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Lucifer: Truly evil and should be avoided or a victim of propaganda
- Thread starter AEJOTYX
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The problem with these kinds of questions is that a lot of these beings are in fact very diffuse clouds. One might say that there are multiple different beings that answer to that name, but there is some connection between these different Lucifers, and so I don't think we can exactly say that they are totally different. But in any case, if you go looking for the Promethean Lucifer, that is more or less who you will get. If you go looking for the very heart of moral corruption and spiritual death, well you probably won't get quite to the heart of the matter, but you're not going to get someone that it's good to be around. I'm sure there are a number of other Lucifers out there too.
My one warning is that you can leapfrog from one Lucifer to another, because as I said there is a connection between them - they occupy mutually overlapping spiritual territory. One will want to keep that potentiality in mind and either be very clear about which Lucifer they want and not allow themselves to get drawn into the other aspects of the Lucifer complex, or decide that a bit of danger is a bracing element that you're willing to take on.
My one warning is that you can leapfrog from one Lucifer to another, because as I said there is a connection between them - they occupy mutually overlapping spiritual territory. One will want to keep that potentiality in mind and either be very clear about which Lucifer they want and not allow themselves to get drawn into the other aspects of the Lucifer complex, or decide that a bit of danger is a bracing element that you're willing to take on.
lucifer from Latin lux + ferre, meaning "light-bringer".
Lucifer was the Roman personification of the Morning Star, the planet Venus as it appears at dawn.
The name was worshipped in this way in pagan circles until a translation of a Bible verse used it to refer to the arrogant king of Babylon. From then on it started building a connotation with evil and the lord of Hell.
When I personally have contemplated the name in the past it is a story of salvation. Your milage may vary
Lucifer was the Roman personification of the Morning Star, the planet Venus as it appears at dawn.
The name was worshipped in this way in pagan circles until a translation of a Bible verse used it to refer to the arrogant king of Babylon. From then on it started building a connotation with evil and the lord of Hell.
When I personally have contemplated the name in the past it is a story of salvation. Your milage may vary
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I’ve always wondered if Lucifer is really the “evil” figure we’re taught he is. I kinda see him more as being about knowledge and facing truths that can be uncomfortablee.
I can’t say I’ve had some supernatural experience with him or anything, but there have been moments - where the whole symbolism felt kinda personal to me..
Especially the idea of finding light in places you’d normally avoid looking. That version of Lucifer just makes more sense to me than the usual devil image.
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Lucifer is different to different people, and different authors probably wrote different books. What matters is what Lucifer means to you. La Vey Satanists would have different opinion/experience with him compared to Goetic practitioners or others who work with demons.
You have to study all the mythologies associated with Lucifer or any deity you want to know and work with and then come to your own conclusion.
Occult path is by definition hidden with no authorities, to make things worse in the last several years (decade) so many authors wrote so many books on so many topics, I never understood how can a single person on the path of occult be capable of writing so many books unless the person is several hundred years old mastering every path or just a charlatan.
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I've been devoted to Lucifer in one form or another for a long time. He is a complicated spirit with many facets, some profoundly wise and loving, some wrathful yet just, some terrible and quite evil. I echo a lot of what @solxyz says above, Lucifer has his Promethean, enlightening aspects that are very noble, but I don't believe that the view of him as Lord of Supreme Evil is entirely due to Church propaganda.
One angle I find helpful is seeing Lucifer as a spirit of individuation, the embodiment of the divine light of awareness coalescing into a discreet, self-knowing entity. This grants him a certain ambivalence. He occupies a crucial position in the unfolding of creation, but the distinction between I and Thou he makes possible can turn into harsh divisions of hatred and isolation, energies that can be seen as truly 'Satanic' in nature. This Luciferian motion of individuation can flow both ways in my experience. He can be a guide in tracing light of your own embodied awareness back to its root where we see everything united in his radiance.
One angle I find helpful is seeing Lucifer as a spirit of individuation, the embodiment of the divine light of awareness coalescing into a discreet, self-knowing entity. This grants him a certain ambivalence. He occupies a crucial position in the unfolding of creation, but the distinction between I and Thou he makes possible can turn into harsh divisions of hatred and isolation, energies that can be seen as truly 'Satanic' in nature. This Luciferian motion of individuation can flow both ways in my experience. He can be a guide in tracing light of your own embodied awareness back to its root where we see everything united in his radiance.
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What is
of Lucifer at this point. That he's a hunk with abs and eyeliner? That he is the emperor of Hell? There are several threads about him now. Please use Search for enlightening perspectives by all types of members.
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Can't forget about the abs and eyeliner, the Hot Topic-fication of demonology. Protestants rebelling against their upbringing go from "Jesus is my boyfriend" to "actually Lucifer is my boyfriend".
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My two cents
The question itself is an issue.
First let me say I honor "Lucifer" as part of my Grimorium Verum practice where "he" is one of the Thee Chiefs. (I see him as one manifestation Solar Demiurge and the Supreme Archangel of Purgatory but that is my own personal gnosis and mythic framework. )
It's too much to go into here in any depth. If you want a more historical grounding in the operative worldview of the later grimoires, I recommend this video from Glitch Bottle.
--------------------------
Please bear with me. I am wordy. Apologies.
The operative worldview behind later grimoires like the Grimorium Verum is a massive bricolage of Hellenistic theurgy - especially from Iamblichus, Proclus, and the apprach of using ritual to invoke and ascend through daimonic and divine hierarchies. Then in there also is Catholic ritual, demonology, and folk magic like exorcism, purgatory, saints, sacramentals, and the authority -command structure. And Jewish Kabbalah and angelology , Arabic astral magic and alchemy, Hermeticism. Then the Greco-Egyptian texts which were often read as a prisca theologia by Catholics. And the folk magic currents also shaped the tradition, especially in the early modern period.
The GV itself is a huge folk magic tradition spanning many countries and many centefore appearing as a late 18th century grimpire . The GV we know today can accurately seen as late 18th-century "blockbuster" edition that consolidated and communicated a widespread oral "folk" in textual form. The earlier Italian manuscript from 1636, the French and Italian printed editions of the 18th century, and the Iberian adaptations are all expressions of the same underlying folk tradition, and not just copies of a single original text.
This is a realtively new aademic consensus that has not yet percolated outwards into internet folk magic when they shit-talk grimoires. The GV is printed book , but it is much more, it's the sticky, viscous, spooky Underworld sediment left after centuries of operative practice, not the source from which that practice sprang.
--------------------------
And gnore all that for now, or it will drive you nuts. It's a mind-trap that can keep people reading and not practicing.
I often draw from Paranomal reasaarch as tools for thinking abhout this when I get too much mythic overload. You know the effect... sometimes called spritual psychosis these days. It's not pretty.
--------------------------
So Jacques Vallee, in his 1975 book The Invisible College (1975), suggests the "UFO phenomenon" (Ugh! which is Daimonic, or at least 95%, imho). we are not waves of visitations of little green men from Mars - but with "a control system" for human consciousness that is called now "The Phenomenon," among paranomal and UFO folks.
The Phenomenon, is Harper's Daimonic Reality, and the Aristotle- Aquinas Sublunar realm, and includes demons, angels, the Chupacabra, the Jersey Devil and other cryptids, the Fae, Bigfoot, djinn,tulpas, UAPs, Reptilians, Nature spirits, pixies, gnomes, pagan gods, demi-gods, shadow people, poltergeists and other earthbound spirits, and much more, the whole colorful damininc realm that makes sorcery very fun and very very weird.
It gnerally acepted now among paranormal folks "The Phenomenon" behaves like a human mental-emotional-daimonic thermostat, and regulates our belief by oscillating between revelation and concealment, absurdity and meaning.
Why? I have my theories, but that is not imporant. Suffice to say many mangicans will tell you how quickly it all goes "poof" the moment you try to film, "prove" or ortherwise e demonstate to others all these amazing things you are experiencing when conjuring. These are Secrets, literally.
So in his analysis of the Schirmer case, Vallee quotes a statement made by the entities to an experiencer: "You should believe in us but not too much."
This line is key, I feel.
Direct, mytical, or religiously unambiguous expression would ruin it all. It would collapse the Phenomenon into a fixed dogma, ending the slow, gradual learning process that the "control system" (ugh!) seems designed to produce. The entities want belief - but only just enough to sustain engagement, and enough to change human culture - but not so much that the phenomenon becomes static, literalized, and therefore powerless.
I see a lot of the daimonic logic of the Grimorium Verum in there.
The names and offices such as Lucifer, Beelzebuth, and Astaroth are not signs pointing to singular entities to be believed in or rejected. They are resonant mythic keys to what I think of as "offices."
But the operative power here depends on the magician maintaining a certain suspended, ambiguous belief. Just enough to conjure as stand up against your Fate for what you truly want out of life- but not so much that the name totally collapses into a fixed, literalist dogma. Hate that stuff.
The GV is not a book of theology. The names function as keys within a tradition that is older, wider, and more operationally useful than any single book could contain. It is a snapshot of a living . uh, very old Katrupian/Sublunar / Sheldrakian Shared Mythic Reality (gah! I know, i know) made of stories as a place human and non-human minds can meet. .And its also a tradition older and wider than any single book. The names, in my opinion, work because they a nexus of many stories, many offices, many manifestations. Take your pick.
So the GV's daimonic names are part of "the Phenomenon " - but I just prefer The Mystery - that wants you to believe, but not too much. The moment you say "Lucifer IS only X," the current become weaker the more you insit on reducign it all down ahead of time. (You can use it integrate with it later, and not go totally insane after doing the work. ) Myth empowered it but only when kep tas myth and not religion, or negation . When you say "Lucifer is nothing but a symbol," the weakening happens, in my view.
The operative region for sorcery is the Daimonic middleground, where the Grimorium Verum lives, if feel. But then I feel that is true of all this crazy, wild weird stuff stuff we call "magic." I prefer the word "sorcery" (getting laid, paid, and getting even) and air-gap it a bit from more religious concerns (which are fine in other contexts too)
The question itself is an issue.
First let me say I honor "Lucifer" as part of my Grimorium Verum practice where "he" is one of the Thee Chiefs. (I see him as one manifestation Solar Demiurge and the Supreme Archangel of Purgatory but that is my own personal gnosis and mythic framework. )
It's too much to go into here in any depth. If you want a more historical grounding in the operative worldview of the later grimoires, I recommend this video from Glitch Bottle.
--------------------------
Please bear with me. I am wordy. Apologies.
The operative worldview behind later grimoires like the Grimorium Verum is a massive bricolage of Hellenistic theurgy - especially from Iamblichus, Proclus, and the apprach of using ritual to invoke and ascend through daimonic and divine hierarchies. Then in there also is Catholic ritual, demonology, and folk magic like exorcism, purgatory, saints, sacramentals, and the authority -command structure. And Jewish Kabbalah and angelology , Arabic astral magic and alchemy, Hermeticism. Then the Greco-Egyptian texts which were often read as a prisca theologia by Catholics. And the folk magic currents also shaped the tradition, especially in the early modern period.
The GV itself is a huge folk magic tradition spanning many countries and many centefore appearing as a late 18th century grimpire . The GV we know today can accurately seen as late 18th-century "blockbuster" edition that consolidated and communicated a widespread oral "folk" in textual form. The earlier Italian manuscript from 1636, the French and Italian printed editions of the 18th century, and the Iberian adaptations are all expressions of the same underlying folk tradition, and not just copies of a single original text.
This is a realtively new aademic consensus that has not yet percolated outwards into internet folk magic when they shit-talk grimoires. The GV is printed book , but it is much more, it's the sticky, viscous, spooky Underworld sediment left after centuries of operative practice, not the source from which that practice sprang.
--------------------------
And gnore all that for now, or it will drive you nuts. It's a mind-trap that can keep people reading and not practicing.
I often draw from Paranomal reasaarch as tools for thinking abhout this when I get too much mythic overload. You know the effect... sometimes called spritual psychosis these days. It's not pretty.
--------------------------
So Jacques Vallee, in his 1975 book The Invisible College (1975), suggests the "UFO phenomenon" (Ugh! which is Daimonic, or at least 95%, imho). we are not waves of visitations of little green men from Mars - but with "a control system" for human consciousness that is called now "The Phenomenon," among paranomal and UFO folks.
The Phenomenon, is Harper's Daimonic Reality, and the Aristotle- Aquinas Sublunar realm, and includes demons, angels, the Chupacabra, the Jersey Devil and other cryptids, the Fae, Bigfoot, djinn,tulpas, UAPs, Reptilians, Nature spirits, pixies, gnomes, pagan gods, demi-gods, shadow people, poltergeists and other earthbound spirits, and much more, the whole colorful damininc realm that makes sorcery very fun and very very weird.
It gnerally acepted now among paranormal folks "The Phenomenon" behaves like a human mental-emotional-daimonic thermostat, and regulates our belief by oscillating between revelation and concealment, absurdity and meaning.
Why? I have my theories, but that is not imporant. Suffice to say many mangicans will tell you how quickly it all goes "poof" the moment you try to film, "prove" or ortherwise e demonstate to others all these amazing things you are experiencing when conjuring. These are Secrets, literally.
So in his analysis of the Schirmer case, Vallee quotes a statement made by the entities to an experiencer: "You should believe in us but not too much."
This line is key, I feel.
Direct, mytical, or religiously unambiguous expression would ruin it all. It would collapse the Phenomenon into a fixed dogma, ending the slow, gradual learning process that the "control system" (ugh!) seems designed to produce. The entities want belief - but only just enough to sustain engagement, and enough to change human culture - but not so much that the phenomenon becomes static, literalized, and therefore powerless.
I see a lot of the daimonic logic of the Grimorium Verum in there.
The names and offices such as Lucifer, Beelzebuth, and Astaroth are not signs pointing to singular entities to be believed in or rejected. They are resonant mythic keys to what I think of as "offices."
But the operative power here depends on the magician maintaining a certain suspended, ambiguous belief. Just enough to conjure as stand up against your Fate for what you truly want out of life- but not so much that the name totally collapses into a fixed, literalist dogma. Hate that stuff.
The GV is not a book of theology. The names function as keys within a tradition that is older, wider, and more operationally useful than any single book could contain. It is a snapshot of a living . uh, very old Katrupian/Sublunar / Sheldrakian Shared Mythic Reality (gah! I know, i know) made of stories as a place human and non-human minds can meet. .And its also a tradition older and wider than any single book. The names, in my opinion, work because they a nexus of many stories, many offices, many manifestations. Take your pick.
So the GV's daimonic names are part of "the Phenomenon " - but I just prefer The Mystery - that wants you to believe, but not too much. The moment you say "Lucifer IS only X," the current become weaker the more you insit on reducign it all down ahead of time. (You can use it integrate with it later, and not go totally insane after doing the work. ) Myth empowered it but only when kep tas myth and not religion, or negation . When you say "Lucifer is nothing but a symbol," the weakening happens, in my view.
The operative region for sorcery is the Daimonic middleground, where the Grimorium Verum lives, if feel. But then I feel that is true of all this crazy, wild weird stuff stuff we call "magic." I prefer the word "sorcery" (getting laid, paid, and getting even) and air-gap it a bit from more religious concerns (which are fine in other contexts too)
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There are many things people call by the name "Lucifer". If the we're talking about the tradition that first used this word for an angelic (or demonic) being - and which variant is by far memetically the strongest and most complete character in my experience - then yes, he is in fact malicious in the most potent, willful way any creature in existence can be. Various traditions have revised this character, usually as some kind of cosmic liberator figure, but honestly to me this feels kind of like "in my made-up language the word rape actually means hug".
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"Lucifer" is an unfortunate name here and triggers a lot of misunderstanding.
It does not help that there are plenty of Anti-Catholic diabolist pagans and Anglo esoteric folks who will glom onto anything that seems even remotely "transgressive." to push a narrative. Many GV spirits are very Lovecraftian, but Lucifer is not.
In the context of the GV, an argument can be made that the grimoire's "Lucifer" only vaguely overlaps with the Church's "Lucifer". Conjuring spirits is a practice and the mythic names are ritual affordances - for US. They are not literally demonic hellspawn - but some can very much act like hellspawn under certain circumstances. I tend agree with David Rankine: we have no idea what the spirits "really" are.
I say they are what you believe they are , which sublunar narrative server you are on, and how your soul needs to experience them for your own spiritual growth. The older Italian Catholic vision is more accurate to the lived reality, as i have experienced it..I call Lucifer the 'Archangel of Purgatory' because that is how he acts in my TradCath worldview - but not because that is what he literally is, nor because that view is closer to 14th Century Italian Catholic worldview of the grims.
That said, there are Protestant magicians who think of them as being totally evil beings who are the literal manifestations of evil in the world, as absolutely the nasty pagan gods. So when you bind them, any positive you are experiencing is the result of the removal of their evil from your life. I am like, meh, okay, that actually works better in some Catholic theological views, but then it also introduces some bad Manichaean dualism I am even more offended by.
It does not help that there are plenty of Anti-Catholic diabolist pagans and Anglo esoteric folks who will glom onto anything that seems even remotely "transgressive." to push a narrative. Many GV spirits are very Lovecraftian, but Lucifer is not.
In the context of the GV, an argument can be made that the grimoire's "Lucifer" only vaguely overlaps with the Church's "Lucifer". Conjuring spirits is a practice and the mythic names are ritual affordances - for US. They are not literally demonic hellspawn - but some can very much act like hellspawn under certain circumstances. I tend agree with David Rankine: we have no idea what the spirits "really" are.
I say they are what you believe they are , which sublunar narrative server you are on, and how your soul needs to experience them for your own spiritual growth. The older Italian Catholic vision is more accurate to the lived reality, as i have experienced it..I call Lucifer the 'Archangel of Purgatory' because that is how he acts in my TradCath worldview - but not because that is what he literally is, nor because that view is closer to 14th Century Italian Catholic worldview of the grims.
That said, there are Protestant magicians who think of them as being totally evil beings who are the literal manifestations of evil in the world, as absolutely the nasty pagan gods. So when you bind them, any positive you are experiencing is the result of the removal of their evil from your life. I am like, meh, okay, that actually works better in some Catholic theological views, but then it also introduces some bad Manichaean dualism I am even more offended by.
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Not quite necessarily I think...? There seems to be another position that's generally favored in the Church. Lucifer's shtick in the grand schme of things, I believe, is that he is a force for the ultimate good very much against his own will. There is no angelic benevolence in his character, no will to take part in the purgation of souls. There are no words that can be spoken that wouldn't eventually compose themselves into benedictions, but he does keep trying is what I'm saying.
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Than you for that, Nembra!
Modern "Magic" - a word I have issues with often when used in a totalizing fashion - is a amorphous soup scraped from the bottom of the many moldy vegetable drawers. It's a mass of left over ideas people have to unlearn to engage with the older animist / daimonic sorcery on one side, or the Western Mystical Tradition on the other. The confusion is real.
That said me stand up a sec for "dumb" practices. 'Dumb GV' when I was in my 20's still worked great, even without all my later ' book leaning.' But they were just hellspawn 'demons' for me back then, and were much more dangerous as a result.
Post-Eliphas Levi, post-Blavatsky "Transcendental Magic," be it RHP or LHP, is not "Magic" in my view or in the New World traditions I am part of. They are not sublunar (except for your own navel lint you guys are staring at), because does not conjure at the Daimonic layer of reality (well it does at the "art" level) - and works more like (well, exactly like ) New Thought "manifestation" but dressed up in red paint. LaVey said LHP Satanism was psychodrama, applied psychology, and I totally agree.
The Transcendentalist Mind Magicicans deny the daimons (reducing them to psychology) - or absolutize them into grand cosmic forces. The "LHP" tends to identify with the big mythic daimonic stories - and to say "I am Lucifer" or "I am Set" - which is just as much a collapse (but can be used, no time for that here) .
The Daimonic is the intermediate realm where the spirits have their own agency, and personhood, and they are not mere extensions of your "Will " and can and often act with a shocking autonomy and sentience. They can resist, deceive, and bargain, harm, heal, help or hinder. The true grimoire tradition is a contiuation of the Paleothtic "shamanic' negotiation with these liminal and weird beings, not a LHP manifestation of your own Navel Lintness.
All good in other "magical" contexts , but also worthy of some mocking when all those modern practices appropriate the language and tools of the grimoires as their stolen valor.
Modern "Magic" - a word I have issues with often when used in a totalizing fashion - is a amorphous soup scraped from the bottom of the many moldy vegetable drawers. It's a mass of left over ideas people have to unlearn to engage with the older animist / daimonic sorcery on one side, or the Western Mystical Tradition on the other. The confusion is real.
That said me stand up a sec for "dumb" practices. 'Dumb GV' when I was in my 20's still worked great, even without all my later ' book leaning.' But they were just hellspawn 'demons' for me back then, and were much more dangerous as a result.
Post-Eliphas Levi, post-Blavatsky "Transcendental Magic," be it RHP or LHP, is not "Magic" in my view or in the New World traditions I am part of. They are not sublunar (except for your own navel lint you guys are staring at), because does not conjure at the Daimonic layer of reality (well it does at the "art" level) - and works more like (well, exactly like ) New Thought "manifestation" but dressed up in red paint. LaVey said LHP Satanism was psychodrama, applied psychology, and I totally agree.
The Transcendentalist Mind Magicicans deny the daimons (reducing them to psychology) - or absolutize them into grand cosmic forces. The "LHP" tends to identify with the big mythic daimonic stories - and to say "I am Lucifer" or "I am Set" - which is just as much a collapse (but can be used, no time for that here) .
The Daimonic is the intermediate realm where the spirits have their own agency, and personhood, and they are not mere extensions of your "Will " and can and often act with a shocking autonomy and sentience. They can resist, deceive, and bargain, harm, heal, help or hinder. The true grimoire tradition is a contiuation of the Paleothtic "shamanic' negotiation with these liminal and weird beings, not a LHP manifestation of your own Navel Lintness.
All good in other "magical" contexts , but also worthy of some mocking when all those modern practices appropriate the language and tools of the grimoires as their stolen valor.
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I'll save you the mumbo jumbo.. Lucifer is a fictional being that came out of titles/ phrases at the time for people, over time just like our slang and our phrases in our language today changes, lucifer too got changed and utilized in different way.. But its all fictional..
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Historically , r4zorenigma is right. So pack it up folks, and turn out the lights. Who can argue with such blistering simplicity?
"Lucifer" was originally a Latin translation for the morning star (Venus) and applied as a metaphor for a fallen king in Isaiah. But names and identities take on power through shared agreement and precedent.
The mental aspect is not wrong, but the "reality" (or whatever is going on) according to Neoplatonism and the Western Mystical Tradition is somewhere in the middle. Think of it this way. The "government" is a fiction (something that exists in mind-space and as a concept) but it also organizes the use of buildings, and many vehicles, holding with people with guns in them, who will come for you if you don't pay your taxes.
But if you view spirits as purely "mental" - or "like, totally made up, dude, so they're just psychological constructs" - the way Crowley insisted that time on a drug bender while trying to suck up the Anglo Establishment like a good little lapdog - that is fine, not saying you have to take them literally. Bit you also miss the methods of traditional spirit work.
And if you view them as ghostly but still standard Newtonian objects floating around "out there," sitting in bars, plotting evil or and going to Be Evil meetings - you miss how they interact with consciousness/soul. They are real, but not real like a coffee cup, a potato, or your mom is real. Well, your theoretical mom. Maybe all of you are AI and I'm the only really-real one here.
"Lucifer" was originally a Latin translation for the morning star (Venus) and applied as a metaphor for a fallen king in Isaiah. But names and identities take on power through shared agreement and precedent.
The mental aspect is not wrong, but the "reality" (or whatever is going on) according to Neoplatonism and the Western Mystical Tradition is somewhere in the middle. Think of it this way. The "government" is a fiction (something that exists in mind-space and as a concept) but it also organizes the use of buildings, and many vehicles, holding with people with guns in them, who will come for you if you don't pay your taxes.
But if you view spirits as purely "mental" - or "like, totally made up, dude, so they're just psychological constructs" - the way Crowley insisted that time on a drug bender while trying to suck up the Anglo Establishment like a good little lapdog - that is fine, not saying you have to take them literally. Bit you also miss the methods of traditional spirit work.
And if you view them as ghostly but still standard Newtonian objects floating around "out there," sitting in bars, plotting evil or and going to Be Evil meetings - you miss how they interact with consciousness/soul. They are real, but not real like a coffee cup, a potato, or your mom is real. Well, your theoretical mom. Maybe all of you are AI and I'm the only really-real one here.
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Exactly. I was just in the middle of typing up essentially the same thing when I saw that you had gotten to it before me.
As I never tire of saying, magic is a mercurial and liminal field. The rigid subject-object dichotomies that we are used to employing in our mundane lives don't work well here. When it comes to the spirits, they meld themselves more readily to our intentions and attitudes than, say, the effects of gravity on our bodies. But at the same time they are not strictly subjective, such that we can just arbitrarily decide or declare what their truth is, as if one were making up a story and could just make it however one wants (although, even there, most good fiction writers know something about being true to their story, and know that if they want their story to come out with depth and power then they can't really do that either). There is something there which has to be engaged with, perceived and listened to, even if that something is a shapeshifter that pours itself into the containers that your mythos and ritual creates for it. In fact, a good mythos and ritual is one which is deeply attuned to and responsive to the spirit in question, one even inspired by that spirit. The boundaries between them and us are not solid.
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In fact, I would go as far as to say that the rituals, symbols, art, and mythology surrounding these beings are their manifest bodies, or the most manifest aspects of their bodies. This helps us understand how spellwork actually works (or at least one way it works). By performing a ritual we are actually moving the spirit's body into a new configuration in the world, such that their energy starts manifesting differently. But of course we can't just do this mechanically. If want to move their actual body, we have to be deeply attuned to it and understand its contours so that the spellworking ritual becomes a dance with the body of the spirit, rather than an external manipulation of symbols which one as broken away from the spirits body.
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The best way to answer your question is through a process I believe is essentially a form of "initiation". In other words, by becoming "initiated" into "Lucifer" directly, through your actions, and by observing the currents of energy that those actions align with.
The way I understand "Lucifer" is not by the label. That is to say, you can combine the capital letter "L" with the lowercase letters "u", "c", "i", "f", "e", and "r" to produce this word, name, label, symbol, sign, signifier, whatever you want to call it. It is a representation. You can show it to me and ask me this very same question, "what do you think about this?" If I did not even know how to read or write English perhaps I would just stare blankly at you. If I did know how to read it, but I had never heard of that word before, perhaps I would just shrug and respond with, "I don't know." So what this exercise shows us is that we need to be clear what this label actually represents to each person, not just the questioner, because it represents more than just other names, other labels, or other letters combined into words.
In order to break out of that subjective web of meanings and associations that could potentially go on forever, I like to switch gears and focus on a task or an objective. I call this "transmuting the subjective into the objective." This grounds the investigation in the realm of action, the realm of doing, of cause and effect. In other words, it shifts the topic to an exploration of VERBS instead of an exploration of NOUNS. This is counter-intuitive at first because "Lucifer" is a name, and a name is a form of a noun, it is a person, or a thing, or a place, or an idea, etc, so the natural tendency is to just stick to nouns when you form associations. To break out of this habit requires you to employ a useful tool, something called the magic "if". You must simply proceed "as if" the name "Lucifer" were, in objective reality, some kind of activity, an action, something happening, an effect being caused by something, something which is part of a narrative sequence.
Now perhaps we are in "new" territory, or at least, uncommonly traversed intellectual territory when it comes to the embodiment of "Lucifer" as an actual, tangible, "real" thing that we can even begin to discuss in a coherent way. Perhaps we need to look at "Lucifer" not as some "thing", not as a noun, but as a verb, as activities. In that case, how do you identify a behavior or action as belonging to the label "Lucifer"? To answer that, we would need to consult historical sources, including folklore, myth, canon, even gossip. Everything we can find, but with a particular focus in mind as we look. We are looking for something specific, something which will help us to characterize "Lucifer" as a physical act. For that, we need to look at the direct physical behavior of Lucifer. How does Lucifer walk, how does he sit, how does he lean? Does he extend his pinky when he drinks his tea? What is his facial expression at rest? What does Lucifer's voice sound like? What is the tempo of everything he does usually? What does he like on his oatmeal for breakfast, or does he not eat? What does he do? If he (or she, or it, or whatever) is doing something right now, what is that task? What is the goal of that task?
That final question gives us the last piece we need to complete our skeleton key to unlock everything there is to know about "Lucifer". Once we can deploy the magic of "what if" or "as if" to start imagining the direct embodiment of action that reflects the living, real, objective character of this vague concept, thus transmuting it from something subjective and mysterious into something objective and physical, then we can start to catch a glimpse of that the goals of these actions might be. What is the "supertask" so to speak, the general narrative of this character? What sequence of tasks is unfolding? If one task is part of another larger task, and is itself being made up of smaller subtasks, then when I look at all the different actions, doings, and behaviors that bring this character into physical reality, what seems to be the overarching main goal or priority that drives all these and brings them into being? In other words, what is the MOTIVE of this character?
If you can somehow accomplish all of this, through first letting go of your prior beliefs and conceptions, then shifting the focus from NOUNS over to VERBS, and then finally see your understanding crystallize into a MOTIVE, then you will really come close to a penetratingly realistic and well-developed idea of what the answer to your question might be.
The way I understand "Lucifer" is not by the label. That is to say, you can combine the capital letter "L" with the lowercase letters "u", "c", "i", "f", "e", and "r" to produce this word, name, label, symbol, sign, signifier, whatever you want to call it. It is a representation. You can show it to me and ask me this very same question, "what do you think about this?" If I did not even know how to read or write English perhaps I would just stare blankly at you. If I did know how to read it, but I had never heard of that word before, perhaps I would just shrug and respond with, "I don't know." So what this exercise shows us is that we need to be clear what this label actually represents to each person, not just the questioner, because it represents more than just other names, other labels, or other letters combined into words.
In order to break out of that subjective web of meanings and associations that could potentially go on forever, I like to switch gears and focus on a task or an objective. I call this "transmuting the subjective into the objective." This grounds the investigation in the realm of action, the realm of doing, of cause and effect. In other words, it shifts the topic to an exploration of VERBS instead of an exploration of NOUNS. This is counter-intuitive at first because "Lucifer" is a name, and a name is a form of a noun, it is a person, or a thing, or a place, or an idea, etc, so the natural tendency is to just stick to nouns when you form associations. To break out of this habit requires you to employ a useful tool, something called the magic "if". You must simply proceed "as if" the name "Lucifer" were, in objective reality, some kind of activity, an action, something happening, an effect being caused by something, something which is part of a narrative sequence.
Now perhaps we are in "new" territory, or at least, uncommonly traversed intellectual territory when it comes to the embodiment of "Lucifer" as an actual, tangible, "real" thing that we can even begin to discuss in a coherent way. Perhaps we need to look at "Lucifer" not as some "thing", not as a noun, but as a verb, as activities. In that case, how do you identify a behavior or action as belonging to the label "Lucifer"? To answer that, we would need to consult historical sources, including folklore, myth, canon, even gossip. Everything we can find, but with a particular focus in mind as we look. We are looking for something specific, something which will help us to characterize "Lucifer" as a physical act. For that, we need to look at the direct physical behavior of Lucifer. How does Lucifer walk, how does he sit, how does he lean? Does he extend his pinky when he drinks his tea? What is his facial expression at rest? What does Lucifer's voice sound like? What is the tempo of everything he does usually? What does he like on his oatmeal for breakfast, or does he not eat? What does he do? If he (or she, or it, or whatever) is doing something right now, what is that task? What is the goal of that task?
That final question gives us the last piece we need to complete our skeleton key to unlock everything there is to know about "Lucifer". Once we can deploy the magic of "what if" or "as if" to start imagining the direct embodiment of action that reflects the living, real, objective character of this vague concept, thus transmuting it from something subjective and mysterious into something objective and physical, then we can start to catch a glimpse of that the goals of these actions might be. What is the "supertask" so to speak, the general narrative of this character? What sequence of tasks is unfolding? If one task is part of another larger task, and is itself being made up of smaller subtasks, then when I look at all the different actions, doings, and behaviors that bring this character into physical reality, what seems to be the overarching main goal or priority that drives all these and brings them into being? In other words, what is the MOTIVE of this character?
If you can somehow accomplish all of this, through first letting go of your prior beliefs and conceptions, then shifting the focus from NOUNS over to VERBS, and then finally see your understanding crystallize into a MOTIVE, then you will really come close to a penetratingly realistic and well-developed idea of what the answer to your question might be.