CHAPTER XXIV.—PIKEAN AND OTHER’ LUCIFERS' OR

SATANS.
Outside of the one Catholic Apostolic belief, there is a chameleon-like variety of Lucifers, Satans, Devils, Demons or Daimons, Demiurges, Shephirahs, Mystical or Magical Spirits or Intelligences, Pneumas, Psyches of many sorts, and an almost equal diversity of their counterparts. An instance: the counterpart of LUCIFER is for some, ADONAI, for others, SATAN, for others, GOD, etc.
In our times the most prominent is the Pikean Lucifer Writers of books or in magazines and newspapers of late years, have been busily engaged with the adversary of Adonai. This attraction of the public gaze towards the Pikean Lucifer, is not on account of his own merit or novelty, but because two dramaturges, one Phocean, the other Franco-Teuton, undertook to enthrone him as the Great Architect in the Masonic temples ; moreover, such men as Joris Karl Huys- man, Archbishop Meurin, and others have said: “We have seen him, or at least his horns and tail, in some Masonic lodges.”
It is true, that, since the 19th of April, 1897, the Pikean Morning Star has had a kind of eclipse; it is on the wane, but it may reappear at any time. We take the description of this Lucifer from A. E. Waite’s Devil Worship:
“The doctrine of Lucifer has been tersely described by “Huysman as a kind of reversed Christianity—a Catholicism “‘a rebours.—It is in fact, the revival of an old heresy “founded on what we have most of us been accustomed to “regard as a philosophical blunder: in a word, it is a man- “ichean system having a special anti-Christian application, “for while affirming the existence of two equal principles, “Adonai and Lucifer, it regards the latter as the god of light “and goodness, while the Christian Adonai is the prince of “darkness and veritable Satan. It is inferred from the con- “ditiou of the world at the present time that the mastery of “the moment resides with the evil principle and that the “beneficent deity is at a disadvantage. Adonai reigns surely, “as the Christian believes, but he is the author of human “misery, and Jesus is the Christ of Adonai, but he is the “messenger of misfortune, suffering and false renunciation, “leading ultimately to destruction, when the ‘Deus maledictus’ “shall cease to triumph. The worshippers of Lucifer have
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“taken sides in the cause of humanity, and in their own cause, “with the baffled principle of goodness ; they co-operate with “him in order to insure his triumph, and he communicates “with them to encourage and strengthen them; they work “to prepare his kingdom, and he promises to raise up a “Saviour among them, who is anti-Christ, their leader and “their king to come.’ ”
In his Digest of the Writings of Eliphas Levi, A. E. Waite had delineated the pattern of the above Lucifer and Satan in this wise:
“Good and evil flourish on the same tree, issue from the “same root. Good personified is God, evil personified is the “Devil. To know the secret and science of God, is to be God ; “to know the secret or science of the Devil, is to be Devil. “To seek to be at once Deity and Satan is to concentrate in “ourselves the most absolute contradiction.”
The 80 Luminaries, quoting from Levi’s Haute Magic, translated by Pike, introduced the same doctrine among their Brethren, see chapters xvi, xvii, etc.
In his translation of Levi's Ritual of Transcendent Magic, A. E. Waite supplies us with special descriptions of the Lucifers of the Kabala, and of the Gnostics, pp. 177, 178, 179:
“The Lucifer of the Kabala is not an accursed and “stricken angel ; he is the angel who enlightens, who regen- “erates by fire; he is to the angels of peace what the comet “is to the mild stars of the spring time constellations....A “Gnostic gospel discovered in the east by a learned traveler “of: our acquaintance, explains the genesis of tight to the “profit ef Lucifer as follows: The self-conscious truth is the “living thought. Truth is thought as it is in itself, and “formulated thought is speech. When eternal thought de- “sired a form, it said: ‘Let there be light.’ Now this thought “which speaks is the Word, and the Word said, ‘Let there be “light, because the Word itself is the light of minds. The “uncreated light, which is the Divine Word, shines because it “desires to be seen ; when it says, ‘Let there be light,’ it or- “dains that eyes shall be open; it creates intelligences. “When God said, ‘Let there be light, intelligence was made, “and the light appeared Now, the intelligence which God “diffused by the breath of His mouth, like a star given off “from the sun, took the form of a splendid angel, who was “saluted by heaven under the name of Lucifer. Intelligence
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“awakened, and comprehended its nature completely by the un- “derstanding of that utterance of the Divine Word, ‘Let there “be light.’ It felt itself to be free because God had called it “into being, and raising up its head, with both wings ex- “tended, it replied, ‘I will not be slavery.” ‘Then shall thou “be suffering,’ said the Uncreated Voice ‘I will be liberty,’ “replied the light. ‘Pride will seduce thee, said the Supreme “voice, ‘and thou will bring forth death.’ ‘I needs must strive “with death to conquer life,” again responded the created
_ “light. Thereupon God loosened from his bosom the shining
“cord which restrained the superb angel, and beholding him “plunge through the night, which he furrowed with glory. “He loved the offsoring of his thought, and said, with an in- “effable smile, ‘How beautiful was the Light !’”
Let us now quote what the same writers say of Satan, the counterpart of Lucifer. Transcendental Magic, pp. 91, 92:
“In the Kabala the occult principle is called Elder, and “this principle multiplied, and, as it were, reflected in “secondary causes, creates images of itself—that is to say, so “many elders as there are diverse conceptions of its unique “essence. These images, less perfect in proportion as they “are further removed from their source, project upon the “darkness an ultimate reflection or glimmer, representing a “horrible or deformed elder, who is vulgarly termed the devil. “Hence an initiate has been bold enough to say, ‘the devil is “God as understood by the wicked ; while another has added, “in words more bizarre, but no less energetic, ‘the devil is “composed of God’s ruins.’....Philosophically speaking, the “devil is a human idea of divinity, which has been surpassed “and dispossessed of heaven by the progress of science and “reason.”
We get some further information from pp. 126. 127:
“We approach the mystery of black magic. We are “about to confront, even in his own sanctuary, the black god “of the Sabbath, the formidable Goat of Mendes. At this
“point those who are subject to fear should close the book. |
« ...Is there a devil? What is the devil? As to the first “point, religion states that the devil is the fallen angel, occult “philosophy accepts and explains this definition.
“In black magic, the devil is the great magical agent “employed for evil purposes by a perverse will.
“The old serpent of the legend is nothing less than the “universal agent, the eternal fire of terrestrial life, the soul of
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“the earth, the living fount of hell. We have said that the “astral light is the receptacle of forms and these when evoked
“one which cannot be contested, one more terrible than could “be recounted by legends. When any one invokes the devi] i es, the devil comes and is seen. “To escape dying from horror at the sight, to escape catal- “epsy or idiocy, one must be already mad....As a fact, we “maintain, like himself’—de Mirville—“the reality and pro- “digious nature of facts ; with him also, we assign them to “the old serpent, the secret Prince of this world ; bnt we are “not agreed as to the nature of this blind agent, which under “different directions is at Once the instrument of al] good and “of all evil, the minister of prophets and the inspirer of “pythonesses....Mr. de Mirville is therefore a thousand “times right, but he is once and one great thing wrong.”
“Let us state for the edification of the vulgar....for the “greater glory of the church which persecuted the Templars,
“be worshipped by their adepts ; yes, there existed in the “past and there May be still in the present, assemblies which
“god of Lamartine and Victor Cousin, the god of Spinoza “and Plato, the god of the primitive Gnostic schools ; the “Christ also of the dissident priesthood ; this last qualification i black magic, will not astonish ities who are acquainted with the
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“phases of symbolism: and doctrine, in their various trans- “formations, whether in India, Egypt or Judea.”
Any one who has studied carefully the magical writings of Eliphas Levi, cannot fail to recognize more or less of his magical teachings in the History by the 80 Luminaries .-., in the three large volumes of R. F. Gould, in The Text Book on Advanced Freemasonry, in the Freemason and generally in the modern literature of the English craft. It is perfectly apparent that during the last 30 years the English leading Masonic Knights, whether in Europe or in America, have imbibed more or less of the magical teachings of the French Magician, and we do not know any one who contributed more to this result than Mr. A. E. Waite did in England.
‘This mystico-magician has misguided and transcendented his readers, when he boldly stated that Levi “was nothing of the sort of a high Mason.” A. Caubet in his SOUVENIRs, 1893, asserts what he was in a good position to know, namely
‘ that Levi “was received Mason in the presence of a consider- “able number of members of that society ; far from thanking “according to usage, those who had received him, he declared “publicly and solemnly that it was the Freemasons who owed “bim thanks. ‘I. come,’ said he, ‘to bring back to you the “lost traditions, the exact knowledge of your signs and em- “blems, and therefore show you the object and end for which “your association was constituted.’ ”
Fie! Waite. “The first in this plot was Lucifer.” You are less excusable than any body else, for no one has con- tributed, as you did, to the propagation of Mvstico-Magic among the English Occultists in or out of Freemasonry. Your digest of the magical writings of Levi has had two
editions in England. |