The Fortunes of Faust….

The Fortunes of Faust.

From the web page:

Historian Jeffrey Burton Russel writes:
“The Faustbook tells how Faustus, abandoning Philosophy, turns to magic. Given the antischolastic bias of the Protestant Reformation, it was natural that the Faustbook should make the figure of the man who sells his soul to Satan a scholar: Faust desires to obtain knowledge by his own efforts rather than receive it by grace. This individualistic rebellion ties Faust’s sin to the original sin of humanity (Adam and Eve’s theft of the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge) and to pride (the original sin of Lucifer himself)…
In order to master magical lore, Faustus determines to call up the Devil. Going to the crossroads at night, he inscribes magical circles and characters upon the ground and invokes a spirit (Gaist) by the name of Beelzebub. Here the author deliberately mixes magic and witchcraft, the traditional signs and symbols of hermetic magic with the witch-like invocation of an evil spirit.”
– Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern Age (P. 60-61; italics mine)
The spirit which appears first takes the form of a dragon, then turns into a fiery globe, and finally into a greyfriar. It gives it’s name to Faust as “Mephistophiles,” a combination of Greek, Latin, and possibly even Hebrew elements. Russel breaks the name down as such: “Greek mē, “not”; phōs, photos, “light”; and philos, “lover” – yielding “he who is not a lover of the light,” an ironic parody of Lucifer, light-bearer.”

by Jack Faust.
Pasted from <http://vonfaustus.blogspot.ca/2010/06/fortunes-of-faust.html>