Lucifer as symbol: light, knowledge, autonomy

Your goal in this lesson: to understand Lucifer as a modern symbol and to try a practice that is safe, honest and real.

Three kinds of light

Modern Modern Luciferians read Lucifer mainly as a symbol of light, knowledge and autonomy, and they draw on three old images of light.

• Light in scripture. “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3) is one of the first gifts of creation, and in Jewish and Christian scripture light stands for presence, truth and goodness.
• Light in philosophy. In Plato’s allegory of the cave (Republic, book 7), prisoners mistake shadows for reality until one is freed and sees the Sun.
• Light in the Enlightenment. The thinkers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took their name from the same image: reason as a light that dispels superstition.

You do not have to call yourself a Luciferian to find these images useful. They are a shared inheritance.

A practice: find the Morning Star

Modern My suggested first practice is not a ritual. It is astronomy.

1. Check in an astronomy app or almanac whether Venus is now a morning or an evening star. You looked this up in lesson 2.
2. Choose a clear morning or evening and a place with a low view of the eastern or western horizon.
3. Go out about 45 minutes before sunrise, or 30 minutes after sunset.
4. Find the brightest point of light low in the sky. That is Venus.
5. Watch it for at least five minutes. Notice its color, its steadiness and how the sky changes around it.
6. Before you leave, say silently or aloud what it is: “That is Venus, the Morning Star, called Lucifer by the Romans.” Add anything else you want to say.
7. Write the date, time, place, weather and what you saw.

That is all. You have seen with your own eyes the light that gave Lucifer his name, and you have done it without fear and without promises.

Living with the symbol

• Watch the cycle. Over eight years, you will see Venus repeat its dance.
• Keep a knowledge practice. Read one primary source a season: Isaiah 14, a canto of Dante, a book of Milton.
• Check your limits. Look at the card you wrote in lesson 6 now and then.
• Look at your first page. Take out the page from lesson 1 with the three names. What has changed?

Try this

Today’s exercise: go out once before sunrise or after sunset, whichever fits Venus this month, and find the Morning or Evening Star. Write the date, time, place, weather and what you saw.

Quick recap

• Modern Luciferians read Lucifer as light, knowledge and autonomy.
• Those images draw on scripture, Plato and the Enlightenment.
• A safe first practice is finding Venus with your own eyes.
• No pacts, no promises: just attention and honest sources.

Keep going

You have reached the end of the course. Press “Mark as done”, and when every lesson is done you can open your certificate of completion. Then try another free course in the School, such as Demons for Beginners or Art History for Beginners.

For moon and star work in a gentle witchcraft practice, read my book The Novice’s Guide to Witchcraft.

Need a refresher? Go back to Ethics, safety and mental health or see the whole course.

Sources

• Plato, Republic, book 7.
• Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.53.
• Genesis 1:3, King James Version (1611).
• Lauri Mukkala, The Novice’s Guide to Witchcraft, chapter 7, “Moon Magic”.

Go deeper: the Lucifer pages on this site, and The Novice's Guide to Witchcraft

Mark as done