Magic in Dr. Faustus

By looking at the magic of the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance Faustus’ dilemmas and inner strife become easier to understand .With that understanding comes a greater sympathy for Faustus and his eventual damnation. His magic defines him, the same way a priest is defined by his religion. In many ways the magician is a priest to himself, the Pope of the Church of One. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus is the archetypal renaissance magus, a king among conjurers. In the play his magic both parallels historical magical practice and reveals an important element of Faustus’ character that explains his lack of faith: his essential nature is that of a magician. His spirit is trapped between the magic that he feels called to and the religion that has surrounded him his entire life.

In the Middle Ages magic and religion were irreconcilable belief systems, the two disciplines were separated primarily by their different views of spirits and whether power in life was superior to the eternal life after death promised by the church. In the pagan world, this dynamic would not have led to as much inner turmoil as it did in the Middle Ages. Many polytheistic religions saw death as comparable to a sleep, with only a shade left to wander the underworld. However when monotheism conquered the ancient world spirits who were not aligned with the Judeo-Christian god were demonized and an afterlife in which consciousness was preserved became the common belief system. Magic and religion were incompatible with each other in that spiritualist paradigm. The magician does not care about the moral alignment of the spirits he works with, they are powerful beings to be controlled and nothing more; the priest on the other hand is concerned primarily with the morality of a spirit. Faustus believes that heaven and hell matter not, a magician’s argument to the problem of conjuring demons. Faustus is a magician at the core of his being and so experiences dissonance between his nature and the environment he exists in.

Despite Faustus’ natural inclination toward a magical view of the universe, his greatest flaw as a magician is a product of the religious world that he was a part of. A belief commonly held by the historical magicians of the period was that the best way for one to protect oneself is to only form temporary contracts: they can be dissolved. Religions tend to favor permanent contracts, binding a worshipper to a deity in service, while magicians tend to be more mercurial and less willing to make a permanent commitment to one camp or another.  By forming a permanent contract with Lucifer--his soul for 24 years of power--Faustus failed to learn the lesson law, “too servile and illiberal for him” (A1.1.36) would have taught him. Faustus is trapped by the religious world he lives in and is unable to separate his magic from the faith that surrounds him. Despite his belief that he is not worthy of salvation he feels a need for a deity and because Lucifer interacts with him and provides him with the worldly powers he desires, Faustus binds himself to the evil spirits. When he makes the pact with Lucifer he thinks like a religious person, perhaps under the influence of Mephistopheles as in the B-Text (5.2.91-96), and not as a magician would. He is a kind of inverted priest in the sense that while he cares little for the moral nature of the spirits he allies himself with, he binds himself to one camp in perpetuity. He ends up servile for all eternity.

Magic in Faustus’ period was based on celestial and infernal hierarchies: spirits had their place in the universe just as each person did. Part of magic’s appeal to Faustus is in spite of its hierarchal nature, it allows him to transcend the medieval world. In the play he interacts with the whole of the social spectrum, from a poor horse courier all the way up to the Holy Roman Emperor. He uses magic to carve out a thoroughly modern world. He is able to stand apart from the hierarchy as an individual, the hallmark of the modern world, where what one does is by one’s own merits and no one should interfere with another’s business. His individuality in a communal society makes him more sympathetic. Modernity arose when the hierarchal society of the Middle Ages fell away in favor of the individual. Rather than a collective society where everyone knew their place and had little to no chance of social advancement, the modern age meant individuals standing up and defining themselves by their own merits rather than by the demands of a community. It led to innovators and great thinkers, including Faustus, a magician and scholar. Faustus becomes the modern individual, concerned with his role in this world rather than his place in the next. He more closely resembles a modern individual as a result of his magic, making his damnation harder to stomach.

In class we discussed reading the play through a Lucretian lens and in many ways magic is more compatible with Epicurean philosophy than religion is. Magic is about working on this world and focusing on the matter at hand while religion is focused on what happens next, always looking toward the future. A major Lucretian tenet is that pleasure comes from seeking knowledge and living a life of contemplation. The ceremonial magic of Faustus’ period often had similar goals. For example, in The Lesser Key of Solomon, a popular magical text of the period, by far the majority of the spirits described in the text’s Shemshamphorash (a catalogue of spirits) serve as teachers to the magician. For example, Ashtaroth, is the 29^th spirit in the Lesser Key. He teaches “all Liberal Sciences”, a truly Lucretian pursuit. We see Faustus for the most part living out the Lucretian ideals of pleasure from study and contemplation. In act one Faustus discusses the possibilities of worldly power with Valdes and Cornelius, in the scenes that follow he is more concerned with a desire to step back and learn about the nature of the world around him.

The notable exceptions to Faustus’ quest for knowledge are the comic scenes in which he uses his powers to deceive and trick. Those show a more Christian outlook with the role of the magician as a servant of the powers of evil rather than a scholar who dares to plumb the unseen waters and seek wisdom from darkness allowing enlightenment. The A-Text lacks most of the comic scenes making the play and Faustus more sympathetic.  In the A-Text he is more a scholar and less the trickster, a role the masses would have adored, because in his role as a trickster they would not have to feel any pity for his fate. In some ways by making him more wicked, he is less scary. If he is an evil character then the audience does not have to worry about his damnation and can go home, content with the end, all as it should be. On the other hand if Faustus is primarily a scholar who uses his magic the same way a priest uses scripture, then his fate becomes less easy to stomach, leaving the audience no longer at ease.

Faustus is defined by his magic. He suffers because of his nature and as a result he is more sympathetic to the audience. His strife and struggles to reconcile his nature with the demands of society lead to his damnation at the hands of the medieval conservative elite, Lucifer.  He is a modern man, an individual who stands on his own for a brief moment before being dragged back into the hellish medieval world he had struggled against. It is difficult not to feel for a man who overreached the constraints of his world and dared to dream of what was, and is, and will be. 

The Consumption of Human Flesh in the Works of Neil Gaiman

Bodily consumption of one character by another appears in several places in Neil Gaiman’s work as a medium for a variety of purposes, most prominently the transfer of power and the fulfillment of an eternal and archetypal role. From Sandman and American Gods to Harlequin Valentine, beings of several different backgrounds consume humans or parts of humans and gain power as a result of that act.

The only example of someone eating human flesh in the works that we have read so far occurs at the end of Harlequin Valentine, when Missy, knowing whose heart she has, eats it and takes on the role of “Harlequin”. Since the general consensus is that eating a heart is not going to transform a person into the previous owner of said heart, it can be concluded that either this heart is special or the actions performed on the heart have elevated it to a higher spiritual state. When the Harlequin nailed his heart to her door and the subsequent scene where Missy eats it remembering that she is not eating the heart of a human is key. What she is actually eating is a significant portion of the soul of an archetypal stock character in the form of a human heart. Bearing that in mind makes the act seem less grisly and thus it can be more acceptable to the reader. Her subsequent transformation into the Harlequin lends a new meaning to the adage “you are what you eat.”

Early in American Gods Gaiman provides a vignette of a “Queen of Sheba” like figure, Bilquis. Bilquis, a prostitute in LA, traps one of her johns into worshiping her as a goddess allowing her to use his lust as a power source and ultimately she consumes him with her vulva. She requests that the man, a film producer, light a candle and “worship her with his body” (American Gods 29). During the act of lovemaking, as he calls out epithets and names of praise to her, he slowly gives up his soul in offering to her. As he offers up his soul, he sacrifices his body, slipping into her completely. She is revitalized by his energy and continues to exist as a result of the rite. As the act occurs vaginally as opposed to orally it is not ingestion, but it is a consumption of human flesh and therefore a valid example of the transfer of power that such an act can represent in Gaiman’s work.

In the world of American Gods, the power of the gods is derived from faith and belief, hence the central premise of the novel, a war between the old gods and the new ones. Bilquis needs the worship of her johns to survive. She needs to receive the devotion and adoration of her victims to continue to exist. Their self-sacrifice on the altar of lust generates energy that she as a nonhuman divine entity is able to feed on.

Another, less visceral example of flesh consumption in American Gods is Mr. Jaquel, Anubis, tasting the organs of the patrons of the funeral parlor he runs with Mr. Ibis, Thoth. This serves a purpose less familiar to our conception of survival, but essential to whom and what Jaquel is. It is not the flesh that Anubis feeds on and the act is not in fact a feeding, rather it is a fulfillment of the role that he plays in the universe. An abiding theme of Gaiman’s work, from Odd and the Frost Giants to American Gods is the eternal and unchanging nature of gods; it is an essential part of their role in the universe that they perform as they do. In Gaiman’s work the gods tend to represent the archetypal and unchanging forces that govern the universe. In that light it is not for energy that Jaquel eats the organs of his clients, rather a fulfillment of his role of god of embalming and attendant to the weighing of the heart in the Hall of Judgment. He is playing his role as a jackal, a scavenger, yet it seems to Shadow to be “respectful, not obscene” (American Gods 201).

In Sandman: Season of Mists the demon Azazel attempts to consume the power of Dream in the heart of his demesne. In the graphic novel he is depicted as a cloud of darkness like a tear in the fabric of the universe covered with sets of sharp and predatory teeth. While he does not succeed in his attempts to consume Dream, this example is significant in the way that he describes the act. Azazel makes it perfectly clear that what he desires more than the body is the soul that is attached to the body (Sandman # 27). The flesh is a vehicle for the spiritual energy that he desires, much the way food is a vehicle for the nutrients that we need. Here the intended consumption is not actually achieved. However, because this is the point where the significance of such an act is most explicitly described it therefore bears mentioning.

The uniting theme of these examples is not only that they involve the consumption of human flesh, but also that spiritual preparation went into the acts. Bilquis prepares her victim by having him worship her. He empties his soul into the act of lovemaking and she is able to take that piece of his soul and use it. Ultimately his body is a vessel for the spiritual energy that the victim has infused it with. He pours all of his energy into his lust for her and brings forth his soul as a result of that total outpouring of emotion; he willingly and joyfully sacrifices his soul to her. Harlequin plucks his heart and love for Missy out of his chest and that takes a good deal of his soul with it; as a stock character he is more spiritual than material and so consuming part of his soul has a much larger effect on Missy than the body and spiritual energy of the materialist film producer that Bilquis consumes and the small tastes that Jaquel makes in the funeral parlor. All of these examples are brought about by acts of love, extremely pleasurable experiences or holy and reverent acts. Love is what allows Harlequin to offer up his soul to Missy and love, or rather its more primal counterpart, allows Bilquis to feed. Jacquel eats as he does in reverence and love for those who have passed on. This is in fact the ultimate nature of sacrifice: it is a material offering infused with spiritual significance, much the way a gas may be trapped by bubbling it through water, the spiritual energy of a sacrifice could be fixed in the material being offered. 

While gruesome and unpleasant for the reader, the acts of consumption play a pivotal role in the lives of the characters involved, acts of transformation that lead them into a new role or preserve their existence. These scenes reflect cycles of predator and prey made more acceptable by the fact that the aspect that is useful to the predator lies not in the flesh, but in the spiritual energy that the flesh has been endowed with. The power that the predators have gained allows them a larger role in the cosmic scheme of things. It is the cycle of nature that moves beyond the material and into the esoteric.