Lucifer's Unique Salvation
To begin, I have to clarify that the Christian myth of Lucifer is a unique and creative synthesis of several scriptural statements and passages made of over centuries that in the earliest readers would not read the same way. This piece represents a reinterpretation in light of new knowledge. It is also perhaps an offering from the part of me that is fascinated by a certain “Satanism”[1]. Although I am not a Satanist, theistic or otherwise – and neither do I plan on becoming one anytime soon, or ever – this post might benefit someone who might want to be a self-aware “Satanist”, or whose tradition has a similar character or God, and who might be looking for ways to understand their primacy.
I
There is an entity St Paul named “Archon of the Power of the air”[2] and “the god of this age”[3], whom Christians equate with Lucifer the “fallen angel”, the tempting serpent and the deceiving dragon. The traditional conception is negative. He is in “rebellion” and will be “defeated”. But as I have shown before, there are other ways to understand these scriptures, interpretation being unbounded due to the unboundedness of divinity itself.
To start with, although “evil” in traditional Christian conceptions is, following Augustine, a “privation”, a negation of Being, what is presented by Paul is an Archon, a god, which is a positive principle. There is within Christianity a sort of “provisional dualism” it shares with its Gnostic partners and antagonists[4]. What is important for our purposes is that this “age” or “aion” is unified by this entity. If indeed evil is privation, then this principle cannot be evil, because it is the prerogative of the Good that it “conserves and holds together the being of each several thing”[5]. If, as Proclus says, “Every divine unity is incorporated immediately by a single being, and each divinized reality points to a single divine unity. And there are as many incorporating genera of being as there are incorporated unities”[6], and this entity unites a particular genera of being (the “powers of the air”), then this entity is, as Paul says, a God. But, unlike Paul, this is a positive attribution, a declaration of the entity’s ineffable Goodness, because “Every God is an independent unity, and every independent unity is a God”[7] and “Every God is beyond essence, life and intelligence.”[8]
What this means is that – in harmony with my conclusion in my earlier commentary on Genesis 3 – “Lucifer” names a God, and in such a naming, we have a revelation, and in that revelation is a salvation proper to the God in question. The God is not reducible to their ontological place, and so, this account cannot be exhaustive. It is instead meant to open a door to further speculation, and this is related to what is in fact the means of salvation of this God.
II
Lucifer’s place in the myths Christians find revealing of him shows him as the arche of generation and destruction, in a particular sense, that of progress and process. Lucifer in Genesis secures the distinction and uniqueness of the physical cosmos, since it is his luring that leads YHWH to cover the living soul with animal skin. His is a subtle division, a discrimination appropriate for philosophical argumentation. This is his role as reinterpreter. It is similar to the role Hades as “Sophist” in Platonic philosophy[9]. The serpent makes Eve question her understanding of what YHWH told Adam. Although the establishment of the physical is told using the language of distance from YHWH, which is negative qua ontology, it can also be seen as positive insofar as the existence of anything is positive, including the physical cosmos, since the Good of a thing is its integral existence whatever its place in an ontological system. Lucifer is thus responsible for the integral unity of the physical cosmos according to a particular aspect, and this is good[10]. What Lucifer unifies is now, in this conception, our window into his salvation, since salvation is the preservation of integral individuality[11].
First, as the reinterpreter, Lucifer is himself the patron of philosophy, in the particular sense of rational introspection. While YHWH organizes the world in ineffable symbol, Lucifer teases out the symbol into words and thoughts and processes in soul. It is indeed Lucifer that undoes the bondage on the mind that the symbol – when it is wrenched from the intelligible – can be to the seeking individual. It is indeed “Lucifer” (among others, like YHWH himself) that breaks the institutional Church apart as it tries to grip too tightly on people’s souls. He does this by being, quite literally, the “light bringer”, breaking apart the darkness of intellectual bondage and moving history forward with novelty that is still within historical repeatability. But Lucifer is also the patron of those who seek the “worldly”, for these are indeed valuable in themselves. He did tempt Jesus with power and fame and money, just as he “tempts” us all; for all these are good, even if ambiguous in another sense and evil in yet another. In all of these, he is the lord of the “fleeting”, hence being associated with “air” and “fire” in another. It is this that brings his activities together.
In seeking reinterpretation, the philosopher seeks the limits of thought. But thoughts are ever fleeting, and the eternal can never be captured in words. Yet, it is good to seek the next thought, for the Gods are always speaking. The paradigm shifts of history are part of the activity of reinterpretation.
In seeking the worldly, one seeks the good of oneself and family. In seeking to be president, one can aim to help the poor of their country. In seeking that job one might want their family well-fed for life. Although every God is, in a general sense, a God of everything, in this particular way we can see Lucifer as the God through whom the Gods gift these things to certain people who are under his and their train. In being “all in each” – here, Lucifer being a God in whom all Gods come together uniquely – he is truly the “God of this aion”, who gives gifts liberally. It is up to us to choose what to do with them, good and evil. This is the “daemonic” side of Lucifer’s activity. I say that because, due to the fact that they are his gifts, they bear his “face”[12], and misusing things with his face gives the impression that Lucifer is the one doing it[13].
However, for those who follow the “train” of Lucifer, I cannot tell of what rituals and practices he reveals to you. But I can say a bit of what it might look like if he decided to follow his already revealed patterns.
III
In the philosopher’s labour of reinterpretation, he reveals the fleetingness of concepts and the vacuity of philosophy considered in this aspect. What Lucifer shows is the value of the individual beyond all concepts, personal and societal, that might box them. This is the orientation of a progressive, the search for justice for the individual, considered as “the principle by which a unique individual finds a place in a harmonious community recognizing and accepting them for who they are, and sustaining itself through the contributions such individuals make to it.”[14] This search is never ending within history, as we uncover injustices and outdated paradigms and continually adjust to each other to accommodate each other. Such a search must be fluid with concepts and acknowledge the vacuity, their fluidity, and their power in being these. One who is saved this way has discovered their integrity beyond categories, and can thus never be threatened by ontological cages.
In the worldly person’s labour, he reveals the fleetingness of the world so constituted, its worries and its goals. The preservation of his family, his people, and himself, is revealed as requiring that these are ever in flux. What is preserved is in some sense a continuum, like a slithering snake, a golden serpent, shining with the flames of history’s entropy. Like the philosopher, his singularity is revealed as inexhaustible, uniting all that has come before, all that is now, and all that will come after, in one existential decision for their preservation, and the one person that makes that decision. That person participates in preserving the unified continuum of history and its reinterpretations, the activity of Lucifer himself. He thus becomes an Icon, the Idol of his God, every bit as valuable as the philosopher.
In both, we have those who, in the passion that is the “lake of fire” – the crucible of the aion considered as unending – preserve the good of the world as progress and process in their perspectival henadic unity of self. This is the salvation unique to Lucifer.
[1] Stephen Bradford Long, “Why Satan?,” Stephen Bradford Long (blog), May 16, 2019, https://stephenbradfordlong.com/2019/05/16/why-satan/. Although Stephen is not a theist (as far as I know), he still represents for me a fascinating thread of “Satanism”, one that is progressive and quite self-aware. I think this can be the disposition of the members of any tradition, theistic or not.
[2] Ephesians 2:2; David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (Yale University Press, 2017).
[3] 2 Corinthians 4:4; Hart.
[4] “what we think of as the “gnostic”
denigration of the created order is an exaggeration of a real “qualified” or “provisional dualism” in the New Testament, and as such is in many ways a more authentic continuation of early Christian understanding of a fallen creation than is, say, the two-tier Thomistic theology of pure nature.” - David Bentley Hart, You Are Gods: On Nature and Supernature (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2022).
[5] Proposition 13; Proclus and E. R. Dodds, The Elements of Theology (Oxford University Press, 1971).
[6] Proposition 135; Antonio Vargas, “Proclus’ Elements of Metaphysics,” accessed November 23, 2022, https://www.academia.edu/44841806/Proclus_Elements_of_Metaphysics. I use this translation because it is clearer than Dodds in this instance.
[7] Proposition 114; Vargas. “God” is capitalized by me for emphasis henceforth.
[8] Proposition 115; Vargas.
[9] Edward Butler [@EPButler], “@DanielJ97534935 I See the Platonic Reading of Hades as Essentially like Psychoanalysis, Where on the One Hand We Have the Awakening of Insight through Beneficent Sophistry, and on the Other, the Perpetual Motion Machine of the Drives, Seen in the Diverse Punishments.,” Tweet, Twitter, October 20, 2022,
[10] Edward Butler [@EPButler], “Where a ‘Trickster’ God Creates the Cosmos, or Establishes Crucial Elements of It, the Question as to Whether That God Is ‘Good’ Seems Vacuous, Regardless of How They Are Said to Do It. It Is Good That There Is Something Rather than Nothing.,” Tweet, Twitter, October 31, 2020,
[11] Edward P Butler, “Gods and Daimons in the Platonic Economy of Sacrifice”, 2014.
[12] “About every God there is an appropriate series of angels, heroes, and daimons, for every God leads a multiplicity which receives his own form.” – Proclus, as translated in: Butler, “Gods and Daimons in the Platonic Economy of Sacrifice”.
[13] “The higher class of daimon creates long cycles, with fewer peaks and valleys, it would seem, whereas the lower class create dramatic swings of fortune, fostering an attachment to “riches, power, and pleasure, vainglories from which discord, war, and things like these are produced” (169.27-170.2).” In: Butler“ Gods and Daimons in the Platonic Economy of Sacrifice”.
[14] Edward Butler [@EPButler], “Plato’s Republic Tl;Dr—Justice Is the Principle by Which a Unique Individual Finds a Place in a Harmonious Community Recognizing and Accepting Them for Who They Are, and Sustaining Itself through the Contributions Such Individuals Make to It.,” Tweet, Twitter, May 3, 2022,