The Term Faustian and the Obfuscating Power of Spengler

The term Faustian has to be one of the vaguest and therefore most useless terms ever to grace our lips. Spengler uses it describe a sense of the infinitely wide and profound space, the yearning toward the “infinite.”

Here, presumably, we are given a sense of colonization, exploration and discovery, the growth and vying of European empires, the instinct toward scientific discovery, a pushing against or away from the “Magian” or Semitic “World Cavern” aspects of Christianity. Perhaps it describes, unwittingly, an “emptiness” or “aimlessness” and the absence of a God, purpose and direction one might call his own.

The legendary Dr. Faust himself, the hero referenced by the term, was originally something akin to Merlin or Odin, a wandering astrologer and wizard. In other words, he was a particularly “Magian” or Semitic figure it would seem. Though he was also a figure engaged, tempted or possessed by a particularly Semitic Devil as the story would develop. Goethe, for his part, appears to Aryanize the figure some, at least in tone, making him read an Aryan figure tempted by the Devil. And Spengler, ostensibly, is deriving the term Faustian especially from Goethe’s Faust.

With the term Faustian, Spengler appears to suggest European or Aryan striving, at least in a profound, unique and hitherto unknown form, did not begin until the 10th century. Yet this of course is false. The Apollonian civilization knew this as well. Their central God was an emblem of it.

Apollo himself, God of the Muses, whom included Muses of the sciences as well as of the arts, was the God of “expansion,” “exploring” and colonization. [1] Granted, after the fall of the classical world, latter populations would be larger and with the benefit of preceding knowledge, even if it often arrived to them along a treacherous road.

Yet developments in science and mathematics are not mystical “soul expressions” of particular civilizational peoples as Spengler seems to suggest, rather they are science and mathematics. While they are gifts for which Aryans have every right to proud, and certainly are proof of his inventive mind, they don’t establish direction. Rather, one can see clearly that the Magic that science degenerates into, as with astrology, alchemy, the Pythagorean Cult, or the contemporary Einstein Cult and String Theory Cult, has far greater influence on culture or direction. And to be sure, the progression is from Aryan, Apollonian Science to Mercurial Hocus Pocus rather than vice versa.

The Aryan man, “Esau the wild man,” emerging from the forest was actually required to solve things in the physical world, whereas the tent-dwelling Jacob merely required to take advantage of these solutions, to “inherit” Benjamin’s “plunder” as Judah would. Indeed, Earnest Rutherford had more in common with the common rural mechanic than with Einstein. And yet it is a mistake to call magic “the cargo cult of science,” rather in it is often contained all the familiar JEM as this study discusses. In this regard it is no less intelligent.

I’ve already discussed my objection to Spengler’s seasonal view of civilization, including the demoralizing notion of an inevitable decline, but there are additional problems to his work. In addition to insisting on plant-like unconsciousness in the ascendant phases of civilization, it fails to realize a conscious agent working to close civilizations in every case.

Also Spengler insists too strongly on the uniqueness of this or that civilization and its particular Religious or Cultural form while failing to understand their significance. This is most significant in the Greco-Roman world where solutions, albeit temporary yet recoverable, were found. In that case, it would have behooved him to mark a greater distinction.

Yet in every other case we see Culture or Religion as primarily JEM developed by Jews or proto-Jews. Here they appear not to sustain civilization but to close it however cautiously or rapidly. The forms are various, of course, at least superficially, as JEM relies on mystery and “novelty,” but so also are the forms and appearances of decomposing corpses.

Spengler can scarcely be blamed for his mistakes, yet, nevertheless, obviously, his work must be evaluated in light of them. It is curious that today’s Wikipedia page, famous for Jewish censorship, emphasizes Spengler’s seeming small amount of Jewish blood. Indeed, even as we assume Spengler to have been doing his “best work,” there does seem some suggestion on Wikipedia that his “best work” was not so bad for the careful curators of that site. But we know of course Spengler to be a “black pill.” And who needs that? The overthrower of Saturn, Jupiter, is Jovial. The term is derived from his personage.

I propose the term Saturnian Age to describe ages dominated by a Jewish or proto-Jewish Chieftain God. I propose the term Angelic Age to describe the ascendant phase of a Saturnian Age, where an ephemeral Aryan servant, like Benjamin, dutifully and unwittingly toils to provide for an increasingly revealed Jewish or proto-Jewish master. Finally I propose the term Apollonian Age to describe ages dominated by Apollo. The last may also be used to describe the future.  As it concerns Spengler, the above paragraph saves a lot of reading.

A discussion on this term Faustian appears here:

[1] For this reason the Apollo 11 space craft was so aptly named. Though on at least a Jungian level, there is something deeply symbolic about it traveling to the moon or Sin as the Mesopotamians called this Semitic God, as if to live in the tent of Shem. A trip to Mars will be more salubrious. Mechanical engineer, Abraham Silverstein, named the Apollo program. Six years early in 1963, the Jewish Esotericist Stan Lee introduced Uatu the Watcher, a God-like figure clearly derived from the Apollo-like Mesopotamian Sun God Utu. Lee made him an inhabitant of the moon, a passive “Watcher.” Sin/Nanna also occupied a dominant position to Utu/Shamash in Mesopotamia.