Lucifer – Bringer of the Dark Light?!

Lucifer in mythology

Greek

Completely far from an identification with evil, the Light-bringer appears very early on in the ancient Greeks under the name Phosphoros (“Lightbringer”), respectively Eosphoros (“Bringer of Dawn”). According to Hesiod, he is the son of Titan Eos and Titan Astraios (who also produced the four winds: Zephyr, Notos, Boreas and Euros), with his primary task as the Morning Star being to announce the day before his mother, the Dawn.

Since the orbit of the planet Venus – the personified and astronomical morning star – lies within the Earth, so that it is only visible in certain phases in the evening in the west and in the morning in the east, the Greeks initially considered it not identical to the Evening Star (Hesperos). Although this error is said to have been known in the 6th century BC, poetry in general always remained at the idea of two different stars.

To explore his characters a little deeper, let’s take a closer look at his mother: Eos, in the Roman equivalent of Aurora, originates from the pre-Hellenic gods under the leadership of Kronos and most likely has an Indo-European origin. After the “Theogonie” of Hesiod, she is the daughter of the titanic couple Hyperion and Theia, making her the sister of Helios the Sun God and Selene, the goddess of the moon and also of magic. Her various loves would most likely impose on her the stigma of a nymphomaniac, even that of a whore, among today’s, at least Western world views and moral conceptions. Because her – whose beauty is already praised above all by Homer – the infuriated Aphrodite, after an affair with the god of war Ares, infused an insatiable desire for young mortal men, she moved across the horizon in the morning to look for such. This was the reason why the sky blushed with her shame and she became the Greek goddess of dawn.

Apart from the fact that the polytheistic world of the Greeks never knew an absolute good or evil, Phosphoros was certainly never a destructive energy for them, for after all it was the light in the darkness of the night. An astronomical absence of its visible presence in the morning sky could only be a bad omen.

In addition, his name (which can also be translated as “the shining” ), his identification with the brightly shining star and the descent from his driven mother, with whom he formed a functional unit, are already expressed by the Hellenes to his beauty, which was often praised and repeatedly mentioned.

Roman

The literal translation of Phosphoros into Latin finally revealed in Roman mythology the name Lucifer, which is due to lux (light) and ferres (bring) and analogous to the Greeks, was also used as a poetic term for the morning star. In place of Eos, Aurora, the sister of the sun god Sol and the moon goddess Luna, was later equated with the Etruscan Thesan. Here, too, the angel, who has fallen according to Christian myths, takes absolutely no counterposition to the sun god.

Mainly Ovid is due to the tradition of the mounted Lucifer, who rides his horse across the sky. With Statius, he changes his white horse to another (whether it is a black one cannot be found out from the text) to proclaim the light of Luna at night – instead of the Greek Hesperus. The fact that he drives across the sky in a car is hard to find among the ancient authors, with a few exceptions.

Almost naturally, Lucifers relationship with the goddess of love Venus arises, because after all he was her star, and Hygin – referring to a job with Hesiod – said that she had argued with him about his beauty. In this context, of course, he almost inevitably has to act in the field of love, Virgil mentions him in this regard as the star, who is much loved by her. However, due to the mythological separation of astronomical Venus into a morning and evening star, there are some confusions in this area. After all, the lovers are more likely to yearn for the proclamation of the night, hence the Greek Hesperos.

Under no circumstances, however, should the influence of the mythological Venus with its attributes – it is equated with the Greek Aphrodite – be underestimated on my favorite angel. It certainly has a significant influence on the fact that he is often seen as a proud angel and regarded as the Lord of the arts. To what extent this relationship is a preeminent to his role as a seducer, I leave your imagination to your imagination.

Jewish – Christian

Isaiah 14, verse 12: How abruptly you fell from heaven, shining morning star! On the ground you are smashed, you conquerorof the peoples.

In the Old Testament, the “shining morning star” appears for the first time as Helal, which in the Greek septuaphlet turned into Eosophoros and in the Latin vulgate to Lucifer.

It is worth noting that in certain circles there seems to have been a confusion of figures from the Hellenic world of gods: while in the Greek mythology Pha’thon (the Radiant), in Ovid and Nonnos the son of the sun god Helios-Phoebus and the nymph Klymene, is brought from the sky by a lightning of Zeus, in the Bible one sets in the Bible Lucifer in place of the fallen. Perhaps this confusion was also contributed by the fact that in Hesiod the Attic heroes Kephalos and Eos are mentioned as parents of the Phaethon and ‘beam’ is an attribute of the morning star.

If you study the history of the Phaethon, it is likely that it was a transforming star or comet of the ages, which triggered a catastrophe on Earth (ev. meteorite impact). An equation with Phosphoros-Lucifer is in any case very doubtful for the reason, since the astronomical Venus did not fall from the sky.

How then did the bearer of light in Christianity become a personified evil? While some church scholars, following jewish tradition, regarded the corresponding passage of Isaiah as the mystified end of a King of Babylon, for example Origen, following the Greek myths and in the context of the emerging angelic doctrine of Christianity, claimed that Lucifer, as a heavenly spirit, plunged into the abyss after which he tried to equate himself with God according to the Fama.

These two negative identifications, the earthly overthrow of a pagan king as an allegory for the fall of the devil, just as Lucifer who rebels against his supposed master, now laid a foundation to discredit the mythical figure of the radiant morning star. This cleverly disposed of a pagan deity, which, as a carrier of light, was naturally a threat to the monotheistic Jehovah.

The Bible passage 28,14 of Ezekiel also exerted a decisive influence on the equating of the fallen angel with the bringer of light. Although the there described, shiny and shimmering cherub, was only the name for the beautiful and powerful, but quite human King of Tyre, one put his pride in relation to Helal / Eosophoros / Lucifer.

Through the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus says in verse 10, section 18, “I saw Satan fall from heaven like a lightning bolt,” the Fathers of the Church, at least those of official Christianity, finally put him on a level with their devil. Although the current notion that Lucifer should correspond to Satan is made up of various heterogeneous sources and is not really anchored in the Bible, it has largely prevailed in the early Middle Ages at the latest and has in fact become an ecclesiastical dogma.

What may seem a little weird at this point is the fact that Lucifer in the Roman Catholic liturgy originally stood for Jesus as a light-bringer, there are some passages in the Vulgata that Lucifer as the morning star absolutely does not put in the context with the devil and according to the John Revelation 22:16 even Jesus says:

“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you of this for the churches. I am the root and the family of David, the bright morning star.”

If you look at the history of Lucifer and his hubris in the Christian tradition cannot be denied that his rebellion – which was once god’s darling – bears a great resemblance to the Prometheus myth, which, in my view, does not really put Jehovah in a flattering light.

Because Zeus refused, according to Hesiod, because people were willing to offer him the best parts of the sacrificial animals, he refused to give them the fire. But Prometheus robbed him, and brought it to the earth hidden in a hollow pipe. After Plato, he robbed the fire of wisdom in the workshop of Hephaistos and Athena and placed the divine spark in the people recently created from clay. It was therefore the spiritual energy that inspired man.

So as Prometheus rises up against the deity to help man, Lucifer takes the same step to gain knowledge and independence, which, according to the conventional notion in Christianity, led to the following fall, which is described in the Apocalypse (12:7-9) as follows:

“And there arose a battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought, and his angels, and did not prevail, neither was their place found in heaven.

And the great dragon was cast out, the old serpent, which is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, and was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast there.”

Theosophical – Anthroposophical

According to Dr. Franz Hartmann, from 1896 to the “Theosophical Society in Germany”^[1], the light of Lucifer is that of understanding, as opposed to divine wisdom (Theosophia). He equates Christ with the sun, the divine mind freed from all self-being, where Lucifer corresponds to the moon, which embodies the acumen afflicted by the “I”, respectively the intellect. For him, the light of Lucifer is thus only the counter-appearance of the Chrestos principle (Diabolus est deus inversus), through which one cannot penetrate into the divine mysteries.

What distinguishes this thesis strongly from the view of the Christian official churches is the fact that the light bearer here is not per se regarded as evil, but represents a stage of development in the perfection of man, which must be overcome. For example, one should not renounce one’s own thinking and aspiration – which is assigned to him – but when the knowledge of the truth has occurred in man, one rises above it.

From this point of view, Lucifer may well have negative aspects, but it is necessary as a basis for the knowledge of the Divine. In his concise floor plan on the secret doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky, he writes: “The fall of Lucifer actually means the descent of the light bringer into matter, whereby matter alone can be illuminated and impermeated by spiritual consciousness. Without the fall of the angel there would be no redemption of man, without individualization in human forms no spiritual individuality.” ^[2]

In the anthroposophy of Rudolf Steiner, which he developed from thetheosophy^[3]because it was too strongly oriented towards eastern mysticism, Lucifer appears in the terrestrial human being in interaction with the Persian Ahriman. In giving people the knowledge of good and evil, he brought them individual freedom, but also seduced them to selfishness, which, among other things, made them vulnerable to the Ahriman power, the materialistic-technical mind. Through the expulsion from paradise initiated by him, this immersion into the outer, sensual world, he did not want to bind it to matter as much as it is now. The anthroposophists see true freedom in a healthy balance between the earth-volatile luciferian and earth-addicted Ahriman forces.

According to the AnthroWiki, the free knowledge base for anthroposophy, human culture would not exist without Lucifer, because science and art are a gift from him. In the basic essence, this idea thus runs quite in sync with that of theosophy, in the end it was simply extended by the outsourcing of the materialistic-technical mind into the form of the Ahriman. According to them, therefore, he is absolutely not harmless to his own development, after all, his light of knowledge likes to tempt the sensual, to the spiritual perception, and one does not get rid of arrogance, but he is at least acquitted of the responsibility to bind people to their one-sided, earthly entanglements of the technological world.

Although Steiner and his followers therefore see him as a seducer and adversary and recognize who wants to lead man into the sensual world of visions, illusions, ecstasy and noise, they see in him a positive action, if through him one can absorb the light of wisdom and the sense of beauty of those. At least in terms of artistic activities, he enjoys a very high value with them, to which Steiner also recognizes in his work the transition of man from nature to culture, he is for him the principle that leads the earth up to spirituality.

Lucifer in Art

Preliminary remark to this chapter: Even though I raised reasonable doubts in my previous, mythological explanations about the bearer of the ‘dark’ light that he was mutated into a fallen angel in the history of the Jewish-Christian cultural world and finally equated with the devil, I will make this distinction, since it has long since become an integral part of his being in the collective unconscious. , pay only very limited attention at this point.

General

Fidus, Lucifer Morgenstern, 1894

I am right to say – even if I am not really neutral in this respect – that there is no other figure in the history of mankind, apart from women, who exerts such a profoundly influential and creative influence on art as that of the legendary Lucifers. Whether it is in literature, in music or painting, those works which were created by the inspiration of him and his empire, usually exert a far greater fascination on man than, for example, the shallow saints of Christianity. Even in the ecclesiastical representations, his magic is usually much more interesting than that of those who, according to them, should actually be worshipped.

What are the causes of this circumstance, which is actually contrary to social thinking? Let us take a closer look at the matter: an important point in this regard certainly represents his often vaunted beauty, which has always accompanied him from his appearance as Phosphoros to the fallen angel (after all, as we know, he was the most radiant in the kingdom of heaven). If one places them in a context with his sweet, flattering qualities, which he embodies in the form of the seducer, and his affinity for visionary illuminism, the clairvoyant longing and the ecstatic intoxication, it seems absolutely not surprising and quite conclusive that he is among many persons the Lord of Arts. In contrast to the extremely indepleased Christianity, which consists mainly of anti-pleasure elements and has only a very bad eye for earthly beauty, its noble nature must almost inevitably stimulate the fantasies of an artist’s soul.

A fact that Lucifer is probably just as important as any other, which is more than any other for the individual freedom of the individual. In which he places knowledge above faith, does not blindly submit to an old tyrant for unconditional allegiance, he gives man a guide to approach himself to the mysteries of existence. He thus does not represent a dogmatic doctrine, which must not even be questioned, but calls for a clear picture of the actual existence of the Divine without fixed boundaries and ties. Creative art in all its forms and variations – we are not talking here about the numerous, degenerate effusions that nowadays are all too happy to adorn themselves with this etiquette – is always an attempt to explore the thing in a completely individual way and thus always luciferine in the basic essence.

If we follow this observation consistently, all that remains to be said is that even if no direct connection with the light bringer is established in an artistic object of representation, the product of a worldview of the interpreting, the work is an extract of its transcendental action. If it is then additionally enforces with its form in any way, it is predestined to lead the consumer into his deepest, emotional abysses, where knowledge beyond the corrupting, absorbing values and moral ideas of the common social structure becomes possible.

“Light is fabric, and darkness is pure spirit. Darkness in its inherent metaphysical basis is subjective and absolute light, but light in all its splendour and splendor is merely a multitude of shadows, and since it can never be eternal, just an illusion or Mayan.”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891)

The third decisive point for this circumstance is the closely intertwined nimbus of darkness, which in Christianity is all too often associated with evil. What is in the shadows and also carries the stigma of danger must almost inevitably attract the curiosity of the people.

As you know, the fear of the forbidden tastes far sweeter, its promise far more enticing than that bland diet legitimized by society. Even if the meager mind of our cultural system fights with all its power against this fact, the individual usually slanderes it, everyone dreams from time to time of exceeding the established limits in some way. Contrary to the supposed ratio, this is often done, to give just one example: a brothel certainly lives only in the fewest cases of those customers who are merely seeking sexual satisfaction, usually the drive to overcome the barrier of alleged sins exerts at least as great attraction.

Logically, this double standard often leads to very whimsical and almost pitiful excesses, but to me people who carry this spark of hidden rebellion against existing values are still far preferable to all those faithful-stupid pests who unreflectively accept and defend the imprints of their surroundings.

Another expression of this sparkling darkness is the widespread longing for death (although it is not always recognizable as such), which in this context is often mistakenly identified with Nirvana. If one seeks true knowledge, embarks on the crystallizing path to explore the dark light of Lucifer, one will inevitably come to the point where the nihilism of all ideological models becomes rampant and one looks into the eyes of the face of nothingness. Suddenly everything loses its importance, any formulated sense corresponds only to a cynical statement far away from a comprehensible basis. The fullness of life has then fallen into an absolute emptiness, for the intellect has now advanced to such an extent that all beliefs correspond only to the sarcastic mockery of a fool.

This is precisely where the danger lies for all those who are looking for true freedom. At this threshold, which may also be compared to the cabalistic Abyssus^[4], it will become apparent whether the individual can grasp the bearer of light as an enrichment for his existence, or whether he falls into a delusion.

If one becomes in this melancholy mood of absolute impotence, finally deciding that death as a representative of nothingness represents redemption, one believes in the sweet temptations which the hereafter whispers again and again in all secrecy, one will lose oneanother forever in the infinite expanses of the universe.

If, on the other hand, one takes the fear, in this situation one is afraid to go back on this threshold to go back on the path taken with full consequence and then once again comforts oneself with his old, fundamentally solar-oriented, hedonistic gimmicks, the bland taste of futility will remain latent in the background. What once possessed color is subjectively coated by an infinitely dreary blasphemy, which is then often overplayed with some addictive behavior.

If, however, one manages to regard death and nothingness as an integral part of everything, to marry with it without succumbing to it, in which one creates new values in this situation, which relate to oneself and are in the affirmative of life, one overcomes finiteness in actual transcendence and thus arrives at a completely independent point of view.

Only when you have reached this point – which in the basic essence corresponds to the superman of Nietzsche – will one be able to deal with magic in a serious way!

However, let us now come to the conclusion of my explanation in this regard, so as not to deviate too far from the core of the subject: Analogous to his work in our culture, these seductive qualities – including the transgressions that go with it – of the dark angel naturally repeatedly fascinate and inspire a large number of artists, and thus their admirers.

Personnel

As a figure, the satanic Lucifer possesses well over a thousand masks, it is not wrong to regard him as the master of transformation par excellence. Whether he appears to Giuseppe Tartini (1692-1770) in a dream to give music new possibilities and promote the composer’s fame, or in Salman Rushdie becomes an everyday person to illustrate the eternal struggle of good and evil, his character always occupies the position that serves the artist to illustrate his work. His being encompasses the full range of human sensations, which leads to the ability to easily transform from the pervasive villain to the keeper of the highest wisdom and enlightenment.

The medieval conception of Lucifer was strongly influenced by Thomas Aquinas, but also significantly influenced in the literature by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). In his “Divine Comedy”, there is sometimes a certain sympathy for the rebel, but even if he let church nods simmer in hellfire, his Christian-moral ideas are ultimately not very different from those represented by the religious establishment at the time.

Nearly three hundred and fifty years later, john Milton’s “Lost Paradise” comes at a time when the psychologization of evil and the individualization of man are bearing fruit. With him, the rebel,although he still bears the blame for the bad of this world, as a tragic figure who does not abandon her well-recognized goal, is literally stylized as a hero. His depiction of the horned in it is much more intense and stronger than that of God, but that in the course of the romanticization some glorify him as a satanist, because as example William Blake calling “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” an unconscious party-goer of the devil certainly doesn’t do justice to the cause.

Nevertheless, he can be seen as a trailblazer for those writers of the nineteenth century who have made it their mission to fully rehabilitate the supposedly evil through consciousness. In this respect, It is certainly worth mentioning Lord Byron and Charles Baudelaire, who created a morally superior being from the fascinating creature. Even if these two probably did not believe in a final victory of the adversary, or their principles embodied in it, they set with their cynical idealism a socially critical counterpoint to the traditional structures. According to Josef Dvorak, Blake’s work even opens up the wider hope: “… that the world cannot be limited to those closed schemes in which everything is decided from the outset, where neither search for arousal nor awakening is possible, where we have to follow the predetermined path, sleep and mix our breaths with the universal tick of the slumber.”^[5]

Let us now come to a figure that is difficult to escape in this context. I am talking about Mephistopheles, as Johann Wolfgang Goethe portrays him in his first part of Faust. When asked who he is, he answers Faust:

“Part of that power,

who always wants evil,

and always creates the good”

A little later he also says about himself:

“I am a part of the part that was everything at the beginning,

a part of the darkness that the light bore, …” ^[6]

Mephisto can therefore be regarded, as Huston Steward Chamberlain puts it in his work on Goethe, as a partial force of the luciferian creation complex, which, as a natural being, unwaveringly sees through all things to the bottom. In which he now seduces Faust to surrender in his quest for temptation and error, he brings him through self-knowledge to the face of God, who grants him grace and redemption. Consequently, for Goethe, as a complementary part of the good, evil is an indispensable and equal aspect of the Divine, which can be overcome and dissolved by love from above.

In many 19th-century stories the devil appears as a nobleman, in Dostoyevsky, for example, he appears as a mature gentleman with fine dresses and has long, dense hair and a slightly grey-melted pointed beard. Many also describe him as a skilled orator and skilled philosopher.

Poems are also often dedicated to the fallen angel, so Christian Morgenstern – an acquaintance of Rudolf Steiner – even lets him appear in one of his works as the impulse of a new creation:

So I bring evil to the apparition,
as a spirit of specialness and denial,
but new world creates my order of spirit.

The alchemist and anthroposophist Alexander von Bernus dedicates a written song to him in which he worships him as a prince and asks him to break away from Ahriman so that he does not steal the words of the poets.

Based on the literary narratives, the Diabolus appears in painting in very different forms and beings, the most common representation being formed in the 12th century. It is a completely hairy, human figure, with pointed ears and a long tail. The horns and claws (bucks or horse feet) that he carries there strongly indicate a spiritual kinship with Pan.

In the Middle Ages, his depictions were mainly used to intimidate the illiterate people, with the hell and devil scenarios of European panel painting between the 13th and 16th centuries characterized by a very great artistic willingness to experiment. In this context, it is certainly important to emphasize Hieronymus Bosch, whose “Garden of Lusts” is probably the most grotesquely fantastic climax of the man-eating Satan.

Through the artists of the Renaissance, the image of the stinking animal began to slowly change, the adversary now often appeared as a lovely satyr or gallant faun. Thus the devil, favored by the bizarrely exaggerated depictions of the Middle Ages, lost more and more his supernatural terror, he became increasingly humanized and the images of Satan and demons of the Church were continually restricted in favor of the saints and angels. In the end, it was mostly only used for depictions of the angelic fall and the Last Judgment, but also in this context it was not as fantastic as before.

Some of the most impressive and well-known paintings by Luciferwere made by the French painter and graphic artist Gustave Doré (1832-1883). His famous book illustrations range from the Bible, to Dante’s “Divina Commedia” to Milton’s “ParadiseLost”,where his almost inexhaustible imagination and his extremely effective play with light and shadow impress.

At the moment, I think HR Giger’s artistically refined depiction of Elipha’s Lévis Baphomet is worth mentioning, his modern interpretation of this syncretistic deity at the symbolic level of a very deep, philosophical understanding. Although it is not in a direct context to my darling, it is more like the old, horned fertility gods of past cultures, it is possible to establish a relationship to Lucifer without the Christian generalization of the devil’s image. For both, as Hermes Psychopompos says of himself in the alchemical Rosarium: “I bring forth the light, but darkness belongs to my nature.”

The habit of seeing the devil in music, which dates back to the Middle Ages, even the belief that Satan is hiding in the scale swelled for quite a long time. Joachim Schmidt writes: “The Triton, the interval f-h, was for a long time regarded by many music theorists as satanic, the saying‘Si contra fa est diabolus in musica’ (h against f is the devil in music) was valid for centuries. From the liturgical music of the Middle Ages this interval was completely banished; …”^[7]

For particularly gifted musicians, the language is often about having made a pact with the horned. For example, the violinist Nicco paganini^[8], supposedly a tall, hapless man whose eyes glowed with inner fire, who was able to elicit truly enchanting sounds from his violin that technically were far above the general level of the time, was simply known to his contemporaries as the devil violinist. This even led to the fact that after his death in 1840, for the time being, he was not buried in the consecrated earth of a cemetery for a long time.

Tommy Johnson, a leading musician of the Delta Blues, who was also known for his numerous affairs and heavy drinking, even claimed that he had sold his soul to the devil in order to play the blues properly.

He influenced various musical works mainly in the form of Goethe’s Mephistopheles, which was used by Franz Liszt, Hector Berlioz, Charles Francois Gounod and Arrigo Boito, among others.

Furthermore, many rock bands express a certain affection for the dark rebel, which can range from a playful worship to absolute glorification, the latter in most cases only fulfilling the task of a provocative PR image. From the “Symphaty for the Devil” of the legendary Rolling Stones, to Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden with their cult song “The Number of the Beast”to the often extremely bloodthirsty black metal, he has captured a very large part of the rock genre for himself. For a large number of Christian fundamentalists, this kind of music is still synonymous with the devil even today.

Of course, the film also discovered the fallen angel quite quickly, shortly after the medium was created, George Milet already made a strip with the title: “Castle of the Devil.”

A classic of the horror genre, whose remake of the film was aptly filmed on 06.06.06 in cinemas and whose story was supposedly accompanied by numerous eerie events, is “The Omen” by the American director Richard Donner.

It is about a child, which is exchanged by Robert Thorn after the sudden death of her newborn, without the knowledge of his wife. After the family moved to London, where Robert now works as an ambassador to the United States, some mysterious incidents occur around the young Damien. At his birthday party, for example, the nanny strangles himself, whereupon a priest tries in vain to explain to Mr. Thorn that his son is the personification of the Antichrist. It was not until much later, not least because of the tragic death of his wife, that he overcomes his skepticism by discovering the number 666 at the back of the boy’s head. When he then stabs him in a church with seven daggers in order to stop his further action, he is shot by police officers. The final shot shows Damien holding the First Lady’s hand after his parents’ state funeral and smiling backwards into the camera.

In addition to the 2006 remake, there are three sequels to this film, none of which was able to build on the great success of the original.

In the underground, the film “Lucifer Rising” by Kenneth Anger^[9], whose filming was interrupted several times, was particularly impressive with the subject. On one occasion, it could not be completed because the lead actor Bobby Beausoleil, a member of the “Manson Family”, was imprisoned for murder. The next attempt, with Marianne Faithfull in the role of Lilith, failed due to the collaboration with Jimmy Page, who was supposed to contribute the soundtrack. In the final, revised 1980 version, Bobby – who plays the music in prison – takes over this part.

The consistently cultish film impresses with an ominously roaring sound, an avant-garde, iconographically extremely high-pitched cut, in which various myths are mixed with impressive natural events and magical-ritual actions in symbolic places. At the end of the day, it’s about summoning Lucifer as the “Bringer of Light.”

“The Nine Gates” by Roman Polanski is a 1999 film adaptation of Arturo Pérez-Reverte’s novel “The Club Dumas”. Although Polanski probably did not take the occult content of the story too seriously, he remains extremely interesting.

Dean Corso, a specialist in ancient books, is commissioned by Boris Balkan to verify the authenticity of a book of which only three editions exist. During his research, mysterious things happen, among other things, a girl with green eyes constantly appears and is told that the author of this writing, which bears the title “The Nine Gates into the Realm of Shadows”, personally collaborated with Lucifer.

When comparing the three books, he finds that the nine woodcuts contained therein differ according to a certain pattern, three of which are each marked with the abbreviation LCF. Balkan sees a way to summon the fallen angel, but by chance Corso senses him at the place where he stages this ceremony and witnesses his failure. Finally, after an ecstatic union in front of the Chateau de Puivert, the mysterious girl gives him^[10], where the Luciferinvocation of Boris took place, the last, decisive clue to open the ninth gate.

Lucifer in (Saturn) magic

“That is why esotericism teaches, the demiurg of Saturn stands at the beginning of the Kausa lives as guardians of the threshold. It can only be passed if it has been recognized in order to enter higher-lying luciferian light worlds that lie in Uranian spheres. Only then do man drop all previous karmic burdens and he is redeemed from the hell of earthly existence. Saturn lowers the torch of death, but at the same time it shines up as the great light-bringer, the angel beyond the gate, who always stood on the right side of God, as the purely esoteric mysticism teaches, despite the Son who was to bring salvation and to whom his mission has failed. Only in this way can one interpret as a knowing person the forgiving smile that plays around the mouth of the great angel. Then Lucifer shines as the morning star for a new era of humanity, in which the dullness of the mass has given way to high insights that lie beyond the usual religious teachings.”

Fra. Protagoras^[11]

Due to the fact that Lucifers view differs greatly in magic, like his multifaceted history, I will only deal here with those aspects of him that can be reconciled with our point of view in order to simplification of the almost infinite amount of material. A striking perspective as an adversary to the generally common image of God of Christians will only find room for this in so far as my remarks in the end automatically speak out against that through the philosophical discussions contained therein. Thus, in the light of the great demiurge, my contemplation goes far beyond the scheme of good and evil that is constantly used in this regard, it is simply not oriented towards the associations which the broad masses have in relation to him, or per se is beyond duality.

In contrast to Lucifers widespread association with Venus, the FS identified it in its complete astral and planetary cosmology as the higher octave of Saturn, whose light worlds lie in Uranian spheres.^[12] Gregorius wrote of him: “Lucifer as the morning star – as the painter Fidus so wonderfully drew him, is not only the fallen great angel Lucifer, but also the brother of Christ. Saturn at its highest octave is embodied deepest knowledge of maturity through suffering. Redemption also stands behind his dark gates.”^[13]

Let us therefore first consider the following theory, which was significantly influenced by our founding members: Astrophysically, the alleged separation of planetary mass of the sun, the apostasy of light into infinite space, is equated with the fall of Lucifer in the old FS literature. Saturn as the custodian of the threshold, which stands for the boundary of space and time, thus forms a duality with the Sun that determines the earthly existence. In the higher saturnian octave, standing beyond the threshold, Lucifer thus becomes the ruler of the outer spheres.

As one might now mistakenly assume, the former FS regarded the dark angel – despite the millions of years old struggle between these two planets – in essence not as an adversary of the Chrestos principle, but as the mystical mystery of the sun, which is considered to be the sacred primal fire. In the cosmosophical assumption^[14]That the planets will merge again, Gregorius wrote: “But if Saturn will return to the Sun, if both circle lonely in the sky as a giant double star that has absorbed all the other planets, Sat – is reconnected with Christ, the end of our cosmos is again near. Saturn is probably the stronger. This dark angel in its atomistic structure, as far as its innermost nucleus is concerned, is far denser and more compact than the sunbody (lead and gold), so that at the end of the planet’s evolution Saturn is probably swallowed up by the sun, but then as a purified, liberated and redeemed principle the sun dominates and redeems.”^[15] Thus, it represents the most essential arcane, which independently blasts the egocentric power of the solar demiurge in order to free man from his patronage by the gods.

This reflects, among other things, certain ideas of the late antiquity Ophites, who recognized the actual Redeemer in the serpent of paradise. With them, it was regarded – at least in part – as the real light-bringer, because it brought man the knowledge of good and evil in order to make him the highest authority of all being, of all ethics and of all morality. In this myth, the evil demiurg “Ialdabaoth” (a corruption of the Old Testament “Jehovah”) defeated the actual bearer of light, the blind faith in a monotheistic God triumphed over the gnostic knowledge, but as we all know, is not yet all evening. Today’s rationalism and materialism of the Western world, however limited, misguided and nonsensical it may be in its quest for total demystification, is in any case in any case – in which he regards man as the supreme authority – substantially closer to the teachings of occultism, to the deification of the individual, as to the theistic world view which wants to force everything under a creator god addicted to domination. Why this does not manifest itself in practice, or only very destructively, is written on another sheet.

In simple terms, we can state the following: Following the saturnian doctrine, there are two principles that can be followed on the path to salvation. On the one hand, the Chrestos principle of the Sun, which demands uncontradictory obedience and total submission in order to dissolve completely in the divine light of the Great One. The Lucifer principle, on the other hand, which hides behind the darkness of Saturn, calls on people to take responsibility for their own existence so that they can recognize their own divinity. Mstr. . Scorpio. described this in one of his texts as follows: “Lucifer was the most beautiful of the angels. And he was the darling of God. Until one day he smashed his ‘Non serviam!’ at him, his final refusal of obedience. The fall of Lucifer was in fact a resignation, a dismissal. With a single act of rebellion, he exposed the patterns of domination of the supposedly benevolent creation of the father – there was no place for rebellion in it, paradise could exist only through submission, by adapting its inhabitants to a ‘happiness’ which, in Lucifer’s eyes, could only be a matte reflection of what was possible for the ‘creation’ – which he now recognized as ‘uncreated’. The creation of a God had already set the course, which at all times determined the direction in which the “creation” was to go towards its sack stations: the dominion of power over powerlessness, of the strong over the weak, of proteins over the silicates.”^[16]

Another aspect of his magical existence is his connection to the fabled number 666, which is referred to as the beast in the “Revelation of Johhannes”. The number is reflected in the magic square of the sun, in which one calculates the total number of its 36 fields (1 + 2 + 3 + … + 36 = 666). This demon is called Svrt. = Sorat. This beast is confronted by the lamb, the book with the seven seals, for which Fra. .˙.Protagoras.˙. writes: “These seven seals point to the content, to the knowledge hidden in the book, to Saturn, the Lord of the eighth sphere, who rules over the seventh sphere of Venus. The eighth sphere has the symbol of the Lemniscate, the symbol of the beginning and the end.”^[17]

Thus Saturn becomes a serpent that encomers the tree of knowledge in paradise, the Kundalini that must be awakened. The 36 fields of the solar square form the 9 fields of the Saturn square in the cross sum, from which the 666 can be constructed four times. By the way, 4 x 9 shows again the relationship with the sun.

In the preceding illustration, we can therefore see the “Ouroboros” snake biting its tail as it wraps around the dragon hidden in Saturn’s square. A brother writes: “It encloses the place, the labyrinth, the great-greis Aion, which is living in a deep cave and which is also called Kronos and Saturnus”.^[18]

It follows that with Lucifer, a part of the divine light fell from the sun in order to unite with the darkness, which was everything at the beginning. Because he is aware that all light is created in the darkness, he becomes the guardian of the dark light, which is master of life and death.

He thus conceals the knowledge of the existing creation, but does not accept the prescribed paths and therefore works in secret to overcome this impotent circumstance of restriction. As the mystical brother of the sun, he carries within him his secret in order to give birth to her in a refined form that stands beyond duality. It can thus be regarded as the inner essence of the sun, which gives man the possibility of emancipating himself from the enslaved Genesis.

Consequently, as I have already discussed sufficiently, Lucifer is in our context a symbolic figure which conceals the knowledge, respectively the knowledge of death and nothingness. In our understanding, he leads the individual without pity to penetrate all illusions and veils with a razor-sharp mind, analogous to Goethe’s fist, always to explore the original ground of all things. Without respect for beloved amenities, he forces the inclined being, through his bitter instrument of recurrent deception in a crystallizing process, to attain maturity to grasp the origin of being, the “prima materia”.

Only when this step, the alchemical blackness (nigredo) is completed as a psychic process in man, will it succeed in the original magic – as we define it^[19] – to approximate. Thus, as a spiritual principle, he assumes the role of a spiritual leader, who brings the individual to the threshold of the causal structure, behind which the magical work actually begins!

^[1] The “TGiD” was created as a branch of Katherine Tingley’s Theosophical Society.

^[2] Frick, Karl R. H.: Light and Darkness, Occult Secret Societies until the turn of the 20th century. Volume II: History of their teachings, rituals and organizations. Wiesbaden 2005, p. 286.

^[3] R. Steiner was General Secretary of the “Adyar-TG” from 1902 to 1913.

^[4] Metaphysically, the Abyssus is the abyss between the phenomenon and the noumenone; the unreal and the real. Grant, Kenneth: Revival of the Magick. Berlin 1997, p. 237.

^[5] Dvorak, Joseph: Satanism, Black Rituals, Devil’s Madness and Exorcism, History and Present. Munich 2000, p. 327.

^[6] Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: Faust, Der Tragödie First and Second Part. Frankfurt a.M. 1998, p. 56 + 57.

^[7] Schmidt, Joachim: Satanism, Myth and Reality. Marburg 2003, p. 226.

^[8]The violin has always been regarded as a diabolical instrument.

^[9] Anger is a follower of Aleister Crowley and a member of the Caliphats O.T.O.

^[10] A Cathar castle from the 12th century. Further explanations can be found in the SaturnRunen Vol. II, No. 9 / Spring 2007, in the article: “The Nine Gates to the Realm of Shadows” by Frater Karl.

^[11] Fra. .˙.Protagoras.˙.: Leaves for applied occult art of life, Saturn = Light-carrier – Guardian of the Threshold – Karma Planet. Berlin, November/December 1962.

^[12] In classical astrology, Saturn ruled Capricorn and Aquarius. Today Uranus is granted dominion over Aquarius, but here we see the close connection between Saturn and Uranus. I myself believe – what is congruent to the old lodge doctrin – is that Saturn covers the personal aspects of the Aquarius and Uranus is responsible for the collective ones.

^[13] Gregorius, Gregor A.: Leaves for Applied Occult Art of Life, The Divine Negative Principle. Berlin, March 1954.

^[14] Gregorius, Gregor A.: Leaves for Applied Occult Art of Life, The System of Planetary Spheres. Berlin, September 1951.

^[15] Gregorius, Gregor A.: Leaves for applied occult art of life, About the Guardian of the Threshold. Berlin, March 1954.

^[16] Frater V. D. A.: Magic or the unfinished legend of the magician Lucifer, published in the “Course of Practical Magic”, Module II – Issue 11.

^[17] Fra. .˙.Protagoras.˙.: Leaves for applied occult art of life, Saturn = Light-carrier – Guardian of the Threshold – Karma Planet. Berlin, November/December 1962.

^[18] Fra. .˙.Karl: SaturnRunen Vol. II / No. 9, The Nine Gates to the Realm of Shadows. Hamburg, Spring 2007.

^[19] In the seemingly paradoxical sense of impossible things do, as Mstr. .˙.Thot.˙. in the following treatise: The Art of the Impossible. Essay, Archive of the Fraternitas Saturni, Berlin 2000.