Occult Art: The First Walpurgis Night – Cantata by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy After A Poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

In 1799 the German mason, member of the illuminati, natural scientist and first and foremost: poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote the ballad “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” – “The first Walpurgis night”.

In a sharp contrast to the Walpurgis night scene in Goethe’s Faust, which pretty much resembles the inquisitor’s cliche about the orgiastic meetings between witches and the devil on their Sabbath, the ballad “The first Walpurgis night” is different: It depicts a pagan community celebrating a spring festival according to the old ways, such as Beltane, despite being suppressed, criminalized and followed by the new, Christian majority.

In order to escape the prosecutors the pagans mask themselves with devil’s masks, exploiting the superstitious beliefs of their enemies. The plan works out and the druids finish their worship of May Day in peace, to celebrate the arrival of spring and the power of the sun.

Goethe –  A Heathen?

Goethe was sometimes called a heathen himself. However, in a different way: In a letter to Johann Caspar Lavater he once wrote that he would not be “an antichrist, neither an unchrist, but a decided non-christ”. In particular, he despited the symbolism of the cross, the original sin (which seemed to him an insult towards creation), and he opposed the Trinity as blasphemy against the one god, as scholar Werner Keller summarized.

He appreciated pantheistic views, in his art he fancied polytheism (especially of the classical antiquity), but his morals, still were Christian, as he used to underline.

Hence, despite Goethe’s inclination to masonry and occult topics – overall: his main work Faust is loosely based on rumors around the German Renaissance magician and cabalist Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim – he was no “heathen” in the way described in his poem “The first Walpurgis night”.

Meaning and Significance of Goethe’s “First Walpurgis night”

This raises the question what drove Goethe to his empathic poem (the text leaves no doubt on which’s side the poet stands!) about pagans celebrating spring and tricking and frightening their Christian persecutors with devil costumes and forks.

Goethe wrote from the very beginning the poem with the aim to have it set to music – a cantata for which he wanted his friend Carl Friedrich Zelter to be the composer. By sending a letter to Zelter, Goethe explained the background of his ballad:

A historian would have tried tracing back the origins of the ancient German belief in the devil’s or witches’ sabbath on the mountain Brocken, Harz (Germany). He found that the old pagan priests, after being driven out of their sacred groves, and after Christianity was made mandatory for the people, gathered with their true remaining followers in the hard accessible Harz mountains to celebrate the arrival of spring the old way.

In order to protect themselves from armed, but superstitious Christian prosecutors they would have covered up their faces with devil’s masks, to safely and unrecognized finish their “pure” worship.

Regardless of the historical accurateness, Goethe obviously liked this idea, and labels the Christian priests with their superstitions even as “dull”. His feelings are with the pagans, whose religion he depicts as supreme.

The Long Way to the Cantata

Composer Zelter, however, soon realized that this task was way beyond him. Instead, he arranged a meeting between Goethe and the 12 (!) year old Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in 1821.  The music was brilliant, but Goethe criticized the understanding of the text as “shallow”, thus the 12-year old could not transpose the complex layers of meaning Goethe had laid into his work. It would take 11 years until 1832 for Mendelssohn to finish the cantata. Goethe died in the same year. Whether he would have liked the result or not is unknown.

Mendelssohn himself felt the need to rework the cantata again, and the first performance was 10 years later: in 1842. Considered often a masterpiece, it took not less than 21 years to create it.

Three times seven – I am not an adept of music, and neither of Goethe, but there is magic in this music and seems the right soundtrack for a day like this 😉

Blessed Beltane, May Evening or Walpurgis night!

P.S. Do not miss Radiana’s post on the Witches’ Sabbath.

Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: “Die erste Walpurgisnacht” Music and Video

Goethe: The First Walpurgis Night – German Text and English Translation

Es lacht der Mai – May is in full bloom

Könnt ihr so verwegen handeln? – Could you be so rash, so daring?

Wer Opfer heut zu bringen scheut – Whoever fears to sacrifice

Verteilt euch, wackre Männer, hier – Divide your forces, valiant men

Diese dummen Pfaffenchristen – Christians and their priests are dull

Kommt mit Zacken und hit Gabeln – Come with prongs and pitchforks

So weit gebracht, dass wir bei Nacht – It’s come so far that now by night

Hilf, ach hilf mir, Kriegsgeselle – Help, oh help me, comrade

Die Flamme reinigt sich vom Rauch – The flame is purified from smoke