Doctor Faustus:

Private Log Entry

15th of December

In the year of our infernal Lord Lucifer

Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-five

     In between the racking pain and endless torture I look back upon my life and trials.  Why, you may ask, well solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.  Through long doubts that have arisen about my behavior in life, I realize I was an arrogant fool for saying "the word "damnation" terrifies not me."  For terrified I am at every moment.  Though I fell as Lucifer fell through pride and insolence, I have been told and now realize that I was not entirely responsible for my actions.  That I was, in a sense, trapped by extraordinary abilities so that I could find no satisfaction in the trivial pursuits of ordinary men.

     My reasoning at first for studying the dark arts was because I had learned every other area of knowledge to the point that it bored me.  Most of these take a life time to learn, but through some curse I learned them all in less.  I had commenced in Logic, Medicine, Law and Divinity.  It was this insatiable thirst for knowledge that was my determinant in damnation.  There was a quote I once heard, it said," Human pride is greatest when it is based upon solid achievements; but the achievements are never great enough to justify its pretensions."  I wish that had been my motto for pride is at least one aspect of "original sin".  Unfortunately, I was of a nature different than other scholars of my time and could not find  intellectual satisfaction in the allowed branches of learning.

     After I decided to broaden my knowledge in the art of necromancy I was visited by two angels, one good and one bad, these were not so much angels as the two sides of my conscience.  I was questioning of my soul and decided that the quest for knowledge good or bad is warranted.

      At the time I first called on Mephistopheles to serve me I should have realized that there was an entrapment forming to snare my soul.  I agree that it is not exactly a good deed to call on devils but were it not for a conspiracy against and to keep my soul I would have been able to repent.  During my first conversation with him he told me," I am a servant to great Lucifer / And may not follow the without his leave".  Yet he later told me that he came to me of his own accord. He even set me up to scorn heaven by being so passionate about being deprived of everlasting bliss.  This shows you the confusing tactics devils can use to have your soul.

     When it came time to sell my soul, by this I mean officially on paper in my own blood, I asked Mephistopheles why Lucifer wanted my soul and he said to enlarge his kingdom.  This is about the only straight answer I got, when I tried to ask him if that was the reason why he tempted us thus Mephistopheles obscurely answered, "Misery love company."  As I tried to delve more he just changed the topic.

     When I first cut my arm to sign the blood would not flow but congealed.  I did not know that this was the side of good trying to get me not to sign.  Yet, before I could contemplate that it may have been Mephistopheles had fetched a chafer of fire to clear the blood.  Then while I was signing in my blood Mephistopheles later told me that he said," What will I not do to obtain his soul!"  This is clear proof for me that by this time it was no longer in my control where my soul would go but was in the hands of stronger powers than me.

     After I had signed I saw upon my arm the words Homo Fuge which translated to your language is means " Fly, man ".  Yet once again without really having time to decipher what it meant and figure out that it was a message that I should turn towards heaven, Mephistopheles distracted me again by showering me with gifts and dancing girls.  This once again looking with hindsight shows me that there was a contention outside myself contending for my soul.

     You may say that pride and insolence were causing me to turn an eye of disdain on heaven and I will say to a certain degree this is so. Yet, why was I created with a mind that could soak up in less than a lifetime all acceptable knowledge and still be craving for more. I would say that I was set up to fall, for why create something that will be driven to sin by a fault that was inherent in him.  An example for you, since I am not the first this has happened to.  If the Creator, whose light I shall never see, knew Adam would fall, the Creator rather than Adam is responsible for the fall.  Let me get back, though, to the conspiracy concerning my fall.

     After I had been with Mephistopheles for a while he was feeding me with false information about heaven saying that, "think'st thou heaven is a glorious thing? / I tell thee, Faustus, it is not half so fair / As thou or any man that breath on earth." When I asked him if he could prove this he told me," 'Twas made for man; then he's more excellent."  The devils of Hell were always there before I even thought I should repent my soul to stop me with diversions.

     The rest of my life were pretty much diversions after that.  Sure, I had fun and anything I wanted but what did I accomplish that was noteworthy after I sold my soul.  Everything good I can think of was from before.  After I had all I did was play the court jester and magician rolled into one.

     One clincher for me, returning again to my fall, was late in my mortal life.  Mephistopheles made a confession to me that he had ensnared my soul.  To my charge of," Twas thy temptation/Hath robbed me of eternal happiness," he replied;

I do confess it Faustus, and rejoice.

'Twas I, that when thou wert i' the way to heaven

Dammed up thy passage. When thou took'st the book

To view the scriptures, then I turned the leaves

And led thine eye.

     Mephistopheles there clearly stated that he happily led me down the road to my own destruction.  What might I have done had he not been there to lead mine eye.  Might I have been able to repent?  These are the quandaries that make me say that it was determined that I would fall.

     Seeing my life through retrospect, with some of the people who viewed it to gloat and tell me what they did when I couldn't see, gives insight to ones life.  Certain things I would never had known about, once told to me, send shivers down my spine.  Two such instances stick out in my mind.  The first is when I first tried to conjure up a devil.  The whole time and even a little before the devils were watching me, dominating me.  How can I not see that now.  The second instance was late in my mortal life when devils again were watching, unknown to me.  These were also no ordinary devils, it was Lucifer, Beelzebub and Mephistopheles themselves watching over with their cosmic powers.  As they gazed down on me in my final hours Lucifer says;

Thus from infernal Dis we do ascend

To view the subjects of our monarchy,

     Those souls which sin seals the black sons of Hell.

     'Mong which as chief, Faustus, we come to thee,

  Bringing with us lasting damnation

To wait upon thy soul. The time is come

     Which makes it forfeit.

The idea that I was trapped becomes strengthened by this fact that they watched me without my knowledge.  The fact that I was but a pawn in the game of souls between Heaven and Hell.

     You could say that I was not trapped and my fall was not determined, I would have to disagree though.  You might mention the fact that one can ask and receive mercy for one's soul till the eleventh hour.  For does not one rejoice more for a soul that is saved than for a soul that does not need to be saved.  I would say that I was unable to choose Heaven not that I had free will to do so and choose not to.  I believed that I could not be saved.  I tried to repent and leap up to God but someone pulled me down.  I saw that God was ireful at me.  I still begged of Him that he could send me to Hell for a hundred thousand years if he would impose an end to my pain.  In the end I knew it had been Lucifer that had deprived me of the joys of Heaven and I cursed him for it.

     Now as I endure my endless tortures and racking pains amid the infernal domain of Lucifer I realize that my fall and internment in Hell was determined and though it looked my doing and I did it, it was not my fault.  I pray that in my eleventh hour the Lord heard my cries and somewhere and somewhen he will have mercy on my tortured soul and allow me to at last reside in his presence.