suffers greatly from her fate which keeps her separate from all living creatures. Her touch causes death, and just this morning she inadvertently killed her canary bird who, scared by a hawk flying overhead, had sought shelter in her lap and fallen lifeless to her feet. The message from the Old Man, and his wife’s gift, the onyx dog, give the Lily Maiden some hope as they are part of a prophecy about her delivery. Quickly, she restores the dog to life and enjoys a few happy moments playing with him. This sight, however, is unbearable for the Young Prince who has been watching from afar. Driven to despair by his hopeless love, he rushes to embrace her, even if it should kill him, and indeed -- as soon as he touches her, he sinks to the ground, like dead.
This great calamity marks an important turning point in the tale. The death of the Prince indicates the stage of mortificatio, the most negative operation in alchemy and belonging to the stage of nigredo. As Jung explains, this corresponds to the “voluntary death” of the ego or mind, “for only separated things can unite”, he wrote in Mysterium Coniunctionis. One-sided rationality (the realm where Lily lives), out of touch with the world of experience, needs to be transformed before a true union of body, mind, and spirit can be achieved. Through her sorrow, Lily dissolves into tears; this suggests the stage of dissolution and purification as a result of the nigredo: “the woman washing sheets” of the Atalanta Fugiens (32/Embl. III). The reduction of the Two Contraries -- the Prince and the Lily -- to the necessary condition that allows the process of transformation, concludes the second part of the story.
The third and fourth episodes of the Fairy Tale will follow soon.
I enjoy things like this. I listened to / watched nearly an ENTIRE video about The Inferno of Dante, & I'm going to rewatch it, very likely, hence THIS attracted my eye. Please continue !