About the Name LUCIFER by James Comper Gray 1876

About the Name LUCIFER by James Comper Gray 1876

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Lucifer, radiant one; the morning-star. Heb. Heylel, fr. halal, to shine." cut down, hewn down. The metaphor is here changed, and the fig. taken from the demolition of the Asherahs, or idols erected to Ashtoreth (i.e. Venus, or the morning star).

Lucifer.—There is no name we know so abused and misapplied as this truly beautiful name. Lucifer, the light-bringer, is the Latin equivalent of the Greek Phosphoros, which is used as a title of our blessed Lord in 2 Pet. i. 19, to which corresponds the phrase "bright and morning star" of the Book of Revelation (xxii. 16). Applied to Him the epithet is most expressive, for He is the true Light who enlightens every man who cometh into the world, and who has shed a flood of light upon life and immortality. But, unfortunately, the name has been given, almost appropriated, in the first place, to Satan, the "prince of darkness," who is the enemy and destroyer of light in the souls of men. The misapplication and degradation of a noble name arose, in the first instance, from a mistranslation and misinterpretation of Isa. xiv. 12, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O brilliant one [or bright star], son of the morning!" Our translators have used the word Lucifer here, and expositors—later ones slavishly following the earlier, such as Tertullian—have referred the whole passage, which is a highly poetical and beautiful description of the king of Babylon, to the devil; and so in common speech the evil one, who has no light in him, has been named Lucifer. And now, by as widespread an abuse of the word in these countries, it has been degraded as the designation of the common match. The match is more a lucifer, and bears the name more righteously, than the ruler of the kingdom of darkness; yet how tiny a lightbringer it is! What a come-down one feels to be in such an application of the word! The writer of the article "Lucifer" in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible remarks, "Its application, from Jerome downwards, to Satan in his fall from heaven, arises probably from the fact that the Babylonian empire is in Scripture represented as the type of tyrannical and self-idolising power, and especially connected with the empire of the evil one in the Apocalypse."

On the word "Lucifer" in The Intellectual repository for the New Church 1868

How the term "Lucifer," which, as just said, signifies bearer or bringer of light, should ever have been applied to Satan, the supposed prince of darkness, is a matter of wonder. The history of this false interpretation, however, is known: it was an error of the early fathers of the Christian church. "Tertullian and Gregory the Great," says Kitto, "understood this passage of Isaiah as referring to the fall of Satan; in consequence of which the name 'Lucifer' has since been applied to Satan, and this is now the usual acceptation of the word." But Dr. Henderson, who, in his "Isaiah," renders the line "Illustrious son of the morning," justly remarks, in his annotation:—"The application of this passage to Satan, and to the fall of the apostate angels, is one of those gross perversions of Sacred Writ which so extensively obtain, and which are to be traced to a proneness to seek for more in a given passage than it really contains,—a disposition to be influenced by sound rather than sense, and an implicit faith in received interpretations. The scope and connection show that none but the king of Babylon is meant."* By the king of Babylon is signified the same as by Babylon, just as the king of Egypt signifies the same as Egypt,—it being a rule of interpretation that the king or head of a country has the same representation as the country itself. The passage, therefore, as already explained, has reference solely to the fallen or corrupted church, signified by Babylon.

On Lucifer by Lewis Spence in An Encyclopædia of Occultism 1920

Lucifer : Literally light-bringer, a name applied to the conception of the devil, who has often been likened to a fallen star or angel. The Miltonic conception of Lucifer as a force potent for good or evil, one who might have done good greatly, intensely proud and powerful exceedingly, is one which is inconsistent with enlightenment. He represents simply the absence of good; a negative not a positive entity. He presides over the east, according to the ideas of the old magicians. He was invoked on Mondays, in a circle in the centre of which was his name. As the price of his
complaisance in appearing to the magician he asked only a mouse. Lucifer commands Europeans and Asiatics. He appears in the shape of a beautiful child. When he is angry his face is flushed, but there is nothing monstrous about him. He is, according to some students of demonology, the grand justiciary of Hades. He is the first to be invoked in the litanies of the Sabbath.

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