Deity Deep Dive: Lucifer

Lucifer, the Devil of Christianity, fallen Angel, discarded son… or is he? I heard somewhere, probably the clock app, that the Christians’ devil, Satan, was never originally a person. Satan is a concept, it means “adversary” and that anyone can become a type of Satan. I also heard mention that Lucifer himself was never an angel, that he was taken from Greek or Roman mythology and turned into the devil after the fact. Since I’m still salty that my aunt hates “Lucian” because “it’s too close to ‘Lucifer’”, I want to get the facts so she can shove it! 

Now, this research has given me a massive headache. The Bible portions bored me to tears, and even though in the Roman mythology where Lucifer originates is vague and confusing, here’s what I’ve learned. 

I wasn’t going to start with Christianity when I first planned this, but I think I’m going to now. The whole basis of any fallen angel in the Christian Bible is actually technically a misunderstanding. Isaiah 14:12 is the verse most people turn to for the “Lucifer fall” reference. Technically Isaiah was calling the king of Babylon out on his shit, calling him “Helel ben Shachar”, or shining one. Or it was “Helel ben Shahar” which references the planet Venus as the morning star, or some shit like that (I was getting bored to tears with the Hebrew to English and Greek and all that, so I admittedly didn’t do as much research as I should have, but you should still get the point). The Latin word for the planet Venus is “lucifer”, so when Isaiah was calling out the king of Babylon for being too prideful it somehow turned into a story of a fallen angel in later translations. There’s some reference to the dragon in Revelations being thrown down to earth that people use for fallen angel shit, and I guess there’s something in the book of Enoch about fallen angels too, but I have yet to sit down and read it.  

Most English translations now exclude using the name “Lucifer” in Isaiah 14:12. They use something like “morning star”, or “shining one”, which is a truer translation, but the damage of misinformation within the belief is that it is probably irreversible by this point. I can just imagine going to my parents with any of this. My dad has already basically said that any research I bring to the table is going to “justify my lifestyle or desires” and he and my mother more than likely won’t take any of it seriously. Which is what I’ve come to hate about Christianity. 

There is a theme with personifications of the planet Venus though. I guess something about the orbital pattern of Venus makes it appear to rise and fall differently than anything else? But I guess Inanna(Sumerian) has a falling from Grace story, Etana (Babylonian), Attar (Canaanite), and Helel (also Canaanite) are all associated with Venus and a fall from Grace. I admittedly didn’t have the patience to research all the stories quite yet, but I’ll get there since I’m going to start diving into more “obscure” Deities for a while. I guess this is to say the “Lucifer falling from heaven” thing isn’t totally baseless considering the pattern of personified Venus, but that’s also a polytheistic thing, not a Christian thing? I don’t know, I just found it interesting that Deities associated with the planet seem to have this theme. Except, apparently, for the Roman personification, the one actually named Lucifer. 

In Roman and Greek mythologies Lucifer (or Phosphorus, or Heosohorus, or Eosphorus) is the son of the Dawn, Aurora or Eos respectively. His father is said to be Cephalus, an Athenian son of Hermes. The man was kidnapped by, and forced into relations with Eos, producing several children. The stories of Cephalus made me feel very sorry for him, because his life just kept going downhill until he finally ended up committing suicide, but I don’t want this to be too depressing a post, so I’ll leave it to whoever wants to learn the specifics to research it themselves. 

Now, there is some debate on whether or not Hesperus (Evening star [still Venus]) is Eosphorus’(Morning star [Lucifer]) brother or if they’re the same being. If they’re the same then there’s four(ish) children, otherwise there’s two(ish) children for each brother, but I’ll talk about them all.  

Eosphorus is said to be the father of Ceyx and Daedalion. Ceyx died at sea (may or may not have pissed Zeus off enough to cause it) and his wife didn’t want to live without him, they ended up being turned into birds akin to the common kingfisher. Daedalion attempts to kill himself after his daughter is killed by Artemis for claiming to be more beautiful than the goddess, but Apollo takes pity on him (and was the father of one of the man’s grandchildren) and turned Daedalion into a hawk.  

Hesperus is said to be the father of Hesperis and the Hesperides. This is weird because Hesperis is also Potentially the mother of the Hesperides, with Atlas as the father. The Hesperides themselves are evening nymphs, or apparently nymphs of the west. But their parentage seems widely debated because they could be from Hesperus, or Hesperis and Atlas, or Nyx and Erebus, or Zeus and Themis. And that’s literally all I found on either of these. Hesperis is literally only known (that I could find with my limited brain power) for being pretty and potentially birthing her maybe sister nymphs.  

Lucifer himself was in charge of leading in the Dawn, his mother, every day. Some say he was the head of the star spirits/deities. But the main thing about him was that he was the planet Venus, the brightest star that could be seen in both evening and morning. It’s sad when the main focus of my research is more boring than the “side characters” (Cephalus’ life still has me effed up). 

Now, there was this guy called Charles Leland who had it in his head that Diana separated her light and dark and the light half turned into Lucifer, her brother, and that she lusted after him and his light, but he wanted nothing of the sort… I learned that too, and I think that’s got me worse than the Cephalus thing… goes to show that people can, and will, come up with everything. 

I’m going to do a follow up to this, because I know people who have worked with one form of Lucifer or another, and I have a theory of how that could work and remain true with all mythologies, but it’s longer and more involved than I thought (as usual) so I’ll come back to the Lucifer topic soon. 

For now, what are your thoughts? Anyone work with Lucifer? What do you believe is the truth of his existence?