The historical Faust was an educated astrologer. Properly done, Astrology was a difficult application taught as part of a higher education and requiring mathematical skills and discipline.
“But an indisputable record of Faust has been recently discovered, which proves him to have ‘flourished’ as early as 1520, five years before the supposed date of his visit to Auerbach’s Cellar. In the accounts for that ear of Hans Miiller, Chamberlain (Kammermeister) of George von Limburg Prince-Bishop of Bamberg, J. Mayerhoffer has found an entry purporting that by the orders of Reverendissimus ten florins were on the Sunday after Scholastica (whose festival falls on February loth) paid to Doctor Faust, pho [=philosopho], as a gratuity, he having cast a nativity or indicium to his lordship. The bishop, a patron of the New Learning and friend of Luther, died 31 May 1522; and it seems probable that the consultation took place at the castle of Altenburg,the bishop’s favourite residence.”
Marlowe’s Tragical History of Doctor Faustus: Greene: Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, Clarendon Press series. Christopher Marlowe. Edition 2. Clarendon Press, 1887.Download the PDF at:http://ia700402.us.archive.org/18/items/oldenglishdramas00warduoft/oldenglishdramas00warduoft.pdf…Or see it at Google Books:https://books.google.ca/books?id=BLc8AAAAYAAJ