7/22/2014

A LUCID LOOK AT
LUCIFER
By Dr. Harrell Rhome

This article originally appeared in Special Issue #10 (“Unexplained Mysteries

and the Paranormal”) of NEW DAWN magazine, Melbourne, Australia.
http://newdawnmagazine.com.au/

With the exception of illustrations this is Copyright ©2010 All Rights Reserved.

The Fallen Angel by Gustave Dore, one of his illustrations for Milton’s Paradise
Lost.

LUCIFER IN THE BIBLE.

We have to literarily, philosophically and theologically deconstruct

certain concepts before we can really understand them. This is a
process where we look beneath and beyond the commonly assumed
folklore. Some readers may think Lucifer is a clearly designated
biblical character, the same figure as Satan. Lucifer is the Fallen
Angel in the Bible, in the Book of Genesis. Right? Of course, the
answer is no on all counts. Surprisingly, the word Lucifer appears
only once in the Bible in Isaiah 14:12, translating the Hebrew word
helel meaning shining one. In the Greek Septuagint translation, it

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was rendered as heosphoros (Ηωσφόρος) or light-bearer. This word

comes from Hesperus, a Greek goddess of the dawn. When the
Romans took over the Christian scriptures in the 300s, Jerome
translated helel and heosphoros as Lucifer in his Latin Vulgate
Bible. Whether in old Hebrew, Greek or Latin, the word was the
common name for Venus, the brightest planet, the Morning Star, the
Light-Bearer, the Day Star. So in the real meaning of Isaiah 14:12,
Lucifer merely describes the vainglorious image that the arrogant
King of Babylon would seek to affect.
S o m e Protestant translations from John Wycliffe and others
followed the Vulgate. But the respected Protestant biblical exegete
Matthew Henry (Matthew Henry’s Commentary, 1721) says
nothing about Lucifer being Satan, focusing on the real meaning of
the text, which has to do with the nation of Babylon and its rulers
who oppressed the Old Testament Hebrews. It goes without saying
that a simple Internet search will bring up mountains of material to
the contrary, supporting the “traditional” view that Lucifer is the
fallen angel, the Devil, the same as the Satan cited in Luke 10:18.
But in truth, the very same term, Day Star, is also applied to the
Christ himself in II Peter 1:19, Revelation 22:16, and in the ancient
Latin Easter hymn, the Exultet. In an interesting coincidence, an
early Christian theologian and bishop back in the 300s was named
Lucifer, so it was obviously not a negative name back then. What’s
more, I’m pretty sure Jerome would have known of him since they
w e r e contemporaries in the early Church. In some ways, the
personification of Lucifer as Satan is crucial to certain versions of
Christianity. Otherwise, if the so-called Fall of Lucifer does not
account for the origin of Satan, then the Old Testament is silent on
the matter. Regardless of that, only a few Bible versions follow
Jerome’s translation. Early Protestants differed. The English King
James version used Lucifer, but Martin Luther’s German translation
did not. When Luther was in seminary, he studied the Vulgate, so he
purposefully differed from Jerome by not using Lucifer. We begin
with the King James Version,

"How art thou fallen from heaven O Lucifer, son of the

morning? How are thou cut down to the ground which didst
weaken the nations!” Isaiah 14:12, KJV.
“Quomodo cecidisti de caelo Lucifer, qui mane oriebaris
corruisti in terram qui vulnerabas gentes?” Jerome’s Latin
Vulgate.
“O Lucifer who didst rise in the morning! How art thou fallen to
the earth, that didst wound the nations!” Douay Rheims
English translation of the Vulgate.
“Du schöner Morgenstern.” (You beautiful morning star.)
Luther Bible.
“O morning star, son of the dawn!” New International.
“O Day Star, son of the morning.” Revised Standard.
“Bright morning star.” New Revised Standard.
"O Day Star, son of Dawn!” New English Bible.
"O star of the morning, son of the dawn! New American
Standard.
Lucifer or Dawn or Venus is also a figure in ancient Canaanite
mythology, having nothing to do with Satan or evil beings.

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“The dwelling of the gods and the riding of the clouds are
both known to us from the Ras Shamra texts at Ugarit in N.
Syria, and so too is Dawn a deity, of whom this figure is
described as a son. The most high is Elyon, the title so often
used of God…. All these elements may be paralleled in the
Old Testament, suggesting how richly Canaanite religion and
mythology have influenced Old Testament thought.”
Interpreters One Volume Commentary of the Bible, 1971.
Old and new reference sources tell us more.
“Lucifer Isa. 14:12. This word, signifying light bearer, occurs
but once in our Bible, and then applies to the king of Babylon
to indicate his glory as a morning star, or figuratively, a son of
the morning. Tertullian and some others suppose the passage
to relate to the fall of Satan; and hence the term is usually
applied in that way; though, as it seems, without specific
warrant.” The Union Bible Dictionary, 1842
“Its application, from St. Jerome downwards, to Satan in his
fall from heaven, arises probably from the fact that the
Babylonian Empire is in scripture represented as the type of
tyrannical and self-idolizing power, and especially connected
with the empire of the Evil One in the Apocalypse.” Smith’s
Bible Dictionary, 1884.
“In spite of this rendering, the proper name ‘Lucifer’ is not in
the original Hebrew text. In Hebrew ‘Lucifer, son of the
morning’ is helel ben shachar. It could be translated ‘shining
one, son of the dawn.’ It is not a proper name, but an epithet
for the king of Babylon.” Bryan Knowles, Who Is Lucifer?
http://www.godward.org, 2009.
Hence, Jerome’s use of Lucifer as a capitalized proper name
is not correct. The Roman Church concocted the Lucifer-as-
Satan myth after they took over emergent Christianity in the
early 300s, as evidenced by references to both Tertullian and
Jerome. If Lucifer is so important, why is nothing else ever
said? Light Bearer, Morning Star; nothing negative about that.
Lucifer not only does not mean anything negative, as a matter
of fact, it doesn’t really seem to mean anything at all, biblically
speaking. Out of the over 800,000 words in the Bible and the
Apocrypha, Lucifer appears once, and then in an ambiguous
reference. Whatever it may mean to certain Christian sects,
theosophical and metaphysical groups, or secret societies, as
you can clearly see, does not come from the Bible!

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THE PAGAN ORIGINS OF SATAN.

Satan (Hebrew ‫ הָׂשָטן‬ha-Satan; in Arabic Shaitan) translates
as adversary or accuser. In all three Semitic religions, Satan
refers to the opposite of the good god, or the so-called Devil.
This is, of course, a direct transplant from Persian
Zoroastrianism into the ancient Hebrew religion then into the
Talmud, Kabala, the New Testament and lastly into the
Koran. Zoroastrianism poses two gods, one responsible for
good and another responsible for evil. The polyglot god
traditions found in Genesis reflect this Persian pagan
influence. For some, the image and persona of the Satan is
quite fascinating, indeed, perhaps even noble. As readers of
English literature know, John Milton addressed this theme in
his famous 1667 poetic magnum opus, Paradise Lost.
Consider the following hypothesis, based on the multiple
Semitic deities portrayed in Genesis.
“El in Egyptian is also the Child, who in the early Sabean age,
was Sut, the planetary type, Saturn. Later El was transformed
into Satan, whom Job introduces as one of the sons of god.
Satan was accounted a son and an Angel of God by all
Semitic nations. The learned Kabalist, Eliphas Levi, speaks of
Satan thus: It is the angel who is proud enough to believe
himself god; proud enough to buy his independence at the
price of eternal suffering and torture; beautiful enough to have
adored himself in full divine light; strong enough to reign in
darkness amidst agony, and to have built himself a throne on
his inextinguishable fire.’ He further says that the true name of
Satan is that of Jehovah reversed, for Satan is not a black
god but the negation of Deity.
The Devil of the early Christians, with horns, hoofs and tail

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was introduced from Babylon through the Jewish Talmud. The

Christian religion transforms Satan into an enemy of God,
whereas in reality by Satan the highest divine spirit or Occult
Wisdom on earth is meant.” E. Valentia Straiton, Celestial
Ship of the North.
Levi also says Lucifer is the Holy Spirit.
“What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the
name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil, The
intellectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the
Paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the
great agent of universal magnetism. To personify evil and
exalt it into an intelligence which is the rival of God, into a
being which can understand but love no more - this is a
monstrous fiction. To believe that God permits this evil
intelligence to deceive and destroy his feeble creatures is to
make God more wicked than the devil. By depriving the devil
of the possibility of love and repentance, God forces him to do
evil. Moreover a spirit of error and falsehood can only be a
folly which thinks, nor does it deserve indeed the name of
spirit. The devil is God’s antithesis, and if we define God as
He who is we must define His opposite as he who is not.”
Eliphas Levi, The Mysteries of Magic.
“The Yahwists and Elohists reflected a very early stage of the
Israelite religion. This is when it was still essentially a
nature/fertility much the same as as the other pagan religions
of the same time and region. It contained things like angels (in
the text called Elohim), talking animals, dreams, and the idea
of an anthropomorphic deity. This deity brought forth both
good and evil as any anthropomorphic deity does. There was
no Satan to bring the natural disasters. It was God. It was God
also when (he was) displeased with someone simply
‘removed’ him by taking his life. So it was necessary to
propitiate and worship this deity in order not to anger him in
any way. It was later, after the Babylonian ‘captivity’, that this
God became patient, just, and merciful, just like [the
Zoroastrian good god called] Ahura Mazda.” Alexander S.
Holub, The Gospel Truth, the Heresy of History, 2004.
So then, when we deconstruct the words, symbols and
images, it turns out that Lucifer-Satan-Devil, the source of all
evil, is originally neither a Hebrew, Christian nor a Muslim
concept, springing directly from much earlier Persian pagan
roots. Naturally, all this biblical revisionism is not popular with
t h e priests and preachers. If they couldn’t scare you with
Lucifer, the Devil and visions of burning with Satan in Hell,
there might be fewer donations. We can’t have that!
LUCIFER IN THEOSOPHY AND SECRET SOCIETIES.
Now that we understand more about the real origins of the
word as misused in the Vulgate Bible, we see that various
metaphysical groups, Illuminati orders and secret societies
essentially created their own deity centered on the image of
Lucifer as Light Bearer. Madame Blavatsky, like Eliphas Levi,
said the Holy Spirit and Lucifer are the same entity.
“Lucifer represents, Life, Thought, Progress, Civilization,
Liberty, Independence; Lucifer is the Logos, the Serpent, the
Savior. …

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It is Satan who is the God of our planet and the only God. …
The Celestial Virgin which thus becomes the Mother of Gods
and Devils at one and the same time; for she is the ever-
loving beneficent Deity but in antiquity and reality Lucifer or
Luciferius is the name. Lucifer is divine and terrestial Light,
'the Holy Ghost' and ‘Satan' at one and the same time.”
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 1888.
Moving beyond this, the magical rituals of some Illuminati
secret societies seem sinister and evil. A lot of commentary is
not needed; the quotations speak clearly. For those wanting
to explore beyond this, all the sources cited, and lots more,
are not hard to find. Neither have we dealt with the myriad of
modern belief systems called Satanism, yet another complex
and diverse topic, but that will have to be at another time. But
right now, just read on and see what the secret initiatic orders
and their high adepts have to say about their
god/demigod/demon-god/holy spirit.
"First Conjuration Addressed to Emperor Lucifer: Emperor
Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I adjure thee
to leave thine abode, in what-ever quarter of the world it may
be situated and come hither to communicate with me. I
command and I conjure thee in the Name of the Mighty Living
God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to appear...." Arthur E.
Waite, Book of Black Magic, 1913.
"I hereby promise the Great Spirit Lucifuge, Prince of Demons,
that each year I will bring unto him a human soul to do with as
it may please him, and in return Lucifuge promises to bestow
upon me the treasures of the earth and fulfill my every desire
for the length of my natural life. If I fail to bring him each year
the offering specified above, then my own soul shall be forfeit
to him. Signed.... Invocant signs pact with his own blood."
Manly P. Hall, 33 rd Degree Freemason, The Secret Teaching
Of All Ages, 1978.
“When The Mason learns that the Key to the warrior on the
block is the proper application of the dynamo of living power,
he has learned the Mystery of his Craft. The seething
energies of Lucifer are in his hands and before he may step
onward and upward, he must prove his ability to properly
apply this energy.” Manly P. Hall, Lost Keys of Freemasonry,
2006.
“That which we must say to a crowd is - We worship a God,
but it is the God that one adores without superstition. To you,
Sovereign Grand Inspectors General, we say this, that you
may repeat it to the Brethren of the 32nd, 31st, and 30th
degrees – The Masonic Religion should be, by all of us
initiates of the high degrees, maintained in the purity of the
Luciferian Doctrine. If Lucifer were not God, would Adonay
whose deeds prove his cruelty, perfidy and hatred of man,
barbarism and repulsion for science, would Adonay and his
priests, calumniate him? Yes, Lucifer is God, and
unfortunately Adonay is also god.”
“For the eternal law is that there is no light without shade, no
beauty without ugliness, no white without black, for the
absolute can only exist as two gods: darkness being
necessary to the statue, and the brake to the locomotive.

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Thus, the doctrine of Satanism is a heresy; and the true and

pure philosophical religion is the belief in Lucifer, the equal of
Adonay; but Lucifer, God of Light and God of Good, is
struggling for humanity against Adonay, the God of Darkness
and Evil.” …
“Lucifer, the Light-bearer! Strange and mysterious name to
give to the Spirit of Darkness! Lucifer, the son of the morning!
Is it he who bears the Light, and with it's splendors intolerable
blinds feeble, sensual or selfish Souls? Doubt it not!” Albert
Pike, 33rd Degree Freemason, Morals and Dogma, 1871.
LUCIFER IN SUMMARY.
Several conclusions present themselves. Firstly, the Lucifer of
the Bible is but a minor character at best, mentioned only
once, not really standing out or signifying much of anything.
The real character portrayed in the Isaiah text is an arrogant
Babylonian monarch who oppressed the Hebrew people.
Secondly, the mystical interpretations about Lucifer as Satan
were added by Kabalistic rabbis, Catholic priests, Islamic
mullahs, and Protestant preachers, all with clearly vested self-
interests. Thirdly, various occult philosophers and
metaphysicians explored and enlarged the Lucifer persona
and paradigm, creating an odd godlike figure.
Lastly, on the outer fringes of this magic and mysticism are
the secret societies and Illuminati initiatic orders, especially
Freemasons of one kind or another. Remember, there are
secret lodges, degrees and covert rituals, unknown outside
the upper level adepts of the Illuminati orders. Their peculiar
Luciferian doctrines and dogma always have had and still do
have a significant impact on world history and geopolitical
affairs. Not so much because of the rituals themselves, but
because of the people who practice this strange cultic
religion. Like any belief system, its basic teachings, its morals
and values color the decisions made by the truly devoted
believers. Certain ones are in very high positions in the
government, the churches and the social order.
I hope some of you will continue your explorations into the
occult underground and its impact on the world around us. If
my deconstruction of the Lucifer legends and lore has been a
literary Light Bearer, then let it be!
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