Ramona Fradon On The Secret Teachings Of The Gnostic Faustus & Devilish Pacts

Ramona Fradon on The Gnostic Faustus: The Secret Teachings

Would you share some of the most fascinating things about the story of Faust and what secret teachings they contain?

RF: I think the most interesting thing about the Faust Book is how long the deception it created has lasted. While the story of the doomed German scholar has grown in influence over the centuries, inspiring artists, and spawning a great modern myth, its secret message of transformation and redemption remains largely invisible. It is the perennial call of the early church, a healing stream that has flowed beneath western civilization since it was driven underground by the Roman establishment in the early Christian centuries. From time to time its message of renewal has resurfaced, but only in disguise – in folk and fairy tale, myth and Arthurian romance, as it has in the Faust Book.

It involves a belief, expressed in the composite Gnostic myth encoded in the Faust Book, that there is a god of love and Light beyond the ignorant one that created this world. The universe is seen as a conscious, polarized energy field issuing from that source, and we reflect that polarity in our divided natures. Our task, then. is to reconcile our inner conflicts and experience the light that flows from unity, or the god within.

That message is hidden in the Faust Book. While the disciple pursues the task of transformation in the underlying account, Faustus embarks on a profligate life, and only by a symbol is the opposite story revealed. The devil allots him twenty -four years, before he must die and surrender his soul. For alchemists the number twenty- four denotes the successful completion of a cycle. Its mention suggests that Faustus is committing himself to complete the effort of self–transcendence, not to die a gruesome death. By symbols and reverse metaphors such as these, the Faust Book conveys its heretical message.

There are two specific practices designed to achieve the goal of enlightenment that are associated with the Gnostics. They are alchemy and tantra, the yoga of sex, and both are encoded in the Faust Book. To the Church, seeking salvation without priestly intervention was heretical and all such practices were the work of the devil. While the Faust Book made the devil unpleasant enough to appease the Church and help it suppress dissent, the outrageous staging of Marlowe’s Dr. Faust some 20 years later, made him and his shrieking demons utterly terrifying. In such an atmosphere, the message of love and healing remained out of sight. Over the centuries, Faustus’ longing for a direct experience of god has remained invisible; transformed according to changing values into a longing for women or power or gold.

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