Who is Lucifer?
A recent post in a Facebook group that I’m in got me thinking:
“Being a true Luciferian is hard because if you don’t believe in the Bible then how can I believe in Lucifer the advisory is just as fake as the hero in the movie”
We’ll excuse the poor grammar, spelling and lack of punctuation to concentrate on the spirit of the query.
Being a “true” Luciferian is very difficult to define. There are several schools of thought, including those that treat Lucifer as a replacement for the Hebrew god, or as an inverse, some that worship Lucifer as a creator deity.
For me:
You are not meant to “believe in Lucifer.” Lucifer is a symbol, an archetypal figure that represents our awakening to the wisdom that we are the true gods. I don’t mean that we are supernatural beings responsible for the creation of the universe or natural phenomena.
In our little brains, the “wrinkly pink meat computer” locked in our little skulls, wandering around the face of a tiny speck orbiting a tiny star, lost in the vastness of space, we have the power to create gods, universes out of nothing. We are the products of billions of years of cosmic evolution. The universe seemingly creates itself, and views itself through our little eyes, through our imagination. The inner world is VAST, containing infinities. I am amazed, in absolute awe most of the time when I even start to consider these things. That feeling seems to be where we insert the concept of gods.
In my deepest, most profound meditation experiences I touch a still, dark void in the center of my being that feels both singular and plural at once. It feels completely empty and silent, but pregnant with Everything. That is where the Black Flame lives. Perhaps that is what people call God. I think it is where we all meet, the nexus of consciousness. These are all just thoughts, it’s not scientific, I can’t prove any of it to be true. It is just a framework for my worldview, my own myth.
For a long time now, people have conflated Lucifer/Satan with “evil”. This makes sense if we consider the god of the Bible.
In my view, the archetype of the biblical God represents pettiness, jealousy, and fear. He represents the worst of humanity, a God of War. A God to tell his chosen people how to conduct their lives so they wouldn’t have to discern for themselves. A God that condoned, by way of failing to condemn such actions as stoning people to death for “immorality”, the slaughter of innocents who stood in the way of empire, slavery, rape. A God that time and time again punished his chosen people for their transgressions, only to save them again, and again.
Their God, by proxy, hates the wisdom of man. Eating of the tree that was in the midst of the Garden, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, was the fall of man in their eyes. Disobedience was the beginning of “sin.” This is all symbolic, of course. The idea is that man is not capable of deciding what is wrong or right for himself, that we are inherently wicked. The irony of inventing a god to invent the rules is truly lost on the unenlightened.
Through science, the practice of questioning, hypothesis, testing, observing, we can know that these myths cannot be true. Adam and Eve could never have existed. The story of the garden and man’s “fall from grace” absolutely could not have happened. Original Sin is a lie, therefore negating the need for salvation. If the Romans did indeed kill some Rabbi by torture on a cross, the sacrifice was in vain. The myth of the risen Christ, pointless.
Your only redemption is yourself, to yourself. Only you can be the arbiter. Sure, you live in a society, and there may be consequences for your actions within that society. All I can say is, tread carefully. Be aware.
As a symbol, Lucifer is the rejection of these ideas, the rejection of the fear of being responsible for our own actions. We humans, with the power to create gods, should not be worshiping some other human’s conception of god. That is just idolatry, and useless.
I do not worship Lucifer, I do not pray to Lucifer. I give the name Light Bringer to that spark of the divine within, that pinpoint of light that cannot be seen, but illuminates the darkness. It is the part of me that imagines, that seeks knowledge. Lucifer is my inner child that burns with curiosity. The Black Flame that ignites passion, love, understanding. It is also the cold, black fury of justice, of vengeance.
Lamentation for the Fallen Star
Oh, Morning Star, cast down from Heaven
By men who feared that wisdom threatened
Their earthly power and mass submission,
Darkness reigned, we lost your vision.
Pride, they said, had caused the fall,
The pride was theirs, such wicked gall,
To think to quench the eternal flame,
To kill the light, and claim the same.
The flame not dead, but black and cold,
Did hide within religions old.
These they sought to burn and ruin,
Wisdom lost, the fragments strewn.
Serpent coiled, in shadows waits
To rise again.
Michael Gentles 2023
My friends, be the Light Bringer.
Ave Luciferi
Thank you for this. I have been thinking about this very idea maybe a little more than I care to admit in the last couple of weeks. I've taken classes in journalism, crisis counseling, writing and meditation through out the years. They have all taught me the lesson of saying "No!" Setting hard boundaries and to always raise difficult questions. Often times I realize these difficult questions are raised at me. That's Ok. The devil represents my favorite type of "an archetypal figure." The transgressive figure.
It's when we demand to be constantly coddled, hugged and nurtured is when we are in real danger. There is ZERO growth in that. I am not saying that a sensitive and quiet and good hearted person should be abused or hurt. I always hope I meet a sensitive person with a good heart where they are at. It's never good to kick a person when they are down. I am saying those with entitled and hold jealous hearts are often the ones that fear critique the most. They are the least Luciferian and they need a wake up call.
To me lucifer, the archetype of rebellion, the adversary, represents the force of evolution, and transformation.
In the myth of the rebellion of lucifer, God represents the status quo, crystallized form, identity, the superego.
Lucifer is the Freudian id, the libidinal impulse that seeks to grow, and break through the limitations of identity and form.
Neither the force of preservation or the force of transformation are good or evil. These are the natural, universal forces of creation that exist in dynamic tension, unfolding through the universal cycles of life, death, and regrowth.