Luciferianism

William Blake's illustration of Lucifer as presented in John Milton's Paradise Lost

Luciferianism is a belief system that venerates the essential characteristics that are affixed to Lucifer. The tradition, influenced by Gnosticism, usually reveres Lucifer not as the devil, but as a liberator, a guardian or guiding spirit[1] or even the true god as opposed to Jehovah.[2]

Lucifer as a literary and religious character

Main article: Lucifer

Lucifer is the King James Version rendering of the Hebrew word הֵילֵל in Isaiah 14:12. This word, transliterated hêlêl[3] or heylel,[4] occurs once in the Hebrew Bible[3] and according to the KJV-based Strong's Concordance means "shining one, light-bearer".[4] The Septuagint renders הֵילֵל in Greek as ἑωσφόρος[5][6][7][8][9] (heōsphoros),[10][11][12] a name, literally "bringer of dawn", for the morning star.[13] The word Lucifer is taken from the Latin Vulgate,[14] which translates הֵילֵל as lucifer,[15][16] meaning "the morning star, the planet Venus", or, as an adjective, "light-bringing".[17]

Later Christian tradition came to use the Latin word for "morning star", lucifer, as a proper name ("Lucifer") for the devil; as he was before his fall.[18] As a result, "'Lucifer' has become a by-word for Satan/the Devil in the church and in popular literature",[14] as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer and John Milton's Paradise Lost.[12] However, the Latin word never came to be used almost exclusively, as in English, in this way, and was applied to others also, including Jesus.[19] The image of a morning star fallen from the sky is generally believed among scholars to have a parallel in Canaanite mythology.[20]

However, according to both Christian[21] and Jewish exegesis, in the Book of Isaiah, chapter 14, the King of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II, conqueror of Jerusalem, is condemned in a prophetic vision by the prophet Isaiah and is called the "Morning Star" (planet Venus).[22][23] In this chapter the Hebrew text says הֵילֵל בֶּן-שָׁחַר (Helel ben Shachar, "shining one, son of the morning").[23] "Helel ben Shahar" may refer to the Morning Star, but the text in Isaiah 14 gives no indication that Helel was a star or planet.[24][25]

General beliefs

Sometimes mistakenly associated with Satanism due to the Christian interpretation of the fallen angel, Luciferianism is a wholly different belief system[26] and does not revere the devil figure or most characteristics typically affixed to Satan. Rather, Lucifer in this context is seen as one of many morning stars, a symbol of enlightenment,[27] independence and human progression, and is often used interchangeably with similar figures from a range of ancient beliefs, such as the Greek titan Prometheus or the Jewish talmudic figure Lilith.

They support the protection of the natural world. Both the arts and sciences are crucial to human development, and thus both are cherished. Luciferians think that humans should be focused on this life and how to make the most of it every single day. The ability to recognize both good and evil, to accept that all actions have consequences, both positive and negative, and to actively influence one's environment, is a key factor.

For Luciferians, enlightenment is the ultimate goal. The basic Luciferian principles highlight truth and freedom of will, worshipping the inner self and one's ultimate potential. Traditional dogma is shunned as a basis for morality on the grounds that humans should not need deities or fear of eternal punishment to distinguish right from wrong and to do good. All ideas should be tested before being accepted, and even then one should remain skeptical because knowledge and understanding are fluid. Regardless of whether Lucifer is conceived of as a deity or as a mere archetype, he is a representation of ultimate knowledge and exploration: humanity's savior and a champion for continuing personal growth.

Theistic Luciferianism

Some Luciferians believe in Lucifer as an actual deity, not to be worshipped as the Judeo-Christian God but to be revered and followed as a teacher and friend, as a rescuer or guiding spirit, or even the one true god as opposed to the traditional creator of Judaism.[28] Theistic Luciferians are followers of the Left-Hand Path and may adhere to different dogmata put forth by organizations such as the Neo-Luciferian Church or other congregations that are heavily focused on ceremonial magic, the occult and literal interpretations of spiritual stories and figures.

Historical Luciferianism

The Gesta Treverorum records that, in 1231, heretics began to be persecuted throughout Germany. Among them were Luciferians, principally in the Archdiocese of Trier, but also Mainz and Cologne. Over the following three years, several people were burned as a result. According to a papal letter from Gregory IX, Vox in Rama, dated from July 13, 1233, one of the claims made by the Luciferians was that Lucifer had been cast out of Heaven unjustly.

On the other hand, Richard Cavendish has argued that some evidence of Satanism may have been uncovered during these investigations into heresy:

The confessions Conrad of Marburg extracted [in Germany during the early 1200s] were apparently made without torture, but under the threat of death if the victim did not confess. If these confessions were accurate, the Luciferans were full-blown Satanists. They worshiped the Devil as creator and ruler of the world, complained that he had been unjustly and treacherously banished from Heaven, and believed that he would overthrow the God of the Christians and return to Heaven, when they would enjoy eternal happiness with him. They reveled in whatever displeased the Christian God and hated whatever pleased him ...[29]
Lucifer the Lightbearer was a US Individualist anarchist publication edited by Moses Harman

Lucifer the Lightbearer was an American individualist-anarchist journal published by Moses Harman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It has been reported that "The title was selected, stated Harman, because it expressed the paper's mission. Lucifer, the name given the morning star by the people of the ancient world, served as the symbol of the publication and represented the ushering in of a new day. He declared that freethinkers had sought to redeem and glorify the name Lucifer while theologians cursed him as the prince of the fallen angels. Harman suggested that Lucifer would take on the role of an educator. "The god of the Bible doomed mankind to perpetual ignorance," wrote Harman, "and [people] would never have known Good from Evil if Lucifer had not told them how to become as wise as the gods themselves."[30]

Lucifer was a publication edited by the influential occultist Helena Blavatsky. The journal was first published by Blavatsky. From 1889 until Blavatsky's death in May 1891 Annie Besant was a co-editor. Rudolf Steiner's writings, which formed the basis for Anthroposophy, characterised Lucifer as a spiritual opposite to Ahriman, with Christ between the two forces, mediating a balanced path for humanity. Lucifer represents an intellectual, imaginative, delusional, otherworldly force which might be associated with visions, subjectivity, psychosis and fantasy. He associated Lucifer with the religious/philosophical cultures of Egypt, Rome and Greece. Steiner believed that Lucifer, as a supersensible Being, had incarnated in China about 3000 years before the birth of Christ.

Léo Taxil (1854–1907) claimed that Freemasonry is associated with worshipping Lucifer. In what is known as the Taxil hoax, he alleged that leading Freemason Albert Pike had addressed "The 23 Supreme Confederated Councils of the world" (an invention of Taxil), instructing them that Lucifer was God, and was in opposition to the evil god Adonai. Supporters of Freemasonry contend that, when Albert Pike and other Masonic scholars spoke about the "Luciferian path," or the "energies of Lucifer," they were referring to the Morning Star, the light bearer,[31] the search for light; the very antithesis of dark, satanic evil. Taxil promoted a book by Diana Vaughan (actually written by himself, as he later confessed publicly)[32] that purported to reveal a highly secret ruling body called the Palladium, which controlled the organization and had a satanic agenda. As described by Freemasonry Disclosed in 1897:

With frightening cynicism, the miserable person we shall not name here [Taxil] declared before an assembly especially convened for him that for twelve years he had prepared and carried out to the end the most sacrilegious of hoaxes. We have always been careful to publish special articles concerning Palladism and Diana Vaughan. We are now giving in this issue a complete list of these articles, which can now be considered as not having existed.[33]

Taxil's work and Pike's address continue to be quoted by anti-masonic groups.[34]

In Devil-Worship in France, Arthur Edward Waite compared Taxil's work to what today we would call a tabloid story, replete with logical and factual inconsistencies.

The luciferian witch Madeline Montalban in the 1970s; this image was published in the magazine Man, Myth & Magic.

Madeline Montalban was an English astrologer and witch. She co-founded the esoteric organisation known as the Order of the Morning Star (OMS), through which she propagated her own form of Luciferianism. In 1952 she met Nicholas Heron, with whom she entered into a relationship. An engraver, photographer and former journalist for the Brighton Argus, he shared her interest in the occult, and together they developed a magical system based upon Luciferianism, the veneration of the deity Lucifer, or Lumiel, whom they considered to be a benevolent angelic deity. In 1956, they founded the Order of the Morning Star, or Ordo Stella Matutina (OSM), propagating it through a correspondence course.[35] The couple sent out lessons to those who paid the necessary fees over a series of weeks, eventually leading to the twelfth lesson, which contained The Book of Lumiel, a short work written by Montalban that documented her understanding of Lumiel, or Lucifer, and his involvement with humankind.[36] The couple initially lived together in Torrington Place, London, from where they ran the course, but in 1961 moved to the coastal town of Southsea in Essex, where there was greater room for Heron's engraving equipment.[37]

In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published in 1971 one year before his death), the prominent American community organizer and writer Saul Alinsky wrote at the end of his personal acknowledgements:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins or which is which), the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom – Lucifer.[38]

In Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible, Lucifer is one of the four crown princes of hell, particularly that of the East, the 'lord of the air', and is called the bringer of light, the morning star, intellectualism, and enlightenment.[39] The title 'lord of the air' is based upon Ephesians 2:2, which uses the phrase 'prince of the power of the air' to refer to the pagan god Zeus, but that phrase later became conflated with Satan.

Author Michael W. Ford has written on Lucifer as a "mask" of the adversary, a motivator and illuminating force of the mind and subconscious.[40]

Organizations

Greater Church of Lucifer

In 2014 Luciferians founded a worldwide organization for Luciferians from Houston, Texas known as the Greater Church of Lucifer under the leadership of Jacob No, Michael W. Ford and Jeremy Crow, founder of the Luciferian Research Society. In January 2015 the founders of GCoL filed paperwork in the Austin County Courthouse in order to do business under the GCoL name. Jacob No describes GCoL as an organization that "follows a philosophy and is a non-dogmatic religion".[41] The GCoL focuses more on teachings based on the practical world. Family and personal progression are among its key tenets.

In 2015, the GCoL opened a parish in Old Town Spring, Texas, with several dozen members. Over a hundred local residents, mainly Catholic, protested the opening of the church.[42]

Neo-Luciferian Church

The Neo-Luciferian Church (NLC) is a Gnostic and Luciferian organisation with roots in western esotericism, Voodoo, Luciferianism, Thelema, and magic.

Fraternitas Saturni

Stephen Flowers in his book on the German magical order Fraternitas Saturni says that "the FS is (or was) the most unabashedly Luciferian organization in the modern Western occult revival."[43] It is also reported that the Fraternitas Saturni holds the view that "Also the A Logos was necessary in order for the light to dawn; and this Logos was Lucifer, the Light-Bringer. Lucifer is the demiurge, who created our visible world by breaking the static cosmic order. The result was War in Heaven, by which death entered the world. Lucifer is regarded as the "higher octave" of Saturn (Satan representing its "lower octave"), the outermost planet and polar opposite of the Sun in ancient cosmology. Because of this ongoing opposition Lucifer is still fighting the Solar Logos. The principal battlefield is our earth, which contains a negative-astral and a positive- mental sphere apart from its physical form. Saturn is seen as the great judge with scales and sword, entrusted with weight, measure and number. He is the Guardian of the Threshold, or the gateway to transcendence. Because he betrayed divine mysteries to mankind, he has been punished. His heavy, dark, leaden qualities must be transformed into gold by the magician, in an alchemical process involving the "repolarisation of lights".[44]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Michelle Belanger (2007). Vampires in Their Own Words: An Anthology of Vampire Voices. Llewellyn Worldwide. p. 175. ISBN 0-7387-1220-5.
  2. ↑ Spence, L. (1993). An Encyclopedia of Occultism. Carol Publishing.
  3. 1 2 "Hebrew Concordance: hê·lêl – 1 Occurrence - Bible Suite". Bible Hub. Leesburg, Florida: Biblos.com. Retrieved 8 September 2013.
  4. 1 2 Strong's Concordance, H1966: "shining one, morning star, Lucifer; of the king of Babylon and Satan (fig.)"
  5. ↑ "LXX Isaiah 14" (in Greek). Septuagint.org. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  6. ↑ "Greek OT (Septuagint/LXX): Isaiah 14" (in Greek). Bibledatabase.net. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  7. ↑ "LXX Isaiah 14" (in Greek). Biblos.com. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
  8. ↑ "Septuagint Isaiah 14" (in Greek). Sacred Texts. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
  9. ↑ "Greek Septuagint (LXX) Isaiah - Chapter 14" (in Greek). Blue Letter Bible. Retrieved 6 May 2013.
  10. ↑ Neil Forsyth (1989). The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth. Princeton University Press. p. 136. ISBN 978-0-691-01474-6. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  11. ↑ Nwaocha Ogechukwu Friday (30 May 2012). The Devil: What Does He Look Like?. American Book Publishing. p. 35. ISBN 978-1-58982-662-5. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  12. 1 2 Adelman, Rachel (2009). The Return of the Repressed: Pirqe De-Rabbi Eliezer and the Pseudepigrapha. Leiden: BRILL. p. 67. ISBN 978-90-04-17049-0. ISBN 90-04-17049-9 (see: Pseudepigrapha).
  13. ↑ Taylor, Bernard A.; with word definitions by J. Lust; Eynikel, E.; Hauspie, K. (2009). Analytical lexicon to the Septuagint (Expanded ed.). Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. p. 256. ISBN 1-56563-516-7.
  14. 1 2 Kohler, Dr. Kaufmann (2006). Heaven and Hell in Comparative Religion with Special Reference to Dante's Divine Comedy. New York: The MacMillan Company. pp. 4–5. ISBN 978-0-7661-6608-0. Lucifer, is taken from the Latin version, the Vulgate
  15. ↑ "Latin Vulgate Bible: Isaiah 14". DRBO.org. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  16. ↑ "Vulgate: Isaiah Chapter 14" (in Latin). Sacred-texts.com. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  17. ↑ "Charlton T. Lewis, Charles Short, "A Latin Dictionary"". Perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 22 December 2012.
  18. ↑ "Lucifer". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 6 September 2013.
  19. ↑ See Latin word lucifer below.
  20. ↑ See #Mythology behind Isaiah 14:12
  21. ↑ Examples of Christian literal exegesis of Isaiah 14:12
  22. ↑ Helel ben Shaḥar "day-star, son of the dawn"; planet Venus is one of the brightest celestial bodies at night, which can be seen in the early morning when no other star can be seen any more, but vanishes when the sun, the real light, rises.
  23. 1 2 "ASTRONOMY - Helel Son of the Morning". The unedited full-text of the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia. JewishEncyclopedia.com. Retrieved 1 July 2012.
  24. ↑ Gunkel, "Schöpfung und Chaos," pp. 132 et seq.
  25. ↑ "Isaiah Chapter 14". mechon-mamre.org. The Mamre Institute. Retrieved 29 December 2014.
  26. ↑ Catherine Beyer. "How Luciferians Differ From Satanists". About.com Religion & Spirituality. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  27. ↑ Catherine Beyer. "Lucifer (Who Is He?) - Lucifer versus Satan". About.com Religion & Spirituality. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
  28. ↑ Spence, L. (1993). An Encyclopedia of Occultism. Carol Publishing.
  29. ↑ Cavendish, 1983, pp. 296–297, The Black Arts
  30. ↑ "The Moses Harman Story" by William Lemore West at Kansas Historical Society
  31. ↑ "Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it he who bears the Light, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!" (Albert Pike, Morals and Dogma, p. 321). Much has been made of this quote (Masonic information: Lucifer).
  32. ↑ "Leo Taxil's confession". Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon. 2 April 2001. Retrieved 23 December 2012.
  33. ↑ Freemasonry Disclosed April 1897
  34. ↑ "Leo Taxil: The tale of the Pope and the Pornographer". Retrieved 14 September 2006.
  35. ↑ Philips 2012, pp. 81–82.
  36. ↑ Philips 2012, pp. 95–97.
  37. ↑ Philips 2012, p. 81.
  38. ↑ Alinsky, Saul. Rules for Radicals.
  39. ↑ LaVey, Anton Szandor (1969). "The Book of Lucifer: The Enlightenment". The Satanic Bible. New York: Avon. ISBN 978-0-380-01539-9.
  40. ↑ "Adversarial Doctrine". Bible of the Adversary. Succubus Productions. 2007. p. 8.
  41. ↑ The Sealy News, 29 Jan 2015, "Greater Church of Lucifer files to do business in Austin County"
  42. ↑ "Greater Church of Lucifer opens doors despite protests in Old Town Spring".
  43. ↑ Stephen E. Flowers. Fire & Ice: The history, structure and rituals of Germany's modern magical order. The brotherhood of Saturn. Llewellyn. pg. xv1994
  44. ↑ "Fraternitas Saturni" by Hans Thomas Hakl. In: Wouter Hanegraaff (ed). Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism. p. 381.

Sources:

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