The corpus of German grimoires attributed to the semi-mythic patronage of the infamous early modern sorcerer Faust were composed and re-articulated in popular circulation from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. They instruct on the ritual protocols for calling, pacting, and trafficking with a range of devilish and elemental spirits and shades; from circle casting and tool consecration to the spoken acts of conjuration, deployments of seals and sigil, and other such intricacies of these cunning nigromantic arts.

In this class, we will investigate the Magia Naturalis et Innaturalis (or, Natural and Unnatural Magic), one of the more formal Faustian grimoires containing detailed spirit-catalogues, conjurational ‘citations’, and ritual protocols of Germanic demonology; analysing features both distinctly Faustian and shared with wider European nigromantic spiritwork and sorcery.