Being a True History of the Light-Bringer and the Name of the Adversary
I've been prompted to explain how the title 'Lucifer', meaning 'light-bearer' in Latin
, came to refer to the Tempter
form of Satan
. I shall attempt to do so, setting out my sources as I go.
According to a fascinating article rebutting accusations of Satanism
levelled at Freemason
s, found at http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/Writings/LuciferandSatan.html, the name Lucifer was used by the Roman
s as an epithet for the morning star
- specifically, what we now know as the planet Venus
. The name was associated with a personification of the planet, not as a goddess
, but as a demi-god
, 'a son of Astraeus
, of Cephalus
, or of Atlas
'. This Lucifer is also 'called the father of Ceyx, Daedalion, and of the Hesperides'. The name Lucifer is also applied as a surname to the goddesses Artemis
, who are beneficial in aspect, and Hecate
, who is considered somewhat sinister, though not the Queen of Witches portrayed by an unknown editor of Macbeth
. The Masonic
page cites Sir William Smith
's Smaller Classical Dictionary
as its source for this information.
So what do these Roman figures have to do with the Jewish
idea of Satan
? Is this another insidious attempt - as with the timing of Christmas
- to subvert inoffensive pagan
practice to the service of the church machine? Not exactly. It may have been portrayed this way with hindsight by writers like John Milton
, who inconsistently uses 'Jove
' as an epithet of his own God in some poems, while depicting pagan idols tumbling down 'On the Morning of Christ's Nativity
'. In fact, no such subversion took place, although the name Lucifer certainly was mis-applied in a fascinating variety of contexts.
The connexion of a 'light bringer' or 'morning star' with Satan derives from Isaiah 14
:12, which (in the Authorized Version
reads 'How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!' This is generally taken to be an allegorical reference to the arrogance of King Tiglath-Pileser III
. (Verse 4 of the same chapter prefaces the denunciation with 'thou shalt take up this proverb against the king of Babylon...') This image is the opposite of that of a 'meteoric rise' - Tiglath-Pileser is seen as plunging to earth like a shooting star. The original Hebrew
(according to the Masonic site, quoting E. Theodore Mullen, Jr.
, The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature
) is (in modern characters) 'HeYLeL BeN-ShaCHaR'. Note the 'ben-' in there, typically indicating 'son of'. In the Greek Old Testament
, the Septuagint
, this is rendered as 'Phosphoros' - 'light-bearer' again - and thus into the Latin
of the Vulgate
as 'Lucifer'. No deliberate allusion is being made here either to Satan or to the Roman Lucifers.
As a falling star was used as the image of the evil spirit known as Wormwood
, later scholars such as Origen
and St Augustine of Canterbury
conflated the two allusions and took Lucifer
to mean Satan
- Satan in the sense of the Devil
, the enemy of God and Man, rather than the angel
depicted in Job
. This image itself is from the second temple
period, rather than earlier Jewish thought. Further confusion dervies from the name of Lucifer Calaritanus (d. c.370), bishop of Cagliari
, who was an opponent of Arius
, and founded the ultra-orthodox Luciferian
sect, which was condemned by St Jerome
for various technical reasons. References to this Lucifer and these Luciferians without context served further to complicate the issue of the use of this name.
It was with poets such as Milton that the synthesis was complete, and the name of the light-bringer came to be associated fairly indelibly with the idea of a personal devil, the 'first born angel' who opposed God.
Although I've used the aforementioned Masonic site as my principal reference, I feel I should back that up by saying that Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
and my own (brief) theological training back up what is asserted here.