Four metal statues in Goethe's temple, read by Steiner as will, feeling and knowledge, which must act separately before a person becomes free.
The Four Kings in the Temple in Anthroposophy is Rudolf Steiner's reading of the four metal statues standing in the subterranean sanctuary at the close of Goethe's 1795 story, The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Steiner set that reading down in Goethe's Standard of the Soul (GA 22), whose fairy-story essay he revised for the 1918 edition. The Brazen King gives the youth a sword with the order to take it in the left hand and keep the right hand free. The Silver King gives the sceptre with the charge to feed his sheep. The Golden King presses a crown of oak on his head with the words acknowledge the Highest. The fourth King, cast from copper, silver and gold together, sinks into a shapeless lump. Steiner reads the three metals as will, feeling and knowledge, and the mixed King as the ordinary soul in which those three run together unrecognised.
The Four Kings in the Temple are the four crowned statues the youth meets in the underground sanctuary at the close of Goethe's fairy story. Three of them, brazen, silver and golden, rise at the Old Man's word and each bestows a gift. The fourth, an alloy of all three metals, has its gold licked out of it by the Will-o'-the-Wisps and collapses into a heap.
In Steiner's Own Words
Yet the Snake by itself cannot impart to the Young Man the gifts whereby he is able to control the newly fathomed soul kingdom. These gifts are bestowed on him by the Three Kings. From the Brazen King he receives the sword with the command: “Take the sword in your left hand and keep the right hand free.” The Silver King gives him the sceptre with the words: “Feed my sheep.” The Golden King sets the Crown of Oak on his head, saying, “Acknowledge the Highest.” The fourth King, who is formed of a mixture of the three metals, Copper, Silver and Gold, sinks lifelessly to the ground.
What it Means Today
The picture of three kings acting each from its own nature, with a fourth collapsing because everything in it is stirred together, became a working principle in the first Waldorf school. Emil Molt opened it on 7 September 1919 in Stuttgart for the children of workers at his Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory, and Steiner gave the founding teachers their course that same autumn. He asked them to address willing, feeling and thinking as three distinct capacities rather than pour them into one undifferentiated lesson. Will is worked through movement, rhythm, handwork and daily repetition. Feeling is worked through painting, music, modelling and story. Thinking is worked last and slowest, when the concept can be drawn out of what the child has already done and already felt. More than a thousand Waldorf schools worldwide still build their day on that separation, and the Stuttgart school on the Uhlandshöhe still teaches on the original site.
Thalira synthesis: the fourth King is not a villain in Goethe's temple, he is the ordinary person, and the Will-o'-the-Wisps who lick the gold out of his veins are the borrowed intellect feeding on wisdom it never earned. A lesson, a decision, or a day in which knowing, feeling and doing are poured together produces exactly that figure: impressive from the outside, hollow in the veins, and unable to stand when the sun comes through the cupola.
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