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The Grand Grimoire

The Grand Grimoire

The first part of the Grand Grimoire, like the Grimorium Verum, is simply a process for the evocation of evil spirits to obtain the enforced surrender of hidden treasure. In the second part the magician is certainly expected to give himself, body and soul, to the demon who serves him meanwhile, and there can be no hesitation in admitting that this creates a sharp distinction, not only between the Grand Grimoire and all the Composite Rituals, but also between the Grand Grimoire and the other Liturgies of Black Magic. It is only a palliation to say that the compact is worded as a subterfuge, and in reality gives nothing to the demon, who here, as so frequently in folklore, is bamboozled, receiving the shadow in place of the substance.

Pasted from <http://www.sacred-texts.com/grim/bcm/bcm22.htm>

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Goethe’s Margaret on Mephistopheles

Goethe’s Margaret on Mephistopheles:
Mephistopheles is Faust’s demonic companion who manages Faust’s seduction of her. But she is a pure, devout and innocent young woman and who in her “innermost soul” intuits the evil and the danger in Mephistopheles, and she speaks to Faust.

Margaret:
I’ve long been grieved
To see you in such company.

Faust:
Why, who?

Margaret:
That man who hangs round you so,
I hate him in my innermost soul:
Nothing in all my life has ever
Given my heart such pain, no, never,
As his repulsive face has done.

From Goethe’s Faust (Scene XVI: Martha’s Garden) at http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesXVItoXXV.htm.

Mephistopheles soon manages the poisoning of her mother at her hands, the murder of her brother at Faust’s, and then her drowning of her child in her madness and her execution for her apparent crimes.

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Goethe’s Mephistopheles ruminates on Faust

Goethe’s Mephistopheles ruminates on Faust

Goethe’s Mephistopheles (In Faust’s long gown.)
Reason and Science you despise,
Man’s highest powers: now the lies
Of the deceiving spirit must bind you
With those magic arts that blind you,
And I’ll have you, totally –
Fate gave him such a spirit
It urges him ever onwards, wildly,
And, in his hasty striving, he has leapt
Beyond all earth’s ecstasies.
I’ll drag him through raw life,
Through the meaningless and shallow,
I’ll freeze him: stick to him: keep him ripe,
Frustrate his insatiable greed, allow
Food and drink to drift before his eyes:
In vain he’ll beg for consummation,
And if he weren’t the devil’s, why
He’d still go to his ruination!

Pasted from <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesIVtoVI.htm>

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I am the spirit that negates/ever, that denies!/that always denies!

Comparing Goethe’s Faust Translations — Kaufmann and Kline — and Google Translate.


It’s an art form. Translations vary. And rightly so. Even Google is subjective, though it’s but a homunculus or golem:

Here’s the original German:

Mephistopheles.
Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!
Und das mit Recht; denn alles was entsteht
Ist werth daß es zu Grunde geht;

Drum besser wär’s daß nichts entstünde.
So ist denn alles was ihr Sünde,
Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt,
Mein eigentliches Element.

Faust. Eine Tragödie von Goethe. (Part 1 about line 1340)

Here’s Walter Kaufmann:

Mephisto:
I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element.

– Kaufmann, Walter (1963). “Introduction”. Goethe’s Faust : part one and sections from part two (Anchor books). Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday. p. 47. ISBN 0-385-03114-9

Tony Kline:

Mephistopheles:
I am the spirit, ever, that denies!
And rightly so: since everything created,
In turn deserves to be annihilated:
Better if nothing came to be.
So all that you call Sin, you see,
Destruction, in short, what you’ve meant
By Evil is my true element.

Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved. From <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesItoIII.htm>

Here’s what Google Translate offers.

Here’s Google:

Mephistopheles.
I am the spirit that always denies!
And rightly so; because everything that arises
Is worth that it perishes;

It would be better if nothing happened.
So everything you do is sin,
destruction, in short called evil,
My actual element.

von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. “Faust – Der Tragödie Erster Teil.” Google Translate, Google, . Oct. 2022.

Not bad, Google!

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Goethe’s Faust – Faust is about to drink a glass of poison

[Faust is about to drink a glass of poison – this excerpt is from the beginning of Goethe’s Faust as he contemplates his failures and limits. Should he just end it all now? This is from Tony Kline’s own translation of Faust, available at his website, http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Fausthome.htm.]

I salute you, phial of rare potion, I lift you down, with devotion!
In you I worship man’s art and mind,
Embodiment of sweet sleeping draughts:
Extract, with deadly power, refined,
Show your master all his craft!

I see you, and my pain diminishes,
I grasp you, and my struggles grow less,
My spirit’s flood tide ebbs, more and more,
I seem to be where ocean waters meet,
A glassy flood gleams around my feet,

New day invites me to a newer shore.
A fiery chariot sweeps nearer
On light wings! I feel ready, free
To cut a new path through the ether
And reach new spheres of pure activity.

This greater life, this godlike bliss!
You, but a worm, have you earned this?
Choosing to turn your back, ah yes,
On all Earth’s lovely Sun might promise!
Let me dare to throw those gates open,

That other men go creeping by!
Now’s the time, to prove through action
Man’s dignity may rise divinely high,
Never trembling at that void where,
Imagination damns itself to pain,

Striving towards the passage there,
Round whose mouth all Hell’s fires flame:
Choose to take that step, happy to go
Where danger lies, where Nothingness may flow.
Come here to me, cup of crystal, clear!

Free of your ancient cover now appear,
You whom I’ve never, for many a year,
Considered! You shone at ancestral feasts,
Cheering the over-serious guests:
One man passing you to another here.

It was the drinker’s duty to explain in rhyme
The splendour of your many carved designs
Or drain it at a draught, and breathe, in time:
You remind me of those youthful nights of mine.
Now I will never pass you to a friend,

Or test my wits on your art again.
Here’s a juice will stun any man born:
It fills your hollow with a browner liquid.
I prepared it, now I choose the fluid,
At last I drink, and with my soul I bid

A high and festive greeting to the Dawn!

(He puts the cup to his mouth.)

Pasted from <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesItoIII.htm>

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Mephistopheles and Christianity

Mephistopheles and Christianity

“It should be noted that the name Mephistopheles is used by some people to refer to the Devil, but it is a mere folkloric custom, and has nothing to do with Christian demonology and Christian tradition. Prince of Darkness and Lord of Darkness are also folkloric names, although they tend to be incorporated to Christian tradition.”

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_teaching_about_the_Devil>

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Goethe’s Faust Scene I:

Scene I: Night
Goethe’s Faust
 

(In a high-vaulted Gothic chamber, Faust, in a chair at his desk, restless.)
 
Ah! Now I’ve done Philosophy,
I’ve finished Law and Medicine,
And sadly even Theology:
Taken fierce pains, from end to end.
Now here I am, a fool for sure!
No wiser than I was before:

Master, Doctor’s what they call me,
And I’ve been ten years, already,
Crosswise, arcing, to and fro,
Leading my students by the nose,
And see that we can know – nothing!

It almost sets my heart burning.
I’m cleverer than all these teachers,
Doctors, Masters, scribes, preachers:
I’m not plagued by doubt or scruple,
Scared by neither Hell nor Devil –

Instead all Joy is snatched away,
What’s worth knowing, I can’t say,
I can’t say what I should teach
To make men better or convert each.
And then I’ve neither goods nor gold,

No worldly honour, or splendour hold:
Not even a dog would play this part!
So I’ve given myself to Magic art,
To see if, through Spirit powers and lips,
I might have all secrets at my fingertips.

And no longer, with rancid sweat, so,
Still have to speak what I cannot know:
That I may understand whatever
Binds the world’s innermost core together,
See all its workings, and its seeds,

Pasted from <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesItoIII.htm>

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Goethe’s Faust – Walpurgis Night while Gretchen suffers….

Goethe’s Faust – Walpurgis Night while Gretchen suffers.

“Walpurgis Night represents the powers of ennui and indifference in full flight, a restless activity of petty sins, a superficiality and cynicism concerning human affairs that is amusing but corrosive. The world is shown as Vanity Fair: and Faust as a selfish observer while Gretchen is elsewhere suffering.”

Pasted from <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/TheRestlessSpiritPartII.htm>