Reinventing the Renaissance Occult

Review of 'Reinventing the Renaissance Occult in Modern and Postmodern Culture' now available at http://jwmt.org/v2n20/reinventing.html

Five hundred years ago the occult – what we think of as ‘the occult’ – was taught in university and practised by many of the foremost personalities of the age. Still it was persecuted. Dangerous. Between the Church and the deep blue sea: Scylla and Charybdis. It was the high point of ‘the occult’ and also its low point. To some it promised to reveal the secrets of the universe, to others it automatically meant a pact with the Devil and damnation. Such contrasts have thrown long shadows that still play across the present.

Published in the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition, No. 20, Vol. 2. Vernal Equinox 2011.

Reinventing the Renaissance Occult

Review of the 'Reinventing the Renaissance Occult in Modern and Postmodern Culture' conference accepted by the Journal of the Western Mystery Tradition (JWMT) for the forthcoming edition, vol. 2, no. 20. Will post link when the journal is published.

Renaissance Occult - Conference Update

Prof. Sarah Annes Brown has posted a summary of my talk 'Dealing with the Devil: The Faustian Pact in Magical Culture':

Leo Ruickbie gave a very engaging account of the Faustian pact in magical culture, moving from the responses of Faust’s near contemporaries, to an account of an eighteenth-century man apparently saved at the last moment when on the brink of selling his soul to the devil, and concluding with some unexpectedly up to date examples. We heard of people attempting to sell their souls on eBay, and also of the curious case of S. Jason Black who claims to have reaped substantial benefits after making a pact with princes of Hell. (Afterwards Marina Warner drew a wholly convincing parallel between such magical pacts and Catholic indulgences – both equally the targets of Protestant disapproval.)

Dealing with the Devil

This paper given at Reinventing the Renaissance Occult, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, 14 November 2009, explored the development of the Faustian Pact, looking at how the Renaissance magician Faustus came to be condemned as having made a pact with the Devil, and how this condemnation itself came to be a pattern for magical practice.

Pacts with the Devil have been a mainstay of Christian legend, used to reveal the saintliness of some and revile the Satanism of others – a two-edged weapon in the war of words fought between sanctioned ‘truth’ and outlawed knowledge. And it is a sword that has landed firmly on the neck of one sixteenth century magician in particular.

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Reinventing the Renaissance Occult

The aim of the day was to explore the different ways in which modern culture has returned to Renaissance esotericism. Some have been drawn to the intriguing remoteness of such teachings from our own more scientific and sceptical age. Others, by contrast, have sought to discover unexpected points of contact between the mysteries of the occult and more modern mysteries, such as quantum science. The lure of the occult today may partly be explained by a growing dissatisfaction with Enlightenment rationalism and its perceived failure to address fundamental human concerns.

Reinventing the Renaissance Occult in Modern and Postmodern Culture, Saturday 14 November 2009, Helmore 201, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

Jennifer Mckimm, ‘“Sounding Alchyme:” The Politics and Aesthetics of Milton’s Alchemical Verse in Paradise Lost’ [Cancelled]

Diana Barsham, ‘"That Miracles are Ceased": Reginald Scot and the Rediscovery of Witchcraft’ [Cancelled]

Ewan Fernie, ‘The Possessed’.

Gyorgy E. Szonyi, ‘Three "New Age" Interpretations of the Book of Enoch'.

Urszula Szulakowska, 'Art and the Esoteric Tradition in Australia'.


Sophia Wellbeloved, 'The Conquest of Time in the Writings of GI Gurdjieff'.

Leo Ruickbie, 'Dealing with the Devil: The Faustian Pact in Magical Culture'.

Monika Smialkowska, 'Magicians and Scientists: David Calcutt's Prospero's Island and Elizabeth Nunez' Prospero's Daughter'.

Patricia MacCormack, 'Occultism and Continental Philosophy: From Solomon through Spare to Serres'.

Mark Goodall, 'L'Occhio Selvaggio: Towards an Occult Film Studies'.

Rowlie Wymer, 'Science, Religion and Magic in James Blish's "After Such Knowledge" Sequence'.

Marina Warner, reading from Phantasmagoria.

Listing from http://www.witchology.com/contents/faustus/conference_renaissanceoccult.php