Raphael [who provided the cover image for The Way of Novalis, from The School of Athens] and Giulio Romano [who provided the cover image for Shakespeare, the Goddess and Modernity, from The Destruction of the Titans].
John O'Meara in a letter to Robert Powell:
"Both authors are working Sophianically, Novalis taking us up, eventually, into the heights along with Sophia, while Shakespeare, likewise eventually, re-emerges with Sophia from the depths."
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from the Author's Notes
“Both are living through tragedy through the power of Sophianic-anthroposophical thinking. This is thinking based in a form of evolutionary self-development as accounted for in our time by Rudolf Steiner and that comes to fruition at some point in eventual communion with the Sophia.
In Novalis, the Divine Mother is reached in the heights where She is reflected by the Daughter, Sophia (via Novalis’s beloved Sophie), as in his Hymns to the Night.
In Shakespeare, the Mother is reached in the depths, where She properly lies, the Mother being further reflected in the Daughter as embodied on Earth, as in Shakespeare's last plays.
For more ON THE SOPHIA, in Her three interweaving aspects of Divine Mother, Divine Daughter, and Holy Soul, see this website’s page for my recent book “The Riddle of the Sophia” and Other Essays, 2020, Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 8. [This book is now downloadable through the link in the title given here.]
For Rudolf Steiner’s account of the process of evolutionary self-development, see The Thinking Spirit: Rudolf Steiner and Romantic Theory, A Collection of his Texts with Notes, 2007. See also, for Novalis’s association with this process, Chapter 1 of “The Riddle of the Sophia”.
For a convenient short view of the relation between the Sophia and Anthroposophia, see The Bereaved Writer, 2017, pp.44-47, and 51-54.”
JOM
“To Tony Gash and Friends:
Needless to say, I do not in my book on Novalis proceed to a direct proof or demonstration of his link to the Sophianic-anthroposophical stream.
That line of demonstration comes from Robert Powell in his big book on Novalis, and also in his review of my book (see https://sophiafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/starlight%202014%20easter_final_s.pdf pp.58-64.
A direct demonstration is also to be found in Steiner's many esoteric pronouncements about Novalis, re: https://rsarchive.org/
In the meantime, I do link Novalis to the anthroposophical method in Chapter 1 of The Riddle of the Sophia:
http://johnomeara.squarespace.com/riddle
I have also offered an exceptional description by Novalis that would appear to link his experience at that time directly to the work of Robert Powell today. See my write-up on Powell that appears at http://johnomeara.squarespace.com/riddle (scroll down to the middle of this page):
He has made a new veil for the Holy Virgin …whose folds are the letters of her sweet Annunciation, the infinite play of the folds … a music of numbers… her singing … the ceremonial call to a new foundation gathering… (from Christendom, or Europe)
This write-up is brought forward in the context of my unpublished article on “The Figure of Novalis’s ‘Brother’ in Christendom or Europe” that is also given on this page. In the revelatory, pioneering work and mission of Robert Powell in our time, something of this Brother’s influence is also being conveyed.
What I do in my full-length study on Novalis is to trace closely the long line of experience and self-work that, over years, leads him at last to his vision of the Mother in his Hymns to the Night, which vision has definite affinities with the Sophianic stream of experience, as becomes clear from some exposure to that stream (especially the work of Powell in our time.) The process of self-work in Novalis also has definite affinities with the anthroposophical method of self-development as be set down by Steiner in our time.
I suppose one could say the same about my work on Shakespeare: that I never proceed to a direct proof or demonstration of his link to the Sophianic-anthroposophical stream, except that in his case I explicitly, and at length, bring Steiner into my discussion, in Remembering Shakespeare as well as in The Thinking Spirit. **See also, most recently, “Shakespeare, Novalis, and their Succession: A Canonical History for Our Time” at https://www.academia.edu/99518835/Shakespeare_Novalis_and_their_Succession_a_Canonical_History_for_our_Time
My argument in the case of both of my authors, as for their participation in the Sophianic-anthroposophical stream, is on the basis of analogy and concurrence, so to speak, this being more fully the case with Shakespeare.
All of my books are intended primarily as close literary-critical studies, and in the meantime I have had a longstanding and direct experience of the culture that is associated with the Sophianic-anthroposophical stream, which is what allows me to draw on, and link myself to, some major authors from that stream, in association with my work as a critic.
In the meantime, I never do leave off from the literary-critical method in my books, which always comes first since, as a writer, I see myself primarily as a literary critic.
This is so even in the case of The Riddle of the Sophia. I approach the published life-work of the authors treated there primarily as a critical reader, one who is, at the same time, familiar with the world of thought and experience out of which they write.
Ever,
my friend”
JOM