Lucifer
Lucifer is a Latin name for the planet Venus in its morning appearances and is often used for mythological and religious figures associated with the planet. Due to the unique movements and discontinuous appearances of Venus in the sky, mythology surrounding these figures often involved a fall from the heavens to earth or the underworld. Interpretations of a similar term in the Hebrew Bible, translated in the King James Version as "Lucifer" as a proper name, led to a Christian tradition of applying the name Lucifer, and its associated stories of a fall from heaven, to Satan, but modern scholarship generally translates the term in the relevant Bible passage,, as "morning star" or "shining one" rather than as a proper name, "Lucifer".
As a name for the Devil, the more common meaning in English, "Lucifer" is the rendering of the Hebrew word הֵילֵל in Isaiah given in the King James Version of the Bible. The translators of this version took the word from the Latin Vulgate, which translated הֵילֵל by the Latin word lucifer, meaning "the morning star, the planet Venus", or, as an adjective, "light-bringing".
As a name for the planet in its morning aspect, "Lucifer" is a proper name and is capitalized in English. In Greco-Roman civilization, it was often personified and considered a god and in some versions considered a son of Aurora. A similar name used by the Roman poet Catullus for the planet in its evening aspect is "Noctifer".
Fall from heaven
The motif of a heavenly being striving for the highest seat of heaven only to be cast down to the underworld has its origins in the motions of the planet Venus, known as the morning star.The Sumerian goddess Inanna is associated with the planet Venus, and Inanna's actions in several of her myths, including Inanna and Shukaletuda and Inanna's Descent into the Underworld appear to parallel the motion of Venus as it progresses through its synodic cycle.
A similar theme is present in the Babylonian myth of Etana. The Jewish Encyclopedia comments:
The fall from heaven motif also has a parallel in Canaanite mythology. In ancient Canaanite religion, the morning star is personified as the god Attar, who attempted to occupy the throne of Ba'al and, finding he was unable to do so, descended and ruled the underworld. The original myth may have been about a lesser god Helel trying to dethrone the Canaanite high god El who lived on a mountain to the north. Hermann Gunkel's reconstruction of the myth told of a mighty warrior called Hêlal, whose ambition was to ascend higher than all the other stellar divinities, but who had to descend to the depths; it thus portrayed as a battle the process by which the bright morning star fails to reach the highest point in the sky before being faded out by the rising sun. However, the Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible argues that no evidence has been found of any Canaanite myth or imagery of a god being forcibly thrown from heaven, as in the Book of Isaiah. It argues that the closest parallels with Isaiah's description of the king of Babylon as a fallen morning star cast down from heaven are to be found not in Canaanite myths but in traditional ideas of the Jewish people, echoed in the Biblical account of the fall of Adam and Eve, cast out of God's presence for wishing to be as God, and the picture in Psalm 82 of the "gods" and "sons of the Most High" destined to die and fall. This Jewish tradition has echoes also in Jewish pseudepigrapha such as 2 Enoch and the Life of Adam and Eve. The Life of Adam and Eve, in turn, shaped the idea of Iblis in the Quran.
The Greek myth of Phaethon, a personification of the planet Jupiter, follows a similar pattern.
In classical mythology
In classical mythology, Lucifer was the name of the planet Venus, though it was often personified as a male figure bearing a torch. The Greek name for this planet was variously Phosphoros or Heosphoros. Lucifer was said to be "the fabled son of Aurora and Cephalus, and father of Ceyx". He was often presented in poetry as heralding the dawn.The Latin word corresponding to Greek "Phosphoros" is "Lucifer". It is used in its astronomical sense both in prose and poetry. Poets sometimes personify the star, placing it in a mythological context.
Lucifer's mother Aurora is cognate to the Vedic goddess Ushas, Lithuanian goddess Aušrinė, and Greek Eos, all three of whom are also goddesses of the dawn. All four are considered derivatives of the Proto-Indo-European stem *h₂ewsṓs, "dawn", a stem that also gave rise to Proto-Germanic *Austrō, Old Germanic *Ōstara and Old English Ēostre / Ēastre. This agreement leads to the reconstruction of a Proto-Indo-European dawn goddess.
The second-century Roman mythographer Pseudo-Hyginus said of the planet:
Ovid, in his first-century epic Metamorphoses, describes Lucifer as ordering the heavens:
The Latin poet Ovid, speaking of Phosphorus and Hesperus as identical, makes him the father of Daedalion. Ovid also makes him the father of Ceyx, while the Latin grammarian Servius makes him the father of the Hesperides or of Hesperis.
In the classical Roman period, Lucifer was not typically regarded as a deity and had few, if any, myths, though the planet was associated with various deities and often poetically personified. Cicero pointed out that "You say that Sol the Sun and Luna the Moon are deities, and the Greeks identify the former with Apollo and the latter with Diana. But if Luna is a goddess, then Lucifer also and the rest of the Wandering Stars will have to be counted gods; and if so, then the Fixed Stars as well."
In Christianity
Background
In the Book of Isaiah, chapter 14, the king of Babylon is condemned in a prophetic vision by the prophet Isaiah and is called הֵילֵל בֶּן-שָׁחַר. who is addressed as הילל בן שחר, The title "Helel ben Shahar" refers to the planet Venus as the morning star, and that is how the Hebrew word is usually interpreted. The Hebrew word transliterated as Hêlêl or Heylel, occurs only once in the Hebrew Bible. The Septuagint renders הֵילֵל in Greek as Ἑωσφόρος , "bringer of dawn", the Ancient Greek name for the morning star. Similarly the Vulgate renders הֵילֵל in Latin as Lucifer, the name in that language for the morning star. According to the King James Bible-based Strong's Concordance, the original Hebrew word means "shining one, light-bearer", and the English translation given in the King James text is the Latin name for the planet Venus, "Lucifer", as it was already in the Wycliffe Bible.However, the translation of הֵילֵל as "Lucifer" has been abandoned in modern English translations of Isaiah 14:12. Present-day translations render הֵילֵל as "morning star", "daystar", "Day Star", "shining one", or "shining star".
In a modern translation from the original Hebrew, the passage in which the phrase "Lucifer" or "morning star" occurs begins with the statement: "On the day the Lord gives you relief from your suffering and turmoil and from the harsh labour forced on you, you will take up this taunt against the king of Babylon: How the oppressor has come to an end! How his fury has ended!" After describing the death of the king, the taunt continues:
J. Carl Laney has pointed out that in the final verses here quoted, the king of Babylon is described not as a god or an angel but as a man, and that man may have been not Nebuchadnezzar II, but rather his son, Belshazzar. Nebuchadnezzar was gripped by a spiritual fervor to build a temple to the moon god Sin, and his son ruled as regent. The Abrahamic scriptural texts could be interpreted as a weak usurping of true kingly power, and a taunt at the failed regency of Belshazzar.
For the unnamed "king of Babylon" a wide range of identifications have been proposed. They include a Babylonian ruler of the prophet Isaiah's own time the later Nebuchadnezzar II, under whom the Babylonian captivity of the Jews began, or Nabonidus, and the Assyrian kings Tiglath-Pileser, Sargon II and Sennacherib. Verse 20 says that this king of Babylon will not be "joined with them in burial, because thou hast destroyed thy land, thou hast slain thy people; the seed of evil-doers shall not be named for ever", but rather be cast out of the grave, while "All the kings of the nations, all of them, sleep in glory, every one in his own house". Herbert Wolf held that the "king of Babylon" was not a specific ruler but a generic representation of the whole line of rulers.
Isaiah 14:12 became a source for the popular conception of the fallen angel motif seen later in 1 Enoch 86–90 and 2 Enoch 29:3–4. Rabbinical Judaism has rejected any belief in rebel or fallen angels. In the 11th century, the Pirkei De-Rabbi Eliezer illustrates the origin of the "fallen angel myth" by giving two accounts, one relates to the angel in the Garden of Eden who seduces Eve, and the other relates to the angels, the benei elohim who cohabit with the daughters of man. An association of Isaiah 14:12–18 with a personification of evil, called the devil developed outside of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism in pseudepigrapha and Christian writings, particularly with the apocalypses.
As Satan or the devil
Some Christian writers have applied the name "Lucifer" as used in the Book of Isaiah, and the motif of a heavenly being cast down to the earth, to Satan. Sigve K Tonstad argues that the New Testament War in Heaven theme of Revelation 12, in which the dragon "who is called the devil and Satan … was thrown down to the earth", was derived from the passage about the Babylonian king in Isaiah 14. Origen interpreted such Old Testament passages as being about manifestations of the devil; but writing in Greek, not Latin, he did not identify the devil with the name "Lucifer". Origen was not the first to interpret the Isaiah 14 passage as referring to the devil: he was preceded by at least Tertullian, who in his Adversus Marcionem twice presents as spoken by the devil the words of : "I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High". Though Tertullian was a speaker of the language in which the word "lucifer" was created, "Lucifer" is not among the numerous names and phrases he used to describe the devil. Even at the time of the Latin writer Augustine of Hippo, a contemporary of the composition of the Vulgate, "Lucifer" had not yet become a common name for the devil.Some time later, the metaphor of the morning star that Isaiah 14:12 applied to a king of Babylon gave rise to the general use of the Latin word for "morning star", capitalized, as the original name of the devil before his fall from grace, linking Isaiah 14:12 with Luke 10 and interpreting the passage in Isaiah as an allegory of Satan's fall from heaven.
As a result, "Lucifer has become a byword for Satan or the devil in the church and in popular literature", as in Dante Alighieri's Inferno, Joost van den Vondel's Lucifer, and John Milton's Paradise Lost. However, unlike the English word, the Latin word was not used exclusively in this way and was applied to others also, including Jesus: the Latin text of Revelation 22:16 has stella matutina, not lucifer, but the term lucifer is applied to Jesus in the Easter Exultet and in a hymn by Hilary of Poitiers that contains the phrase: "Tu verus mundi lucifer".
Adherents of the King James Only movement and others who hold that Isaiah 14:12 does indeed refer to the devil have decried the modern translations. An opposing view attributes to Origen the first identification of the "Lucifer" of Isaiah 14:12 with the devil and to Tertullian and Augustine of Hippo the spread of the story of Lucifer as fallen through pride, envy of God and jealousy of humans.
However, the understanding of the morning star in Isaiah 14:12 as a metaphor referring to a king of Babylon continued also to exist among Christians. Theodoret of Cyrus wrote that Isaiah calls the king "morning star", not as being the star, but as having had the illusion of being it. The same understanding is shown in Christian translations of the passage, which in English generally use "morning star" rather than treating the word as a proper name, "Lucifer". So too in other languages, such as French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish. Even the Vulgate text in Latin is printed with lower-case lucifer, not upper-case Lucifer.
John Calvin said: "The exposition of this passage, which some have given, as if it referred to Satan, has arisen from ignorance: for the context plainly shows these statements must be understood in reference to the king of the Babylonians." Martin Luther also considered it a gross error to refer this verse to the devil.
, illustration to Paradise Lost, book IX, 179–187: "... he held on /His midnight search, where soonest he might finde /The Serpent: him fast sleeping soon he found..."
Bogomilism
In the Bogomil and Cathar text Gospel of the secret supper, Lucifer is a glorified angel and the older brother of Jesus, but fell from heaven to establish his own kingdom and became the Demiurge. Therefore, he created the material world and trapped souls from heaven inside matter. Jesus descended to earth to free the captured souls. In contrast to mainstream Christianity, the cross was denounced as a symbol of Lucifer and his instrument in an attempt to kill Jesus.Latter-day Saints
Lucifer is regarded within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the pre-mortal name of the devil. Mormon theology teaches that in a heavenly council, Lucifer rebelled against the plan of God the Father and was subsequently cast out. The Church's scripture reads:"And this we saw also, and bear record, that an angel of God who was in authority in the presence of God, who rebelled against the Only Begotten Son whom the Father loved and who was in the bosom of the Father, was thrust down from the presence of God and the Son, and was called Perdition, for the heavens wept over him—he was Lucifer, a son of the morning. And we beheld, and lo, he is fallen! is fallen, even a son of the morning! And while we were yet in the Spirit, the Lord commanded us that we should write the vision; for we beheld Satan, that old serpent, even the devil, who rebelled against God, and sought to take the kingdom of our God and his Christ—Wherefore, he maketh war with the saints of God, and encompasseth them round about."After becoming Satan by his fall, Lucifer "goeth up and down, to and fro in the earth, seeking to destroy the souls of men". Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints consider Isaiah 14:12 to be referring to both the king of the Babylonians and the devil.
Uses unrelated to the notion of a fallen angel
Other instances of lucifer in the Old Testament pseudepigrapha are related to the "star" Venus, in the Sibylline Oracles battle of the constellations "Lucifer fought mounted on the back of Leo", or the entirely rewritten Christian version of the Greek Apocalypse of Ezra 4:32 which has a reference to Lucifer as Antichrist.is not the only place where the Vulgate uses the word lucifer. It uses the same word four more times, in contexts where it clearly has no reference to a fallen angel: , , and . Lucifer is not the only expression that the Vulgate uses to speak of the morning star: three times it uses stella matutina: , and and .
Indications that in Christian tradition the Latin word lucifer, unlike the English word, did not necessarily call a fallen angel to mind exist also outside the text of the Vulgate. Two bishops bore that name: Saint Lucifer of Cagliari, and Lucifer of Siena.
In Latin, the word is applied to John the Baptist and is used as a title of Jesus himself in several early Christian hymns. The morning hymn Lucis largitor splendide of Hilary contains the line: "Tu verus mundi lucifer". Some interpreted the mention of the morning star in Ambrose's hymn Aeterne rerum conditor as referring allegorically to Jesus and the mention of the cock, the herald of the day in the same hymn as referring to John the Baptist. Likewise, in the medieval hymn Christe qui lux es et dies, some manuscripts have the line "Lucifer lucem proferens".
The Latin word lucifer is also used of Jesus in the Easter Proclamation prayer to God regarding the paschal candle: Flammas eius lucifer matutinus inveniat: ille, inquam, lucifer, qui nescit occasum. Christus Filius tuus, qui, regressus ab inferis, humano generi serenus illuxit, et vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum. In the works of Latin grammarians, Lucifer, like Daniel, was discussed as an example of a personal name.
In occultism
Anthroposophy
'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.Luciferianism
is a belief structure that venerates the fundamental traits that are attributed to Lucifer. The custom, inspired by the teachings of Gnosticism, usually reveres Lucifer not as the devil, but as a savior, a guardian or instructing spirit or even the true god as opposed to Jehovah.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. 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.
In Freemasonry
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", instructing them that Lucifer was God, and was in opposition to the evil god Adonai. Taxil promoted a book by Diana Vaughan 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:Supporters of Freemasonry assert 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, the search for light; the very antithesis of dark. Pike says in Morals and Dogma, "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!" Much has been made of this quote.
Taxil's work and Pike's address continue to be quoted by anti-masonic groups.
In Devil-Worship in France, Arthur Edward Waite compared Taxil's work to today's tabloid journalism, replete with logical and factual inconsistencies.
In neopagan witchcraft
In a collection of folklore and magical practices supposedly collected in Italy by Charles Godfrey Leland and published in his Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, the figure of Lucifer is featured prominently as both the brother and consort of the goddess Diana, and father of Aradia, at the center of an alleged Italian witch-cult. In Leland's mythology, Diana pursued her brother Lucifer across the sky as a cat pursues a mouse. According to Leland, after dividing herself into light and darkness:Here, the motions of Diana and Lucifer once again mirror the celestial motions of the moon and Venus, respectively. Though Leland's Lucifer is based on the classical personification of the planet Venus, he also incorporates elements from Christian tradition, as in the following passage:
In the several modern Wiccan traditions based in part on Leland's work, the figure of Lucifer is usually either omitted or replaced as Diana's consort with either the Etruscan god Tagni, or Dianus.