Classical Mythological and Biblical Origins of ‘Lucifer’

“Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God, or the injunctions of men.” (John Stuart Mill, 1806-1873)

LUCIFER IN CLASSICAL LATIN WAS USED AS A TRANSLATION OF THE GREEK WORD, PHOSPHOROS (lit. “light-bearer”), a term for the morning star. It is first found in Varro and Cicero.

stella Veneris, quae Φωσφόρος Graece Lucifer Latine dicitur cum antegreditur solem, cum subsequitur autem Ἕσπερος (De Natura Deorum, 2.53

“The star of Venus, called in Greek Phosphoros (the light-bringer) and in Latin Lucifer when it precedes the sun, but when it follows it Hesperos.” (Phosphorus, Morning Star)

LUCIFER comes from the Latin lux (light) and ferre (to bear), and its corresponding Latin names are Luna and Vesper. Lucifer was transliterated from the Hebrew heylel, or helel (bright or brilliant one), because the King James Version was based on the Latin Vulgate of Jerome (Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus). The name only appears once in the Book of Isaiah (14:12) of the Tanakh.

ISAIAH 14.—Isaiah, as in 14:4 and 14:12-18, this clearly refers to a man, not an archangel, who the writer of Isaiah is jeering at, and which the term star in Hebrew figuratively refers to as monarch or king.

STELLA MATUTINA, HEYLEL, AND JESUS THE BRIGHT MORNING STAR.—Revelations 2:28 promises ὁ ἀστὴρ ὁ πρωϊνός in the original Greek, which comes to mean stella matutina, or morning star to those who persevere. Stella matutina cannot be a principle of evil incarnate in an archangel, if in Revelation 22:16, Jesus is made to call himself ὁ ἀστὴρ ὁ λαμπρὸς καὶ ὀρθρινός, “the bright morning star.”

The Jewish tradition and New Testament exhibit two fundamentally different conceptions of Satan, who in the former case is presented as an attorney (accuser) under (the will of) God. So, why is it still centuries later established to conflate Isaiah 14:12 and Luke 10:18, when it is said:

“He said to them, I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.”—Luke 10:18,

Or “…beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.”

“The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in Your name.” So He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will harm you…”—Luke 10:17-19.

Yet Jesus in REVELATIONS is made to say:

“It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”—Revelation 22:16.

“So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”—2 Peter 1:19.

It would read, “I am the root and the descendant of David, הֵילֵל lucifer”; and “until the day dawns and הֵילֵל lucifer rises in your hearts.” Jesus Christ is called הֵילֵל the morning-star. 2 Peter 1:19 and others describe Christ in a way that refers to old metaphysical conceptions, far more elaborated in other ancient and later schools than in the Christian theology.

So, we are to explain the myth of Christos and Lucifer as representing thus:

• Two dual-gods, or principles (as represented by the six-point triangle, or interlaced triangle): Christ (divine Lucifer) and the Lower Self (Infernal Lucifer)
• The “inner god” and the process of henosis (lit. “mystic union,” in a sense, the Yoga of the Greeks)

Regarding the demonization of the symbolic representation of serpents in antiquity, see Interpretations of Serpents  and Dragons in Theosophy and Ancient Mythology. This regards Revelation 12:9 when it states: “And the great dragon was hurled down—the ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

Here is the Exsultet chant in praise of the paschal candle in the Roman Rite, which calls Christ the Morning Star, using the Latin word, lucifer:

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.

May this flame be found still burning by the Morning Star: the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who, coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever.

In the English stanza of the Litany of Loreto, our Blessed Virgin Mary who is our modern Ishtar, Venus, Aphrodite, and Isis is invoked as “Stella matutina” (Morning Star):

Mary Immaculate, Star of the Morning,
Chosen before the creation began,
Destined to bring, through the Light of your Dawning,
Conquest of Satan, and rescue to Man.

LUCIFER IN ASTRO-THEOLOGY.—Astronomically, the planet Venus (lucifer) orbit lies between the orbit of Earth and the Sun (Christos, the Son). Venus never rises high in the sky at night, though outshining Jupiter and Saturn. In the mythology of the Canaanites, they thus have a story about Ashtar (Ishtar), who fails to take over the throne of Baal, or Bel, whose exoteric symbol is the Sun. In the Greek mythology of Ἓσπερος hesperos (the evening star) and Φωσφόρος eosphoros (lucifer or phosphoros), it was adopted from the Babylonians, as two principles of the same Great God. They also adopted the system of identifying them with the planets.

The development of the myth of Lucifer left a simple historical record. The Life of Adam and Eve (Vita Adami et Evae) called the Apocalypse of Moses is a Jewish pseudepigraphical work, and in it we find the legend that is shared in the Qur’an that Satan conveyed to Adam and Eve, that his fall is due to refusing to worship Adam. This is a misinterpretation rooted in drawing out ideas from Isaiah. The ideas of Apocalypse may also be traced to interpretations of conditions resulting in physiological and psychological pain during the despair of the Israelites. These ideas come from Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha texts. Further, also in the 17th century English poet, John Milton’s Paradise Lost we first encounter the equating of Lucifer’s fall with “pride,” identifying him as the first angel to “disobey” God.

The title morning-star was ascribed to the Roman Venus, or Virgin of the Sea and other Divine Mother goddesses, such as the Semitic Akkadian Ishtar (Hebrew. Ashtoreth; Gr. Astarte), and the Christian Holy Virgin, Mary.

Lucifer in the Greek is Eosphoros Εωσφορος or “bringer of dawn,” aside Hesperos Ἑσπερος “bringer of evening,” which Hesiod in his Theogony relates to the gods of planet Venus. Satan (in Luke 10:18) and Christos, the ‘Son of Man’ (in Matthew 24:27 and Luke 17:24) are both connected with lightning.

Christians, that connect every mention of the word light in Occult Philosophy, or the jargon of the Masons as a reference to evil, or demons are ignorant. The phenomena of lightning by the Hebrews was associated with the coming of the divine presence (שכינה shekinah). Theosophists teach, that all life is integrally part of the living Universe, where cosmic electro-magnetism is the corporeal vitality of the cosmic nous (Emanation and Fohat as the basis for the Electric Universe, Theosophy Forward).

“The truth is: light and life is God and Father, whence Man is begotten. If, therefore, you realize yourself as being from life and light and that you have been made out of them, you will return to life.” (The Corpus Hermeticum)

REBELLIOUS ANGELS AND THE GOD OF LIBERTY.—World mythologies retell the story of rebellious angels in many ways, and the theme is common, as in the Chinese myth of Sun Wukong during the Song dynasty (960–1279 C.E.).

In the case of Zeus or Jove, he is depicted in many ways. The pantheon of the Athenians was built to be a democracy where the gods shared their rule with its godhead, Zeus. However, in the Promethean myth, Zeus is the Olympian tyrant and autocrat. He rules madly, as tyrannical as his titan-father, Kronos (“Infinite Time”). Zeus creates mankind from clay, but leaving the creation unfinished, and without mind. Prometheus wanted to steal the sacred fire of Zeus, and infuse into the new creation life or animation, but just as in Genesis, the gods did not want their creation to possess this. For the crime of Prometheus stealing the fire, he is eternally punished to disembowelment of his insides on Mount Caucasus, whereby he is rejuvenated to repeatedly endure this suffering. Prometheus is thus seen as the father of humanity, or representing mankind, and a symbol of intellectual and individual liberty or REASON.

He is, or represents mankind caught in conflict between the two natures.

The myth of Lucifer is similar to this myth. Hence, it is explained, that Lucifer represents the mind-principle, and we suffer in our ignorance of its higher nature, or ignorance of God’s Wisdom (the Logos). It is also the mind, that saves us from that stagnation and brutish nature of our animal side. It is this simple understanding, which mainly underlies the very human sympathy for these literary characters. The idea of viewing the Jehovistic conception of God as a tyrant like Zeus, or a fiend is unthinkable to the ordinary believer, and one is likely to become discomforted by the idea and ignore it.

THE MYSTERY IN THE INTERLACED TRIANGLES.—According to this stance, Lucifer is not seen as an entity, or devil in the Christian sense of the belief. In Helena P. Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, Lucifer is identified with the Aether (Αἰθήρ) or Akasa in its highest aspect. It is termed the “Sidereal Light” (Paracelsus and the Medieval Alchemists), or the “Astral Light” (Eliphas Lévi) in its lower aspect, or the “lower dregs” of the Aether. This Aether (not quite the ether concept of 19th science) was called by Alchemists the Mysterium Magnum, or the Matrix of the Universe, “from which all that exists is born by differentiation” (The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2., pg. 511.). Mankind determines the reaction of the great magical agent, or “Sidereal Virgin,” H.P. Blavatsky wrote. Man causes the fall of the Celestial Virgin, but she — metaphorically speaking — is beneficent to all who stir her heart and soul, pg. 511 goes on to read, instead of attracting the shadowy side of her essence, called the “fatal (astral) light” by Eliphas Lévi, which “kills and destroys.” Sounding less like the nefarious “Luciferian” she is imagined to be, H.P.B. states that ‘Humanity can overpower and master its effects, only by living a Holy life, and producing good causes.’ Her slanderers do not seem to be producing good causes, except confusion and offence to people’s intelligence.

Blavatsky identified this principle light of nature with the sixth and seventh principles at once in her system, which is identified with the CHRISTOS (the seventh principle, or the non-dual Spirit). When it has been said, that the Logos is Satan, it is a reference to the operations of Matter, to centrifugal force, and “the double mode of Universal Motion.”

A SUMMATION OF POINTS AND FACTS ABOUT LUCIFER AND THE ORIGINS OF HIS MYTH.—Lucifer (Septuagint tr. of Helel ben Shaḥar) is an angel constructed and cobbled from older myths.

• There’s no Biblical basis for LUCIFER.
• Helel ben Shaḥar (הֵילֵל בֶּן-שָׁחַר) refers to Babylon’s king;
  • the Babylonian or Hebrew sidereal star-myth is similar to the Greek myth of Helio’s son, Phaéthōn.
• Prometheus, like Phaeton is the prototype for the many ideas, or sympathetic writings about a suffering Lucifer;
• Prometheus is an unjustly treated character in the world of his mythology; and leads man to the divine fire (consciousness and intelligence), endowing them with mind and reason.
  • Throughout history, this principle, the mind, liberty, and reason have been suppressed or obstructed more than it has been nurtured by those who rule (politically and religiously). The ‘doctrine of illumination’ and henosis (ἕνωσις), or any mention of light is often described as luciferianism, or traced back to a belief that the fall of the Angels and Lucifer was an actual event.
• Lucifer, helel or heylel is in the Greek, eosphoros; and Christ is identified with eosphoros;
• The “morning star” is the personification of Venus, and mythology splits its light into Hesperus (evening star) and Eosphorus (bearer of dawn);
• These gods can be traced back to the pre-Hesiodic Theogony;
• The great Virgin-Goddesses (Venus, Aphrodite, Astarte, Isis, &c) were also called “The Morning Star” — titles and attributes now transferred to the Virgin Mary, or Christian “Queen of Heaven.”