Witchology, the history of Wicca & Witchcraft
by Dr Leo Ruickbie

Study and learn the history of Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, Magic and the Occult with our courses and resources

Did Doctor Faustus Sell his Soul?

Everyone believes Faustus invoked the Devil and sold his soul, but did he? Find out why the legend was the witchcraft trial of a dead man in this rich and vivid story of magic and magicians in the Renaissance. Highly recommended.

Dealing with the Devil: The Faustian Pact in Magical Culture

by Dr Leo Ruickbie

This paper explored the development of the Faustian Pact, looking at how the Renaissance magician Faustus came to be condemned as having made a pact with the Devil, and how this condemnation itself came to be a pattern for magical practice.

Pacts with the Devil have been a mainstay of Christian legend, used to reveal the saintliness of some and revile the Satanism of others – a two-edged weapon in the war of words fought between sanctioned ‘truth’ and outlawed knowledge. And it is a sword that has landed firmly on the neck of one sixteenth century magician in particular.

Out of this venerable history of pact-making the Faustian version emerged as a Reformation challenge to the Northern Renaissance. It is no idle speculation to wonder why this occurred. When Faustus has been called an ‘icon of modern culture’ whose legend has been central to the formation of Western consciousness it has been the Faustian Pact that has informed that interpretation and it is the Faustian Pact that continues to be the main cultural reference point.

However, the conceptualisation of the pact has not remained static. Several distinct periods in its development are discernible: pre-Faustian Christian morality tale, anti-secular polemic against Renaissance Humanism with sectarian overtones, Romantic salvation in the Enlightenment, political critique in the modern era, comical decline in post-modernity. Against this largely literary trend there has also continued an underground magical tradition of practice patterned on the Faustian Pact of the Northern Renaissance.

[...]

Edited version of a paper given at Reinventing the Renaissance Occult, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, 14 November 2009.

Explore Faustus

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Faustus: The Life and Times of a Renaissance Magician

Keywords

Faustus, Faust, magic, black magic, alchemy, astrology, necromancy, witchcraft, grimoires, Germany, Renaissance, sixteenth century, Goethe, Marlowe, biography, history, folklore, legend, Devil, Mephistopheles, pact, damnation, soul

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Witchology, the history of Wicca & Witchcraftby Dr Leo Ruickbie