Tag: Pact with the Devil

Implied Pact Impact

In 1398, the University of Paris declared that the demonic pact could be implicit; no document need be signed, as the mere act of summoning a demon constituted an implied pact.

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

Secret Teachings of All Ages, by Manly P. Hall

“In the case of black magic, it is the magician and not the demon who must sign the pact. When the black magician binds an elemental to his service, a battle of wits ensues, which the demon eventually wins. With his own blood the magician signs the pact between himself and the demon, for in the arcanum of magic it is declared that “he controls the soul who controls the blood of another.” As long as the magician does not fail, the elemental will fulfil to the letter his obligation under the pact, but the demon will try in every possible way to prevent the magician from carrying out his part of the contract.”

Pasted from <http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta24.htm>

Lives of the necromancers: or, An account of the most eminent persons in …

By William Godwin (1834)

“But what is most deplorable we are not contented to endeavour to secure the aid of God and good angels but we also aspire to enter into alliance with devils and beings destined for their rebellion to suffer eternally the pains of hell. As they are supposed to be of a character perverted and depraved, we of course apply to them principally for purposes of wantonness, or of malice and revenge. And in the instances which have occurred only a few centuries back, the most common idea has been of a compact entered into by an unprincipled and impious human being with the sworn enemy of God and man, in the result of which the devil engages to serve the capricious will and perform the behests of his blasphemous votary for a certain number of years, while the deluded wretch in return engages to renounce his God and Saviour and surrender himself body and soul to the pains of hell from the end of that term to all eternity. No sooner do we imagine human beings invested with these wonderful powers, and conceive them as called into action for the most malignant purposes, than we become the passive and terrified slaves of the creatures of our own imaginations, and fear to be assailed at every moment by beings to whose power we can set no limit, and whose modes of hostility no human sagacity can anticipate and provide against. But, what is still more extraordinary, the human creatures that pretend to these powers have often been found as completely the dupes of this supernatural machinery, as the most timid wretch that stands in terror at its expected operation; and no phenomenon has been more common than the confession of these allies of hell, that they have verily and indeed held commerce and formed plots and conspiracies with Satan.”


Preface. Page ix

http://books.google.ca/books?id=AtkLAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA358&ots=nOaFJroEyp&dq=Georgius%20Sabellicus&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=but,%20what%20is%20most%20deplorable&f=false

Hysteria and Madness. Father Gaufridi is executed.

Court proceedings saw both Sisters Madeline and Louise behave in, according to 17th century standards, fashion typical of an advanced state of possession. Madeleine in particular was seen to maniacally swing from violently denouncing Gaufridi as a devil worshipper and sorcerer to retracting the accusations. She would return to charges of cannibalism, and then turn to begging him for a single word of kindness. Twice, Madeleine attempted suicide after the courts found the Devil’s Mark on her body.

Father Gaufridi entered the courtroom after a series of physical and mental torture inflicted during his time in prison. His body had been shaved in a search for the Devil’s Mark, three of which were found and used as evidence against him. A pact with the Devil was produced in court, allegedly signed by Gaufridi’s own blood. A confession was also produced, which Gaufridi had signed in prison, extracted under torture. Included in the confession was an admission of celebrating a Black Mass in order to gain power over women:

Pasted from <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aix-en-Provence_possessions>

Melmoth the Wanderer is a gothic novel published in 1820, written by Charles Robert Maturin (uncle of Jane Wilde who was mother of Oscar Wilde).

The central character, John Melmoth (a Wandering Jew type), is a scholar who sells his soul to the devil in exchange for 150 extra years of life and spends that time searching for someone who will take over the pact for him. The novel actually takes place in the present, but this back story is revealed through several nested stories-within-a-story that work backwards through time (usually through the Gothic trope of old books).

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

5 People That Sold Their Souls To The Devil

Niccolo Paganini
Robert Johnson
Johann Georg Faust
Urbain Grandier
Jonathan Moulton

See <http://www.weirdworm.com/5-people-that-sold-their-souls-to-the-devil/>

Concerning the early German chapbook:

P.57 The sin of knowledge: ancient themes and modern variations
By Theodore Ziolkowski

Pasted from <http://books.google.com/books?id=-5mtHlmOtIEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false>

“Is there a God beside Me? Yea, there is no God; I know not any”, God says (Isa. 44: 8);
“The Lord He is God; there is none else beside Him” (Deut. 4:35).
Such verses occur time and again throughout the Bible. Because God is the source of all power and the only God, He is therefore a jealous God, as He often reminds us (e.g. Ex. 20:5; Deut. 4:24).
God gets jealous when His people start believing in other gods, if they say to Him, ‘You are a great God, a powerful God, but actually I believe there are still some other gods beside You, even if they are not as powerful as You’. This is why we cannot believe that there are demons or a Devil in existence as well as the true God. This is just the mistake Israel made. Much of the Old Testament is spent showing how Israel displeased God by believing in other gods as well as in Him. We will see from the Bible that the “demons” people believe in today are just like those false gods Israel believed in.

Pasted from <http://www.realdevil.info/4-1.htm>

Poor simple but honest Devil.

“He is always duped and the vilest tricks are resorted to to cheat him. While thus the Devil, having profited by experience, always insists upon having his rights insured by an unequivocal instrument (which in later centuries is signed with blood); he, in his turn, is fearlessly trusted to keep his promise, and this is a fact which must be mentioned to his honor, for although he is said to be a liar from the beginning, not one case is known, in all devil-lore in which the Devil attempts to cheat his stipulators. Thus he appears as the most unfairly maligned person, and as a martyr of simple-minded honesty.”

http://www.sacred-texts.com/evil/hod/hod19.htm History of the Devil, by Paul Carus, [1900], at sacred-texts.com.

Pasted from <http://www.sacred-texts.com/evil/hod/hod19.htm>