#doktor faustus

[skyeventide]

thomas mann just made me read "my friend and his friend were both celibate and chaste, and I was jealous of the fact that they were close because of that" + "it was weird that I banged my wife in a house full of celibate people" + "they were always alone except for when his friend went into the arms of young englishmen"

like

honestly this is insane lol

[mozartalive]

"Music is energy in itself, yet not as idea, rather in its actuality. I call your attention to the fact that that is almost the definition of God. Imitatio Dei - I am surprised that it is not forbidden."  - Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus

[princessofmistake]

e con un misto di spavento e d’invidia, col penetrante sentimento che noi non saremmo capaci di tanto, né in bene né in male, abbiamo appreso come un paese, le cui condizioni di spirito e la cui solita freddezza ancora gli consentono di tirare le conseguenze da una serie di scandalose perdite e sconfitte, si sia sbarazzato del suo grand’uomo per concedere poco dopo al mondo ciò che si pretende anche da noi e che la profonda miseria ci renderebbe troppo cara concedere: cioè la resa incondizionata.

[yorgunherakles]

çalıyorum kapıyı, çalıyorum…

kapı açılmıyor…

neden?

istediğim olmaz iş mi mefistofeles?

yoksa lime lime ruhum satın alınmaya değmez mi?

pırağ’da ay doğuyor limon sarısı

doktor faust’un evi önünde duruyorum

çalıyorum açılmaz kapıyı gece yarısı

nazım hikmet - doktor faust'un evi

[thenightling]

The Occult vs. seemingly useless books

Tonight, someone in a group I run on Facebook, told me a story of how in the 1970s they found a paperback book on "How to be a fortune teller." and to their disappointment it was a guide book on how to be a con artist. For example, it said that teenagers and older people both can be told "I see you have had trouble in love." and there is the old "You lost a loved one. They are standing beside you right now." among other things such as spotting "tells." This person threw out the book in their disappointment. But in reality there IS a use for a book like this in the realm of occultists and paranormal investigations. This sort of book teaches you what the con artists do ans by extension it tells you how to spot their tricks and what they are doing to pull their tricks. There is rarely a truly useless book. When I was studying parapsychology the course provided six text books, one of which was a book on I Ching which I hated. The author put too much of their own opinions and biases into the book and by the time I was done reading it, I really did not like that person but it gave me a lot of insight into how that person, and people like them, might think. In a more dark side of things, there is a medieval grimoire called "The Trifold Coercion of Hell" or "The Black Raven" by Doktor Johann Georg Faustus. Faustus (Latinized name) is the historic figure, and supposed sorcerer, that the character of legend of Faust is supposedly to have been based on. Both Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe both wrote versions of the Faust legend. Personally I prefer Goethe's version because it's a two parter and in part 2, Faust's soul is actually saved. Now in the case of The Black Raven, this grimoire may be the first reference to the demon Mephistopheles, who has become a fixture of the Faust legend and is often mistaken as an alternate name of Satan himself. (They are not actually the same character). And, as you might expect, the grimoire is full of stuff that many would consider black magick. According to Wikipedia there are records of Johann Faustus being banned from Ingolstadt University for being a "N-gr-mancer" (black magick user. I censored the old word for black because social media mistakes it as a racial slur.) and he was also banished for allegedly being a s-d-mite (old not-polite word for LGBTQAI+). Now, if you look at his old Grimoire carefully (available online translated into English in PDF format) many of the spells actually teach you how to bind and ward against various demons. You just have to learn to read between the lines. The bulk of it is a book of protections against the infernal as opposed to actually invoking them. Each invocation spell is layered with means of warding and defense that can be implemented on its own. Similar is true for The Key of Solomon and especially The Lesser Key of Solomon. One of my favorite things in the old Black Raven grimoire is there is a spell for making a cloak or coat levitate like a magick carpet. This is similar to a scene in Goethe's Faust Part 1 when Mephisto and Faust leave by means of a similar conveyance. But that's not why I love it. What I love is the warning that comes with the spell. It warns to make sure the window is open "Lest there be disaster." The implication is clear. Faust tried the spell and slammed right into the closed window like a cartoon coyote ("Suuuper Genius!") So anyway, my point is this. In the realm of the occult there is rarely (if ever) a truly useless book. Even if what you found is a manual on conning people you can reverse its purpose to learn how to spot the con artists.

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

this is what the submitter had to say about it:

here is my favorite book!!! It's a little slow for like the first 50 pages but don't worry, there's more than 550 more to go! After that point it turns into a horrifying, genteel, massive train crash moving in microscopically slow motion with each little tiny piece so visible you can't look away, but you also can't see the train until like the very last part of the book so you only see the crash for the longest time. So tragic and so riveting!

[croziers-compass]

1 thing I want to know about you: What would some of your top reccomendations of classic literature be? (I've just been consuming that recently. Fervently. For some reason.)

The Top "Classical Literature" I like to encourage others to read? Oh dear that's a large large list. However, I think given the season, I think William Blake's poetry is a wonderful thing for this time of year. But in other texts and literature...

Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov is an incredible read. Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast is a Brilliant read! Doktor Faustus: Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde by Thomas Mann Братья Карамазовы (Brat'ya Karamazovy) (The Brothers Karamazov) by Fyodor Dostoevsky of course! As well as my Personal Delight is Crime and Punishment. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. Stanisław Lem's Solaris is incredible as well.

Do let me know if you've read any of these or if you do read any of these! They're all wonderful!

[garadinervi]

Thomas Mann, (1947), Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1963. Cover design by Wolf-Dieter Zimmermann

(on the way of dispokino)

[lesser-known-composers]

Hans Werner Henze (1926 – 2012) : Violin Concerto #3 (1997) - II Das Kind Echo

Three portraits from the novel Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann

Torsten Janicke, Violin-

Christian Ehwald, Magdeburg Philharmonic Orchestra

[hyperions-fate]

I would like to one day cultivate both figs and arcane knowledge, like some kind of Phoenician Doktor Faustus.

[skyeventide]

everything in Doktor Faustus makes so much more sense if you assume that the story Adrian told about having had sex with an escort with syphilis is false. that story and the entire section of the dialogue with the devil are referred in older German, written by Adrian's own hand. the conversation with the devil is also written on lined music paper, over the treble staffs instead of musical notations. my edition's commentary argues that Mann remarking that Beethoven wrote some music with words instead of musical notes is enough of a hint hint that what Adrian is doing is composing. and therefore neither anecdote actually happened.

the comment doesn't mention this, but in the chapter immediately after the conversation and pact with the devil, Adrian talks with Serenus (or well, Serenus reports the conversation) and keeps saying that he visited both the bottom of the ocean and over the stars, personally, with a scientist who showed him the sea's abyssal depths. in this Adrian is living as a tenant in an old country house in the Bavarian mountains. he keeps insisting that it really actually happened. and Serenus says that he didn't know how this was in preparation of — surprise surprise, a new musical piece about the marvels of the cosmos.

you could read it the normal way. Adrian is obviously lying about having been at the bottom of the ocean and over the stars and having received that knowledge first hand. alternatively? the devil showed him those depths and gave him that knowledge. but it's real telling that the musical outcome lines up with the diabolical meetings also being musical transcriptions or preparations.

the biggest objection is, of course, that Adrian has syphilis. like he actually has it. (and of course, in the brothel scene, he plays the piano, which sure is an interesting stand-in for what actually happens in brothels). so maybe he did meet this girl who also is an agent of the devil and through whom the pact was practically pre-sealed before the actual meeting with the devil. on the other hand, during the conversation with the devil, we learn that another friend of Adrian, a painter called Baptist Spengler and who is suggestive, a little saucy, and a bohemian sort of man, is also ill. and like sure, the devil would know. but if we presume that the conversation is a musical notation... then how could Adrian possibly be aware of that?

well. you know.

[perkwunos]

The arguments Carnap gives for his value judgement about metaphysics in ESO are articulated as essentially utilitarian. ... This can be interpreted as utilitarian in a narrow (Gradgrind-style) sense, i.e. people shouldn’t waste their time and mental resources on metaphysics rather than something socially useful and productive. That interpretation isn’t exactly wrong, but it is such a small part of the answer as to constitute a fundamental misunderstanding. In fact, it’s not so distant from the — hostile — misunderstanding entertained by Horkheimer and Adorno about logical empiricism back in the 1930s. They saw Carnap & Co as trying to restrict human dreams and aspirations, so as to force them to conform with dominant social and scientific norms and keep them tame. Since the Frankfurt School rightly thought that unruly human dreams and aspirations need to go beyond what is, and try to imagine what could be, they saw metaphysics as an essential vehicle for the articulation of such aspirational visions. But this was exactly backwards. Carnap not only thought, like Wittgenstein (Investigations 118), that metaphysics failed in this role because it consisted of Luftgebäude (buildings in the air); his main objection to metaphysics was its authoritarian subordination of human aspirations, their imprisonment in a particular version of what is. It did the opposite of what Horkheimer and Adorno imagined it could achieve — by trying to put us in a cage of what really and ultimately is, in realms where humans are actually free to imagine and decide for themselves. (It’s sort of tragic that Adorno of all people set so much store by metaphysics in this aspirational role, since he was after all himself an artist — a composer and student of Alban Berg, as well as close musical collaborator with Thomas Mann on Doktor Faustus — and would have agreed entirely with Carnap that art was the superior vehicle for the articulation of transcendent aspirations.) It’s this positive aspect of Carnap’s conception that really mattered to him, and this aspect was the whole point of, and motivation for, the critique of metaphysics: the positive idea of liberation from authoritative versions of how things really are and forever have to be.

André Carus, Carnap’s “distinctive metaphysical methodology”?!

[r0-x4-nne]

Memoiren des Doktors Elster Faustus

*The title is translated by google translate.

in short: the story of Faust but Faust and Mephistopheles are two little girls during ww1 and ww2.

[ambrose-and-aislinn]

über O.W. Fischer

O.W.Fischer: Austrian actor who loved cats. His wife, a Czech actress, died in 1985. In an interview the year before he passed, he expressed that he was ready for God to call him home, having outlived his wife, friends and his cats.

Der Katzenfischer aus der Schweiz Der treibt mit Menschen seinen Geiz · Er streckt für sie die Hand nicht aus Und lebt für sich allein im Haus. Das Tier hat ihm so imponiert Der Mensch ihn aber deprimiert · Er schloss sich fort mit Hund und Katz Und fand: bei ihnen ist sein Platz. Es soll kein Mensch ihn wiedersehen Er taucht hinab ins Land der Feen · Und flüchtet vor den Kameras Wie Fischlein hinter dickem Glas. Es sind geheime Wissenschaften Verbot´ne Weisheit zum Verhaften · Ein Doktor Faustus ist er jetzt Und studiert bis ganz zuletzt.

Ambrose the Poet

[thenightling]

Homophobia and transphobia is not "old school" witchcraft

Today on Facebook someone told me a story of how he tried to join a coven of magical practitioners in the 1990s only for the "High Priestess" (I'm putting that in quotations for a reason) told him that because he was a gay man he was outside the cycle of creation since gay men don't have children. She would not let him join her coven. Let me point-blank tell you this. That "High Priest' is no High priest of any real Occult practice. Lots of people like to use "Traditional" or "old school" as an excuse to exclude trans women or gay men from the "Eternal feminine" or other magical practices and concepts. I do not know what kind of coven this is so I'll be covering both Wicca and Hecate-based Neo Paganism in this rant. In the 1990s Wiccan books offered same-sex marriage ceremonies. And LGBTQAI+ magical practitioners aren't something new and "invented" recently. In the fifteenth century there was Doktor Johann Georg Faustus, the basis for the Faust legend. This is a sorcerer from German legend and at least two works of classic literature. The historic version was banished from Ingolstadt University for practicing black magick (N--romancy which would probably be Noirmancy today since though that first half of the word does mean black but is deemed offensive). And he was also banished for being a "S-d-mite" (and old impolite word for being a gay man). As far as i know no one ever questioned his credentials as a magical practitioner. Also would this "High Priestess" also say that those who are infertile, or women past menopause are outside of the cycle of creation? How about a happily married straight practitioner who just chooses to not have children? The excuses that would leave out gay men or transwomen would also leave out a LOT of cis / het women just for not being baby factories. How misogynist can you get? if you think the womb is the extent of what "eternal feminine" means you are no witch or feminist. The thing about Neo-Paganism is the neo part. Neo means new. Wicca is not the only religion cobbled together from remnants of pre-Christian faiths. Most Neo-Paganism was (whether people want to face it or not) invented in the nineteenth century. A lot of the old beliefs and practices were lost. Also I find it baffling that anyone could accept a possible "High Priestess of Hecate" (I assume that's the deity this "High Priestess" worshiped) as being anti-gay. Let's step back and look at the obvious problem here. Someone who worships a GREEK deity being anti-gay. Did... did this "high priestess" think the Ancient Greeks were anti-gay? Do I need to point out what's wrong with this idea? If you stumble across any occult practitioner who claims being LGBTQAI+ means you cannot be a part of their coven or you can't use magick, that is no true High Priestess of anything. That's just a mean girl with a clique trying to reclaim the cruelties of exclusionary factions in High School and giving herself a power trip while possibly offending multiple entities. Real magick is natural as the way you are born. Real magick has always been inclusive. If someone says you are unworthy because of what you are... that person is no true High Priestess and is the truly unworthy person. End of rant.

[aufdemzauberberg]

doktor faustus is fanboy thomas mann writing nietzsche fanfiction you can't convince me otherwise