Lucifer

In Roman folklore, Lucifer ("light-bringer" in Latin) was the name of the planet Venus, though he was often personified as a male figure bearing a torch.

It is visible both at dawn and sunset, and so properly has been called both Luciferus and Hesperus.The Latin poet Ovid, in his 1st-century epic Metamorphoses, describes Lucifer as ordering the heavens:[22] Aurora, watchful in the reddening dawn, threw wide her crimson doors and rose-filled halls; the Stellae took flight, in marshaled order set by Lucifer who left his station last.Ovid, speaking of Phosphorus and Hesperus (the Evening Star, the evening appearance of the planet Venus) as identical, makes him the father of Daedalion.

The Jewish Encyclopedia comments: The brilliancy of the morning star, which eclipses all other stars, but is not seen during the night, may easily have given rise to a myth such as was told of Ethana and Zu: he was led by his pride to strive for the highest seat among the star-gods on the northern mountain of the gods [...] but was hurled down by the supreme ruler of the Babylonian Olympus.

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.

[31][32] 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.

[37][38][39][40] The title "Hêlêl ben Šāḥar" refers to the planet Venus as the morning star, and that is how the Hebrew word is usually interpreted.

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!

[65] An association of Isaiah 14:12–18 with a personification of evil, called the devil, developed outside of mainstream Rabbinic Judaism in pseudepigrapha,[66] and later in Christian writings,[67] particularly with the apocalypses.

[75][76] Aquila of Sinope derives the word hêlêl, the Hebrew name for the morning star, from the verb yalal (to lament).

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 the devil.

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.

[82][83][84] Though Tertullian was a speaker of the language in which the word was created, "Lucifer" is not among the numerous names and phrases he used to describe the devil.

[85] Even at the time of Augustine of Hippo (354–430), a contemporary of the composition of the Vulgate, "Lucifer" had not yet become a common name for the devil.

[86] Augustine's work Civitas Dei (5th century) became the major opinion of Western demonology including in the Catholic Church.

[104][105] 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 Saint theology teaches that in a heavenly council, Lucifer rebelled against the plan of God the Father and was subsequently cast out.

"[109] 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.

The custom, inspired by the teachings of Gnosticism, usually reveres Lucifer not as the Devil, but as a savior, a guardian or instructing spirit[113] or even the true god as opposed to Jehovah.

[115] 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.

Taxil promoted a book by Diana Vaughan (actually written by himself, as he later confessed publicly)[116] 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.

[120] In Devil-Worship in France, Arthur Edward Waite compared Taxil's work to today's tabloid journalism, replete with logical and factual inconsistencies.

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.

[123] 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: Diana greatly loved her brother Lucifer, the god of the Sun and of the Moon, the god of Light (Splendor), who was so proud of his beauty, and who for his pride was driven from Paradise.

[121] Luciferi primo cum sidere frigida rura carpamus, dum mane novum, dum gramina canent ("Let us hasten, when first the Morning Star appears, to the cool pastures, while the day is new, while the grass is dewy")[14] Lucifer a Casia prospexit rupe diemque misit in Aegypton primo quoque sole calentem ("The morning-star looked forth from Mount Casius and sent the daylight over Egypt, where even sunrise is hot")[15] [...] vigil nitido patefecit ab ortu purpureas Aurora fores et plena rosarum atria: diffugiunt stellae, quarum agmina cogit Lucifer et caeli statione novissimus exit ("Aurora, awake in the glowing east, opens wide her bright doors, and her rose-filled courts.

The stars, whose ranks are shepherded by Lucifer the morning star, vanish, and he, last of all, leaves his station in the sky")[16] Et iam Mygdoniis elata cubilibus alto impulerat caelo gelidas Aurora tenebras, rorantes excussa comas multumque sequenti sole rubens; illi roseus per nubila seras aduertit flammas alienumque aethera tardo Lucifer exit equo, donec pater igneus orbem impleat atque ipsi radios uetet esse sorori ("And now Aurora rising from her Mygdonian couch had driven the cold darkness on from high in the heavens, shaking out her dewy hair, her face blushing red at the pursuing sun – from him roseate Lucifer averts his fires lingering in the clouds and with reluctant horse leaves the heavens no longer his, until the blazing father make full his orb and forbid even his sister her beams")[17][18]