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.