The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code (6 page)

Lords of light and dark

Although most shared the view of Church Father Polycarp that `Anyone who twists Christ's words to suit his own desires and says that there is no resurrection, or judgement is the first-born child of Satan',72 there were always dissenters, who were inevitably accused of `twisting Christ's words' to suit themselves. By and large, these were the Gnostics, who were to lose out to the Roman Church and, by doing so, become persecuted almost to extinction as the perceived servants of Satan. Certainly, they were to entertain some extremely thought-provoking notions about good and evil, even daring to reverse the usual role of God and Satan ...

`Gnostic' derives from the Greek gnosis, which means knowledge, referring to a sense of personal relationship with the deity, maintained by intuition, revelation and incremental initiation. Gnosticism was basically a knowledge of self - Gnothi sea uton - 'know thyself': `what united the various Gnostic sects was the belief that the world is completely evil and cannot be redeemed.'73 To them the world was so terrible that it could only be a shadowy, inferior realm, a grotesque parody of something far finer, more spiritual, which existed beyond our material senses.

Even the less extreme Gnostics assumed that the Creator himself was formerly a benign spirit who had fallen, like Lucifer. Indeed, they often identified this blind, ignorant and evil entity with the Devil, and, after the Greek Gnostics, called him the `demiurge' or `partial mover', the opposite to the prime mover, God. Robert McL. Wilson writes: `The Demiurge of Gnostic theory is simply the Satan of Jewish and Christian theology . . . transformed by the dominant Gnostic pessimism into the creator of the world, its present ruler. 171

To the Gnostic it made no sense to debate the likely outcome of the battle between Good and Evil - or as they frequently symbolized it, Light and Darkness - if, as most Christians believed, the Devil was already known to be doomed to defeat. Like the ancient Persians, most Gnostics were dualists, seeing the world in a constant state of flux between the powers of equal but opposite forces of Light and Darkness. The only problem, to put it bluntly, was knowing which was which ...

Although colourful, with their wild prophecies and speaking in tongues, the Gnostics' cosmology - apart from being immensely, not to say ludicrously, complex - was ultimately somewhat depressing, as acknowledged in the passage quoted above. They saw men and women as vulnerable slivers of spirit trapped in a gross fleshy package: to them originally mankind had been pure spirit, but had been caught by the evil aeon. Of course by espousing the idea that Yahweh was Satan, they were doomed to a not very peaceful future among the flock of the emergent established Church, the Roman Catholics.

It was usually left to the heretics to point out that there was a basic and disturbing discrepancy between the harsh, tyrannical Almighty of the Old Testament and Jesus' loving Father of the New Testament. Indeed, John Milton, who sought in his poem Paradise Lost famously to `justify the ways of God to Man' - and only succeeded in firing up luminaries of the Romantic Movement such as Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Blake with admiration for Lucifer, who saw him as the hero of the work - wrote of a truly sadistic Yahweh:

Almighty ... Have left us this our spirit and strength Strongly to suffer and support our pains That we may so suffice his vengeful ire.75

He seems little better, and because of his status and omnipotence even worse, than the Inquisitorial torturers who revived their victims so they could suffer further agonies, even (as we shall see) pulling them half-consumed from the flaming pyre to writhe for an hour or two before returning them to the fire. God has ensured that Adam and Eve had enough `spirit and strength' with which to suffer, to appease his own pathological anger. Yet even here, Milton seems unwilling to have the first man and woman wholly and irretrievably tormented, for although they were condemned `to work and suffer' the situation was `not without hope'.76 And while Satan was to suffer `torture without end', this somehow represented `Eternal justice'.

Indeed, many early Christians (and some more recent thinkers) became exercised over the vexed question of whether a just God would leave even Satan to languish in Hell for eternity - although gradually they came to accept that even the average sinner would be condemned to the infernal regions for ever. The Church Father, Clement of Alexandria, believed that in the fullness of time, all sinners - even Satan himself - might be saved. To Clement, the existence of free will meant that even the Devil retained the right to repent. But it was left to Origen to develop the concept of apocatastasis, `the ultimate return of all beings, including Satan, to the God from which they sprang'?? Today the Vatican proclaims that even the most dyed-in-the wool sinner can be forgiven by the Church, if he is genuinely repentant.78

However, the Gnostics with their intense anxiety about the real nature of God, had not plucked the idea of a good Lucifer out of thin air. Their sympathy for the Fallen One was similar to the ancient Greeks' admiration for Prometheus (whose name means `Forethought'), who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mankind, only to be condemned to be chained to a mountaintop where his liver was torn out by `his own totemic eagle and nightly restored to be devoured again'79 The wretched Prometheus lamented: `I rescued mankind from the heavy blow that was to cast them into Hades . . . Mankind I helped, but I could not help myself."' Admiring this altruistic anti-hero, and seeing in him true Luciferanism, Gnostic icons depicted Prometheus creating the first man out of clay - according to the Greek legend. Perhaps they saw behind the myth, for, like Lucifer, Prometheus, who gave Man the `fire' of intelligence, was ultimately the loser. With his fellow Titans, the giant spirits who roamed the earth even before Zeus and his pantheon took up residence on Olympus, Prometheus lost the ensuing battle for supremacy, and was chained in bondage under the planet.

This story was one of the inspirations for the Judaeo-Christian `war in heaven' and the fall of Lucifer," although Prometheus seems also to have been the prototype for trickster gods, such as the Scandinavian Loki. According to Barbara G. Walker he played a trick on Zeus that also surfaced in the Old Testament in another guise:

... Prometheus tricked Zeus into accepting the less edible parts of sacrificial animals, such as the fat and bones, on behalf of the gods, while human beings were allowed to consume the meat. This was not what Zeus intended, and he swore vengeance on both Prometheus and his human friends.82

Zeus was forced to accept the offal because he had made a sacred oath to take the sacrifice, but when the similar thing happened to Yahweh - the priests being instructed that they `shall remove all the fat ... and burn it on the altar as an aroma pleasing to the Lord 181 'the Jews simply claimed that Yahweh preferred it'.84

Significantly, however, it was `Prometheus' excessive contribution of rationalism"' that effectively brought the Olympian religion to its knees. Intuitive and mystical religious sentiments fade like the morning dew under the bright solar glare of too much thought, too much `right-brain' logic. (We will also see this in action when the scientific Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century helped sweep away the religious dogma and superstition of the ages, although some claim that science itself has become the modem bigotry.)

To Christians, Lucifer fell because of his wicked presumption. Yet to an objective eye, the Church's story is all too neat, Lucifer's transformation being suspiciously swift. Somehow during the fall, between being God's favourite angel and arriving on earth/in hell, the radiant Son of the Morning had acquired much nastier characteristics than mere pride. The shining Lucifer had become Satan, the literal embodiment of all imaginable evils, a dark creature of mind-freezing horror, who knows no mercy or compassion. He presides over his hellish college of demons amid the eternal flames of punishment and conspires with them to lure mankind into their foul embrace. He is the ultimate vampire, the soul-sucker par excellence, whose chief triumph is to make men evil like him. His underlying raison d'etre is to kill hope, although, as the `Father of Lies', he will first deceive by offering whatever the seeker desires.

Despite Milton's best intentions, his Satan, compared to a God seriously in need of anger management, is comparatively normal. Once forced down to Hell - or 'Pandemonium', the abode of devils - Satan seems determined to make the best of it, as a sort of diabolical pioneer, declaring `Here at last we shall be free',86 and, classically: `Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heav'n'.87 And Milton depicts Hell as a sort of Parliament (perhaps he should know, having worked for Cromwell!), where the demons debate whether or not to try to recover Heaven, which sounds really rather democratic.

The early Christians themselves were often confused by the nature of evil and the character of God. Marcion, who was expelled from the Christian community in Rome in 144 CE for musing on the big question `Whence is evil?' came to the conclusion that two gods must exist, the Old Testament demiurge, whom he also called the conditor malorum, `author of evils', and auctor diaboli, `maker of the Devil' 88 The benevolent deity, on the other hand, was allmerciful, but - presumably because there is not much evidence of this characteristic in most people's lives - his ways must be hidden from humankind.

To the Muslims, the Devil is either `Iblis' or `Shaytan', a pagan Arabic term `possibly derived from the roots "to be far from" or "to [be] born with anger".89 He was originally one of the morally ambiguous, shape-shifting djinn, created by God out of fire. These impish beings are associated with graveyards and the underworld, and on occasion they can be `trapped' into servitude as sorcerers' servitors. Satan himself can only tempt, never force, but he is remarkably successful, leading the righteous astray - specifically into apostasy, heresy and blasphemy.

Red god of the desert

Traditionally, the Hebrew Shaitan - who acted as arch-tempter in the Book of Job - is seen as deriving from the ancient Egyptian god Set,90 but there is another, more unsettling and controversial association. Although this would hardly sit comfortably with traditional Judaism or a literal form of Christianity, Hebrew scholar Professor Karl W. Luckert notes an interesting parallel between the Old Testament God and the ass-headed Set (although he is often depicted as a jackal-like mythological beast), the ancient Egyptians' nearest equivalent to the Judaeo-Christian Devil. Once ruler of the pantheon, Set (or Seth) villainously killed and dismembered the good god Osiris, consort of Isis, the mother goddess. In some versions of the story, he also sexually abused both Isis and her son Horus. However, the Egyptians had no out-and-out Satan figure, no irredeemable evil god with no function or purpose except to torment and entrap humans. To them, all their gods were aspects of the one God, so in a sense Set was an equally valued part of the Creator with the likes of Osiris, or Thoth, god of learning and healing. Even Set had his uses, to balance the usefulness and goodness of the others, and therefore should not be blamed for it. (His was also a useful name to utter in spells, as in The Book of the Dead, where the soul uses it to pass by afterlife snares and obstacles, saying `... for I am great of magic, with the knife that issued from Seth, and my legs are mine for ever.')" Set also appears in the Old Testament in human form as Seth, `the supplanter' of the Good Shepherd Abel92

Nevertheless, Set ruled over a physical realm - an actual, geographical location - that the Egyptians knew from their everyday experience to be nightmarish. With only their narrow strip of verdant land hugging both banks of the Nile, on which they were totally dependent for food, they were vulnerable to famine and recognized the hellishly inhospitable nature of the surrounding `red' desert - which was Set's kingdom. The Egyptians hated anything red, as can be seen from an invocation to Isis: `Free me from all red things' 93 In his alter ego as Typhon, Set was called `the red-skinned one' 94

Yet Set's desert was exactly the same environment that the Old Testament God Yahweh seemed to favour, as he led Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt, as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Indeed, he seemed curiously loath to let his nomadic people escape from the never-ending wilderness, managing to keep them wandering on its sand for `forty years' (usually taken to mean simply `a long time'), while they managed to travel just as many miles, apparently going round in circles. And like a typical desert dweller, in the story of Adam and Eve's fall, Yahweh prefers to walk `in the garden in the cool of the day' 95 Luckert writes:

As a desert god, Seth was known among Egyptians as the god of foreigners, of thunder, lightning and earthquakes ... It has been told that Moses spoke to the Pharaoh in the name of the God of the Hebrews. (Exodus 5:3). To an Egyptian pharaoh that meant in the name of Seth. [• •] The God who killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians would have been Seth to them, the very god of desert-dwellers 96

It is interesting that Set combined the characteristics of both Yahweh and Lucifer, especially his association with lightning. The Egyptian pharaohs also descended into the earth as the serpent Sata, father of lightning, before their triumphant ascent into the heavens as the resurrected Osiris, where they literally became a star. The devout believed they could become immortal like Sata, by repeating the prayer in which they identified with him:

I am the serpent Sata, whose years are infinite. I lie down dead. I am born daily. I am the serpent Sata, the dweller in the utter most parts of the earth. I lie down in death. I am born. I become new, I renew my youth every day 97

In the Gospel according to Luke Jesus describes Satan `as lightning fall from heaven.'98 Yet the nearest Egyptian god to the bright star Lucifer was the hawk-headed Horus, magically conceived by Isis and the murdered Osiris. Horns was Set's sworn enemy - so reminiscent of the Israelites' Yahweh, was no benevolent deity. But although he delighted in human folly, as we have seen, he had his uses. The Gnostics, like the ancient Egyptians - who rejoiced in the ultimate balancing triad, their Trinity of Father, Mother and Child - also saw a sort of essential balance in Good and Evil, the glue that kept the cosmos together. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip (rediscovered after nearly 1,500 years at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945)99 makes the point that: `The Light and the Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers one for another."00