More Hellfire..

Faust.

Faust by Rembrandt, c. 1652. 

The fruitful plot of scholarism grac'd,

That shortly he was grac'd with doctor's name,

Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes

In heavenly matters of theology;

Till swoln with cunning, of a self-conceit,

His waxen wings did mount above his reach,

And, melting, heavens conspir'd his overthrow;

For, falling to a devilish exercise,

And glutted now with learning's golden gifts,

He surfeits upon cursed necromancy;

Nothing so sweet as magic is to him,

Which he prefers before his chiefest bliss:

And this the man that in his study sits.

 THE TRAGICAL HISTORY OF DOCTOR FAUSTUS

BY CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE
FROM THE QUARTO OF 1604.

What are we to make of Christopher Marlowe's Tragic History of Dr Faust?

Was Faust Marlowe's attempt to clear his name of any association with the occult, or did it do the opposite and get him arrested on charges of heresy?

Witch hunts have long been associated with authoritarian regimes spinning lies to justify the annihilation of 'enemies of the state'. Even in Marlowe's time few were so credulous as to truly believe in Satan as a personal foe; the real evil occurred in the accusation of heresy or witchcraft- being charged with associating with the devil could mean the destruction of ones reputation and livelihood and eventually torture and execution.

Aldous Huxley wrote The Devils of Loudun in 1952 a historical narrative of supposed demonic possession, religious fanaticism, sexual repression, and mass hysteria which occurred in 17th century France. In it the mechanism of 'Satanic trials' is made clear. Unfortunately the very clarity of Huxley's account can get in the way of seeing how social paranoia arises and how it plays out within our own culture.

Faust strikes me as an odd story for Christopher Marlowe to write.

Faust's crime was knowledge, he only wanted to know. Of course when he was offered limitless possibilities he did not ask for knowledge, he wanted Helen of Troy. Given limitless possibility one would expect a man desirous of knowledge to chose to speak to some great figure of the past such as Euclid, or to visit the hanging gardens, or see the pyramids built. Marlowe shows Faust as too ordinary for extraordinary knowledge, knowledge that belonged to god alone.

Faust is a warning and Faust is supposed to be all of us.

The 1620's cover to the play shows a bearded man standing inside a circle of symbols representing the twelve constellations of the zodiac; he holds a book (The Justinian bible) in his left hand, and a stick (for drawing the signs?) in his right..

Outside of the circle and a part of the furniture there is a cross, some kind of circular device with a central cross, something like a small suitcase and a ball hanging from the ceiling.

More importantly Faust is looking directly at a strange figure outside the circle, possibly rising up out of the floor. It has wings, spikes and claws. It is black and probably it has a beard and horns.

Marlowe's Faust is clearly a man who has gone too far. A 'man glutted with learning's golden gifts, he surfeits upon cursed necromancy...'. A man not dissimilar in the popular imagination to John Dee.

And Christopher Marlowe- atheist and Rosicrucian?- was a man writing a play reinforcing the moral panic of his time.

Back to the subject, not why did Marlowe write the play (to save his own skin I guess...) and clearly he was referring to Dee, but why and how does the fictional Faust summon Mephistophales?

First the how to summon demons:

Faustus, begin thine incantations,

And try if devils will obey thy hest,

Seeing thou hast pray'd and sacrific'd to them.

Within this circle is Jehovah's name,

Forward and backward anagrammatiz'd,

Th' abbreviated names of holy saints,

Figures of every adjunct to the heavens,

And characters of signs and erring stars,

By which the spirits are enforc'd to rise:

Then fear not, Faustus, but be resolute,

And try the uttermost magic can perform.

Anagrams of Holy names, symbols and signs of 'erring' stars- planets are wondering stars -these are the things that call forth spirits, and spirits enable magic. The Sigillum Dei Aemeth looks just the thing Doctor Faust would use.

Next an incantation:

Sint mihi dei Acherontis propitii! Valeat numen triplex Jehovoe!
Ignei, aerii, aquatani spiritus, salvete! Orientis princeps
Belzebub, inferni ardentis monarcha, et Demogorgon, propitiamus
vos, ut appareat et surgat Mephistophilis, quod tumeraris:
per Jehovam, Gehennam, et consecratam aquam quam nunc spargo,
signumque crucis quod nunc facio, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc
surgat nobis dicatus Mephistophilis!

Christopher Marlowe,

Faust calls to the god of the river Acheron- which leads on to the river Styx - to be gracious to him and says good bye to god in three, Jehovah (my Latin is not to be trusted, by the way)

Fire, air, spirit of water greetings!

The prince of the East Belzebub, monarch of burning hell, and Demogorgon, let Mephistophilis rise. Why do you delay! By, Jehovah and hell, I scatter consecrated water and by the sign of the cross and by my vows,
rise Mephistophilis !

Marlowe was using his imagination and referring to images and ideas his audience would understand and believe to be real enough. The consecrated water and the sign of the cross provide reassurance to the audience that god still has dominion over the infernal beings.

Why does Faust sign the pact with the devil?

Like Marlowe himself and most of us I guess, we think we can get out of it- what ever it is -if it gets too bad. The pact is a trick, but Faust is confident of his abilities.

Hubris...this is a tragedy after all.

If John Dee was the Faust of Marlowe's play, what ever John Dee may have done, no one ever accused him of performing a Black Mass.

Neither Faust or Dee praised the devil, or asked for his blessing.

Faust/Dee sought knowledge but it was that desire for knowledge which led Faust into the devil's power, echoing the biblical story of Eve eating from the tree of knowledge. Seeking 'god-like' knowledge and earthly power is the same (Marlowe's play seems to be saying) as praising the devil....


The Black Mass.
The Black Mass is an invention of the Inquisition who were set up specifically to destroy the Knights Templar and rooting out their heresy. Heresy was, at the beginning anyway, the Arian heresy- nothing to do with Aryans, it was a philosophical debate at first about the nature of Jesus. The Arian heresy is to say that Jesus was Divine of in his own right, in other words disagreeing that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost is like water, steam and ice- the same thing but different.

Those guilty of the Arian heresy have a less mystical view, and say that each of those things are too different to be the same thing.

More to the point, heresy was also failing to pay tax, or posing a threat to established order...or becoming powerful enough to challenge the king.

The demise of the Templars is one of the saddest stories of history. It is hard not to believe that their executions came about as a logical solution to a problem: the Templars were rich, the king needed money so the Inquisition found them guilty of denouncing Christ, worshipping idols.

The name of the idol was supposed to be Baphomet, apparently it was composed of stuffed human heads,The Templars were accused of spitting on and trampling on the cross, and worshipping the Devil in the form of a black cat.

It is more than likely that Baphomet was a mispronunciation of Mohamed, but the more outlandish or plain silly the accusation is, the easier it is to make it stick in the topsy turvy mirror world of satanic panic.

400 years latter the real meaning of the word: Baphomet is confused further by Eliphas Levi taking the goat from Goya's image of a sabbat 1821-1823 and quoting from Herodotus.



Translation by Wallis Budge:

At several places in the Delta, e.g. Hermopolis, Lycopolis, and Mendes, the god Pan and a goat were worshipped; Strabo, quoting (xvii. 1, 19) Pindar, says that in these places goats had intercourse with women, and Herodotus (ii. 46) instances a case which was said to have taken place in the open day. The Mendisians, according to this last writer, paid reverence to all goats, and more to the males than to the females, and particularly to one he-goat, on the death of which public mourning is observed throughout the whole Mendesian district; they call both Pan and the goat Mendes, and both were worshipped as gods of generation and fecundity. Diodorus (i. 88) compares the cult of the goat of Mendes with that of Priapus, and groups the god with the Pans and the Satyrs. The goat referred to by all these writers is the famous Mendean Ram, or Ram of Mendes, the cult of which was, according to Manetho, established by Kakau, the king of the IInd dynasty.[49]

Goya paints mothers offering children to a goat...did Goya use the symbol to represent (Moloch- child sacrifice) animal cravings and stupidity?

Goya: Nightmares are creatures of the imagination.

Eliphas Levi describes the goat of the sabbot as The Goat of Mendes in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie1855.

In 1921 Margaret Murray in The Witch-Cult in Western Europe wrote that the devil was said to appear as "a great Black Goat with a Candle between his Horns".

Back to France and a hundred years after the Templars had been burned at the stake Baron Gilles de Rais, was accused of conducting Black Masses in the cellar of his castle. The accusation claimed that he kidnapped, tortured, and murdered more than 140 children as sacrifices.

Why did he do it?
It was said that he did it in order to gain riches and power. 

He was executed in 1440.


Did he do it?
No one knows...but he endured three days of torture.

As to what one should do to perform a Black Mass, this account of The mass of Saint-Secaire (performed to curse someone to death) was written in 1843:

The Mass of Saint Sécaire can only be said in a church where it is forbidden to congregate, because it is half-ruined, or because things were done there which no Christian should do. From these churches, the horned owls, the screech owls and the bats make their paradises. Gypsies lodge there. Under the altar, there are a bevy of singing toads.

The bad priest brings with him his mistress, to serve as his clerk. He must be alone in the church with this sow, and to have enjoyed a good supper. At the first stroke of eleven o'clock, he begins the mass, reading the whole thing backwards from the end, finishing at midnight exactly. The host is black, and has three points. The bad priest does not consecrate wine. He drinks the water of a well into which a child, who died unbaptized, has been thrown. The sign of the cross is always made on the ground, and with the left foot.

Singing toads is a new one...I find myself asking, are the toads essential?

What if you don't have any toads, would a recording do?

The most famous description of a witch comes from Lucan in book 6 of his Pharsalia (A.D 61-65). The witch Erictho brings a corpse back to life to tell the future- Necromancy.

As Lucan says, for the witch murder is nothing to fear, it is justified by the rites she performs:

 Where lay a corpse upon the naked earth
     On ravening birds and beasts of prey the hag
     Kept watch, nor marred by knife or hand her spoil,
     Till on his victim seized some nightly wolf; (36)
     Then dragged the morsel from his thirsty fangs;
     Nor fears she murder, if her rites demand
     Blood from the living, or some banquet fell
     Requires the panting entrail.  Pregnant wombs
     Yield to her knife the infant to be placed
     On flaming altars: and whene'er she needs
660  Some fierce undaunted ghost, he fails not her
     Who has all deaths in use.  Her hand has chased
     From smiling cheeks the rosy bloom of life;
     And with sinister hand from dying youth
     Has shorn the fatal lock: and holding oft
     In foul embraces some departed friend
     Severed the head, and through the ghastly lips,
     Held by her own apart, some impious tale
     Dark with mysterious horror hath conveyed
     Down to the Stygian shades.


It has long been known that the fear witchcraft inspires is more dangerous than the reality. The potency of this fear (rather than a desire to deal with any spirit or god) is what draws some groups of people to borrow its symbols and structures. Most often the users do not believe that the symbols have any intrinsic power and conclude that it is legitimate to write of witches sacrificing babies and of singing toads and to make up anything shocking for the purposes of selling their books or papers.

Another section likewise know the symbols to be worldly artifacts with no connection to other worlds or beings, but use the fear these images inspire, to empower to their work- I class the Steganographia (written c.1499) by Johannes Trithemius as one of those books. John Dee's work could likewise be cryptography, but the lines between real and unreal blur when looking back 600 years away.

Trithemius wrote of cryptography as a...

"...secular consequent of the ability of a soul specially empowered by God to reach, by magical means, from earth to Heaven"

And when thinking of David Deutsch's work, it is easier to understand Trithemius's comprehension of magic as an extension of research into the unknown...

Cryptography- the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of third parties -was an outcome of Trithemius's work. Dee and Marlowe were both associated with spying, this meant that any one dealing with cryptography risked being outed for witchcraft- and risking the moral panic and outrage of 'the people'.

Therefore the monarchy-  an institution engaged in spying -required an alliance with the church as essential for the survival of the monarchy.

It is very tempting to believe that Faust was Marlowe's attempt to distance himself from anything at all that could get him into prison, nevertheless:

A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May 1593. No reason for it was given, though it was thought to be connected to allegations of blasphemy—a manuscript believed to have been written by Marlowe was said to contain "vile heretical conceipts". On 20 May he was brought to the court to attend upon the Privy Council for questioning. There is no record of their having met that day, however, and he was commanded to attend upon them each day thereafter until "licensed to the contrary." Ten days later, he was stabbed to death by Ingram Frizer. Whether the stabbing was connected to his arrest has never been resolved.

If Marlowe had not been stabbed he would have been tortured; it is terrible to think this but the stabbing could have been his reward for work done.

Marlowe had written and performed the play before his arrest. The texts we have today were changed, and are not exactly as Marlowe wrote the play.

But did the writing of Faust actually cause Marlowe's arrest?

One hundred years after Marlowe, in England it was as if witchcraft was the same things as being Catholic. In other words, a sign of rebellion and moral decline. The king was Protestant (head of the Church), he felt himself to be under threat from the Catholic supporters of James Stuart...

When George 1 banned Hellfire clubs he banned aristocrats making fun of the Church of England, suspecting them if not of being Catholic supporters, then drunkard louts causing civil disorder. A group known as The Mohock club- basically criminals running a protection racket - as described by Sir Richard Steele in the Spectator 1712 explains the danger:

The particular talents by which these misanthropes are distinguished from one another, consist in the various kinds of barbarities which they execute upon their prisoners. Some are celebrated for a happy dexterity in tipping the lion upon them; which is performed by squeezing the nose flat to the face, and boring out the eyes with their fingers. Others are called the dancing-masters, and teach their scholars to cut capers; by running swords through their legs; a new invention, whether originally French I cannot tell. A third sort are the tumblers, whose office it is to set women on their heads. But these I forbear to mention, because they cannot but be very shocking to the reader as well as the Spectator. In this manner they carry on a war against mankind; and by the standing maxims of their policy, are to enter into no alliances but one, and that is offensive and defensive with all bawdy-houses in general, of which they have declared themselves protectors and guarantees.

By the eighteenth century witchcraft was not a major concern...

The last executions for witchcraft in England had taken place in 1682, when Temperance Lloyd, Mary Trembles, and Susanna Edwards were executed at Exeter. Jane Wenham was among the last subjects of a typical witch trial in England in 1712, but was pardoned after her conviction and set free.

So when people blog about or Tumblr (Tumblrs of Illuminati symbols in pop videos)....assuming that some bimbo pretending to be augmented like Denton (Deus Ex) dancing around gun carrying military figures inevitably dressed in black is actually performing a magic ritual to create a police state...

Nothing new here folks, move on!