O Lucifer, Son of the Morning!

Posted: July 27, 2009 
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[Virgil] stepped aside, and stopping me, announced:

“This is is he, this is Dis; this is the place

that calls for all the courage you have in you.”

Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy Volume 1: Inferno.  pg. 380, Lines 19-21, Canto XXXIV, Penguin Classics, Indiana University, 2003

This is part of my Dantesque Journey series, which can be viewed by copying and pasting this link into your browser:

http://www.soma-sema.com/old/Abstract/dantesque-journey.html

All of the photos from the Dantesque Journey were taken with my Nikon FM2, a 135mm Nikon e-series lens or a 50mm Nikkor lens, 400 ISO colour negative film and a red filter mounted on the lens using my Cokin P-Series filter system.

In ancient Greece, the ruler of the Underworld and the dead was Hades, whose realm took his name.  In Latin, his name was Dis. Later he would be called Lucifer by St. Jerome after a misreading of the bible (Davidson 176)

Lucifer is perhaps the most misunderstood angel of all.  Upon mentioning the name, anyone even familiar with Western religion at all contrives an image of Evil, winged and terrible as the end.  However, Lucifer, I protest, is not the devil (this is not an original idea of mine, I am not making this up, all can be found in Gustav Davidson’s brilliant compendium of angelology A Dictionary of Angels).  The misconception, as Davidson suggests, comes from an early misreading of the Book of Isaiah 14:12

“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 passage is actually directed at the King of Babylon.  Book 14 of Isaiah describes the punishments of Nebuchadnezzar in Hell, and the rejoicing of the land once reaped, and the nations weakened under the rule of tyranny.  Consider if the passage went like this:

“How art thou fallen from

heaven, O Lord!  How art thou cut down

to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!”

If this were how it was written, would you believe that the Lord is actually the Devil? Lucifer actually means “light giver” in Latin, and is written as a benevolent being in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, a Latin Roman text written in 100 A.C.E, a full century after Christ!  Gustav Davidson’s dictionary provides a vibrant spectrum of information on Lucifer, and I wholeheartedly encourage you to pick up this book if you have any interest at all in angels.