Vi veri universum vivus vici (also written as "Vi veri veniversum vivus vici") is a Latin phrase meaning: "By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe".

The English occultist Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley

Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...

 took this phrase as his magick

Magick

Magick is an Early Modern English spelling for magic, used in works such as the 1651 translation of De Occulta Philosophia, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, or Of Magick...

al motto as a "Magister Templi

Argenteum Astrum

The A∴A∴ is a magical order that was created in 1907 by Aleister Crowley and George Cecil Jones after they left the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The acronym, A∴A∴, has been assigned many meanings . The order is a Thelemic magical fraternity, the goals of which are the pursuit of light and...

".

The phrase has been made popular as a result of the movie version

V for Vendetta (film)

V for Vendetta is a 2005 dystopian thriller film directed by James McTeigue and produced by Joel Silver and the Wachowski brothers, who also wrote the screenplay. It is an adaptation of the V for Vendetta comic book by Alan Moore and David Lloyd...

 of the graphic novel

Graphic novel

A graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using sequential art in either an experimental design or in a traditional comics format...

 V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta is a ten-issue comic book series written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future United Kingdom imagined from the 1980s to about the 1990s. A mysterious masked revolutionary who calls himself "V" works to destroy the totalitarian government,...

. In the graphic novel, the initials "V.V.V.V.V." appear embossed in an arch of V's hideout the "Shadow Gallery" -- the character of "V" explains that these stand for the phrase Vi veri veniversum vivus vici.. In the film, this phrase appears instead on a mirror, also inside V's Shadow Gallery. (In addition to prominently featuring the letter 'V', the phrase contains five words, which in Roman numerals

Roman numerals

The numeral system of ancient Rome, or Roman numerals, uses combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet to signify values. The numbers 1 to 10 can be expressed in Roman numerals as:...

 is represented as 'V'). While the film attributes the the quotation to the work "Faust" (without stating more specifically which version of "Faust"), the graphic novel attributes the phrase to "a German gentleman named Dr. John Faust".

Apparently as a result of the claim in the film, this quote is often attributed to Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

's Doctor Faustus, or to Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...

's Faust

Goethe's Faust

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust is a tragic play in two parts: and . Although written as a closet drama, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages...

. However, no use of the phrase appears in either work.