Faustianism vs. Ikaros

Spengler was a genius, and the term Faustian is hardly bad. However, I find Icaran to be a better term.
Christian civilization, including its pre-Christian predecessors, is all about building cruddy wings you can't safely use, using them anyway, and getting yourself fucked up. They will spend endless efforts learning to make wings, and spend yet more endless effort on blocking any attempt to learn their profundities.

If we steelman Faust's tale, the "spiritual" wealth that Faust sacrifices is wisdom. Faust gives up the ability to use the knowledge in exchange for the knowledge he intends to use. Faust gives up the mental skill of flying in exchange for physical wings.

IRL Mephistopheles didn't need to explicitly add any [you'll be damned later] clause to the contract. Goethe's version is cope. Faust wanted to condemn himself to hell, he just couldn't figure out how to screw himself over properly without assistance. "I want to slit my wrists but I can't bear to knife myself. How do I die anyway?" Mephistopheles: "I gotchu fam." "Thanks bro, great service, 8/8." Faust sells his ability to self-preserve, glad that someone was willing to take it off his hands.

In the original tale Faust thinks the profane is superior to the divine, and in the end he's mistaken.
Ikaros isn't mistaken. He knows that flying too high will get him killed. He just does it anyway. 

Again, the slave is trapped. If  Faust saw a tension between knowing to fly and having wings, everyone would see the same thing, they think. They don't notice Faust is an idiot because they're yet more a fool.

IRL Faust never knew how to fly in the first place. Resentful of this limitation, rather than trying to learn to fly, he tries to shame Gnon into letting him fly by building cargo-cult wings. Gnon is not amused. That's a lie: Gnon finds Faust's self-destruction hilarious. Faust's wings give him the confidence to leap from the cliff, but not the ability to survive the fall.
lol, pwned

Faust's tale is itself an Icaran tale. The things Faust pursued are in fact divine, meaning it's Faust's taleteller who is in fact profane. What can Pride be except the claim that glory isn't glorious? If you deny that power is glorious, you claim that God, who represents absolute power, is profane. Satanic. Absolutely haram.

Faust wants to suffer and die, but he's too pussy to just throw himself off a cliff. He has to trick himself into thinking maybe he can fly, while sabotaging any genuine attempt to learn to fly. If you suggest Faust affix his wings with pins instead of wax, he will cite chapter and verse at you. Literally: Faust's infernal profanity is cloaked in the terms of religious fanaticism. E.g. the tale Faust. All so he can manipulate himself into taking the lethal plunge.

Icaran civilization. 

Faust's fall from the cliff is apparently exciting enough to be more glorious than all competing societies, and my god that's pathetic. Doesn't make it any less suicidal. 

Ikaros gets just close enough to touch the divine, before his sabotaged wings catch up with him. This is enough to look like a winner when all your competitors can't even find wax, let alone pins. Doesn't meant they should strap on a pair of Daidaloses in an effort to find pins.

P.S. Earth is Eden.
The divine prayer that allows you to fly is called "blimp blueprints" and "airship factory." No wax used as glue at any point, and anyway IRL as long as there's still air to flap against, it becomes colder as you go up, not hotter.
There's no angel waving a flaming sword at you; if you can't find Eden, you're waving the flaming sword at yourself. Bro, just put it down. Just walk away from it.