Rituals of Pleasure    Asenath Mason    Live Now

Learn the most sinful secrets of sexual sorcery. Unleash the ultra-powerful
forces of human transcendence with my grimoire of demonic sex magic.

While in medieval and Renaissance magic Mephistopheles was one of the most popular spirits, in modern occultism his role been diminished and much less attention is now paid to this legendary character. For this reason, The Book of Mephisto, the only grimoire dedicated solely to the spirit, presents his role from a completely new perspective, showing him as an initiator of the Left Hand Path, the Adversary, a spirit of Luciferian initiation, and the personal Shadow that accompanies us throughout our whole lifetime.

When I wrote this book for the first time, I was deeply fascinated with the idea of Mephisto as an embodiment of personal Shadow, and I was working extensively with grimoires that mentioned him in their catalogue of spirits. Apart from that, I was also searching for his appearances in literature and popular culture, and discovered that even though he no longer appears under his medieval and Renaissance disguise, he has accompanied us throughout all the following centuries and is still present in the modern world, tempting us with “forbidden” knowledge and igniting our desire of transcendence. It is especially true in regard to the Luciferian ethos - the search of power through self-knowledge and self-sacrifice.

The story of Faust is a tale of initiation in which Mephistopheles is the initiator acting on behalf of Lucifer. He ignites in Faust's heart the desire of knowledge and power and shows him the path that can make him greater than any common man. It is the initiation of the Left Hand Path - the desire of man to be a god. Mephistopheles performs to Faust the role of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden - he initiates him into the path of liberation, offers the fruits from the Tree of Knowledge, and reveals secrets of creation and destruction. The theme underlying the whole legend is longing, desire, thirst that drives the main character to leave his entire life behind and to open up to the unknown. Faust understands that in order to gain the knowledge he wants he has to enter a territory that is forbidden, dark and transgressive. He doesn’t hesitate to renounce God, his religion, and all that he has learned so far. It is a similar approach as in certain aspects of Gnosticism, which claimed that man cannot be redeemed from a sin that has not been committed, and whose followers indulged in all that was forbidden because they believed that this was the only true way to salvation. In Faust’s case, this is turning to magic instead of philosophy and rituals instead of mere study.

In the Bible, the Adversary initiated Adam and Eve into mysteries of knowledge and revealed to them the path of self-deification. In the Faustian Tradition, it is Mephistopheles that acts as the manifestation of the Adversary. He is the "spirit of contradiction." He questions, reverses values, destroys old viewpoints, and plants the seeds of doubt and hesitation. These seeds planted in human consciousness may lead either to transcendence or insanity – depending on whether or not we are able to handle the transforming force of the Adversary. It is the Devil, the Adversary, that invents challenges and trials to test the determination of the Initiate, and without this ordeal initiation would not be possible. In this interpretation, Mephistopheles is "the spirit that denies," the Faustian equivalent of the original force of misrule, disorder and contradiction that appears in all accounts of Creation in many forms and under many disguises. It is the same principle of misrule that was personified by the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, identified usually with Lucifer/Samael, but generally associated with the Adversary of the Left Hand Path. He is the spirit of eternal progress and movement, acting against cosmic order and inspiring the desire of transcendence in the heart of man. Goethe portrayed Mephistopheles as highly intelligent, but also amoral and inhuman, with the ability to perceive all weakness and hypocrisy of humanity. In Jungian psychology, he corresponds to the alchemical spirit Mercurius, which is morally neutral, neither good nor evil. At the same time, he is a spirit of chaos related to the Devil. This ambivalent nature allows him to act as the Adversary, question everything he encounters on the way, and point out alternative solutions.

Another modern interpretation of the legend is related to the translation of the name “Mephistopheles” as “he who shuns the light.” In this sense, his essence is that of absolute darkness. He is a personification of darkness not permeated by any single ray of light. Rudolf Steiner identified him with Ahriman, the Black Dragon of Persian lore. In Steiner’s anthroposophy, Ahriman is the spirit of matter and shadow, the dark counterpart of Lucifer, who is the spirit of light, intellect and all progress. As an embodiment of darkness, Mephistopheles can be ascribed to the “Samael” Qlipha on the Qabalistic Tree of Night, which is the sphere of darkness, shadow and the total withdrawal of light.

As a personification of the Shadow, Mephistopheles is the principle of contraction, the force that contracts and withdraws the light so that the energies of the Shadow can enter. The “Shadow” is a term encountered in psychology. Carl Gustav Jung speaks of the Shadow as the total of the dark and unknown aspects of personality, everything that has been repressed from consciousness and has never been expressed in life. It is the dark side of the human nature, the reservoir of repressed and unwanted aspects of the Self, feared and avoided to such an extent that it is generally viewed as evil and personified as the Devil. In magic, however, the Shadow has a broader meaning than in psychology. It embraces physical, cultural, cosmological, and personal elements of what is referred to as “darkness” and “evil.” All that is encountered in the external world is translated into an inner experience. Therefore, the Shadow operates on the personal level of our own negative, unpleasant and traumatic experiences, but it also manifests through the archetypal level of what Jung called “the collective unconscious.” According to this theory, all external impulses are filtered by the psychic censor - what is repulsive is pushed down into the depths of the unconscious. There it lives its own life, slowly evolving as an independent force that is integral with the Self, and eventually comes up to the surface as a manifestation of the Shadow. On the conscious level, the Shadow may cause a number of disorders, in regard to both the physical and emotional health, as well as our spiritual life, making us unable to find happiness, balance and fulfillment in anything we do. In Jungian psychology, the work with the Shadow is of great importance because it helps to integrate these repressed aspects in a conscious way, thus regaining control over our life, be it mundane or spiritual. For the same reason it is important to work with the Shadow on spiritual paths, and those paths that deny this necessity seldom lead to any genuine transcendence or development.

These and many other modern interpretations of the Faust legend can be found in The Book of Mephisto. You will find there rituals to embrace the power of the Adversary and meditations to work with the Shadow for the sake of self-empowerment. You will also find information on how to use Mephisto’s assistance in your personal work and how to contact and work with Lucifer with his help.

The Book of Mephisto    Asenath Mason    Live Midnight March 11

Unlock the magic of the demon Mephistopheles with his first Left Hand Path grimoire and guide to occult art of the diabolical Faustian Tradition.

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Darkest Blessings,