The Great Lucifer Myth

By James Donahue

Many Christians believe that Lucifer is a fallen angel, cast from Heaven by God because of pride. The belief is that Lucifer now rules the Earth in the form of the Devil, and he has an army of demonic forces, also angels that fell with him, to help him carry out his dirty work.

The dirty work, of course, is to lead humanity into sin, to claim their souls, and thus bring us all with him into an eternal place of damnation called Hell from which there will be no escape.

It is a frightening story and one that has generated an unnatural fear of death among hundreds of millions of people who expect an awaiting judgment and punishment. We know of cases where people have experienced terrible deaths because of the deep planted fear of what awaited them. We also believe this twisted belief system may account for the thousands upon thousands of spirits of departed humans that still wander the earth . . . people who refused to pass correctly into the light and start the process of rebirth all over again.

We believe Christianity is a very bad religious cult that has perpetuated this ugly belief system that has become so deeply embedded in the human psyche that people are totally unprepared for death. Rather than accepting it as part of life, they perceive it as a most fearful event.

This strange belief is supported even among the fundamentalists, who argue that every word in the Holy Bible is the inspired Word of God and must be taken literally. But the Bible does not support the Lucifer story.

The word Lucifer is found only in one verse in the King James version, in Isaiah 14:12: “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!”

What many hard-line Bible thumpers don’t understand is that the translations have changed over the years, and this particular line was changed from an older text that read: “How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning!” Notice that the word Lucifer has completely disappeared.

When you go back to the original Hebrew text, the verse changes yet again to read “O Helel, son of Shahar.” Shahar was an ancient Persian god of the dawn and Helel was his mythological son, or the morning star which we have named Venus.

Another Old Testament verse, Jeremiah 44:17, speaks of burning incense “to the Queen of Heaven” for assurances of ample harvest and a prosperous year. While some Bible scholars argue that the worship of the Queen of Heaven was a reference to the moon and the goddess Diana, others claim it is a reference to Venus and the goddesses Asherah, Ashtoreth, Ishtar or Isis, or the shining star of the morning.

Venus, which shines low on the horizon in the morning, has always been known as the morning star.

So how did the name Lucifer get mixed into this story. The word “Lucifer” means “light-bearer,” which was easily slipped into the text as a reference to Venus, or the morning star.

Christians argue that the rest of the text in Isaiah 14:12-14 explains the full story of Lucifer’s fall from heaven. It reads: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heard, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God; I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon; I will ascend to the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’”

Theologians might also look into Ezekiel 28:11-19: “Moreover the word of the Lord came to me: Mortal, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. . . On the day that you were created they were prepared. With an anointed cherub as guardian I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God . . . You were blameless in your ways from the day that you were created, until iniquity was found in you.  In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence, and you sinned, so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and the guardian cherub drove you out . . . Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings. . . I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you.”

It is easy to see why this text from the English translations might be used to build the myth of Lucifer as a fallen archangel, cast from Heaven because of his sin of pride. Yet if this is the real story, who would the name “light-bearer” get picked to describe the angel that God punished by casting him to Earth and making him the prince of darkness? And notice that the verse in Ezekiel clearly describes the judgment as against the King of Tyre, an ancient Phoenician city that still stands in the nation of what is now Lebanon.

At the time this story was scribed to parchment, people were caught up in a period of extreme ignorance about the world in which they lived, and especially the stars that circled overhead. The great knowledge of the ancients was obviously buried under religious superstition. It was commonly believed that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the Sun, Moon and stars circled around it.

It wasn’t until Galileo published papers proclaiming otherwise in 1610 that people began seeing the universe as it really was. And Galileo was severely persecuted by the Roman Catholic Church for daring to challenge long-standing beliefs. He was arrested and tried for heresy.

This general ignorance on the part of the authors of the Old Testament stories is an important key to understanding the true meaning of the verses in Isaiah. People who have studied the issues of that time say the passage in Isaiah is really a reference to the king of Babylon who was caught up in his pride and consequently doomed to fall with his kingdom into ruin. The passage in Ezekiel is obviously a reference to the looming fall of yet another great power figure of that period. The stories apparently are not related.

While Venus, the morning star, was sometimes present in the early morning sky, sometimes it wasn’t. This bright star, like the Sun, Moon and other well known star formations, fell regularly below the horizon and out of sight in the night sky, only to return at regular times. This led to mythological stories proclaiming that the stars sometimes fell into a strange underworld of darkness among demons and evil spirits.

This could be referred to as the “fall from Heaven” by the morning star. Fortunately, as the world turned, the North Star always returned to its regular place in the sky.

One final issue: the names “devil” and Satan.” They both appear in the same verse in Revelation 12:9: “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”

It is from this verse that the Bible students have somehow linked the name Lucifer with that of Satan and the Devil, and created the legions of demonic forces, or fallen angels, who serve him on Earth.

While it appears that demons do exist, and they work in legions much like modern military forces, with chief demons leading them into battle, there is no proof, other than this odd verse, that they follow a chief evil force such as the Devil.

In our encounters with the invisible spirit world we have, indeed, encountered powerful entities that might well be described as demons. But we also have found that they, like the angels, are beneath us, and can be easily controlled. When we are caught unguarded they can be a nuisance, but these forces are not to be feared.