While reading "High Tech Heretic: why computers don't belong in the clasroom & other reflections by a computer contrarian" I came across this passage:

"Remember Faust, that legendary scholar who sold his soul to the devil? dr.
Faust was a real person, though his sixteenth-century colleaugues considered
him a fraud and humbug. He boasted that if all the works of Aristotle and
Plato were blotted from the memory of man, he could restore them with
greater elegance. And Faust shrugged at Christ's miracles; adter all, he
could do the same whenever he wished. Having spread the rumor that he was
in league with the devil , it's hardly surprising that Magister Georgius
Sabellicus Faustus J. was chased out of towns and apparently carried off in
1525."

In "Faust Part One" by Goethe (a new trans. by David Lake) there was this chronology:

c. 1480	George or Johann Faust born in ?Knittlingen (d.c. 1540)
1506-36	Faust mentioned occasionally in contemporary documents.
1548-85	Various reports of Faust's legendary exploits.
1587	First know printed Faustbuch (Faust chapbook): Historia of Doctor Johann Faust, the infamous magician and necromancer, published in Frankfurt by Johann Spies; annonymous, and thought to be based on a lost earlier version.
?1592	Marlowe writes the Tragical History of Doctor Faust (first attested perfomrance in 1594, first known edition 1604).
1599	Second Faustbuch published in Hamburg, in the version by George Rudolf Widmann.
1608	First attested performance of Marlowe's Faustus as a German popular play (in Graz).
1666	First attested to faust puppet-play (in Luneburg).
1674	Third Faustbuch published in Nuremburg in the version by Nikolas Pfitzer.
1725	Publication of the fourth Faustbuch 'by one of Christian intent' (History of the universally notorious arch-necromancer and sorcerer Doctor johann Fasut, his alliance with the Devil...); this was the version known to Goethe.
1749	Johann Wolfgang Goethe born in Franfurt-am-main (28 August).
1759	Lessing (1729-81) publishes in the seventheenth of his Letters concerning Contemporary Literature (but without claiming authorship) a scene from his projected and now lost dramatic version of the Faust story.
1765-8	Goethe studies at the University of Leipzig.
1768	The Faust play performed in Frankfurt by travelling players.
1768-70	Goethe in Frankfurt; Pietistic period, reading of cabbalistic literature.
1770	The Faust play performed in Straussburg by travelling players.
1770-1	Goethe at the University of Straussburg; meeting with Herder (1744-1803); collects folk-songs and writes poems to Friederike Brion. First version of Gotz von Berlichingen written in 1771 after Goethe's return to Frankfurt.
1772	Execution (14 January) of Sussanna Brandt for the murder of her illegitimate child.
?1772	(possibly earlier): Goethe begins to write Faust ('Urfaust' phase of composition, till 1775).
1773	Publication of revised version of Gotz von Berlichingen.
1774	Publication of The Sarrows of Young Werther.
1775	(November) Goethe arrives in Weimar at the invitation of the Duke Karl August (1757 - 1828).
c.1775-6	Copy made of by Fraulein von Gochhausen of the unpublished Faust manuscript.
1775-86	Goethe's first Weimar years (ministrerial duties, growing interest in the natural sciences, amitie' amoureuse with Charlotte von Stein, end of 'Storm and Stress' phase, early versions of Iphigeniua in Tauris, Wilhelm Meister and Torquato Tasso; 1782 Goethe ennobled by the Emporer Joseph II at Karl August's request).
1786	(September) Goethe's Itallian journey (till June 1788).
1787	Publication of final (iambic) version of Iphigeniua in Tauris.
1788	(February) Resumption of work on Faust (second phase of composition).
1788	Beginning of Goethe's liaison, on his return to Weimar, with Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), whom he married in 1806.
1788-90	The Roman Elegies written.
1790	Publication of Faust. A Fragment and of Torquato Tasso
1794	beginning of the friendship between Goethe and Schiller (b.1759); over 1,000 letters exchanged between them in the next eleven years.
1795	Publication of the Roman Eligies; 1795-6 Wilheilm Meister's Apprenticeship; 1797 Hermann and Dorothea.
1797	(June) Resumption, with Schiller's encouragement, of work on Faust (third phase of composition; most of the new material written in 1801).
1805	Death of Schiller.
1808	Publication of Faust. The First Part of the Tragedy.
1809	Publication of The Elective Affinities.
1819	Publication of the West-Eastern Divan.
1823-32	Johann Peter Eckermann's conversations with Goethe (published after Goethe's death).
1825-31	Goethe completes Faust. The Second Part of the Tragedy. Publication in 1827 of Act III under the title Helena. A Classical-Romantic Phantasmagoria. Interlude for Faust; part of Act I published in 1828.
1829	First public performance of Faust Part One, in Brunswick.
1832	Death of Goethe (22 March). Faust Part One published posthumously.
1854	Berlioz, La Damnation de Faust.
1857	Listz, A Faust Symphony.
1858	Schumann, settings of scenes from both parts of Faust.
1859	Gounod's opera Faust (based on Part One).
1862	Frierich theodor Fischer's parody Faust. the Third Part of the Tragedy, published under the psyeudonym Deutobold Symbolizetti Allegoriowitsch Mystifizinsky.
1868	Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele.
1876	First production of Faust Parts One and Two, by Otto Devrient in Weimar.
1887	Erich Schmidt discovers the Gochhausen transcript of the 'Urfaust' and publishes it as Goethe's Faust in its original form.
1910	Gustav Mahler's setting (in his 8th symphony) of the closing scene of Faust Part Two.
1925	Ferruccio Busoni's opera Doctor Faust.
1933-7	Max Rheinhard's Faust prodictions at Salzburg festivals.
1947	Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus.
1957-8	Gustavv grundgens' Faust productions in Hamburg.

Interesting footnotes from "Faust Part One" by Goethe a new trans. by David Lake (the footnote number is expressed as ^xxx and is followed by the line number to which it corresponds):

³¹ 1395 f.: the five-pointed star or pentagram has been associated since antiquity with various symbolisms. It was used by the Pythagoreans and the Gnostics as well as in the cabbalistic and alchemical systems of medieval Jewishand Christian thought, and still plays a part in Satanic rituals. As a deformed or five-clawed 'witch-foot' it was an apotropaic magical sign in Germanic folklore. Goethe found it reproduced and discussed in a book on magic and witch craft published in 1666 under the title Anthropodemus Plutonicus by Johannes Schultze ('Johannes Pratorius'), a seventeenth-century popular writer on such subjects. Geometrically and graphically the pentagram is a figure of some interest, definable as a regular pentagon whose five sides are also the base of outward-pointing identical isosceles triangles, or as and interlocking system of five identical capital 'A's whose crossbars areth sides of th pentagon, or as five straight lines each of which begins and ends at two of five equidistant points the circumference of a circle enclosing the figure. The pentagram thus consists of five intersecting and joining straight lines of equal length; and when the sign was, for example, drawn with consecrated chalk on a threshold as a charm against witches, it was considered important to trace these lines continuously without raising the chalk from the ground, and to take care that there was no break at any of the five angles.

⁴³ 2000: MAtthew 5:18 ('jot' = the letter iota). It is possible ... that Goethe is alluding satirically to the Christological controversy at the Council of Nicaea (AD 325), in which the difference between [Greek word] o'uoov'oios (of the same nature [as the Father]) and o'uoiov'oios (of similar nature) had vast doctrinal consequences.

⁵⁹ 2540-52: It has been suggested that this nonsense-rhyme ironically disquises an allusion to the doctrine of numerical 'magic squares' which Goethe encountered in his alchemistic reading. One such square is the ternary acrostic illustrated below, in which each of the six horizontal and vertical lines of figures add up to 15

the witch's words can be read in such a way as to fit this pattern. Thus, 1 is replaced with 10, to which 2 and 3 are added making us 'rich' with 15 lines (lines 2541-4); 4-5-6 becomes 0-7-8 (2545-8), and 'that puts it straight' (literally 'that completes it') in the sense that the figure can now be completed by entereing in the third row the three numbers not yet used - with the exception of 9 which can be taken to stand for the square as a whole. Line 2550 f. could then mean that 9 is one of the 'magic' square numbers but 10 is not.

[Lines 2540 - 2552

Now hear and see!
From one make ten,
Take two and then
At once make three,
And you're rich!
Four doesn't score.
But , says the witch,
From five and six
Make seven and eight;
That puts it straight.
And nine is one,
And ten is none.
That's witch's twice-times-table's done. ]

⁶⁰ 2557-62: Goethe had no patience with the apophatic paradoxes of theology, and here take occasion to satirize the dogma of the Trinity by comparing it to the witch's numericalabracadabra, or perhaps to the 'three in one' magic square (cf. Note 59). The polemically anti-Christian tendencyinGoethe's thinking was particularly evident at the time of the Italian journey ... when this scene was written. It is also of interest that mephistopheles' two phallic gestures 9stage directions after 2513 and 3291) both occur inthe scenes added at this time.

⁸⁷ 3672 f." the German merely says "I did not see something like a kind of pearl necklace'. Pearls were thought to symbolize tears (and therefore to be unlucky for a lover to give or a bride to wear)...

⁸⁹ 3699: Shakespeare's mercutio challenges Juliet's cousin Tybalt with the words,"Tybalt, you rat-catcher,will you walk?" Romeo and Juliet was the only Shakespeare play Goethe himself translated, and this seems to be a concious echo, another being probably Faust's enforced flight from the town after killing Valentine, which is comparable to Romeo's banishment after killing Tybalt. There is also a certain affinity between Juliet's nurse and Grethchens confidante Martha, and perhaps between Mercutio generally and Mephistopheles.

⁹³ 3835-4222 Walpurgis Night: St. Walpurgis or Walburga, abbess of Heidenheim in Franconia, was born in England and died in 779; her name appears to be derived from 'Wolborg', a 'good fortress' (against evil, by her purity) and she was invoked in aid against witchcraft. Her day, 1 May, is also an ancient pagan spring festival, and she is thus associated by antithesis with the witches' sabbath which was traditionally suppose to take place on the Brocken during the previous night. The Brocken or Brockberg, known to the Romans as Mons Bructerus, is the main summit of the Harz Mountains and at 3,745 ft.,the highest mountain in central Germany. ... Sources that influenced him [Goethe] ... and a large engraving by Michael Herr (1591-1661) which depicts the grotesque revels of witches and demons. It is of interests in this connection that the last witch burning in Germany had not taken place until 1782.

⁹⁸ 3962, Baubo: a figure from classical Mythology (the lewd nurse of the earth-goddess Demeter).

¹⁰⁴ 4119: 'Lilith', as a kind of mythical primal witch, was to be found in Pratorius and in the Blocksburg literature generally. Fromthe fact that the Book of Genesis offers two versions of the creation of Woman, Rabbinical tradition had concluded that Adam must have been married twice, and his first wife acquired the name Lilith, meaning a kind of demon. The word occurs in the Bible only once, in a passage (Isaiah 34:14) from which it has been variously translated (screech owl, night hag, lamia, kobold).

¹²⁶ 4399, gallows-mound: In German Rabenstein, literally 'raven's rock'. When criminals were hanged or broken on the wheel, the rough stone-built mound on which (for better public viewing) they were executed was generally outside any town, because their bodies would be left there unburied and would attract ravens and crows. Such places were of course uncanny. Faust and Mephistopheles ride past one on their way to the town in which Gretchen is awaiting her relatively merciful execution by beheading in the market-square (4588-94), after which she evidently expects to be buried (4521-6). The witches at the gallows-mound are reminiscent of thise in Macbeth; the scene is also thought to have beeninfluenced by Gottfried August Burger's famous Storm and Stress ballad Lenore (1774),in which a lover returning from a grave to fetch his mistress carries her off through the night, and on their way they ride past a place of excecution with spirits hovering round it.

¹²⁸ 45900: The ceremonies at a public execution such as Goethe had in mind here included the tolling of a bell (the 'poor sinner's bell', Armesunderglocklein) as the prisoner was conveyed through the streets tot he scaffold, adn the breaking of a white rod above his head in token of final condemnation. The prisoner was tied to a chair and beheaded with a special executioner's sword.

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encheirisis naturae - 'an intervention by the hand of Nature'

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The word "warlock" which is considered an insult in most Wiccan circles,
stems from the Old English "waerloga," meaning an "oath-breaker" and was
used derogatorily by Christian Church as a name for a male witch.
My dictionary has the following:
[ME waloghe <OE waerloga, traitor, liar < waer faith, a compact (see VERY)
+ leogaan, to lie]


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