universal practice of great antiquity, only the profoundly initiated, brave and single-minded magician has any chance of success in such a venture, always considered to be extremely dangerous, for not only is a pact with the Devil necessary, but it is thought that the "astral corpse" has an intense desire to live again and could, by absorbing life-energy from living creatures, prolong its life indefinitely, thus, unless he has taken adequate precautions, the magician might be in great danger.'
The mage and his assistant set up their magic circle in an appropriately emotive location such as a graveyard or blasted heath, on an astrologically propitious night, and call forth the dead, using the most powerful names of God. Woe betide them if they step from the protective circle, for then the temporarily animated corpse could tear them to pieces and destroy their souls. Even within the hallowed circle they have to be proof against nightmarish screaming and gibbering figures, decked out in rags of putrid skin, eye sockets flickering with a dim and hellish light.
Utterly abominated and proscribed in the Bible, as was all forms of communication with the dead - the classic case is the Witch of Endor10 - necromancy has had a long and chequered history, according to the differences in attitude of various cultures and generations.
As I have suggested, it is even possible that Jesus' own movement engaged in a variation of necromancy, if indeed, as the evidence may suggest, they seized the head of the Baptist in order to enslave his soul for purposes of divination. It may not be how the modern mind works, but such necromantic practices have a long pedigree.
Wooed, showered with all the glittering prizes of material and intellectual life, the anti-hero of Dr Faustus is of course doomed to be ultimately betrayed by the Evil One. But the story of his flight from all that is good and holy was also a colourful morality tale guaranteed to give the groundlings rip-roaring, not to say occasionally terrifying, entertainment.
The Faust of the great German poet and philosopher (and onetime sorcerer) Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) is somewhat subtler. He has to battle to maintain his place centre stage against the wit and charm of a particularly charismatic Mephistopheles, who says to God:
The last line merely makes explicit what churchgoers must have long suspected, however guiltily: judging from the dour and pompous Old Testament, Yahweh does appear to have lost his sense of humour, if indeed he ever had one to lose. The wryly amusing Mephistopheles possesses an instant appeal particularly to a modern, Anglo-Saxon audience to whom a talent to amuse and the expectation to be amused is almost everything. A sense of humour - more particularly a sense of the absurd - is now seen as the epitome of civilization, the antidote to fanaticism and bigotry, the gift that marks humans out from the beasts, and often the one light in a grim and bleak life. Yahweh smacks rather too much of a boring head teacher pontificating about rules and regulations while the whole school sniggers over a private joke: to use a Dickensian analogy he is the ramrod straight, and downright sinister, coldhearted Mr Murdstone against the mercurial, funny and irreverent Sam Weller.
Goethe's Mephistopheles - although he has his dark moments - is a brilliant member of the irreverent tradition that had already produced a long line of capering anti-Establishment court jesters and had yet to include the likes of Mel Brooks, the Monty Pythons and Eddie Izzard. With God apparently choosing to present himself as a sort of unsmiling and ranting Taliban, who can blame those who prefer to be entertained and even informed by masters of the subversive art of humour? Surely of all human activities and talents, humour is the most truly Luciferan, with intellectual enquiry - particularly science - a close second, as we shall see.
The dynamic between the truly Satanic and the Luciferan can be see in the horrifying story of the woman arrested for witchcraft, having sex with the Devil and all manner of puerile nonsense, who laughed.'2 She could hardly imagine anything more ludicrous than her being a practising Satanist: but very soon she had been `persuaded' to `confess' to anything and everything the truly Satanic Inquisitors demanded of her. She had been a breath of fresh air in the foetid witch-dungeon until devoured by the Terror, and although we do not know her name, we can still sing her praises.
Like Milton's Satan, Goethe's representative of Evil is also sexy, roguish and attractive: as women have long known and nice guys suspected, bad boys possess a powerful but elusive allure. With a casual and flippant air Mephistopheles announces that he merely observes `the plaguey state of men', finding `it boring to torment them', but nevertheless actively seeks out the rather priggish and unappealing Faust. In a brilliantly astute line, Mephistopheles notes that the human, desperate to attain knowledge and assuage his craving for he knows not what, already `serves me in a bewildered way'. Satan's emissary seeks to make Faust lick up dust, `Just like the snake, my celebrated cousin'. (Mephistopheles also murmurs `Omniscient? No, not I; but well-informed.')
Faust, it seems, was already halfway to Hell, being maddened with the frustrations of academic life that promises so much and delivers so little. Like many another solitary thinker and lost soul, he cries: `Who is my guide? What shall I shun?/Or what imperious urge obey? . . .' Desperate to attain and achieve intellectually and spiritually he muses on where exactly any progress would take him, asking tormentedly: `Shall I then rank with gods?'
Sorcerers sought to command gods to do their bidding or fought to achieve a sort of illusory godhood for themselves, only maintained by the toughest of personal battles and doomed to an ignominious end. On the other hand, Gnostics and mystics realized that every individual is already potentially divine, believing that this inner deity will only truly blossom with profound spiritual honesty, dedication to the true ideals of divinity, and the harnessing of ecstasy. Faust overlooked the fact of his own godhood in seeking to exert power over the gods; a true recipe for disaster.
Yet Faust was only half of the story: in a literal sense he was `possessed' by Mephistopheles - but only when he was ready for the pact. In other words, like many examples of apparent demonic possession, Faust is flooded with evil only when he invites it in. In the world of the occult it is said that `like attracts like', and this is the true meaning of the satanic pact. Give yourself up to a harsh and unforgiving god or bigoted mores and that is what will possess you to the neglect of everything that is brighter and better: your mind and soul will be as narrowly confined and implosively consuming as the source you have espoused. Let in the bright spark of the Luciferan principle, and it will know no bounds, for it is essentially about enhancing, expanding and making sense of human potential.
While enjoying the fruits of his new highly-charged intellect, like all Renaissance anti-heroes, Faust suffers from a fatal flaw - in his case a monumental egotism, surely the besetting sin of all dedicated sorcerers. Inevitably there will be a dreadful reckoning, as Mephistopheles rather honourably points out:
He does, however, add famously, `While there's life, there's hope', although there may not be much hope, one suspects, ultimately for Faust. In fact, his soul is redeemed, largely through the pure love of a good woman, and instead of a hellish climax, there is the sweet sound of hymns of the mystical chorus and a prayer to `Virgin, Queen of Motherhood' to `Keep us, Goddess, in thy grace'.
Goethe's intelligent and often humorous work nevertheless contributed to the widespread idea of the reality of the pact, which fuelled countless witch trials. Ironically, many cases of devilworship, both real and imagined, were born in the heady hot-house atmosphere of religious houses.