OCCULT SIGNIFICANCE OF BLOOD

In an old book on Faust it is circumstantially described to us how Faust makes a slight incision in his left hand with a small penknife, and how then, as he takes the pen to sign his name to the agreement, the blood flowing from the cut forms the words: “O man, escape!” original: "O homo fuge!" — a famous warning in the Faust legend where the blood itself attempts to warn the protagonist of his soul's peril. All this is authentic enough; but now comes the remark that the devil is a foe to the blood, and that this is the reason for his demanding that the signature be written in blood. I should like to ask you whether you can imagine any person being desirous of possessing the very thing for which he has an antipathy? The only reasonable explanation that can be given — not only as to Goethe’s Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), the German poet and scientist whose version of Faust is the most famous. meaning in this passage, but also as to that attaching to the main legend as well as to all the older Faust poems — is that to the devil blood was something special, and that it was not at all a matter of indifference to him whether the deed was signed in ordinary neutral ink, or in blood.

We can here suppose nothing else than that the representative of the powers of evil believes — nay, is convinced — that he will have Faust more especially in his power if he can only gain possession of at least one drop of his blood. This is self-evident, and no one can really understand the line otherwise. Faust is to inscribe his name in his own blood, not because