Lucifer

The Fallen Angel

To stamp an order or a person Luciferian or Satanic is the same as saying that they, him or her is in league with the devil. Nothing could be more wrong. It’s time the whole world realize that there is no malevolent force or creature out to deceive and manipulate us. We do that well enough by ourselves and it is ourselves we should fear, and heal. To cast the blame on some other thing only distracts us from coming to terms with what is the true cause of our personal and collective sufferings.

To be direct Lucifer is, in a way, the product of misunderstood astrology and the connection to Satan, or an evil entity, merely popularized by Milton in Paradise Lost into the minds of the masses. But where would the Christian movement be without Satan, or Lucifer for that matter, since it’s the only form of threat that can keep the believers in line?

The story of how Lucifer was cast out of heaven by God is an oral tradition and not represented in the Bible. It’s only in Isaiah 14:12 of KJV and NKJV that the name Lucifer appear:

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!” (1)

Other versions of the Bible such as the NIV, NASB, NLT, RSV and YLT doesn’t use the word Lucifer but instead employ morning star, star of the morning, shining star, day star and shining one.

In Hebrew O Lucifer, son of the morning is O Helel, son of Shahar (HeYLeL BeN-ShaCHaR). The Babylonian god of the dawn was Shahar and his son, Helel, was the morning star that in fact is the planet Venus that at certain times is visible in the morning but not in the evening. Shahar had a twin brother, Shalem, associated with dusk and the evening appearance of Venus. Over time shalem became shalom which means go in peace or peace be with you. Jerusalem actually means House of Shalem from the worship of Venus as an evening star.

Since the planets moved differently than the star stories originated about them such as the one how Venus falls from heaven. Because the morning star Venus was visible before sunrise, and as the evening star immediately after sunset, the ancients have given a number of names to it. At sunset Vesper (2) and at sunrise, as it appears before the sun, the false light, the star of the morning or Lucifer (the light-bearer). (3)

When Helel was translated into Greek for their version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, it became Phosphorus, which was Greek for Venus, and then when translated into Latin for the Vulgate it became Lucifer, which is Latin for Venus. (4)

How ironic is it not that the collective perception of Lucifer is that of evil and Venus that of love, when in fact the two are one and the same in some form of translational Yin and Yang. Jesus himself, expressing the notion of unconditional love, called himself the morning star in Rev 22:16 (KJV):

“I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, [and] the bright and morning star.”

The Rosicrucian scholars called the spiritual sun Vulcan, the sun of the soul Christ and the intellectual sun Lucifer and the material sun Jehovah. Without the spiritual (Vulcan) the intellectual (Lucifer) is not illuminated, and is in fact a false light. When the intellect (Lucifer) is transmuted into the soul (Christ) it’s equates the alchemical process of transmuting base metals into gold. Paracelsus wrote:

“There is an earthly sun, which is the cause of all heat, and all who are able to see may see the sun; and those who are blind and cannot see him may feel his heat. There is an Eternal Sun, which is the source of all wisdom, and those whose spiritual senses have awakened to life will see that sun and be conscious of His existence; but those who have not attained spiritual consciousness may yet feel His power by an inner faculty which is called Intuition.”

But how did the story of the fallen angel come about?
If Isaiah 14 is taken as a whole it is evident it talks about to the downfall of the King of Babylon, in specific Tiglath-pileser III, and not some satanic entity. Isaiah 14:4-15 (KJV):

”That thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon, and say, How hath the oppressor ceased! the golden city ceased! The LORD hath broken the staff of the wicked, [and] the sceptre of the rulers. He who smote the people in wrath with a continual stroke, he that ruled the nations in anger, is persecuted, [and] none hindereth. The whole earth is at rest, [and] is quiet: they break forth into singing. Yea, the fir trees rejoice at thee, [and] the cedars of Lebanon, [saying,] Since thou art laid down, no feller is come up against us. Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet [thee] at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, [even] all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, [and] the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! [how] art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.”

An important Christian scholar of the early Greek Church Origenes Adamantius (185 B.C.E. – 254 B.C.E.) and Augustine of Canterbury (d. 6004/605 B.C.E.), founder of the Christian Church in southern England, both interpreted Lucifer as a reference of the Devil, but it was St. Jerome who would apply the name Lucifer to Satan although it was Milton who christened this demon of sinful pride Lucifer in his tome Paradise Lost, which was followed by artistic representation in a negative sense by most artists since then.

The word satan comes from the Hebrew word sathane meaning adversary or calumniator and is the enemy not of god but mankind. In other words the angel god charges with the task of proving that man is an unworthy creation. It was in the Middle Ages that Lucifer became the term for Satan.

Jesus himself, according to the Bible, never preached about a hell. When Judaism absorbed such ideas as Zoroastrian dualism and concepts about angels, the idea of an underworld ruled by an evil power where punishments were acted out on the wicked became part of the Christian doctrine, although the idea of an underworld was nothing new. Satan, Lucifer, Pluto and Hades all merged into one.

In Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma he writes in the third chapter entitled The Master:

“The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed; for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. The Devil is the personification of Atheism or Idolatry. For the Initiates, this is not a Person, but a Force, created for good, but which may serve for evil. It is the instrument of Liberty or Free Will. They represent this Force, which presides over the physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the God PAN; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient Serpent, and the Light-bearer or Phosphor, of which the poets have made the false Lucifer of the legend.”

Some people may claim that the Devil’s greatest trick is to make people believe he doesn’t exist, but this form of arguing is stems from the fear of coming to terms with his non-existence, since the whole belief system relies on this dualistic set-up, and by getting rid of one we ultimately loose the other. Because if the Devil if fictitious is not God that too? This scares people who are believers and their already narrow minds narrow even more.

Somehow we have interpreted the concept of the material and the spiritual, the below and the above, the yin and yang as one being good and the other evil instead of realising that one is part of the other and that we can not transmute gold into gold, but it has to be lead into gold i.e. first we have to be born and then reborn. The Gospel of Philip it simply explains:

“Those who say they will die first and then rise are in error. If they do not first receive the resurrection while they live, when they die they will receive nothing.”

In astrology Saturn is associated with building (or anything to do with the earth) (5) and in alchemy linked to lead. King Solomon built altars to Ashtoreth (or Astarte, Chiun, Kaiwan, Remphan and Saturn). The city of Rome was originally known as Saturnia, or City of Saturn. The Roman Catholic Church retains much of the Saturn worship in its ritual. Saturn is related to Lucifer. In occult dictionaries Saturn is associated with evil and was important to Druids and the religion of Mithra. In this sense Saturn could be seen as Evil.

Now if gold was made from lead, then it could be understood that good (Sun) was made from evil (Saturn). In a Yin Yang terms both Evil and Good is thus essential for complete harmony and the creation of a supreme Third Existence. That which could be called a earthly Nirvana.

(to be continued.)

Footnotes:
(1) In NKJV: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”
(2) Venus has also been called Hesperus, Cesperugo, Vesper, Noctifer and Nocturnus and equated with the goddesses Astarte, Ashtoreth, Aphrodite, Lilith, Isis, Cemeramis, Mari and Ishtar.
(3) Lucifer as a personification has been called the son of Astraeus, Aurora, Eos, Cephalus and Atlats, and the father of Ceyx, Daedalion and Hesperiedes. Lucifer is also the surname of such goddesses of light as Artemis, Aurora and Hecate.
(4) The Greek version, Septuagint, of the Old Testament (including the apocrypha) is said to have been made about 270 B.C.E. by seventy translators. The Vulgate is the Latin version of the Bible prepared by Jerome late in the 4th century. For clarity the Apocrypha are the books of the Old Testament included in the Vulgate and Septuagint, but not originally written in Hebrew, nor counted genuine by Jews, and excluded from the Canon at the Reformation.
(5) Also included may be government, administration, law and management of large enterprises. Philosophers and practical idealists are ruled by Saturn. They are often giving their occupation a stable and on a long-term set of criteria. Saturn’s workers often have a powerful but carefully planned ambition.

© deviadah