Luciferianism In Literature, Movie, And Art

Introduction

This paper proposes to analyze how Lucifer and Luciferianism are perceived by common people, how they were treated in literature, religion, and arts during centuries, and how their meaning and reason influenced people and cultures. All in all, this paper tries to prove how every person, author, creator, or member of a certain secret society perceived and believed in this idea.

This thesis plan treats all the aspects mentioned above from a pragmatic point of view. It is structured on 3 main chapters, each of them covering the main aspects of the theme. The first chapter proposes to analyze the idea of Luciferianism from a cultural and religious point of view. The second one treats the literary interpretations and visions of few of the most important authors and other artists of all times. The third, and final one, is based on a survey applied on common people and their understanding on the theme and subject and the way they perceive Lucifer.

Luciferianism is a long debated theme that preoccupied important figures in literature, arts, philosophy, etc. This paper will focus on literary, cultural, and religious approaches.

Lucifer, as an entity, appears in many myths and literary works, but also as a person. It is many times associated with Satan, is considered to be the fallen angel, Beelzebub, Memnoh, or other religious or obscure beings or entities. Its names differ from author to author and from culture to culture.

Lucifer is a Latin word from the words lucem ferre, literally meaning "light-bearer", which was used as a name for the dawn appearance of the planet Venus, heralding daylight. Use of the word in this sense is uncommon in English, in which "Day Star" or "Morning Star" is more common expressions.

In English, the noun Lucifer has 3 meanings:

The first one refers to Satan, Old Nick, Devil, Lucifer, Beelzebub, the Tempter, Prince of Darkness, acceptations in Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions, the chief spirit of evil and adversary of God; tempter of mankind; master of Hell.

The second meaning refers to morning star, daystar, Phosphorus, Lucifer – a planet (usually Venus) seen just before sunrise in the eastern sky.

In the third and final acceptation, it means match, lucifer, friction match – lighter consisting of a thin piece of wood or cardboard tipped with combustible chemical; ignites with friction.

Merriam Webster defines Lucifer as “the morning star” or “a fallen rebel archangel”, “the Devil” (2003: 739)

As I have mentioned above, Lucifer, in one of its English definitions but also in many other interpretations and opinions refers to Satan, although the name is not applied to him in the New Testament. The use of the name "Lucifer" in reference to a fallen angel stems from an interpretation of Isaiah 14:3–20, a passage that speaks of a particular Babylonian King, to whom it gives the title of "Day Star", "Morning Star", as fallen or destined to fall from the heavens or sky. In 2 Peter 1:19 and elsewhere, the same Latin word lucifer is used to refer to the Morning Star, with no relation to the devil.

A pagan myth of the fall of angels, associated with the Morning Star, was transferred to Satan, as seen in the Life of Adam and Eve and the Second Book of Enoch, which the Jewish Encyclopedia attributes to the first pre-Christian century: in these Satan-Sataniel is described as having been one of the archangels. Because he refused to accept the rules of the earth, Satan-Sataniel was hurled down, with his hosts of angels, and since then he has been flying in the air continually above the abyss.

A passage in the Book of Isaiah refers to the king of Babylon, a man who seemed all-powerful, but who has been brought down to the land of the dead. Isaiah promises that the Israelites will be freed and will then be able to use in a taunting song against their oppressor the image of the Morning Star, which rises at dawn as the brightest of the stars, outshining Jupiter and Saturn, but lasting only until the sun appears. This image was used in an old popular Canaanite story that the Morning Star tried to raise high above the clouds and establish itself on the mountain where the gods assembled, in the far north, but was cast down into the underworld.

Lucifer is, therefore, considered the logos from Venus, the light bringer. The first Christians considered Jesus the logos from Venus. This is also an explanation for the reason the Satanists took the pentagram as a symbol: it was considered to be the star (the planet) Venus, Lucifer’s home.

the Romans also, when saying Lucifer, reffered to the planet Venus when it was west of the sun and hence rose before the sun in the morning, thereby being the morning star.

The same planet was called Hesperus, Cesperugo, Vesper, Noctifer, or Nocturnus, when it appeared in the heavens after sunset. Although 19th and 20th century occultists would equate other goddesses such as Astarte, Ashtoreth, Lilith, Isis, Cemeramis, Mari, and Ishtar with Venus, links between the cultures and attributes represented are not historically clear. Lucifer as a personification is called a son of Astraeus and Aurora or Eos, of Cephalus and Aurora, or of Atlas. He is called the father of Ceyx, Daedalion, and of the Hesperides. Lucifer is also a surname of several goddesses of light, such as Artemis, Aurora, and Hecate.

Lucifer is also the Sun God, the eternal consort of the Moon Goddess Diana. The conjunction of the God and Goddess is called the God (dess) or Luxifer (The Divine Androgyne). In other words, here is one energy with two poles and an infinite number of possibilities.

The Tyndale Bible Dictionary states that there are many who believe the expression "Lucifer" and the surrounding context in Isaiah 14 refers to Satan. But it points out that the context of the Isaiah passage is about the accomplished defeat of the king of Babylon, while the New Testament passages speak of Satan.

Lucifer was both an Etruscan God and a Roman God.
In the Etruscan religion he was The God of Light. In his darker nature he was the God of Nature – a Horned God. When incorporated into the roman pantheon as a lesser god he became the God of light, knowledge, and air.

Thus Lucifer is a force of Nature fallen from Above. In Christianity, Lucifer fell because he wanted to be God. In Merkavah Kabbalah the point is to stand before the glory of The Throne of God (The Merkavah) and thus in the glory of his presence dissolve into him. Lucifer sought to gain the Throne and Be God.

The original name for Lucifer in Isaiah was actually ''Day Star'' and not the ''Morning Star''. There was actually a King in those days with the name of Day Star. So in some parts of the occult Lucifer is seen as an honored force, a force of temptation to an in order to test and improve him.

In Islam Lucifer fell and became Iblis because when God created Man he wanted Lucifer to bow down before his creation. Lucifer then said '' Why should a son of fire bow down to a son of clay?'' and because he was defiant he was cast out of Heaven. Thus he told God that he hated man and would do everything to turn Man away from God.

In Occultism this was not seen as a test of God but the idea that proving that God is not infallible. In one train of thought this only proved that one could become a God or that there were multiple ones. So when Lucifer fell into the abyss he arose as a God. In Luciferian thought a God is not born simply through ritual but through sweat, hard work and discipline.

It is commonly said that Lucifer was the most beautiful angel in Heaven. In theory, the Luciferianism is totally different from Satanism because of the entity itself they praise.

The etymologies of the names come from different languages and times.

The Luciferiens see Lucifer as a God of Good, while Satanists consider that this name is Satan’s bright side, but they prefer his dark one. They believe that Lucifer saved the man form Heaven giving him to bite from the forbidden fruit to protect him from the evil plans of Jehovah. Once on earth, demons and Lucifer came into contact with people teaching them different things and making of them a real opponent against Jehovah.

They believe in meditation and astral projections.

On the other hand, Satanism is a darker, tougher and more realistic belief. Its purpose is not that of uniting individual.

Satanism can be considered spiritualism (loosely) of an orientation which lacks moral, social, or religious norms and with antisocial manifestations.

Luciferianism is considered to be the belief of the most initiated Satanists. Its roots go until they reach the supreme understanding of the concepts of good and evil and their annihilation. From the Templar return from Jerusalem to the Illuminati, everyone understood this fact.

The Gnostic Luciferianism believes that Lucifer is the same as Satan, but it is the constructive part, the angel of light, while Satan is the destructive part, the beast it protects itself from God, it is about the duality in every person. Lucifer did not open the war in Heaven to take God’s place, but to save people from slavery. It is not the first fallen angel, even though this is sustained by many.

Luciferianism is identified by some people as an auxiliary of Satanism, because countless identification of Lucifer with Satan. Some followers of Luciferianism accept this identification or consider Lucifer as Satan's light. Other followers of Luciferianism reject this idea, saying that Lucifer is another ideal than Satan. The followers of Luciferianism are inspired from Egyptian, Roman, and Greek mythology, and Western Occultism.

Lucifer was both an etruscan God and a Roman God.
In the Etruscan religion he was The God of Light. In his darker nature he was the God of Nature – a Horned God. When incorporated into the roman pantheon as a lesser god he became the God of light, knowledge, and air.

Thus Lucifer is a force of Nature fallen from Above. In Christianity, Lucifer fell because he wanted to be God. In Merkavah Kabbalah the point is to stand before the glory of The Throne of God (The Merkavah) and thus in the glory of his presence dissolve into him. Lucifer sought to gain the Throne and Be God.

The original name for Lucifer in Isaiah was actually ''Day Star'' and not the ''Morning Star''. There was actually a King in those days with the name of Day Star. So in some parts of the occult Lucifer is seen as an honored force, a force of temptation to an in order to test and improve him.

In Islam Lucifer fell and became Iblis because when God created Man he wanted Lucifer to bow down before his creation. Lucifer then said '' Why should a son of fire bow down to a son of clay?'' and because he was defiant he was cast out of Heaven. Thus he told God that he hated man and would do everything to turn Man away from God.

Chapter I

Luciferianism – History and Culture

“The desire of excessive power caused the

angels to fall, the desire of knowledge

caused men to fall.”

Francis Bacon

As I tried to state in the introductory chapter, Luciferianism is seen by some as an auxiliary of Satanism, due to the popular identification in some novels of Lucifer with Satan. Some Luciferians accept this identification or consider Lucifer as the light bearer aspect of Satan. Others reject it, arguing that Lucifer is a more positive ideal than Satan. They are inspired by different cultures’ mythologies, by Gnosticism, and by western occultism. In the historical Luciferianism there were several cults that worshiped Lucifer. The Gesta Treverorum records that in 1231, heretics began to be persecuted throughout Germany. Among them, there were also Luciferians. Over the there were several cults that worshiped Lucifer. The Gesta Treverorum records that in 1231, heretics began to be persecuted throughout Germany. Among them, there were also Luciferians. Over the following three years, several people were burned as a result. According to a papal letter from Gregory IX, one of the claims made by the Luciferians was that Lucifer had been cast out of Heaven unjustly. Women were implicated in the cult, and the Church accused those named as heretics of sexual perversities.

In Modern Luciferianism, The Church of Lucifer is an organization that represents modern Luciferianism where Lucifer is considered a symbol of endless desire for knowledge and a power over all aspects of nature. Modern Luciferianism activates since before de 1980’s in America and includes members from around the world. Modern Luciferianism encourages the study of various ancient cults.

There are several organizations of Luciferianism and each one of them sees Luciferianism from its point of view differently and, in the same time, very similar. The Order of Phosphorus is a nonprofit organization that offers great honor to Luciferian principles of discipline, spiritual excellence, and the endless desire of knowledge. The Church of Adversarial Light, an ecleziastical affiliation of the Order of Phosphorus worships culture and knowledge of current Luciferianism without the rigors and requirements of the system of the Order of Phosphorus

The organization Ordo Luciferis, opposed to The Ordo Luciferi, is a spiritual group of Luciferians representing a high degree of Masonry.

The Ordo Luciferi is an international organization that does not mandate for a strict religion or a dogmatic belief system. Known as The Luciferian Order, The Ordo Luciferi exists to provide discussions about philosophy, magic and lifestyle. In this organization there is a working group appointed to coordinate events. It is considered "The Official Think Tank of the Luciferian Order" and is involved in the development of occult techniques.

The Temple of the Dark Sun, also known as The Order of the Dark Sun is an occult Luciferian organization that considers that the white energies must be harnessed as well as the black energies (earth and universe) to establish the natural balance. The Luciferian organization is very selective in choosing members that want to join. The Temple of the Dark Sun has a system of grades and each grade has different needs for advancement.

As there exist several cults that worship and function for Lucifer, there are, in the world, different religions that worship different gods or beliefs. These religions or belief systems have ranged in iconology and practice, but common threads are clear and concise. In their systems, most notably is the idea of dualism. Merriam Webster defines dualism as a "doctrine that the universe is under the dominion of two opposing principles one of which is good and the other evil." (2003: 384) With this definition we can further elaborate of the meaning of the concept as an intricate balance, here of good vs. evil. This theme may be as widespread as civilizations needed to classify their residents and at the same time teach them the difference between good and evil. Egyptians used mythology to educate their society on behavior and religion. “Myths are based on rivalry or struggle of the myths characters."(Idem, 1221)

All of the above refer to the duality of the human being and of the nature. Duality always implies two sided things. It is like different and opposed things and aspects. We can talk about the duality God and Satan/Lucifer, good and evil, yin and yang, the Egyptian gods Horus and Seth, etc. The duality most frequent in the mysticism refers to good vs. evil. An even though we also have other dualities, all of them drive us to these two concepts: good and evil.

Talking about the duality formed by God and Lucifer/Satan, we can see different perceptions, depending on everyone’s religion or belief: skeptics reject the existence of God, the Christians believe in Him. One of the most common reasons skeptics reject the existence of God is due to the presence of evil in this universe. They reason that a perfect God would not create a universe in which evil exists. Skeptics claim that since God created everything, this means God must have also created evil. They even cite Bible verses. In Isaiah, for example, it is stated that: “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.” (45:7), or Amos, “Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?” (3:6), or passages from Lamentations: “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?” (3:38).

However, evil is not really a created thing. You can't see, touch, feel, smell or hear evil. It is not one of the fundamental forces of physics, nor does it consist of matter, energy, or the spatial dimensions of the universe. Still, skeptics like to claim that God created evil and cite the Bible to prove their point. The Bible is quite clear that God is not the author of evil and insists that He is incapable of doing so: "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?” (23:19).

Skeptics love the King James Bible. Use of this translation is problematic these days, since it uses an archaic version of modern English, which doesn't necessarily mean the same things today as when it was translated over 400 years ago. In addition, the King James Version was produced using a limited number of medieval manuscripts that did not represent the earliest Alexandrian set of manuscripts.

There are different interpretations of the translated King James Version: “The One forming light and creating darkness, causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the LORD who does all these.” (Isaiah 45:7) is translated nowadays as “I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.” (Isaiah 45:7).

Isaiah 45:7 contrasts opposites. Darkness is the opposite of light. However, evil is not the opposite of peace. The Hebrew word translated "peace" is “shâlôm”, which has many meanings, mostly related to the well being of individuals: completeness, soundness, welfare, peace, “Râ‛âh”, the Hebrew word translated "evil" in the King James Version often refers to adversity or calamity. There are two forms of the word.

In Amos 3:6: “If a trumpet is blown in a city will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in a city has not the LORD done it?” translated “When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the LORD caused it?” (3:6). Likewise, Amos 3:6 uses the same word, “râ‛âh”, referring to “calamity” or “disaster”. The context (a disaster happening to a city) does not refer to moral evil.

These examples are very illustrative to point out that God is not the author of evil: “For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness; No evil dwells with You.” (Psalm 5:4). Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.” (James 1:13).

When talking about the duality, the nature of the individual is dual in itself. The philosophers have different opinions but in all of them this duality is mirrored. Thomas Hobbes argues that the natural state of people is violent and inclined to devolve toward the bestial. Aristotle argues that that the natural state of humans inclines towards the good; much of the arguments that he puts forth in The Nicomachean Ethics contains at its core the Platonic assumption that evil is simply ignorance and can be educated away. Aristotle firmly believes that everyone has it within himself to become a better person through thought, observation, education, and experience (and of course the practice of philosophy). Not only does each person have this capacity, Aristotle argued, but has the moral obligation to try to improve.

Evil is considered by some to be something which has no definite meaning, as there will always be someone who has a different interpretation. It will remain in this world in order to test people's temptations and morals. Evil can be classified as an act which causes pain purposely and not accidentally. A person committing an act of evil knows that he/she is doing something which is morally wrong but then still proceeds to do it. Evil is an ugly thing but then one needs to have evil so that there would be good in the world. There has to be something out there which will allow us to classify something as an act of good so that it can be distinguished from evil. Evil has to be there so it can balance goodwill in the world so that life can go on. This is known as the theory of duality where it states that life is a struggle between good or evil. It is believed that evil and good are different parts of the pole and cancel each other out.

St. Thomas Aquinas sees evil as having no purpose or substance of its own, because God did not create it and neither does He allow it. It exists only because the human will, which is free, opts for it. He says that evil is not an essence, form or substance, which goodness possesses. Rather it is the absence of that goodness or the privation of good. A created thing or creature is created for a purpose by God and that purpose is necessarily good, because God created it, and that individual’s nature is directed at that purpose, which is good. When the individual, by his or her own free will, decides not to opt for that purpose directly or indirectly it violates its own nature, which is aimed or directed towards its own good, and therefore, commits evil.

Centuries before the establishment of modern religion, the problem of evil already plagued humanity. Early philosophers discussed its defining characteristics at length. Socrates, who roamed the Greek city-state of Athens nearly 400 years before Christ's birth, claimed that good and evil could only be distinguished through self-knowledge. However, it seems that this discovery was no easy task; over 2000 years later, theologians continue to debate the problem of evil. At the core of this debate is a struggle to discover the essence of evil and to describe this essence in a way that will force humanity to confront and to judge its own actions. For Socrates, this confrontation took the form of knowledge. The world's theologians, however, sought to define the problem in more concrete ways.

St. Augustine believed evil was allowed to exist, despite the goodness of God, in order to create and strengthen the belief in God. St. Augustine spent many years contemplating the problem of evil, wondering why evil exists despite the fact that God, the almighty controller of the world, is entirely good and all-powerful. He believed that God made everyone and everything completely good, yet recognized that evil existed in the world. Therefore, he aimed to understand evil in order to develop his faith. His major question was: If the body and soul are created by God and are therefore good, what causes evil?

He initially believed that God made a perfect world, but that God's creatures turned away from God of their own free will, through different types of falls, and that is how evil originated in the world. In Augustine's study of the problem of evil, he argues that there are a variety of things that are good. Without this variety, he says, there can be a greater goodness of things as a whole than there would be if this variety did not exist. Augustine also argues that evil is not completely real in itself. Instead, it is dependent on something more real, like disease, which is a form of evil. He points out that disease can only exist in a body, which is a form of good. Therefore, Augustine says, God, who is the source of everything that exists, is not in contest with a positive being or a counterpart that is evil.

Good and evil create a yin and yang effect that many believe is necessary to understand life and its balance. It is difficult to prove what is evil and what is good; there are many different opinions, depending on the circumstances. To totally remove the problem of evil, everyone on earth would have to be destroyed, which would be pointless. The opposing opinion is that evil need not remain with humanity. Many believe that evil and good are not actually opposing forces. They are not forces at all. Instead, they are simply words that are put on actions and ideas, depending on what the majority of the society agrees upon. There are many places that do not have the same rules and regulations as other areas, but that does not make one of these places evil and the other place good. It only makes these places different from one another. It is the same with good and evil. They are side by side, not opposed to one another, and the only difference between the two is based in the perceptions and opinions of those around them.

Throughout the Bible there are many examples of which humans must make a choice between good and evil. If the Fall had never occurred humankind would never have the responsibility to make their own choices. The consequences of the Fall provide humanity with the knowledge and characteristics that make them human. While the knowledge may not always result in the right choices, it at least provides people with humanity. Without the freedom to make their own choices people are more like soulless beings. Knowledge is a key human characteristic that often leads to other humanlike qualities, such as modesty, fear, blame, and jealousy. The Fall provides people with those humanlike qualities.

Other elements that form an interesting duality consist of the Egyptian gods Horus and Seth, which are considered to be Lucifer like. It seems that Lucifer; Horus and Seth are regarded as similar archetypes. The eye of Horus and the eye of Lucifer is said to be the “all seeing eye”. Then by saying that Lucifer-Seth and Lucifer-Horus are similar archetypes, Seth and Horus are connected indirectly. But Seth and Horus were adversaries and sworn enemies even though they did stop attacking each other later on. But then it seems like almost everyone has the “all seeing eye” as their symbol. The eye is also a symbol for free masonry. Any insight appreciated.

It is interesting that in the case of Isis, Osiris, and Horus one can also say the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, or Mary, God, and Jesus. Lucifer was the morning star and Isis also held that title, so I would not say Horus and Lucifer are the same, but I would say there is a connection.

Horus and Set were originally expressions of the primal duality, the two aspects of Heaven, the day-sky and night-sky. As the Egyptian mythology was elaborated towards its final chaotic state, their symbolism drifted away from these absolute poles into the middle ground, first becoming solar, and finally taking on a variety of solar/martial and zodiacal characteristics. Yet their final form can still be expressed in a concise symbolism, that of the astrological signs of Aries and Scorpio. Taken whole, their symbolism is that of the primal duality manifesting in its male aspects.

A brief list of some of the characteristics associated with the gods shows their positions as opposite poles of a duality. These characteristics are extracted from myths quoted in Budge's Gods of the Egyptians.

Horus is associated with daylight, life, fire and its symbols: Aries. He is considered a slayer, the bursting forth of life. He is the conqueror and the king; it rises into the sky and steals Seth’s virility. On the other side, Seth is associated with exactly the opposite characteristics of Horus: night, death, water and its symbols: Scorpio. He is considered a slain, the withdrawal of life and its reappearance. He is the victim and the rebel and he descends into the earth.

In its most general form, Aries is represented by the myth-pattern called the Man-Who-Lives, which appears in many different myth-systems essentially unchanged. He is the warrior who by right of conquest becomes the King, and rules until he is overcome by Death. Cabalistically speaking, he represents the transformation of the martial sexual power into a solar child, or the transformation of fire-by-friction into solar fire.

Scorpio is a watery sign, representing the withdrawal of life from the plant kingdom at the end of the growing season, and its concentration into the seed, which is buried in the Earth to await a new life. Extension of this principle into the animal kingdom accounts for its connection with the sex act.

Horus can not maintain a state of ascendancy without a self-interested and emotionally passive population to rule. His opponent Set/Scorpio seeks to break out of the emotional passivity, creating disturbances and breaking the patterns of normal life so that new conditions might be created.

The myth-pattern of Set is that of the Man-Who-Dies. In one aspect, he is the victim of Horus, the one who is slain so that Horus's reputation can be enhanced. Except for his slaying of Osiris, there are very few instances in Egyptian mythology where Set engages in active violence. In contrast, the myths of Horus are filled with detailed accounts of slaughter. Set traditionally acts the part of the perpetual victim. Horus slays him over and over, and always he reappears in another form to be slain again. In another aspect he is the rebel, the man who does not submit to conquest and goes "underground", opposing the conqueror secretly because he lacks the power to oppose him openly. His is also the pattern of the martyr who prefers to submit to death rather than abandon his principles. Or speaking more generally, the Eagle aspect of Scorpio represents adherence to the ideal at the expense of the mundane.

There is also at least a partial correspondence between Scorpio and the self-immolating Phoenix, which destroys itself in order to reproduce.

Cabalistically speaking Set represents the transmutation of fire-by- friction through a dark solar stage into electric fire, the fire of the divine will. He is the Wandering Son, the Everyman who breaks away from his home life and community, passes through strange ordeals and trials, and returns home a demi-god to save the community from destruction and oppression by the conqueror.

Both are heroes, both necessary to the accomplishment of the hero's task. Their fundamental natures embody the same energies but with dissimilar emphasis. While related to Aries and Scorpio in their individual manifestations, together they are the twins of Gemini. Thus they at times appear to be in conflict, as in the Horus/Set, Cain/Abel, and Romulus/Remus, or even God/Lucifer myths, and at other times they cooperate, as in the Arthurian Romances and the myth of Castor and Pollux.

By examining the myth of the feud between Horus and Seth, we can find parallels to Christianity. Even those who do not practice as Christians are well aware of the Bible's teaching of Lucifer, commonly known as the Devil, and God, a perfect example of good versus evil.

How can we define what is good and what is evil? Are there universal indicators behind, within, or consequent upon an action by which one can determine whether it was a good or an evil act? How can one tell whether a person is good or evil? The scriptures of the world's religions provide a variety of answers to these questions.

The first group of passages defines good and evil by their fruits. A good person or a good deed bears good fruits; and an evil person or an evil deed produces evil fruits. From the fruits, the person's heart and sincerity can be known. Among the good fruits, of special importance for their traditions are the Confucian Five Happinesses and the Christian Fruits of the Spirit.

Second are passages which define good and evil by purpose and intention. Purpose may mean to follow an objective standard: the Dhamma or the will of God or Way of Heaven. Or, intention may be known inwardly and intuitively. Defining good and evil by purpose or intention permits one to know good or evil even when the result is not visible. But since intention is often hidden, it may have to be brought to light by testing, as in the final selections.

In Saint Matthew, we can read:

“That deed that I am desirous of doing with the body is a deed of my body that might conduce to the harm of self and that might conduce to the harm of others and that might conduce to the harm of both; this deed of body is unskilled, its yield is anguish, its result is anguish. If you, Rahula, reflecting thus, should find it so, a deed of body like this, Rahula, is certainly not to be done by you. (7.16-20).

In Buddhism, there are five sources of happiness: is long life, riches, soundness of body, and serenity of mind, love of virtue, an end crowning the life. The six extreme evils are: misfortune shortening the life, sickness, distress of mind, poverty, wickedness, weakness.

Another main duality, meaning and referring to good vs. evil duality is Yin and Yang symbol. The Symbol (Yin-Yang) represents the ancient Chinese understanding of how things work. The outer circle represents "everything", while the black and white shapes within the circle represent the interaction of two energies, called "yin" (black) and "yang" (white), which cause everything to happen. They are not completely black or white, just as things in life are not completely black or white, and they cannot exist without each other. Yin is made from yin which means “clouds”, “clouded weather” and fu meaning “hill”. Yang is made of yang, meaning “sun”, “sunny hill” and again fu. So, they refer to the dark or light side of a hill, and therefore the dark and light side of everything, of how natural things are, of how the nature of the individual is.

The idea of opposites (Yin Yang, the union and harmony of opposites) has existed in both Eastern and Western philosophy since ancient times. Of the Ancient Greek Philosophers, Heraclitus and Parmenides both understood that the Universe was One and Dynamic. As Bertrand Russell writes on Heraclitus;

For Heraclitus the unity of things was to be found in their essential structure or arrangement rather than their material. This common structure or Logos, which was not superficially apparent, was chiefly embodied in a single kinetic material, fire. It was responsible both for the regularity of natural changes and for the essential connection of opposites. Heraclitus adopted this traditional analysis of differentiation through balanced interaction. The regularity underlying change was for Heraclitus the significant thing.

Yin and Yang are opposites. They are either on the opposite ends of a cycle, like the seasons of the year, or, opposites on a continuum of energy or matter. This opposition is relative, and can only be spoken of in relationships. Yin and Yang are never static but in a constantly changing balance.

They are also interdependent which means they cannot exist without each other. The Tai Ji diagram shows the relationship of Yin and Yang and illustrates interdependence on Yin and Yang. Nothing is totally Yin or totally Yang. Just as a state of total Yin is reached, Yang begins to grow. Yin contains seed of Yang and vise versa. They constantly transform into each other.

There is a mutual consumption of yin and yang. Relative levels of yin-yang are continuously changing. Normally this is a harmonious change, but when yin or yang are out of balance they affect each other, and too much of one can eventually consume the other.

One can change into the other, but it is not a random event, happening only when the time is right.

Talking about the nature of the individual, there are people that cannot balance the good and evil in each other. In real life, as well as in fiction, the goo and the evil coexist, but in spite of the fact that they must be balanced, one of them often reigns over the other. Different people cannot be evil or good, but their true nature includes the both. In the same time, different people can see good or evil in their own perception. Gerald Messadié, in A History of the Devil, states that:

“In the mid-eighties, the world saw an odd and symbolic case of geographical transference. The president of the United states, Ronald Reagan, called the USSR <<the Evil Empire>>, while the de facto leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini called the United States <<The Great Satan>>. Both flights of rhetoric indicate that hell, the kingdom of the Devil, doesn’t appear to be situated in the same place for everybody – and that the Devil is a politically useful figure.” (1997: 3)

There are also organizations that worship good or evil. As I stated in the beginning of this chapter, there are Luciferian cults, but there are also some other cults that we only have heard about, but there is nothing clear about what they do and plan. Such cults, like the Illuminati or the Francmasons, are, in my opinion the most complicated and long debated organizations. There is nothing material we know about them, only what others suppose or have heard from unknown people. But there is often stated that these organizations rule the world, even though we do not know yet which one is the most powerful. We will se below some opinions of different people, none of them named.

Some state that what we commonly call the historical fact is a phenomenon that takes place on two levels. The first plane is visible, to the reach of any man who comes out on the street or has TV and Internet access. This is only the tip of the iceberg. The second plane is invisible to many people. In this hidden dimension the future of the world is planned. The authors form a secret group who watches the destinies of mankind for thousands of years. Those who heard of them call them the Illuminati

If we imagine, if only for a moment that everything we know about the surrounding reality is a big fake. Like much of what serves the media are lies and manipulation. That everything they call "free" is only the result of a false that springs from a long line of official lies.

In this case, we will slowly discover that the "power" of this world is not that for which are fighting today the United States, Russia, Japan, and EU. All these economic and military powers are only some parts of the game, handled from the shadow by the true masters of the planet. From there, from the anonymous darkness, they bind and untie things. From the highest conceivable level of power, this unknown form many forums govern unhindered. They make laws and revolutions, introduce governments; they decide what countries disappear for other countries to take their place. They create new ideologies and even religions. About identities and nationalities of the Illuminati very few things are known, as is easy to suspect. Instead, their plans are visible as the “veil” in the eyes of those who want to know the truth, is equally erased by the thirst for knowledge and the desire to be truly free. Their power is great and feared by anyone who gets to know something about them. Over the millennia, they have perfected the art of conspiracy up to the climax of perfection. They have four great directions simple and difficult to oppose: they create conflicts and wars where the two involved parts fight against each other and never against the real instigator, never appear in public, finance all the parts involved in the conflict, and they are always seen as the peacemaker that ends the conflict.

Neither the attributes nor personification of Lucifer or Satan play any role in the beliefs or rituals of Freemasonry. The topic is only of interest insofar as anti-Masonic attacks have accused Freemasonry of worshiping Lucifer. The confusion stems from such 19th century Masonic authors as Albert Pike and Albert G. Mackey who have used the term "luciferian" in its classical or literary sense to refer to a search for knowledge. John Robinson notes "The emphasis here should be on intent. When Albert Pike and other Masonic scholars spoke over a century ago about the "Luciferian path," or the "energies of Lucifer," they were referring to the morning star, the light bearer, the search for light; the very antithesis of dark, satanic evil.

Roger Firestone sees freemasonry is a fraternal organization that encourages morality and charity and studies philosophy. It has no clergy, no sacraments, and does not promise salvation to its members.

Philosophy is sometimes confused with religion since the two topics cover many of the same issues. Both religion and philosophy address questions such as: Why are we here? What is the nature of reality? What is good? How should we treat each other? What is most important in life? Religion often has rituals marking important life events and times of the year. Unlike philosophy, religion makes a distinction between the sacred and the profane. Religions also often have a belief in the “miraculous.”

The Freemasons began as members of craft guilds who united into lodges in England in the early 1700's. They stressed religious tolerance, the equality of their male peers, and the themes of classic liberalism and the Enlightenment. Today they are a worldwide fraternal order that still educates its members about philosophical ideas, and engages in harmless rituals, but also offers networking for business and political leaders, and carries out charitable activities.

The idea of a widespread freemason conspiracy originated in the late 1700's and flourished in the US in the 1800's. Persons who embrace this theory often point to purported Masonic symbols such as the pyramid and the eye on the back of the dollar bill as evidence of the conspiracy.

But what can we say about the link between Lucifer and witchcraft? In all the world the most significant area to Witches is Fire Island and coastal south Suffolk County, New York. It is here that Ray Buckland, the father of modern Wicca, spread witchcraft throughout the world. The geography is what makes it so significant. Because Long Island is the most significant land in the north to have a beach facing south to the Atlantic Ocean, it gets an extraordinary amount of winter sunlight. The sun coming from the south reflects off the huge ocean and increases the light intensity.  This is the reason why Sayville, Long Island was at one time the greenhouse capital of the world.

According to the National Park Service central Fire Island gets so much sunlight that, Fire Island takes its name from an illusion created by the glancing rays of sunlight on local foliage. Though only a vision, this 'island in flame' is an integral and fitting part of wilderness. That is an example of just how bright and strong the sun is.

Because the winter sunlight is so strong here, it is an important spot for witches. Witches believe that Lucifer is the God of the Sun. and the Sun God is also known as the "Horned God." Lucifer is also known as the "Angel of Light." Many of the Witch's holy days revolve around the Sun such as the Yule. A big part of their belief system is the concept of the Sun weakening and the world dying, then on the Winter Solstice the Sun God Lucifer is reborn and warms the Earth. The best place in the world performs this demonic ceremony celebrating the birth of Lucifer is of course south shore Suffolk County in the area around the 11782 zip code. This would include Sayville and the Sodomite communities of Cherry Grove and the Fire Island Pines.

In addition to the natural phenomena of the bright sunlight there is also an unsurpassed winter view of the sun in this region of the world. Because the beach faces south it is possible to see the sun not only rise at dawn but set at night. This gives a phenomenal view of the sun.

In addition, at this spot is the greatest holly forest is the world. It covers a huge expanse and has holly trees that are over 300 years old! It is these holly tree leaves that the National Park Service says has the "glancing rays of sunlight which make it look like an “island in flame.” The holly tree is a sacred tree to the witches/wiccans. The Horned God is the Holly King and the Oak King, two twin gods seen as one complete entity. Thus, we have the world's greatest holly forest in the same as exact place where this natural phenomenon of the sun takes place. Ray Buckland said it was destiny that had him come to this area to spread witchcraft and that this phenomenon was fascinating.

Furthermore, this place is the site of the world's first modern sodomite community rivaling even Sodom and Gomorrah. There are a series of cities such as Cherry Grove that makes up the purest gay place in the modern world. Its gayness goes back to even before Oscar Wilde went there in the 1880s. Imagine a place where everyone is a homosexual, thousands. It is here that is the greatest place to worship Lucifer in the world. Is this a one in a million coincidence?

The gateway to this place is Sayville, New York. It is the home of Melissa Joan Hart that is the owner and producer of Sabrina the Teenage Witch television show. She and Ray Buckland are the two people in the world most responsible for setting off the worldwide witch movement. Melissa Joan Hart even had a classmate in Sayville named "Serena" that killed a beautiful cheerleader in a demonic ceremony! Sayville was founded by a witch hunting family from Salem. It is somewhat of a mystery of how Sayville got its name, but one theory is that Sayville is a contraction of Salem Village the original name of where the witch hysteria was.

Luciferianism has its fingers in many pies; it has influenced Masonry, Christianity, Judaism, Hermeticism, Gnosticism, Zoroastrianism, Enochian magic, Wicca, as well as both ancient and modern witchcraft.  Ties to Luciferianism can also be found in the largest ancient pagan religions – those of Greece, Egypt, and Assyria – and also to the religions of the Proto-Indo Europeans.

But what is Luciferian Witchcraft? What is clear is that Luciferian Witchcraft is not “left-hand path” witchcraft, it is not dark Gothic witchcraft, and it is not Satanism or Goetia. Essentially it is the cult of Lucifer, which means “Light Bearer”, who is deity of intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, fire, and divine inspiration. It is neither feminine nor masculine but both at the same time, with Lucifer being the masculine aspect and Lilith the feminine one. Lucifer is synonymous with Venus, the “Morning Star”. He/she is the torch-bearer, the bringer of fire and therefore the bringer of knowledge; Prometheus who stole fire from Zeus to give it to mankind, Raven who stole the sun, Lucifer who betrayed god and gifted mankind with awareness and knowledge. Lucifer is considered the creator, savior, and father of mankind. Lucifer is not Satan and the two were not associated until the fear of eternal damnation in an imaginary hell was dreamed up by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and they needed an adversary to rule it. Before then hell as a place of damnation did not exist, except perhaps in the ancient myths of Tartarus, but instead the belief in an underworld was held across cultures as the realm of the dead.

This is the god of Luciferian Witchcraft, although the deity is usually divided into the feminine and masculine, worshipping Lilith as Queen of the Underworld and Moon Goddess with her harpy features belonging to the creatures of the underworld and worshipping Lucifer as the Lord of Light and Cunning Father, as the crooked one with the blinding torch of illumination between his horns. They are the mother and father of the witch, granting their followers with the arcane knowledge of the moon and the fire of wisdom found within us – the spark, the spirit, and the ancient soul.

The meetings and rituals of Luciferian Witchcraft are like the witches sabbaths of old–wild rituals in hidden groves of nature invoking the horned master of the witches – sometimes for a greater purpose than themselves, but sometimes just for worship and personal magic. Sometimes there is a black man to bring them together, and sometimes there is not.  There may be hedonism and inhibition, but no sacrifices of goats, virgins or babies – no altars of naked women surrounded by candles. Instead, when the simplest but oldest of mysteries is understood, it is celebrated and reenacted, the gods of witches invoked.

Chapter II

Luciferianism in Literature, Movie, and Art

I this chapter my point is to analyze the Luciferian aspects in literature and arts, namely paintings, and to point out the main ideas of the Luciferian texts. I will begin with a classic text, whose name suggests the very home of Lucifer: Dante’s Inferno. The aspects and symbols suggested by Dante are very subtle, yet very clear.

Into this book, Dante describes the path he undertakes until he gets into Lucifer’s home and whom he meets. This is very illustrative when referring to Lucifer and his logos.

In The Rev. H.F. Tozer is stated:

“Hell, as conceived by Dante, is a vast funnel-shaped cavity, extending from the neighborhood of the earth's surface to its centre. The area which is thus formed is divided into nine concentric circles, which descend one below the other, gradually narrowing, until the pit of Hell is reached, where Lucifer is stationed. In each of these circles a different form of sin is punished; and the upper part of the area, containing the first five circles, is assigned to the less heinous sins; the lower part, containing the four remaining circles, to the more heinous sins. The latter of these portions, which is called the City of Dis, is separated from the former by a strong wall of circuit. Within the gate of Hell, but on the hither side of the Acheron, beyond which stream the first circle commences, is a sort of Ante-Hell, in which the pusillanimous, or those who did neither good nor evil, are punished, together with those angels who were neutral at the time of Lucifer's rebellion. The first circle is the Limbus, which contains the souls of the virtuous heathen and of unbaptized children; the suffering of these is confined to regret for their exclusion from the presence of God.”(1901)

In the poem, Hell is depicted as nine circles of suffering located within the Earth.

In Christian tradition, light-dark duality symbolizes the two opposed elements: heaven and hell. Plutarch describes Hell as lacking sun. If the light is identified with life and with God, then hell means the absence of God and life.

Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant in their Dictionary of Symbols sate: “The intimate essence of hell is the capital sin, where the doomed are dead” (1995: Vol.II, 150).

In his journey through Hell, Dante follows a leftward course throughout, that direction being intended to signify that the forms of sin which he passes become steadily worse as he descends. In contrast with this, his course through Purgatory is continuously towards the right hand.

The entire book abounds with symbols, symbols that relate to the two main aspects I treated in the first chapter: good and evil, God and Lucifer, yin and yang. The book begins on Good Friday, which is a symbol of good, God, yang. Good Friday is the Friday of Holy Week, and commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Black was the color attributed to the Good Friday, but now it is considered to be red. It used to be black because black is the color of mourning, but the Christian tradition turned it into red because of the blood of Christ spoiled for the humanity.

Good Friday is the Friday within Holy Week, and is traditionally a time of fasting and penance, commemorating the anniversary of Christ's crucifixion and death.

The whole story expands until de first Sunday after Easter, which is ten days. Ten is in itself a symbol of the whole. It is structured on nine main parts of the journey named the nine circles of suffering.

The nine circles of suffering are very clear illustrated by Dante. The first circle is the Limbo. In Limbo reside the unbaptized and the virtuous pagans. These ones, even though they are not sinners, they did not have the possibility or the desire to accept Christ. They are not punished in an active sense, but rather grieve only because of their separation from God, without hope of reconciliation. Without baptism called by Dante "the portal of the faith that you embrace” (IV:36). They lack the hope for something greater than rational minds can conceive.

The limbo is, according to Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, “an abode of souls that are according to Roman Catholic theology barred from heaven because of not having received Christian baptism” (2004: 721).

In the second circle of Hell are those overcome by lust. Dante condemns these "carnal malefactors”(V, 38–39) for letting their appetites dominate their reason. They are the first ones to be truly punished in Hell. These souls are blown by the terrible winds of a violent storm, without hope of rest. This symbolizes the power of lust to blow one about needlessly and aimlessly.

Lust is one of the seven deadly sins, presented in The Gospel of Mathew as:

“Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust 1937 after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (5:27 – 28)

In Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve fall into lustful behavior immediately after eating the forbidden fruit.

The third circle is that of the gluttony. Cerberus guards the gluttons, forced to lie in an infamous slop produced by perpetual dishonesty, icy rain. In her notes on this circle, Dorothy L. Sayers, in The Comedy of Dante Alighieri, The Florentine: Hell, writes that "the surrender to sin which began with mutual indulgence leads by an imperceptible degradation to solitary self-indulgence.”(1949: 107). The gluttons lie here sightless and heedless of their neighbours, symbolizing the cold, selfish, and empty sensuality of their lives. Just as lust has revealed its true nature in the winds of the previous circle, here the slush reveals the true nature of sensuality – which includes not only overindulgence in food and drink, but also other kinds of addiction.

Gluttony is mentioned as a prime cause of sickness and death in mankind's future, as Michael explains it to Adam in Milton.

“Before thee shall appear; that thou mayst know

What miserie th' inabstinence of Eve
Shall bring on men. Immediately a place
Before his eyes appeard, sad, noysom, dark,
A Lazar-house it seemd, wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseas'd, all maladies
Of gastly Spasm, or racking torture, qualmes
Of heart-sick Agonie, all feavorous kinds,
Convulsions, Epilepsies, fierce Catarrhs,
Intestin Stone and Ulcer, Colic pangs,
Dæmoniac Phrenzie, moaping Melancholie
And Moon-struck madness, pining Atrophie
Marasmus and wide-wasting Pestilence,
Dropsies, and Asthma's, and Joint-racking Rheums.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans, despair
Tended the sick busiest from Couch to Couch;
And over them triumphant Death his Dart
Shook, but delaid to strike, though oft invokt
With vows, as thir chief good, and final hope.
Sight so deform what heart of Rock could long
Drie-ey'd behold? Adam could not, but wept,
Though not of Woman born; compassion quell'd
His best of Man, and gave him up to tears
A space, till firmer thoughts restraind excess,
And scarce recovering words his plaint renew'd.

O miserable Mankind, to what fall
Degraded, to what wretched state reserv'd!
Better end heer unborn. Why is life giv'n
To be thus wrested from us? rather why
Obtruded on us thus? who if we knew
What we receive, would either not accept
Life offer'd, or soon beg to lay it down,
Glad to be so dismist in peace. Can thus
Th' Image of God in man created once
So goodly and erect, though faultie since,
To such unsightly sufferings be debas't
Under inhuman pains? Why should not Man,
Retaining still Divine similitude
In part, from such deformities be free,
And for his Makers Image sake exempt?

Thir Makers Image, answerd Michael, then
Forsook them, when themselves they villifi'd
To serve ungovern'd appetite, and took
His Image whom they serv'd, a brutish vice,
Inductive mainly to the sin of Eve.
Therefore so abject is thir punishment,
Disfiguring not Gods likeness, but thir own,
Or if his likeness, by themselves defac't
While they pervert pure Natures healthful rules
To loathsom sickness, worthily, since they
Gods Image did not reverence in themselves. (Book 11:475-525)

Those whose attitude toward material goods deviated from the appropriate mean are punished in the fourth circle. They include the avaricious or miserly, including many "clergymen, and popes and cardinals"(VII: 47), who hoarded possessions, and the prodigal, who squandered them. The two groups are guarded by Plutus, the Greek god of wealth. The two groups tourney, using as weapons great weights which they push with their chests:

"…I saw multitudes to every side of me; their howls were loud while, wheeling weights, they used their chests to push. They struck against each other; at that point, each turned around and, wheeling back those weights, cried out: Why do you hoard? Why do you squander?”(VII: 25–30)

The contrast between these two groups leads Virgil to discourse on the nature of Fortune, who raises nations to greatness, and later plunges them into poverty, as she shifts "those empty goods from nation unto nation, clan to clan." (VII: 79–80). This speech fills what would otherwise be a gap in the poem, since both groups are so absorbed in their activity that Virgil tells Dante that it would be pointless to try to speak to them – indeed, they have lost their individuality, and been rendered "unrecognizable" (VII: 54).

In the swamp-like water of the river Styx, the wrathful fight each other on the surface and the sullen lie gurgling beneath the water, withdrawn "into a black sulkiness which can find no joy in God or man or the universe."(Dorothy L. Slayers, 1949: 114). Phlegyas reluctantly transports Dante and Virgil across the Styx in his skiff. On the way they are accosted by Filippo Argenti, a Black Guelph from a prominent family. When Dante responds "In weeping and in grieving, accursed spirit, may you long remain," (VIII: 37–38), Virgil blesses him. Literally, this reflects the fact that souls in Hell are eternally fixed in the state they have chosen, but allegorically, it reflects Dante's beginning awareness of his own sin.

The lower parts of Hell are contained within the walls of the city of Dis, which is itself surrounded by the Stygian marsh. Punished within Dis are the active sins. The walls of Dis are guarded by fallen angels. Virgil is unable to convince them to let Dante and him enter, and the Furies and Medusa threaten Dante. An angel sent from Heaven secures entry for the poets, opening the gate by touching it with a wand, and rebuking those who opposed Dante. Allegorically, this reveals the fact that the poem is beginning to deal with sins that philosophy and humanism cannot fully understand, in the opinion of Dorothy L. Slayers.

In the sixth circle, Heretics, such as Epicurians, who "say the soul dies with the body" (X: 15) are trapped in flaming tombs. Dante holds discourse with a pair of Epicurian Florentines in one of the tombs.

In response to a question from Dante about the prophecy he has received, Cavalcante explains that what the souls in Hell know of life on earth comes from seeing the future, not from any observation of the present. Consequently, when "the portal of the future has been shut," (X: 103–108) it will no longer be possible for them to know anything.

There is a drop from the sixth circle to the three rings of the seventh circle, then again to the ten rings of the eighth circle, and, at the bottom, to the icy ninth circle.

Pausing for a moment before the steep descent to the foul-smelling seventh circle, Virgil explains the geography and rationale of Lower Hell, in which violent and malicious sins are punished. In particular, he asserts that there are only two legitimate sources of wealth: natural resources (nature) and human activity (art). Usury, to be punished in the next circle, is therefore an offence against both:

"From these two, art and nature, it is fitting, if you recall how Genesis begins, for men to make their way, to gain their living; and since the usurer prefers another pathway, he scorns both nature in herself
and art her follower; his hope is elsewhere."(XI: 106–111)

The seventh circle houses the violent. Its entry is guarded by the Minotaur, and it is divided into three rings:

The outer ring which houses the violent against people and property, who are immersed in Phlegethon, a river of boiling blood, to a level commensurate with their sins. The Centaurs, commanded by Chiron, patrol the ring, firing arrows into those trying to escape. The centaur Nessus guides the poets along Phlegethon and across a ford in the river.

In the middle ring are the suicides (the violent against self), who are transformed into gnarled thorny bushes and trees, which are fed on by the Harpies. Unique among the dead, the suicides will not be bodily resurrected after the final judgment, having given their bodies away through suicide. Instead they will maintain their bushy form, with their own corpses hanging from the limbs. The trees are a metaphor for the state of mind in which suicide is committed. The other residents of this ring are the profligates, who destroyed their lives by destroying the means by which life is sustained (money and property). They are perpetually chased by ferocious dogs through the thorny undergrowth.

In the inner ring, the violent against God (blasphemers) and the violent against nature (sodomites and usurers) reside in a desert of flaming sand with fiery flakes raining from the sky. The blasphemers lie on the sand, the usurers sit, and the sodomites wander about in groups. Dante converses with two Florentine sodomites from different groups. One of them is Dante's mentor, Brunetto Latini. Dante is very surprised and touched by this encounter and shows Brunetto great respect for what he has taught him:

"you taught me how man makes himself eternal;

and while I live, my gratitude for that

must always be apparent in my words”(XV: 85–87),

this is a proof that the suggestions that Dante only placed his enemies in Hell are not true.

The last two circles of Hell punish sins that involve conscious fraud or treachery. These circles can be reached only by descending a vast cliff, which Dante and Virgil do on the back of Geryon, a winged monster traditionally represented as having three heads or three conjoined bodies, but described by Dante as having three mixed natures: human, bestial, and reptile. Geryon is an image of fraud, with his face appearing to be that of an honest man, and his body beautifully colored, but with a poisonous sting in his tail.

The Ninth Circle is ringed by classical and Biblical giants, who may symbolize the pride and other spiritual flaws lying behind acts of treachery. The giants are standing on a ledge above the ninth circle of Hell, so that from the Malebolge they are visible from the waist up.

The traitors are distinguished from the merely fraudulent in that their acts involve betraying a special relationship of some kind. There are four concentric zones of traitors, corresponding, in order of seriousness, to betrayal of family ties, betrayal of community ties, betrayal of guests, and betrayal of liege lords. In contrast to the popular image of Hell as fiery, the traitors are frozen in a lake of ice known as Cocytus, with each group encased in ice to progressively greater depths.

The entire book abounds with symbols, symbols that relate to the two main aspects I treated in the first chapter: good and evil, God and Lucifer, yin and yang. The book begins on Good Friday, which is a symbol of good, God, yang. Good Friday is the Friday of Holy Week, and commemorates the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Black was the color attributed to the Good Friday, but now it is considered to be red. It used to be black because black is the color of mourning, but the Christian tradition turned it into red because of the blood of Christ spoiled for the humanity.

Good Friday is the Friday within Holy Week, and is traditionally a time of fasting and penance, commemorating the anniversary of Christ's crucifixion and death.

The whole story expands until de first Sunday after Easter that is ten days. Ten is in itself a symbol of the whole.

The journey to Hell begins once the valley terminates and Dante reaches “a mountain's foot” (I: 13). This mountain can be regarded in many different ways: as the “holy Hill” by Hermann Oelsner (1899: 3), or as mount Olympus. The mountain as a symbol has very many interpretations regarded to the ideas of height and centre. Because it is tall, vertical, and very close to the sky, it is a symbol of transcendence. Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant call the mountain “the meeting point between heaven and earth, place of the gods and beginning for men’s ascension.” (1995, Vol. II: 121)

Observed from upside, the mountain is seen as a top of a vertical, as a centre of the world; observed from downside, it appears as a line of a vertical, as an axis of the world, but also as a ladder, as a ramp. The double symbolism of the height and the centre can be found in the ecclesiastic writers. The mountain is the logos of the gods and its ascension appears as a lift towards the sky, as a means of connecting with divinity.

Niphates is the mountain where Milton says Satan first “alighted on earth” (Book3: 742). It is a real mountain in the Taurus range in Armenia, northeast of Turkey. Milton also refers to it as "the Assyrian mount" (Book 4:126), though it is somewhat beyond the area of the ancient empire of Assyria.

At the end of Dante’s journey, he meets Lucifer, described by him in very much detail:

“The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous

From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice,
And better with a giant I compare” (XXXIV: 31-32)

And:

“O, what a marvel it appeared to me,
When I beheld three faces on his head!
The one in front, and that vermilion was;

Two were the others, that were joined with this
Above the middle part of either shoulder,
And they were joined together at the crest;

And the right-hand one seemed 'twixt white and yellow
The left was such to look upon as those
Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.

Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,
Such as befitting were so great a bird;
Sails of the sea I never saw so large.

No feathers had they, but as of a bat
Their fashion was; and he was waving them,
So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.

Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed.
With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins
Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.” (XXXIV: 33-56)

In the very centre of Hell, condemned for committing the ultimate sin (personal treachery against God), is Satan (Lucifer). Satan is described as a giant, terrifying beast with three faces, one red, one black, and one a pale yellow.

Satan is waist deep in ice, weeping tears from his six eyes, and beating his six wings as if trying to escape, although the icy wind that emanates only further ensures his imprisonment (as well as that of the others in the ring).

Here, Lucifer is seen as the punisher for the sinners. Each face has a mouth that chews on a prominent traitor, with Brutus and Cassius feet-first in the left and right mouths respectively. These men were involved in the assassination of Julius Caesar—an act which, to Dante, represented the destruction of a unified Italy and the killing of the man who was divinely appointed to govern the world. In the central, most vicious mouth is Judas Iscariot, the betrayer of Jesus. Judas is being administered the most horrifying torture of the three traitors, his head gnawed by Satan's mouth, and his back being forever skinned by Satan's claws. What is seen here is a perverted trinity: Satan is impotent, ignorant, and full of hate, in contrast to the all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving nature of God.

Here, Lucifer is seen as the punisher for the sinners:

“At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching
A sinner, in the manner of a brake,
So that he three of them tormented thus.”

‘That soul up there which has the greatest pain,’
The Master said,’ is Judas Iscariot;
With head inside, he plies his legs without.

Of the two others, who head downward are,
The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus;
See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.

And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius. “(XXXIV: 57-66)

These three arch-sinners betrayed, in the persons of their lords and benefactors, the two most august representatives of Church and State – the founder of Christianity and the founder of the Roman Empire. The other sinners in Giudecca are not specified save in a general way

The red, yellow and black faces have been variously explained. The best interpretation seems to be the one which makes them representative of hatred, impotence and ignorance – the qualities opposed to those of the Holy Trinity.

The three faces as symbolizing Ignorance, Hatred, and Impotence. Others interpret them as signifying the three quarters of the then known world, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Lucifer’s description can be compared with John Milton’s Satan description from Paradise Lost:

“Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,

With head uplift above the wave, and eyes

That sparkling blazed; his other parts besides

Prone on the flood, extended long and large,

Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge

As whom the fables name of monstrous size,

Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,

Briareus, or Typhon, whom the den

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast

Leviathan, which God of all his works

Created hugest that swim the ocean stream:

Him, haply, slumbering on the Norway foam,

The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff,

Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell,

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind

Moors by his side under the lee, while night

Invests the sea, and wished morn delays.

So stretched out huge in length the Arch-fiend lay

Chained on the burning lake.”

“He, above the rest

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,

Stood like a tower: his form had yet not lost

All her original brightness, nor appeared

Less than archangel ruined, and the excess

Of glory obscured: as when the sun new-risen

Looks through the horizontal misty air,

Shorn of his beams; or from behind the moon,

In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds

On half the nations, and with fear of change

Perplexes monarchs: darkened so, yet shone

Above them all the Archangel.”

“As when far off at sea a fleet descried

Hangs in the clouds, by equinoctial winds

Close sailing from Bengala or the isles

Of Ternate and Tidore, whence merchants bring

Their spicy drugs: they on the trading flood

Through the wide AEthiopian to the Cape

Ply, stemming nightly toward the pole: so seemed

Far off the flying fiend.”

“On the other side, Satan, alarmed,

Collecting all his might, dilated stood,

Like Teneriff or Atlas, unremoved:

His stature reached the sky, and on his crest

Sat horror plumed; nor wanted in his grasp

What seemed both spear and shield.”

“At last his sail-broad vans

He spreads for flight, and in the surging smoke

Uplifted spurns the ground.” (Book 2: 929)

Dante’s journey can be regarded as Orfeus’s descent into the underworld in searching for Eurydice. This aspect also appears in Virgil’s Georgics where, in the fourth book, Proteus describes the descent of Orpheus into the underworld to retrieve Eurydice, the backward look which caused her return to Tartarus, and, at last, Orpheus' death at the hands of the Ciconian women. Our hero will live in the end of his descent.

The two poets escape Hell by climbing down Satan's ragged fur, passing through the centre of the earth, and emerge in the other hemisphere just before dawn on Easter Sunday, beneath a sky studded with stars.

This journey can be regarded as Orfeus’s descent into the underworld in searching for Eurydice. This aspect also appears in Virgil’s Georgics where, in the fourth book, Proteus describes the descent of Orpheus into the underworld to retrieve Eurydice, the backward look which caused her return to Tartarus, and, at last, Orpheus' death at the hands of the Ciconian women. Our hero will live in the end of his descent.

It is also a journey through the true face of the seven deadly sins.

Milton implies indictment of these sins in the all embracing act of eating the forbidden fruit. Gluttony and lust, for example, are overtly present. Covetousness and envy of the "gods" is instilled in Eve by the serpent. Eve feels pride in her imagined superiority. Adam and Eve slothfully retreat to a shady spot and sleep after food and sex; and finally, spew angry accusations at each other.

The setting is a space on the convex side of the ice of Cocytus, which is on its far side. The only remaining evidence of the infernal core is offered by the legs of Lucifer, sticking up through the crust of the area that contains the rest of him. We are on the other side of the ice, and there is nothing more by way of constructed space to catch our eye.

Dante wants to know why he no longer sees the ice, why Lucifer is “upside down” (XXXIV, 104), and how it can already be morning. Virgil explains that they are now under the southern hemisphere of the world above, not the northern, where Christ was put to death and whence they had begun their descent.

This passage has generally been taken to establish a connection between the cone of the Mount of Purgatory and the funnel of Hell. It is obvious, however, that Hell was in existence ready to receive Satan, and that the “place vacant” (XXXIV: 125) and the “tomb” (XXXIV: 128) refer not to Hell, but to the cavern into which the nether bulk of Satan is thrust.

Virgil's final words in Inferno create the foundation myth of sin: how it established itself in the world that God had made good. Carla Forti in Nascità dell'Inferno o nascità del Purgatorio: nota sulla caduta del Lucifero dantesco,” Rivista di letteratura italiana 4, refers to the passage as a “genuine cosmological myth” (1986: 246) and describes the fall of Lucifer as “the first event that occurs in time” (1986: 259).

It is worth considering a similar passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses where Astraea, or justice, has just left the earth. The battle of Phlegra ensues and once the giants are destroyed, mother Earth, Gea, forms man in their image, if smaller, out of their gore. But this new stock, too, is contemptuous of the gods. Soon enough Lycaon – the wolfman – will commit the first murder, one that will eventually lead to the murder of Julius Caesar.

In the final moments of Inferno’s final canto, we learn of the first things to occur in terrestrial time: Satan fell from heaven and crashed into our earth. To flee from him, all the land in the southern hemisphere hid beneath the sea and moved to the north of the equator, while the matter that he displaced in his fall rose up behind him to form the mount of purgatory.

Landor in his Pentameron, makes Petrarca say:

“This is atrocious, not terrific nor grand. Alighieri is grand by his lights, not by his shadows; by his human affections, not by his infernal. As the minutest sands are the labors of some profound sea, or the spoils of some vast mountain, in like manner his horrid wastes and wearying minutenesses are the chafings of a turbulent spirit, grasping the loftiest things, and penetrating the deepest, and moving and moaning on the earth in loneliness and sadness.” (1837: 527)

As I pointed out somewhere above, Dante can be compared to Milton. In the latter’s case, the narrator does not meet companions or enemies, but mythological and religious figures in story.

The account of Satan's (Lucifer's) rebellion and fall from heaven with all his followers takes up a major portion of the plot of Paradise Lost.

Milton embroils his God in a power struggle, has him plotting military strategy with his son, and shows him using his power of prophecy to carefully engineer an intricate balance of justice, mercy, and the "loophole" through which man can redeem himself from his fall from grace, all without ever disrupting the endowment of perfect free will in man, the angels, and Satan.

All the outcomes within the story can be traced to what God does or does not allow, since he has it in his power to control everything. Therefore, the most interesting way to approach an analysis of God's character is to figure out why he holds back his power in any given situation, and lets things progress to their natural, chance, or man-made conclusion, whether the result be good or, as is often the case, very, very bad.

The angels who, led by Satan, rebel against God, are doing it because they consider that what God does is tyranny. They are thrown into Hell, where they become devils, devoted to the destruction of the human race as revenge against God. Some were destined to become the false gods of ancient civilizations.

Adonis was, in Greek mythology, a beautiful youth destined to yearly death and resurrection, associated with nature's cycle and symbolized by a river of blood. Milton plays up the sexual overtones.

The name Beelzebub means "The Lord of the Flies." In the New Testament, it's another name for Satan. Milton casts him as Satan's second in command. In the debate among the devils in Book II, Beelzebub presents the plan for a furtive revenge against God by perverting man.

Belial is a member of the demonic council who speaks second, conceding God is too powerful to oppose and they should wait for his amnesty. His graceful manner conceals a vice-ridden soul. On Earth he would corrupt churches and palaces, and fill the streets at night with violence and debauchery.

Lucifer is the Satan's name before he fell. It means "brightest star." In his original state, he was glorious to behold.

Satan is a central character in the first half of the poem. A high ranking archangel in Heaven who became jealous of the Son of God and led multitudes of angels in a violent rebellion against the Almighty. Tossed into Hell, he makes it his kingdom, where he plans revenge against God by corrupting mankind.

Satan’s complex musings and self-examination sometimes resemble a hero’s stance against a tyrannical enemy, inducing more sympathy from the reader than Milton intended. In the latter part of the poem, Satan’s character degenerates into a more typical villain, as we sympathize more with the human couple.

In mythological style, Milton turns certain concepts into living beings. Among these are Grace, Liberty, Night, Chance, Discord, and the following three who become central to the plot.

Daughter of Satan, Sin is embodied as half-woman, half-serpent, she sprung from Satan's head when he conceived the thought of rebelling against God. She is charged to hold the key to the gates of Hell. Together with her son, Death, she builds a highway from Hell to Earth.

Son of Sin, fathered by Satan, Death is a faceless creature; his first act upon being born is to rape his mother. He confronts Satan at the gate of Hell, and the two are prevented from a deadly battle when Sin reveals that he is Satan's son/grandson by incestuous union with her. Chaos is the being who personifies the infinity of uncreated matter between Heaven, Hell, and our universe.

Chaos resents God’s intrusion on his domain by creating the new world, and cheers Satan on in his quest to destroy it.

In the context of her work on Milton’s polemics (Milton and the Revolutionary Reader), Sharon Achinstein has characterized Milton as "a writer compelled to show readers how to act by reading . . . the enemy argument properly," (1994: 59) which is to say that, by cross-examining the opposition’s logic point by point and challenging his audience to do likewise, he shows the politically naive how criticism ought to be conducted. In this world Milton creates even the most innocuous of truths is no longer relied upon as given, and in which all of the received epistemology (geocentrism, heavenly perfection, divine right kingship, the sacredness of the Bible, the infallibility of the Pope, etc.) had been refuted or cast seriously into doubt. Like Herbert, Milton was intimately familiar with the self-referentiality of the Bible.

The image of the sun both presents and subverts the kinds of easy link between natural and cosmic orders.

Since we're on the subject of death and have glanced at John Milton's description of Death personified, ready with his mortal Dart to confront anyone, let's take a look at Death's first encounter with Satan, who has himself recently escaped from the chains that bound him to a flaming, hellish sea, has managed to rouse his fallen angelic followers to further, even greater resistance to the reign of God, and is heading off on a reconnaissance mission to see if he can escape from Hell and find his way through chaos up to the rumored world wherein he suspects to find the newly formed creature man. The confrontation occurs when Satan reaches the gates of Hell, only to find his way barred not only by the great, locked gates but also blocked by the two formidable shapes, Sin and Death, sitting to either side of the exit

They displace their aggression onto humankind, for Satan – upon learning who Death is and how he came to be – promises to satisfy Death's hunger for mortal food with human beings, at which, "Death

Grinnd horrible a gastly smile, to hear

His famine should be fill'd" (Book 2.845-7).

Satan makes good on his promise by seducing Eve and – through Eve – Adam to commit sin and fall into a mortal state, which Sin and Death both sense from afar

When Satan for the second time meets Sin and Death, "Great joy was at thir meeting" (Book 10.350), far unlike their first encounter, by which, we learn the valuable lesson that even fiends can be friends. Satan uses the Protestant rhetoric of legitimate rebellion by princes or inferior magistrates against a king and transforms it into a rallying cry for the overthrow of God himself. Satan continually refers to his compatriots as princes, as "Powers," as "Potentates." Even the poem's narrator gets in on the act: in referring to Mammon in his pre-fall role as Heaven's architect, the narrator gives readers an image of "Scepter'd Angels" who viewed "many a Tow'red structure high," angels who "sat as Princes, whom the supreme King

Exalted to such power, and gave to rule,

Each in his hierarchy, the Orders bright" (Book I. 733-737).

The political structure of Heaven itself is drawn on a model of a King and his princely magistrates, the very magistrates by whom, according to the above-mentioned Protestant thinkers, resistance, rebellion, and overthrow could be carried out under the right circumstances.

In making Satan the mouthpiece for Protestant theories of rebellion that spell out the proper relation of the individual Christian to secular authority, Milton critiques not only the theories themselves (which tended to uphold secular tyranny so long as it was decent enough to refrain from intruding into the realm of Christian religion), but also the notions of magistracy and kingship contained therein. Milton wants to take the arguments of Luther, Calvin, Mhuntzer, and Marshall into much more radical territory than those men were willing to enter. According to these men, the power of princes is from God. Satan goes even further, implying that the power of heavenly princes is “self-begot, self-rais'd," before he finally claims, of himself and his fellow princes, that "Our puissance is our own" (Book V. 860, 864).

In justifying his, and his faction's, rebellion against heaven's king, Satan portrays himself as a prince entitled and even required to resist an unjust monarch who is grasping for absolute power and thereby attempting to usurp that portion of the higher power or governing authority that belongs to the lower magistrates.

The picture of heaven's king as a grasper, a usurper of powers not rightfully his own, is common to those who follow Satan's lead.

That Satan claims to be fighting against tyranny is made clear by his numerous references to the Father as a tyrant: Hell is the "Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns

By our delay"; the Father is "our grand Foe,

Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of joy

Sole reigning holds the Tyranny of Heav'n" (Book I. 122-124).

Satan seems to realize that the possibility of preventing Hell’s legions from choosing or rejecting, retaining or deposing himself, has now been made available since the rebellion in heaven, which is why he appeals immediately to the system of "Orders and Degrees" that "Jar not with liberty" (Book V. 792, 793) when he tells his fellow fallen angels that the "just right and the fixt Laws of Heav'n / Did first create [me] your Leader" (Book II. 18, 19). This may also explain the speed with which Satan moves to cut off the opportunity for any of the other fallen angels to step forth as his rival in the debate in Book II, as he "prevented all reply,

Prudent, lest from his resolution rais'd

Others among the chief might offer now

(Certain to be refus'd) what erst they fear'd;

And so refus'd might in opinion stand

His Rivals, winning cheap the high repute

Which he through hazard huge must earn" (II. 467-473).

Paradise Lost is of course in its largest sense a lament for the loss of human innocence.  And there are several moments where characters grieve throughout the poem: Eve, Adam, Satan, the fallen angels.  But a small number of passages in Paradise Lost reveal with particular clarity the authorizing functions of gendered grief in the poem. 

These passages connect, as authorizing strategies, a contained expression of loss, the presence of the feminine muses, and the prophetic emblems of inner vision.  In the tradition of biblical prophets like Jeremiah or Amos, the Miltonic narrator in these passages emphasizes his own sorrow in order to lend ethical authority to his inspired message.

In Book 3, the address to “Holy Light” introduces the “Heavenly Muse,” (Book 3:19), and the “Muses haunt

Clear Spring, or shady Grove, or Sunny Hill” (3.27-8) where the poet dallies, “smit with the love of sacred Song” (Book 3.29). 

Milton carefully collects these images of height, of secret, sacred space, of the mysterious darkness through which his guides can lead him, to create the mystery of prophecy around his literary work.  The baptismal waters of the muses’ sacred hill he “visit[s]…Nightly” (Book 3: 32); he describes his “obscure sojourn” (Book 3: 15) in Hell and his return as a kind of trance-like vision; his thoughts

“voluntary move

Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful Bird

Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid

Tunes her nocturnal Note” (Book 3.37-40). 

The prophetic gift requires here the conventional passive, trance-like state, a world of shade and darkness.

The most important element of this fairly conventional representation of inspiration, though, lies in what seems to be for Milton a necessary correlative in his own sorrow.

Eve/Magdalene figure is clearly an initial step in Paradise Lost’s defense of specifically reformed piety, an intermittent project of the poem which is often buttressed by typological treatments of Eve and Adam as righteous mourners like the Protestant exiles who lament and mourn.

.  In this instance in Book 5, Adam and the tearful Eve seek to worship as good Protestants, with "fit strains… unmeditated" (Book 9: 148), surrounded by "the shrill Matin Song/ of Birds" (Book 7: 8). Their unliturgical praise is clearly valorized in the poem, and Milton's further critique of the Roman church is hinted at throughout Eve’s dream, as in it she falsely rises to Heaven to become a kind of saint or idol.   Milton’s chaste appropriation of the Magdalene trope of eroticized sorrow, so celebrated in the baroque sentimentality of the Catholic Counter-Reformation, is a deliberately ironic undercutting of the values of the Roman church.

This excessively controlled prophetic penitence of Eve is remarkably different from the second Magdalene-moment in Paradise Lost, in which Eve serves as the tearful suppliant to a temporarily Christlike Adam:

                                        …Eve
 Not so repulst, with Tears that ceas’d not flowing,
And tresses all disorder’d, at his feet
Fell humble, and imbracing them, besought
His peace, and thus proceeded in her plaint.
Forsake me not thus, Adam, witness Heav’n
What love sincere, and reverence in my heart
I bear thee, and unweeting have offended  (10, 909-916)

Here Eve’s postlapsarian grief is at least potentially excessive and immoderate, “with Tears that ceas’d not flowing,” her spirits “disorder’d.”  The striking evocation of Magdalene’s eroticized sorrow (“imbracing” Adam with “love sincere”)  reveals Milton’s ambivalent appropriation of the mourning-woman figure; here her “plaint” is both appropriately spiritual and inappropriately symbolic of feminine excess at the same time. 

          In Paradise Lost, Milton treats sensuality as an inherent part of human nature, celebrating the "wedded Love" of Adam and Eve (Book4: 750). There are two scenes in Paradise Lost that describe Adam and Eve making love and falling asleep. The first passage describes the prelapserian bliss of Adam and Eve and their "Nuptial Bed" (Book 4: 710). The second describes the lustful hunger of the pair immediately following the eating of the "fallacious Fruit" (Book 9: 1046). These seemingly similar passages contain subtle differences that contribute to a difference in tone which best illustrates the shift in perception due to the Fall in all of Paradise Lost.

What is interesting about Dante's hell is the endlessness of the sound: it contains human voices and human non-vocal sounds blended together and made so continuous as to become almost an atmospheric condition. For Dante, as for Aeneas, the sheer level of sound is physically shocking. In this, Dante was in accordance with popular medieval belief, since as Eileen Gardner notes, medieval dream-visions of Hell generally mention the "horrendous noise" there as one of its most prominent features.

The narration proper of Paradise Lost opens on a lake of fire, covered with the forms of fallen angels “rolling in the fiery gulf” of "ever-burning sulphur" (Book 1: 55, 69). Thus, the first auditory indication of the poem might seem a little surprising: Satan "with bold words / Breaking the horrid silence thus began." (Book 1.82-83). There are two effects here. One is the small surprise involved in adjusting our mental model of this scene – no groaning from the devils or crackling from the flames. On the other hand, "horrid silence" is an oxymoron, and a bold one.

In the speech he holds, Satan defines him as an antihero and allows us to sympathize with him. In the speech Adams holds we can see parallels between him and Satan. Both lament mistakes made, and the dire results. Both persons are in a state of desperate hopelessness. Both regret bringing down so many others by their actions. But while Adam feels responsible for the plight of future humanity, and is willing to take all the burden onto himself, Satan's main concern is his hurt pride, and he resolves devotion to evil as his only relief.

“Beyond all past example and future,
To Satan only like both crime and doom.” (Book 10: 840-841)

By beginning the story with Satan just having been thrown into hell, we get a full picture of his character as he reacts to his loss with anger and increased defiance. His desperate situation is even more intense than that which precipitated his rebellion in heaven. When he calls his legions together, he is choked with emotion, that so many have fallen while following his cause and yet still look to him for leadership.

There were some critics that have linked Emily Bronte's Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights to Satan in Milton's poem. Both are rebels against authority, antiheroes propelled by jealousy and revenge, which, "at first though sweet, bitter ere long back on itself recoils." (Book9:.171).

In the creation story as told by Milton, the fruit of the forbidden tree expresses the fundamental dualism.

In Paradise Lost, the dualism is expressed through the symbol of ‘the state of human knowledge before and after eating the forbidden fruit’, i.e. with and without a capacity for consciousness. It is the difference between an innocent knowledge of the world, in harmony with God (Universal Will), and the more complex and troubled knowledge that comes with the individual’s awareness of itself, which itself leads to a conflict with God and the need for redemption.

Another literary work where the figure of Lucifer appears is the great work of Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus. But now, in contrast with the two analyzed above, we are talking about a different Lucifer image: the one that appears also in Paradise Lost but which is more connected to the image of Satan in popular belief: the Satan/Lucifer that seduces the weak individual, that posses him.

The play both partakes of traditional forms – it is in some ways a medieval morality play, with its good and bad angels – and breaks with them – Faustus, for instance is the hero of this tragedy, which contains a classic chorus, but unlike the classic tragic character: "… he is born of parents base of stock" (1.1.11). The proud Doctor Faustus himself appears as a subliminal figure, straddling the ground between residual and emergent modes of behavior and thought, presenting to Marlowe's audience an aspect at times inspiring, but at others frightening, or worse, despicable. Faustus sells his soul for knowledge and power, but gets very little of either.

At the play's outset it is clear that for Faustus, as for many at the time, knowledge was found in books, and in the play's first scene Faustus chafes against the limitations this has imposed. He has mastered – and now wishes to discard – the works of Aristotle, Galen, Justinian, and finally, Jerome's Bible. He wishes instead to have magic books, books that seem to contain forbidden knowledge, recalling at once the story of Eden, but also keeping to the notion that all knowledge which humanity was capable of, was that which God allowed to be revealed. To do the work of a scientist, to investigate the natural world, was to attempt to read the book of nature. The ethical question up to this time revolved around whether, in failing, one was simply a poor reader, or if the text was intentionally hidden, and one had inquired too far. So for Faustus it seems knowledge still comes from books, but they are unauthorized texts, secret papers full of information somehow pirated by the devil:

”Meph.Here, take this book and peruse it well.

The iterating of these lines brings gold:

The framing of this circle on the ground

Brings thunder, whirlwinds, storm, and lightning;

Pronounce this thrice devoutly to thyself,

And men in harness shall appear to thee,

Ready to execute what thou command'st.

Faust. Thanks Mephostophilis for this sweet book.

This I will keep as chary as my life.” (2.1.161-69)

But there is a significant break with this traditional view of knowledge and its sources in the play, and it concerns astronomy. Faustus puts to Mephistophilis a series of questions in Act II about the nature of the universe, receiving standard Ptolemaic replies to all. The audience would recognize instantly the rejection of the Copernican theory, which was well known in a casual way to so many in England. It is likely better for Marlowe that he does not distract from his drama by inserting a controversial opinion, but this matter continues offstage. The chorus tells us,

”Learnèd Faustus,

To find the secrets of astronomy

Graven in the book of Jove's high firmament,

Did mount him up to scale Olympus' top:

Where…

He views the clouds, the planets, and the stars,

The tropics, zones and quarters of the sky

From the bright circle of the hornèd moon

even to the height of primum mobile:” (3.1-10)

So even as Marlowe uses the metaphor of the book, he presents us with a Faustus who is still unsatisfied with the authority of books and of Mephostophilis, and who conducts empirical research. When the chorus speaks at the beginning of the fourth act, we find that Faustus has returned home to Wittenberg where he is questioned about

”… what befell

Touching his journey through the world and air

They put forth questions of astrology

Which Faustus answered with such learnèd skill

As they admired and wondered at his wit.” (7-11)

Faustus lectures on astronomy in the place where the Copernican theory was first taught. Yet all of this action has occurred out of sight, and therefore, though it is interesting in light of past work on the play to find and instance where Marlowe seems to say one thing, and yet believe another, of more significance in the context of this course is this moment when knowledge does not seem to come from books, when authority of tradition is rejected in favor of gathering new data for evaluation.

This observation, however, if it was to be complete, had to include the observer. So there is perforce some subjective element in Marlowe's heroes, since he is himself involved in the intellectual and spiritual revolutions of his time. Marlowe is not to be
identified with Faustus and the rest of his characters, but he describes their revolt with imaginative understanding. If Marlowe's dramas were simply Morality plays, their chief characters would be monsters of villainy, with none of the complexity which he has bestowed upon them.

When referring to Faustus and the way he was perceived by critics and public audience, Michael Mitchell states that:

“Interpretations range from the religious (Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Calvinist) portraying Faustus as hero, villain, flawed genius, fool, ascetic, hedonist, repressed old monk, spokesman for subversion, or orthodoxy, proponent of transcendent magic or material reality. Some see him as damned, others not; his damnation, if it happens, has been seen as a punishment for pride, curiosity, despair, hubris, rejection of the body, acceptance of the body, having sex with demons, trying to have sex at all, reading the scriptures incorrectly, excessive cleverness or plain stupidity.” (2006: 51)

In Doctor Faustus, the magic has a different symbol: it is associated with the apple from the Garden of Eden. It is considered to be an unifying symbol which “draws together the three aspects of Renaissance” that concerned Marlowe: “the indulgence of the senses and the enjoyment of the worldly beauty, the quest for wealth and political power, and the pursuit of infinite knowledge” (1989: 113), as stated in John S. Mebane’s Renaissance Magic and the Return of the Golden Age.

The mistake Faustus makes is not that he leads with spirits and demons, but that he foolishly subordinates himself to them.

Mephistopheles is not only a speaker for the Devil, but he is also seen as a possible lover to the character. In the play, Faustus asks Mephistopheles for a wife and, when he returns, the woman is just a devil in disguise as a woman. According to Hammill, “the wife that [Mephistopheles] brings demonstrates that marriage is not a signifier that can stabilize the gender. The play… instead replaces this wife with a series of courtesans in an economy of homosocial exchange.” Hammill also explains that Mephistopheles brings Faustus a wife who is not actually a woman because he wants to bring up sexual tension between Faustus and himself. This article describes the conversation between the two characters during this scene as “barely legible as male friendship”. The article goes on to explain that the conversation is no longer considered to be friendly because the women whom they are discussing appear to have very masculine features. In “Myth, Psychology, and Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus”, Kenneth Golden explains Mephistopheles' role representing Faustus' alter ego constructed from his suppressed feelings.

Faustus also brings together all the elements of popular demonology, as Macbeth later did for witch lore. Marlowe provides a detailed description of Faustus's process; this was given the title of necromancy, the raising of spirits. The nature of Christian spirits we shall consider with the other actor in the drama of damnation, the demon. One thing this era was not short on was familiarity with an astoundingly well-organized metaphysical world, and through Faustus and the Daemonologie, we today are familiar at least with the forms; the magic circle, the signs of the zodiac and the tetragrammaton – the four Hebrew letters of the Divine Name. Details such as these turn up in the strangest places.

One of the common points of summoning involved commanding the demon to assume a pleasing shape. This was necessary both for the conjurer's presence of mind, and also for the demon's purpose.

Magic required formal alliance with the devil. "He that is grounded in astrology, Enriched with tongues, well seen in minerals, Hath all the principles magic doth require", but let there be no confusion. The Faculty of Theology at Paris University had determined in 1398, that sorcery implied pact. No human being could alter nature, and no human being could control a demon.

“Faust:Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee? Speak!

Meph:That was the cause, but yet per accidens;
For when we hear one rack the name of God,
Abjure the scriptures and his saviour Christ,
We fly in hope to get his glorious soul;
Nor will we come unless he use such means,
Whereby he is in danger to be damned:
Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring
Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity,
And pray devoutly to the prince of hell”

In almost the same inclinations there is another literary masterpiece, a novel this time: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

This magical story enters into the fragile world of youth and old age, the thirst to maintain the former and the fear of the inevitable latter, accompanied with dreadful emotions of love, shame, hate, fear.

There are four main aspects treated within this novel: beauty, conscience, hedonism, and influence. Talking about beauty, it is treated different by the characters involved in the story. Lord Henry finds the beauty the most important thing, whereas Basil, although he appreciates Dorian's beauty, finds that he would not want to be beautiful himself. One has to pay for being beautiful, or even intelligent; he says that the ugly and stupid people have it the best in the world. The first time we hear of someone being forgiven for acting badly because they are beautiful is when Lord Henry assures Dorian that his Aunt Agatha could not possibly stay mad at him, because she is so enamored with his beauty. It is impossible to see evil in a beautiful face. Lord Henry's first impression of him is that he looks so good and so pure, that he isn't surprised that Basil has such affection for Dorian.

"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face." (1908: 3)

Lord Henry is the first to impress upon Dorian the idea that his beauty is what will get him things in life, and the idea that his beauty will also fade with age. He issues a warning to Dorian that he had better live out his dreams now, when he is young, beautiful, and can do no wrong in the eyes of the world. Dorian is not quite aware of the effect his looks have on the people around him, but Lord Henry tells him that someday he will be ugly, and he will understand what Lord Henry is talking about.

Dorian awakens to the reality of his own beauty for the first time when he sees Basil's portrait of him and at the same instant is struck by what Lord Henry has told him. He is beautiful now, but when he ages he will no longer be beautiful. He realizes how important beauty is, and that he would be willing to give anything to keep it. Though he had previously been unaware of his beauty, he realizes it now as the most important thing he possesses. Beauty is more important, in fact, than his soul.

Beauty and character are directly connected for the first time when Dorian sees the changes in the portrait; previously the effects of age on a beautiful face have been discussed, as has the effect that beauty has on one's perceived character, but here we see that Dorian's actions have made the portrait appear a little cruel, and a little less beautiful. Wilde refers to the painting as a mirror, for it shows Dorian's face as it has been affected by his character.

We see a bit more into Dorian's vanity here: his chief motivation for becoming good, for doing the right thing, is his beauty. The choice of words is important; he doesn't say that he doesn't want his soul to be evil, or corrupt; he says he does not want it to be hideous. The thing he is most afraid of is that people will see that he is evil.

Dorian decides to hide the portrait so no one will see that it has changed; he is clearly subscribing to Lord Henry's view that beauty and youth are the most important things, because even though he has resolved not to commit any more sins, he knows that the portrait will be ruined by age anyway. A good character cannot make a beautiful face; only youth can, and he has made his choice to keep his youth no matter what.

The way that society judges Dorian is not based on his character but on his looks; good looks can create a perceived good character, and that is as far as most people think to look. In spite of the rumors being passed about, whenever Dorian meets someone face to face, they cannot help but love him.

We discover that goodness and beauty are not necessarily linked; quite the opposite. Dorian comes to think of evil in terms of how beautiful it is, and over the years commits evil simply for the poetic beauty of doing so. He believes, and this is mainly due to Lord Henry's preaching about hedonism, that doing things simply for the sake of adding pleasure to his life also adds an element of beauty.

Beauty has let Dorian down. He needs to escape from it and acquire something that no expensive jewel or piece of art can give him, which is reality. This is one reason why he goes to the opium den; there is an ugliness there that far surpasses anything he might find in high society; the beauty in high society is false, whereas the ugliness that takes place in the opium dens, where people are desperate and their lives have been ruined, is completely real.

Looking back on his life, Dorian sees that Lord Henry was wrong about beauty; it is not the most important thing, and had he not awakened to his beauty that one afternoon in Basil's studio, he might not have gone down the path of ruin that he did. Youth and beauty are overrated, and he wishes that he could have had a good life rather than one filled with artificial art and beauty. He acknowledges that it was due to his own vain prayer that the portrait bears the burden of age and sin, and deeply regrets having made such a wish. There is no way to undo the effects of age on a beautiful face, just as there is no way to undo the effects of sin on a soul, and Dorian now realizes that the latter is the more important.

We know that Lucifer was the most beautiful angel in Heaven. He turned against God, just like Dorian turned against humanity.

The second important aspect is conscience. it is present from the very first chapter, but discourses about it get longer while the story continues because it almost vanishes.

Dorian states, when he first meets Lord Henry:

"I knew that I had come face to face with someone whose mere personality was so fascinating that, if I allowed it to do so, it would absorb my whole nature, my whole soul, my very art itself." (1908: 7)

Basil believes that the way people could see his soul would not be to look at him, but rather to look at his best work, the painting of Dorian. He put all of himself into it, and fears that a person could look at the painting and know everything about him.

"The reason I will not exhibit this picture is that I am afraid that I have shown in it the secret of my own soul." (1908: 6).

Dorian, as well as Basil, believes that this painting holds the secret to their respective souls, and neither wants the picture to be seen. Dorian is afraid even to look at it himself, for he does not like what he sees; he has made a mistake, and as a result his "soul" has gotten uglier. He can look at the painting to judge what kind of person he is, and he does not want to see that much.

"How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. . . . If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that-for that-I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that!" (1908: 29)

Dorian decides to use the painting as his conscience; since it tells him how good or bad his soul is, he will be able to look at it as a reminder that he should be good. Without the painting as a reminder that he has done wrong, he might not have decided to go back to Sibyl. Seeing a reflection of his soul, however, has prompted him to do the right thing and marry Sibyl regardless of the pain she has put him through; he cannot bear the idea that his soul is ugly.

Dorian's plans to be good have been ruined; he cannot marry Sibyl, and it is apparent that the painting knew this before he did. He has an opportunity to take this as a blessing in his life, and relish the youth and beauty that he has been given indefinitely. He realizes that he can do whatever he wants and he will still be beautiful; he can ignore the conscience and watch the corruption of his soul as it happens. This will afford him a sort of pleasure, knowing that everyone around him will grow old and he will not; his soul may suffer, but his outward appearance will not.

"I know what conscience is, to begin with. It is not what you told me it was. It is the divinest thing in us. Don't sneer at it, Harry, any more-at least not before me. I want to be good. I can't bear the idea of my soul being hideous." (1908: 109)

Basil is under the impression that evil is always evident on a person's face, and thus cannot believe that Dorian is evil. He is too innocent-looking to be evil. He is right, in a way, that evil always shows; in this case, however, Dorian's soul has been transferred to the painting. Looking at the painting, one would know instantly that the subject is evil.

Basil has seen Dorian's soul in the painting, and begs Dorian to turn back and be good again. Dorian does not know where his hatred for Basil comes from in the next instant. We can see that Basil is acting as Dorian's conscience in this scene; Dorian is used to being able to cover his conscience with a curtain and hide it, and when it suddenly has a voice, the urge to silence it, just as he has been able to silence the portrait, takes over.

Lord Henry's offhand comment about losing one's soul affects Dorian deeply; at the outset of this adventure, Dorian had previously thought that the soul does not matter, as long as one has pleasure. But now he realizes that it has profited him very little to gain all of the material wealth and hedonistic pleasure of the world, at the expense of having and ugly and evil soul. He feels very strongly about this and tells Lord Henry that the soul is not something to be taken lightly. He wishes he had treated it with more reverence when he was truly young and when his soul was still pure.

Just as he destroyed Basil when he was acting as his conscience, Dorian is filled with rage at the painting for ruining his life. There is a strong parallel between Dorian's murder of Basil and his murder of the portrait; he kills the art and the artist, and in doing so kills himself. Basil put his soul into the painting, as he told Lord Henry in the first scene, and because the painting became Dorian's soul, Basil, the painting and Dorian were inextricably linked. There is no way to destroy the painting without destroying Dorian as well.

The portrait itself is a very illustrative symbol in this story. It is considered by Henry, when talking about Dorian “the most magical of mirrors” (1908:120) because it is able to “reveal to him his own soul” (1908:120).

As a symbol, the mirror reflects the truth and the purity. Plato talks about the souls as a mirror; therefore the mirror is seen as an image of the psyche. It is said that the vampires are not able to see themselves in the mirror because they lack the soul.

Plato, drawing on the words of his teacher Socrates, considered the soul as the essence of a person, being, that which decides how we behave. He considered this essence as an incorporeal, eternal occupant of our being. As bodies die the soul is continually reborn in subsequent bodies.

Aristotle, following Plato, defined the soul as the core essence of a being, but argued against its having a separate existence. For instance, if a knife had a soul, the act of cutting would be that soul, because 'cutting' is the essence of what it is to be a knife. This is very illustrative for our novel as Dorian kills Sybil’s brother and Basil with a knife.

The relation between soul and body, on Aristotle's view, is also an instance of the more general relation between form and matter: thus an ensouled, living body is a particular kind of in-formed matter. Slightly simplifying things by limiting ourselves to the sublunary world, we can describe the theory as furnishing a unified explanatory framework within which all vital functions alike, from metabolism to reasoning, are treated as functions performed by natural organisms of suitable structure and complexity.

The third main aspect is hedonism which is present from the very first moment Lord Henry makes his presence felt next to Dorian.

Lord Henry stirs the first seeds of Dorian's awakening by telling him about the philosophy of Hedonism; he opens Dorian's eyes to a world where the only good thing to do is seek out pleasure, not morality, and do whatever feels good. He tells Dorian that this is what the world needs. He believes that if everyone were to follow pleasure instead of what society tells him is moral, and then the world would be happier, richer, and more ideal.

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful." (1908: 21)

Speaking about Dorian's beauty and youth, Lord Henry cautions him not to take it for granted and to use it to live life to the fullest, because one day it will be gone and he will not be able to have the same pleasures that he can have today.

Lord Henry is following his own Hedonistic beliefs when he tells Basil that he hopes Dorian will marry Sibyl and six months later find someone else. He finds studying Dorian immensely pleasurable, and though it is not the moral thing to do to lead a young person down a path of passion and destruction, it amuses him, and therefore, by his philosophy, it is good. He assures Basil that Dorian's life will not be spoiled by following Lord Henry's advice; the only way his life could be spoiled would be to listen to Basil's advice and remain sheltered all his life.

Upon the realization that he cannot do what is socially thought of as good, Dorian becomes fascinated with all that he could do that could be pleasurable. Now that he does not have to worry about growing old, he can have the pleasures of the flesh for as long as he wants; and it will be an added Hedonistic pleasure to watch his soul grow ugly because of all that he can do, knowing that the world will never see him as ugly.

Dorian begins to take on Lord Henry's mannerisms and believe in his philosophies on life, speaking on the importance of a new Hedonism in society. Puritanism has taken over, and the world needs people who go in search of pleasure. He is spurred on by this idea to search out the finest of the pleasures, material objects, and experiences he can find.

The fourth and final topic of the novel is influence, the influence Lord Henry has upon Dorian, Basil’s painting upon Dorian, but also Dorian will upon himself.

Basil knew instinctively, at first glance, that Dorian would have a profound influence on his life; he could not have possibly known the extent of this influence. Not only does Dorian's soul affect all of the works of art he paints after meeting him, he also will eventually absorb all of Basil himself-quite literally, in fact, as he has Basil's body burnt completely after killing him to leave no trace behind.

Basil knows Lord Henry well enough to know that he tells people things that can give them bad ideas; he warns Lord Henry not to influence Dorian because he knows that were Lord Henry to try, Dorian would be ruined. Basil, it seems, has the most foresight of the characters in this book; without knowing it, he has predicted what is to happen to both himself and to Dorian.

Dorian compares his friendship with Basil with his new friendship with Lord Henry. Basil has never influenced him in a noticeable way; he is the same person with or without Basil's friendship. Lord Henry, on the other hand, has already begun to give him new ideas and feelings; he knows that Lord Henry's influence on him will be profound. He also acknowledges, however, that Lord Henry is merely stirring thoughts that were already somewhere inside him.

Despite Basil's plea not to change Dorian, Lord Henry makes it his new goal to have a great influence over Dorian's life. He sees him as a psychological case, as a puppet whom he can control.

Dorian feels indebted to Lord Henry; he caused him to go in search of pleasure and new sensations, which brought him to Sibyl, so Dorian feels like he owes Lord Henry at least the assurance that he will always tell him everything. The two have a master-puppet relationship; Dorian would not have had the desire to search out pleasure if it were not for Lord Henry; and with Lord Henry controlling the strings, Dorian feels like there is nothing he can hide from him.

Just as he knew at the very beginning, Basil knows that whatever evil is at work inside Dorian is due in no small part to Lord Henry's influence. Basil is correct to be confused by Dorian's looks; they betray no hint of evil, and yet he seems to be completely over the fact that his fiancée took her own life the night before. These two things do not go together, and Basil recognizes that Dorian is looking at the tragedy with the same emotional passivity with which Lord Henry carries out his own life. Basil refuses to believe that these ideas were in Dorian before Lord Henry came along, because that would spoil his vision of Dorian as the beautiful innocent.

Unlike Faust, there is no point at which Dorian makes a deal with the devil. However, Lord Henry's cynical outlook on life, and hedonistic nature seems to be in keeping with the idea of the devil's role, that of the temptation of the pure and innocent, qualities which Dorian exemplifies at the beginning of the book. Although Lord Henry takes an interest in Dorian, it does not seem that he is aware of the effect of his actions. However, Lord Henry advises Dorian that "the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing"; (1974: 52) in this sense, Lord Henry can be seen to represent the Devil, leading Dorian into an unholy pact by manipulating his innocence and insecurity.

In his preface, Wilde gives a speech about art:

“The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.”

Lord Henry’s opinion about women is very similar to what we can interpret from Lucifer’s attitude towards them. Lucifer tempts Eve to eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and not Adam. He considers her weaker than the man. Lord Henry has the same opinion: the woman has no brain; she is nothing but a decorative object:

"My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mid, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals." (1908: 53)

Even more than that, Dorian is aware of Henry’s power over women and he asks his advice about how to charm Sybil:

"You, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous, I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain. My God, Harry, how I worship her!" (1908: 61-62)

As we talked about the soul and the mirror, there is another aspect that should be taken into account of this latter subject: the mirror as the image of the other. The image we reflect in the mirror shows us our personality and soul, as I already stated, but all these mean it shows us our other self, the “Ï”. It is that part of us that makes us think that we are thinking, feel that we are feeling, when in reality it is someone else that in a given moment thinks in our martyrized brain and feels in our sore heart. What we see in the mirror is the self that we are not aware of. Is like a mask that only covers our true nature or, in this case, uncovers it.

The mask can be an alter ego image, just like the reflection in the mirror or opposed to it. The mask has a very long history regarding what it can hide or reveal. It was used by the Greeks, where masks were not used to hide but are an instrument of catharsis during a performance. Also, they were often related to mythology, like the mask of the Gorgon, which had the power to repel evil influences.

Lastly, the cult of Dionysus, god of enjoyment and trance, gave a new function to masks. Subversive and liberal, Dyonisos initiated the celebration of springtime and popular feasts, turning theater into masquerade.

The masque of the theatre is a manifestation of the universal self. Generally it does not modify the personality of the one that wears it, which means that the self is untouchable. the mask first appeared in Greece once with the ceremonies given for Dionysius, the god of wine. The participants were masks and costumes. Further, in the religions and mythological ceremonies the wearer of a mask was considered to be in direct association with the spirit force of the mask and is consequently exposed to like personal danger of being affected by it. In morality plays vice or vice character is an allegorical representation of the seven deadly vices; the antagonist, the protagonist who represents humanity as a whole.

Here we can consider the painting as a mask of Dorian, as his true self. Another author who deals with the mask, this time physically is Edgar Allan Poe in his masterpiece: The Masque of the Red Death.

The disease of the Red Death is a fictitious one. Poe describes it as causing "sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores" (2003: 322) leading to death within half an hour. The masked figure that appears at Prince Prospero's costume ball is the most illusive character' in the story. Upon the stroke of midnight, the guests first notice this masked figure, who is “tall and gaunt, and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of the grave,”(2003: 325) and looks like the corpse of a body afflicted by the Red Death, its face ‘‘besprinkled with the scarlet horror.’’(2003: 324) Prince Prospero orders that the figure be unmasked and hanged at dawn, but his guests refuse to unmask him.

The Masque of the Red Death is an allegory. It features a set of recognizable symbols whose meanings combine to convey a message. An allegory always operates on two levels of meaning: the literal elements of the plot (the colors of the rooms, for example) and their symbolic counterparts, which often involve large philosophical concepts (such as life and death). We can read this story as an allegory about life and death and the powerlessness of humans to evade the grip of death. The Red Death thus represents, both literally and allegorically, death. No matter how beautiful the castle, how luxuriant the clothing, or how rich the food, no mortal, not even a prince, can escape death. In another sense, though, the story also means to punish Prospero’s arrogant belief that he can use his wealth to fend off the natural, tragic progress of life. Prospero’s arrogance combines with a grievous insensitivity to the plight of his less fortunate countrymen. Although he possesses the wealth to assist those in need, he turns his wealth into a mode of self-defense and decadent self-indulgence. His decadence in throwing the masquerade ball, however, unwittingly positions him as a caged animal, with no possible escape.

The rooms of the palace, lined up in a series, allegorically represent the stages of life. Poe makes it a point to arrange the rooms running from east to west. This progression is symbolically significant because it represents the life cycle of a day: the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, with night symbolizing death. What transforms this set of symbols into an allegory, however, is the further symbolic treatment of the twenty-four hour life cycle: it translates to the realm of human beings. This progression from east to west, performed by both Prospero and the mysterious guest, symbolizes the human journey from birth to death. Poe crafts the last, black room as the ominous endpoint, the room the guests fear just as they fear death. The clock that presides over that room also reminds the guests of death’s final judgment. The hourly ringing of the bells is a reminder of the passing of time, inexorable and ultimately personal.

As in many Poe stories, the use of names contributes to the symbolic economic context of the story and suggests another set of allegorical interpretations. For example, Prospero, whose name suggests financial prosperity, exploits his own wealth to stave off the infiltration of the Red Death. His retreat to the protection of an aristocratic palace may also allegorize a type of economic system that Poe suggests is doomed to failure. In the hierarchical relationship between Prospero and the peasantry, Poe portrays the unfairness of a feudal system, where wealth lies in the hands of the aristocracy while the peasantry suffers. This use of feudal imagery is historically accurate, in that feudalism was prevalent when the actual Bubonic Plague devastated Europe in the fourteenth century. The Red Death, then, embodies a type of radical egalitarianism, or monetary equality, because it attacks the rich and poor alike.

The portrayal of the masquerade ball foreshadows the similar setting of the carnival in “The Cask of Amontillado,” which appeared less than a year after The Masque of the Red Death. Whereas the carnival in The Cask of Amontillado associates drunken revelry with an open-air Italian celebration, the masquerade functions in this story as a celebratory retreat from the air itself, which has become infected by the plague. The masquerade, however, dispels the sense of claustrophobia within the palace by liberating the inner demons of the guests. These demons are then embodied by the grotesque costumes. Like the carnival, the masquerade urges the abandonment of social conventions and rigid senses of personal identity. However, the mysterious guest illuminates the extent to which Prospero and his guests police the limits of social convention. When the mysterious guest uses his costume to portray the fears that the masquerade is designed to counteract, Prospero responds antagonistically. As he knows, the prosperity of the party relies upon the psychological transformation of fear about the Red Death into revelry. When the mysterious guest dramatizes his own version of revelry as the fear that cannot be spoken, he violates an implicit social rule of the masquerade. The fall of Prospero and the subsequent deaths of his guests follow from this logic of the masquerade: when revelry is unmasked as a defense mechanism against fear, then the raw exposure of what lies beneath is enough to kill.

The Masque of the Red Death uses the palace setting as part of its allegorical statement about the inevitability of death. Whereas Prince Prospero believes he can use the walls of his palace to fend off the spread of the Red Death, the story reveals that death knows no boundaries. The lavish setting of the palace on the night of the masquerade also contrasts with the impoverished living conditions of the surrounding peasants, who are the first to suffer from the plague. The interior layout of the palace, which promotes the progression of guests from east to west, is an allegory for the life cycle of a day. With the westernmost room, which features the color black and contains a massive clock, Poe suggests that all the guests must end up in this room of death, which ticks away the hours of life.

While this story is literally about a pestilence called the Red Death, it can be read at an allegorical level as a tale about man's fear of his own mortality. In the story, Prince Prospero and his thousand friends seal themselves into an abbey of his castle in an attempt to ‘‘defy contagion’’ (2003: 324) and escape the clutches of the Red Death. The Prince employs "all the appliances of pleasure’’ (2003: 324) in order to distract his guests both from the suffering and death outside their walls and from thoughts of their own vulnerability to the Red Death.

In The Masque of the Red Death' Poe's allusions to both The Tempest and the Bible have been widely recognized. Briefly, the allusions to The Tempest include Poe's use of "Prospero" for his hero's name; his use of the romance "masque" for his story's central event; and his borrowing of Caliban's curse of the red plague' on Miranda for his story's central idea. Poe's allusions to the Bible include his remarks about the Red Death itself: that the Red Death ‘‘out-Heroded Herod’’(2003: 324).

The main character of The Masque of the Red Death is prince Prospero. His refusal to accept death and his arrogance in thinking his wealth and power render him invincible make Prospero a symbol for all who refuse to acknowledge the real life\s course.

Red Death is the term used to describe the disease sweeping the country in which Prince Prospero resides. The Red Death is symbolic of all death and of the mortality of al humans; it is also possibly symbolic of tuberculosis, given that Virginia Clemm suffered for years from TB and was prone to bleeding from the mouth.

Poe uses the theme of insanity vs. insanity, and all the nuances in between, in many of his short stories, often charging his insane narrators with the futile task of proving that they are not mad. Often, in stories such as The Tell-Tale Heart and The Imp of the Perverse, though the respective narrators of each claim they are of sound mind and seem completely unremorseful, they are driven to confess by a persistent reminder of their crime. In other tales, such as The Cask of Amontillado, the narrator is unquestionably insane, and yet there is no remorse and no confession, and though his actions are insane, he is very levelheaded when it comes to their execution.

The Fall of the House of Usher is another story full of symbols of Poe. This story contains many suggestions of psychic and supernatural influences upon the feelings of the narrator and the nerves of Roderick Usher. But the influences are not defined. No ghosts appear. Surely, Poe as craftsman intended the story to do what it does, to arouse a sense of unearthly terror that springs from a vague source, hinted and mysterious.

In The Fall of the House of Usher, Edgar Allan Poe entices his readers to view the narrator's experiences as a dream. Many critics have noted the tale's iterative images of water, mist, sleep, and descent, connoting the subconscious, as well as the explicit verbal clues Poe provides in such passages as "I looked upon the scene before me … with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after dream of the reveler upon opium” (2003: 247).

In The Fall of the House of Usher, the narrator makes an observation about Roderick and Madeline Usher when he helps to bury Madeline after her apparent death: they are twins. There is an explicit motif of the doppelganger, or character double that characterizes the relationship between Roderick and Madeline. Poe philosophically experiments with a split between mind and body by associating Roderick exclusively with the former and Madeline exclusively with the latter. The doppelganger motif undermines the separation between mind and body. Poe represents this intimate connectivity between mind and body by making Roderick and Madeline biological twins. When sickness afflicts one sibling, for example, it contagiously spreads to the other. The mode of contagion implies an early version of ESP, or extrasensory perception. Poe insinuates that these mysterious sympathies, which move beyond biological definition, also possess the capacity to transmit physical illness. It is also possible to view these sympathies as Poe’s avant-garde imagining of genetic transmission between siblings.

Poe suggests that the twin relationship involves not only physical similitude but also psychological or supernatural communication. The power of the intimate relationship between the twins pervades the incestuous framework of the Usher line, since the mansion contains all surviving branches of the family. The revelation of this intimacy also reaffirms the narrator’s status as an outsider. The narrator realizes that Roderick and Madeline are twins only after she is nearly dead, and this ignorance embodies the fact that the walls of the Usher mansion have protected the family from outsiders up to the point of the narrator’s arrival. When the narrator, as an outsider, discovers the similitude between Roderick and Madeline, he begins to invade a privileged space of family knowledge that ultimately falls to ruins in the presence of a trespasser.

This is a theme long debated by every culture and religion. The twins have a very interesting symbolical meaning: they denote the whole, the one. They can be like good and evil, God and Lucifer, yin and yang, or they can be a single being or not. The physical similarity between twins denotes the ego and the alter ego.

Near the end of this poem, when the fear of the poem's speaker has reached a level of near hysteria, he shouts "Leave my loneliness unbroken!" In one sense, this could just be an emotional outburst, like the lines that lead up to it, but the interesting thing about this particular line is that the speaker, in his terror, is for once reflecting upon himself. This, and the line's location at the climax of the poem, indicates to us that "my loneliness" is not just another expression that he shrieks: it is the key, the secret that he has been trying to guard all along. Throughout the poem, we see the speaker being drawn out of his isolation by the raven and the one word that it speaks.

The Fall of the House of Usher suggests itself as the subject of the following investigation, for it is a "typical" Poe short story in which the most important characteristic of his tales, the combination of extreme intellectual and spiritual conditions with a suggestively mood-invested space, is especially clear and pronounced.

While Poe in The Fall of the House of Usher solves the problem of describing and delineating mood-invested space by blending observed details, emotional reaction, and the fundamentally analytical attitude of the first person narrator, he must reach for different means in The Masque of the Red Death for this story is told usually from a greater distance. Although the narrator occasionally chooses a close focus and writes from the perspective of a certain character, the story as a whole – in contrast to The Fall of the House of Usher – is conspicuously impersonal in tone all the time. Poe therefore achieves the decidedly dense atmosphere not by means of the narrator's mood-investment, but by stylizing space and the characters' expressive gestures throughout. Expressive elements in the static space relationships come to be contrasted and the (temporal) sequence of events within these spaces is rendered rhythmic.

From the very beginning, the description of space is aimed at making evident the two principles which are confronted bodily at the climax of the story: the bizarre autocracy of the individual in the person of Prince Prospero and the inexorable lawfulness of time and death, embodied in the masque of the Red Death. Accordingly, the primary formative principle is contrast, which begins with the spatial opposition of outside and inside. As the circumscription of the setting in The Fall of the House of Usher could be explained primarily by the striving for concentration that is by a formal principle here a condition of tension prevails, which has both significance for content and at the same time existential relevance. For outside lurk danger and death; inside, there seems to be a security which permits an intoxicating enjoyment of life. The separation of the domains is emphasized by means of the illumination: the natural daylight outside the house is contrasted with the artificial illumination of all the windowless rooms by the flickering flames of the "tripods." The seclusion of the house from its surroundings, for practical reasons, to be sure, and neutral in regard to values, thus creates the impression that an artificially created realm is arbitrarily isolated from the realm of natural life and natural order.

The principle of contrast (like the principle of rhythmization) can also be observed in the arrangement and decoration of the interior rooms. On the one hand, they show the Prince's preference for the bizarre by the strangely irregular and unclear arrangement with "a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yards," which runs counter to the customary arrangement of an "imperial suite" with its "long and straight vista" (2003: 325); the rooms are arranged in an irregular fashion similar to the winding passages in other stories by Poe. On the other hand, however, the presence of firm orderly lines – the entire establishment extending from East to West and its orientation towards the seventh room (where 'seven' evokes the concept of the ages of man) – points to an immanent order. This impression is reinforced by the corridors on both sides of the rooms that follow the rhythm of the suites and by this emphasis on the directional components, translate the irregularity of the arrangement into a kind of regularity. The same becomes apparent in the coloration, which is uniform within each room but changes from one room to another. The sequence of the expressive colors – blue, crimson, green, orange, white, purple, and, in the seventh room, black and red – on the one hand seems to express the Prince's love of the bizarre, his extremely individualistic autocracy and freedom; on the other hand, however, the execution of the seventh room in black and red color tones and the breaking of the formative principle of uniform coloration in this very room show the rhythmic encounter of the polar forces mentioned earlier. The place standing out within this entire mood-invested space is the last or seventh room, because it is the last of the rooms and because it has accompanying symbolic associations tied to the number seven, to the room's situation toward the West or the setting sun, and to black, the color of death. The most conspicuous mood-investing device is the gigantic ebony clock with its brazen lungs, symbol of time in its double aspect as measurable time and the power of fate that sets an end to all life on earth. This double aspect is emphasized by the clock's location against the western wall, evoking with the image of the setting sun that of the ultimate end, while the order of time and fate is illustrated by the monotonous movement of the pendulum, which is also set off by the rhythm of the language. Even more important, however, is the striking of the clock, its tone measuring time and creating within the suite a uniform mood in the sense of being directed towards the end.

The mood-investment of space, however, not only builds up – here as elsewhere – on the basis of objective factors but also results, as mentioned before, from the interchange between space and man: the mood-invested characters respond to the mood-investment of space. The black room, for instance, "produced so wild a look upon the countenances of those who entered, that there were few of the company bold enough to set foot within its precincts at all" (2003: 326). Even more impressive in this connection are the peculiar movements of the dancers, of whom it is said, "they writhe to and fro" (2003: 324). Their expressive movements – the reaction to spatial mood-investment – reflect at the same time the bizarre element that characterizes the space as a whole and causes the dancers to appear as figures parallel to Prospero, whose fate they share in the end. Space and man thus form a unit of action here as they did in The Fall of the House of Usher

The element which guides movement is sound; there is for one thing the striking of the clock, its tone filling space and contracting it; there is for another the shrill tone of the music, which corresponds to the bizarre interior arrangement and the eccentric movements and here has an effect opposite to that of the clock, the effect of expansion and dispersion. One is reminded of Poe's cosmological principles of repulsion and attraction, forces that keep the world in balance, while a disturbance of its equilibrium through the refinement of what is individual, through repulsion, as in The Fall of the House of Usher activates the power of attraction, which leads to death. In The Masque of the Red Death, attraction and repulsion now-are translated into expressive movements – pressing forward and receding, motion and cessation of motion – and thus are dramatized. The phantasmal play of movement to the sounds of the music is followed, with each striking of the hour, by the dancers becoming motionless, by their being struck dumb and the music falling silent, until with the dying away of the last stroke dancing begins anew. Scenes of motion and cessation of motion alternate five times in the same manner and thus divide the action in the sense of rendering it rhythmical. While the clock strikes, the remoteness of the seventh chamber, into which no one will venture, becomes a threatening proximity, leaving no room for individual action. There are two possibilities for making room: receding and pressing forward. As these two motions, opposites in their direction, follow one another, they mark the progress of time and the approach of the high and end point of the action. This sequence of motions becomes quite clear, for instance, when the Red Death appears. Growing alarm is made evident by the expressive movement of receding to the periphery of the space: "the vast assembly . . . shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls" (2003: 327); the counter movement towards the black chamber then follows, an attempt to gain space by conquest and by crossing boundaries. The irony lies in the fact that this transgression is at the same time a result of attraction (by the clock and by death) and thus leads to chaotic precipitation. Here the different modes of behavior of the figures of death and of the human beings, which again are made evident by expressive movements, are effectively contrasted. The gait of the Red Death is solemn, measured – like time, he halts only at the wall of the last chamber that is at the outermost limit of the space (in time) at his disposal. The others rush after him ("the revelers . . . threw themselves into the black apartment," 2003: 327), their behavior is reaction, not action, and they confirm his power – again by an expressive movement – as they sink dead at the feet of the gigantic clock.

This black ebony dock, which "breathes its last" with the narrative figures, is the central symbol of the story. It seems to be merely an allegorical piece of stage property, but as shown above it is at the same time, and primarily, a part of mood-invested space. Within this tension and its resolution lies the uniqueness of the symbolic method in this story. The structure of the clock symbol is determined by the double embodiment of time: as a kind of personification [page 10:] with a "minute-hand," a "face," "brazen lungs," and a "life" (IV, 253), it has the fixed, immovable meaning of the power of fate that is time and so constitutes a closed symbol with allegorical traits; as part of the totality of furnishings, especially in the last chamber, as a body of sound, which divides measurable time by its striking, it belongs to mood-invested space and directs the action. Much like the clock, the colors black and red in the last chamber, as well as the direction of the suite from East to West, contain elements of the closed symbol. But it is significant that the same does not apply to the other colors; their meaning remains open to a great extent. Here again, closed and open symbols are contrasted in dialectical manner. As to the directional component, its closed meaning is suspended at least at times by the process of motion and the polarization of East-West in the course of the narrated events. So it is that towards the end of the story the Prince's voice resounds from the Easternmost chamber and, analogous to the penetrating sound of the clock (both are designated by the verb ring), fills all the chambers of the suite. In the end, to be sure, the significance of the clock, as of the directional component and the colors red and black (blood and death), seems to be solely allegorical, for the duplication of the figures' death by the dying of the clock shows the 'significance' of the clock to be separable from the phenomenon. This, however, only seems to be the case: though on the one hand the symbolic variant of the meaningful image is translated here into the allegorical one, on the other hand the atmospheric forces of the uncanny, which were developed in the course of the story, affect also the clock symbol and tie it to the total expression of space which only then (together with the expressive movements of the figures) endows it with its meaning. The clock then fulfills here the function of the ballad in The Fall of the House of Usher: it unveils meaning and at the same time, by heightening the referential quality within itself, prevents space as a whole from becoming a closed symbol. The clock is not the only instance of this kind. This process of translating an open symbol into a closed one, visible in the floor clock, can be observed with particular clarity at the end of the story in the flames of the tripods. At first, these lend movement to space by means of their flickering light and invest it with mood – the flames evoking only very vaguely the idea of individual life – and not until the very end does the element of meaning emerge more clearly, though without assuming, in spire of its closedness, the character of allegory: "And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired" (2003: 258).

Besides the closed spatial symbol, the poetological comments by the narrator in this story also fulfill an interpretive function in keeping with Poe's dictum: "every work of art should contain within itself all that is requisite for its own comprehension" (2003: 78). As in The Fall of the House of Usher the closed spatial symbol interprets the fateful context, while poetic allusion concerns above all the concept of the characters. The narrator describes the masqueraders as grotesque and arabesque, giving here according to Kayser perhaps the most complete and appropriate definition that the word grotesque was ever given by an author

The distortion in the elements, the mingling of the domains, the simultaneity of beautiful, bizarre, horrible and repulsive elements, the fusion into a turbulent entity, the alienation into the phantasmal and dream-like, all this has entered here into the concept of the grotesque. This world is prepared for the invasion by the nocturnal, which will bring destruction as death in a red mask.

Stated differently and examined as to function within the story, the distorted expressive movements of the figures reflect their subconscious knowledge of their fate, which is also embodied in the directional system of the space and in the sound of the clock; they can escape it only accompanied by festive music, using phantasmal masks and costumes, and making distorted movements in a room with bizarre furnishings; with each fateful striking of the clock, however, they must respond to this fate more consciously by turning rigid or receding – or through the attempt to overcome. Against the background of Poe's cosmological concepts, the dialectic of repulsion and attraction, of spiritual and material principle, which becomes apparent in expressive movements, the fear and terror of the figures as of Roderick Usher can be understood as the highly developed personality's resistance against giving up its individuality in favor of the universal cycle of repulsion and attraction, refinement and death. At the same rime, however, the contradictory expressive elements of space and the contrast of the movements – receding and pressing forward – contain analogies to a discrepancy philosophically reasoned out by Poe, the discrepancy between creator and created, self-determination and determination by something alien to the self, which is the final condition of every particle in the universe, especially, however, of man and of the artist through his share in the divine.

With this utterly closed, logically constructed story, Poe has taken another step, even beyond The Fall of the House of Usher, towards modern ways of presentation such as the surrealistic and the grotesque. For the time being this brings to an end a development which began with the Gothic novel. Poe accomplishes the integration of space into all levels of the story: as picturesque, not to say melodramatic stage and as fellow actor in the spatial scene; as the sign of unalterable fate (the clock), which manifests itself in death; as the sign of the individual will to self-preservation, which shows itself in the bizarre furnishings; and as expression of the conscious, as well as of the subconscious, that knows of the cosmic process of becoming and passing away, yet yields its own life to this process only unwillingly.

When one compares the delineation of space and the constitution of symbol in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death, common traits in the application of narrative means emerge, which in the face of different narrative premises point to a unified concept in Poe's works. A glance at the detective stories and landscape sketches may serve to confirm this. Conspicuous is the circumscription of space, which gives it a hermetic character in that it has become devoid of references to pragmatic reality. This far-reaching renunciation of mimetic traits, and the confusing confrontation of contrary symbolic phenomena, which reaches its climax in The Masque of the Red Death, give to the delineation of space the special mood-investment of the strange and the uncanny, the unclear and the hidden, and stimulate reflection. Being hermetic, space at the same time is available for various possibilities of expression and can be manipulated artistically. After the Gothic novel had discovered mood-invested space, Poe was first in recognizing its availability for expression and the resulting possibilities, especially for the foreshortened presentation in the short story. Because the short story must use its setting economically and, in contrast to the novel's broader delineation of the world, especially reflects man's reaction to a given situation, Poe's own mixture of illustrative, emotional, and ideational presentation of space is not only an expression of the unity of effect he strives for but also evidence of a mode of presentation which is in keeping with the form of the short narrative. In regard to the objective qualities of space, this fulfillment of the short form shows itself in the reduction of details in favor of a stylized overall impression, and this in turn rests on the arrangement of space according to a few important basic elements which determine the expressive qualities of the details. Directional components such as East and West above and below, outside and inside and formal elements like the circular and the angular, the straight and the twisted, the open and the closed, acquire their special meaning within the narrative context and are related in the sense of being made parallel or contrasted. These static relationships are again rendered dynamic in the spatial scene for instance, in The Murders in the Rue Morgue the murder of the two women by an orangutan is described from the perspective of the spatial realities – and in the landscape sketches for example, in The Domain of Arnheim the forms of the landscape, coming together and separating with changing perspectives during the trip on the river, alone impart to it their special character. In all cases it is important that, according to a given delineation and in spite of certain constants of expression, mood-investment and associative meaning of space can be varied.

In the delineation of mood-invested space, this becomes apparent in the sequential variation of focus and presentation, that is observation, mood-investment, reflection, observation, and so forth, the circle beginning at will, with observation as in The Masque of the Red Death, with mood-investment as in The Fall of the House of Usher or with reflection as in The Domain of Arnheim. Always, however, all stages are gone through. The fact that the observer becomes uncertain results, on the objective side, in the narrative spaces becoming enigmatic. Either the previously described circle of observational, emotional, and ideational presentation creates the impression of something being in process, something indissoluble as in the tales of terror and thereby creates the mood quality of the uncanny, which in Poe's works is brought about in particular by the partially hidden becoming perceptible, if not atmospherically tangible; or the circle can bring about a result as in the landscape sketches, in that the observer recognizes in nature and its details, by tracing these back to certain ideal, harmonizing, basic forms like the circle or the meandering line (as a connection of the straight and the circular line), the works of God and in these the almighty design.

The variability and artistic manipulation of hermetic space also applies to its contextual significance. It can be seen in the variability of the manner of relating phenomenon to meaning. In the detective stories, such as The Purloined Letter, Poe can entirely forgo symbolic significance and concentrate meaning solely in the appearance of space, its observational qualities, or, as in The Murders in the Rue Morgue, he can introduce additional mood qualities. Central in both cases, however, is the pragmatic or intuitively rational solution of an enigma which can be fathomed only with the help of spatial details. Poe's use of the symbol thus exhibits two characteristics: for one, the multiple variation in mode of linking meaning and phenomenon between the two poles of symbolic atmosphere and objective allegory, snaking it impossible to limit Poe to only one way of using the symbol (such as the allegorical); for another, the supplementary use of different modes of connection, such as the open and the closed symbol with its many variants. Through the atmospheric references of the former, the quality of the mood-invested space is attained, while the rational logical references of the latter clarify the meaning of the spatial entity. The complementary use of both, or the integration of the closed symbol into the narrative context and thereby into the narrative course of time with its changing conditions, does not allow the abstract meaning, in the sense perhaps of Poe's cosmological concepts, to predominate, and thus provides that the atmospheric elements of the mood invested space are not destroyed by being transferred to the pattern of the observed space (which underlies the allegorical space arrangements). This is accomplished, as becomes especially dear in connection with the clock symbol in "The Masque," by means of the firm establishment of even the closed objective symbol within the greater unit of the mood-invested space. At the same time, and in the sense of varying and enhancing the sequence as well as rendering it rhythmical, the tendency toward in creasing clarification of the under or mystic current of meaning by means of the closed symbol becomes apparent in the course of the narrative.

The manipulation of the mood-invested and symbolic hermetic space becomes further evident not only in the manifold possibilities of relating phenomenon to meaning, with which Poe experiments, but also in the quality of meaning and therefore in the determination of content. On the one hand, Poe has the Ushers' house appear as a milieu symbol – in the early view of the narrator – and thus as a symbol for the ideas and forces of the environment that determines the inhabitants; on the other hand, he uses it as an analogical symbol which has the function of conveying insights into existence. As milieu symbol, it clarifies causal relations between house and inhabitants; as analogical symbol, it interprets the decay of personality and points to parallel developments in matter and spirit, space and man, in keeping with Poe's cosmological ideas. For direct statements about the meaning of space and its symbolic references, the possibilities of variation have a similarly wide range. The immediate conceptual definition is at its most direct in the landscape sketches, which are aimed at illuminating the divine "design" in nature. Finally, the many ambiguities in Poe's spatial symbolism become apparent not only in the contrasting or combining of different kinds of symbols, which articulate their meaning more or less plainly, but also in the expressional ambivalence of the individual basic forms of symbols and complexes of direction. Poe develops the same basic forms for the space full of horror as for the spatial idyll. The rounded and circular forms reflect the artificial, hallucinatory closedness of a prison-like space, or one marked by supernatural phenomena.

There is a similitude between Poe image of the world presented in his work and that of Baudelaire. The main element that brings a similarity is between the Flowers of Evil and The Fall of the House of Usher primarily. The atmosphere the both authors present in these two masterpieces that were revolutionary in the period they were published is full of putrefaction and grotesque.

Putrefaction itself is a very illustrative symbol for the two works. The reduction of the matter to ashes or the putrefaction symbolizes the destruction of the old nature and its rebirth in another form of existence. For hermetics this is the main step of the chemical activity, the death of the bodies and the division of the matters they are made of that leads them to degradation and brings them to the step of the creation.

Putrefaction means, from a more general point of view related to its etymology, to decompose, to petrify. But the symbolism is the same: after death there is rebirth into a new life. This new life that follows the putrefaction is, many times, conceived as a superior or sublimed life. Or it means the transmutation of an entirely material existence into one purely formal and ideal.

Baudelaire writes, in The Carcass:

The sun shone onto the rotting heap,
As if to bring it to the boil,
And tender a hundredfold to vast Nature
All that together she had joined;

……………………………………………………

Yet to this rot you shall be like,
To this horrid corruption,
Star of my eyes, sun of desire,
You, my angel and my passion!

……………………………………………………

Then, oh my beauty! You must tell the vermin,
As it eats you up with kisses,
That I have preserved the form and essence divine
Of my decayed loves. (1993: 28-29).

But talking about the Luciferian side of his work, these ones reveal all the ambiguity of the period of transition he lives in. for him, the devil was both very personal and wholly other. Baudelaire believed alienation and evil together constituted the deepest realities of human existence. He even has been accused of Satanism because he declared: “The most perfect time of masculine Beauty is Satan”.

He used Satan in many places as a symbol of evil. In others, however, he called God cruel and tyrannical and portrayed the devil positively. In The Possessed he claims: “There is no fiber in my trembling body that does not cry, / Dear Beelzebub, I adore you!” But Baudelaire’s most familiar Satanic Piece is Litanies of Satan.

“O thou, of Angels loveliest, most wise,

O God betrayed by fate, deprived of praise!

Satan, have mercy on my long distress!

O Price of exile, who was dispossessed,

Who ever rises stronger when oppressed,

Satan, have mercy on my long distress!

O thou who knowest all, Hell’s sovereign,

Know healer of mankind’s afflictions

Satan, have mercy of my long distress.” (1993: 37)

Baudelaire was interpreted by very many contemporaries in different ways, each of them as he perceived this kind of poetry, not allowed those days and taken as an affront to his contemporaries. Gustave Bourdin on 5th of July 1857, in Le Figaro, wrote: “The odious crowds with the miserable; the repulsive allies with the infect. Never has been seen biting and even chewing so many breasts in so few pages; never has anyone assisted to a such presentation of demons, of fetuses, of devils, of chlorosis, of cats, and of vermin. This book is a hospital opened to all demences of the spirit, to all putrefaction of the heart; at least if one would know to cure them but they are cureless.”

Also, Edouard Thierry, on 14th of July 1857, in Le Monitor:

“…suppose that in a palace like the one of the prince Prospero, for example, after the seven grand enlightened rooms…a greenhouse made out from glass, meant to serve as a winter garden. This is another palace. The owner, that wanted it made after his own bizarre…wanted to know what the killing nature could give. He wanted to raise evil plants and which bear the evil sign in their non-calming forms. He wanted to be searched the barks that distill the dangerous juices, the canopies that exalts the dizziness and fever. He created the tapestries puddles with all the spew, with all the froths, with all the drafts, with all the green pearls of the vegetable corruption. He arranged the low and suffocated areas where flies of thousands of colors bloom and awfully imitate the breathing movements in the womb of the dead animals. From one end to another of this terrible garden, a smoldering heat broods in the same time the rottenness and penetrating fragrances that are confused, so that the scents revolt again and the amazed senses fear to fall to infection. Yet in all sides an extraordinary flora develops, extraordinary creepers and of a great power of multiplication that no one ever suspected, hideous and suspect shapes, sinister glow colors next to which any other color would fade. The owner of the place realized the Eden of the Hell. Death walks here with pleasure, his sister…. the race of the ancient snake slither heart on the alley and in the middle, the tree of science pushes a sour that streams as a wonder from its lighting hit trunk.”

Ed. Duranty, on 14th of November 1856, in Le Figaro:

“Although making a kaleidoscope in his head with the words: Bad luck, / Satan, doubt and Rottenness, fatality, although he wants be considered a vampire, a husband of Death, he has a piece of intelligence that resists to the translations he imposes himself mechanically. The only idea and the only feeling in Baudelaire is that of death.”

As we have seen, in literature, the theme of Lucifer is very well treated and extremely vast. But there are also traits of Lucifer in arts: paintings, sculpture and even movies.

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni’s “Creation of Adam” is a masterpiece that can be, in my opinion related to Milton’s description of God’s creating Adam.

This painting is part of the Sistine Chapel. The Creation of Man is the fourth panel in the series of nine which constitutes the central portion of the frescoes; or the sixth in the series reckoned in the order in which it was painted. For, as the entire world knows, the series was painted backward.

"God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him" (Genesis 1: 27).

The focal point of the episode of the Creation of man is the contact between the fingers of the Creator and those of Adam, through which the breath of life is transmitted. God, supported by angels in flight and wrapped in a mantle, leans towards Adam, shown as a resting athlete, whose beauty seems to confirm the words of the Old Testament, according to which man was created to the image and likeness of God.

The Creation of Adam fresco shows Adam and God reaching toward one another, arms outstretched, fingers almost touching. One can imagine the spark of life jumping from God to Adam across that synapse between their fingertips. However, Adam is already alive, his eyes are open, and he is completely formed; but it is the intent of the picture that Adam is to “receive” something from God. I believe there is a third “main character” in the fresco that has not previously been recognized. This image has the shape of a brain.

In the fresco traditionally called the 'Creation of Adam', but which might be more aptly titled the 'Endowment of Adam', I believe that Michelangelo encoded a special message says Frank Meshberger.

Scholars and art historians have long recognized that Michelangelo habitually made liberal use of symbolism in both painting and sculpture, and perhaps he was also fond of visual puzzles and humor.

There is some speculation that much of the symbolism attributed to Michelangelo's works is due not only to the cultural and religious climate of Florence in the 1480s and early 1500s, but also the philosophy of Neoplatonism. There is evidence that at the time of painting the Creation of Adam, Michelangelo was influenced by the Neoplatonic teachings of Marsillio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola. His writings and poetry of that time reflect his belief in the divine origin of art, and of physical beauty, and that the intellect is itself divine.

But the Neoplatonic thinking rejected the existence of God, and therefore, the creation of the man by Him. Maybe Michelangelo, wanted to illustrate the fact that the creation itself is nothing but the imagination of human mind.

The angel that sits in the left side of God looks like is trying to hold Him back, like he is not content with His choice of creating man. Could that be Lucifer?

In the same time he can hold God to be sure He is protected.

Another important painting that, this time reflects the image of Lucifer himself is Raphael Sanzio’s “St. Michael”.

Saint Michael kills Lucifer in this image; he punishes him for what he has done. This is very illustrative for the fight of the good against evil and vice versa. In the painting we are not shown that Saint Michael kills Lucifer. He only prepares to do it. The good always triumphs over evil, but it never destroys it, evil never perishes. Just as in the yin-yang theory, there could be no good without evil and no evil without good. The evil must not perish for the good to reign because one without the other there will be no whole. They cannot be differentiated if one of them does not exist. This is the balance of life and nature.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci created another masterpiece of art: “Last supper”.

Da Vinci gives up to the tradition of the era in which Judas was always posted outside the table, to his isolation. He did this because he was conditioned by the Dominican monks. Judas is positioned in the middle of the apostles. They all are positioned in the left and the right of Jesus six by six. The both sides are divided in two parts of three men each. The number six is full of symbolical meanings. Six is the number of Satan. A trilogy of six is the number that denotes Satan. But the apostles are divided by three. This makes the number three more important than the number six. Even tough without Judas six would not have been whole, thus the number of Satan would not have existed, and maybe Jesus would not have been betrayed, three makes the connection with God and the Trinity. Three is compose out of the sum of the first two numbers: one and two.

One is the symbol of iniquity, thus the number of God, Jesus in our case, and two is the number of duality, the duality formed by good and evil. Three itself is the number of God, the Wholly Trinity makes The Father, The Son, and The Wholly Spirit an one and only being, entity.

Judas being among his friends confirms the idea of Lucifer who wandered among his friends and family in Heaven just before he was vanished from it, wandered in Heaven while he conspired against God and His rules.

There are, as I stated above, images of Lucifer in television as well. There were been made movies that presented the idea of Lucifer/Satan, usually different than in literature and art, but with more or less the same connotation: evil.

Movies as The Exorcist, or The Exorcism of Emily Rose, are very illustrative of a feature of Lucifer I have not been treating by now in this paper: the possession of Satan seen among the Christians. In The Exorcism of Emily Rose we see that not only the sinners and the villains can be possessed by Satan, but also the religious people. Emily was a religious person but very weak.

Another image of Satan can be seen in Stigmata where Lucifer not only possesses the corpse of a woman, but he also is trying to send a message: that he was the one that put Jesus on the cross that he is there to bring the end of the world. The woman possessed by him here is not a Christian, nor a hater of God; she is nothing but an atheist. She rejects the existence of God until she is possessed by Lucifer.

I referred earlier about the six being the number of Satan. There has been a series of movies made after the idea of Satan’s son and creation and the signs for this called The Omen. In one of the parts of this movie, a five years old child has on his back head the number 666.

This chapter tried to cover a very vast theme long treated and discussed in literature, film, and arts. The aim was to prove that, depending on the creator of the above mentioned, Lucifer can be seen as evil, good, or even neutral. What is clear is that he occupies very many pages, mages, and movie scripts.

Case study

For this part of the project I have done a survey on a lot of 60 individuals. the questionnaire is presented above for the analysis:

Anonymous survey

Please answer the following questions honestly and without using any extra material. The purpose of this survey is to mirror the beliefs of people.

What is the first thing you think about when you hear the word “Lucifer”?

__________________________________________________________________

Do you believe in the supernatural? If your answer is affirmative, then which of the following seems to you closer to reality:

Witchcraft,

God/Satan,

Occultism.

__________________________________________________________________

Do you think Satan and Lucifer are one and the same entity? Why/Why not?

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I decided to interview persons outside the literary or religious areas, for following what the usual people, not directly involved in these domains think about the above. The data analyzed revealed more or less the same interpretations depending on the affirmative or negative answer. In isolated cases there have been detailed answers, and usually not very informed.

Overall analysis

I decided to interview persons outside the literary or religious areas, for following what the usual people, not directly involved in these domains think about the above.

I interviewed people from Cluj Napoca, students in Political Sciences, and few persons employed in an IT company.

My goal was to have 100 individuals to answer my questions, but only 60% of them accepted it. The reactions varied from amazement to laughter.

The period lasted more than I expected. They answered my survey in about two weeks. Their explanation for this was that they almost forgot about it. My conclusion is that people do not give a very much importance to these things. Surveys are all over and people prefer to ignore them.

The data analyzed revealed more or less the same interpretations depending on the affirmative or negative answer. In isolated cases there have been detailed answers, and usually not very informed.

Table 1

To the first question, most of the answers said what is stated almost all over the world, and what is usually denied by the Luciferians and Satanists: that Lucifer is Satan in proportion of 60%. On the second place, 26.67% of the interviewed believe that Lucifer is the fallen angel, and only 6.67% associate him with evil or with nothing in particular.

The conclusion of these answers is that the general belief of the common people, not involved in the literary or religious areas is that Lucifer and Satan are one and the same. We will see in the third question how many answered affirmatively.

Table 2

In the case of the second question, answers varied from all to none. As we can see in the table above, 53.33% of the respondents do not believe in supernatural, while only 6.67% believe in occult sciences. The second and the third places are taken by God/Satan (26.67%) and witchcraft (20%) which are very close to each other.

Even though they believe that Lucifer is considered the evil, the fallen angel, or Satan, people do not believe that he really exists. The general belief here is that supernatural is completely imaginary.

As we can see in Table 3, the majority of respondents believe that Lucifer and Satan are one and the same entity (53.33%), whereas, on the last place are those who refuse to identify them as such (20%). In the middle (26.67%) there are those who do not find an answer for this question.

Table 3

The explanations the respondents gave when answering Why/Why were not very different. The main idea, for those who identify Lucifer with Satan, was the fact that this is a general belief, that everybody talks like this and that no one denies that.

The ones that denied their being the one and same entity, state that Satan was called Lucifer before falling from Heaven; with his fall he became other entity, from angel the devil. They also find explanation like: Satan is the devil that allures us, while Lucifer is the angel banished from Heaven for different reasons: he did not obey God’s laws; he was the most beautiful of all angels, etc.

The general idea of this survey was to see what common people believe about Lucifer, Satan, God, supernatural. As it can be seen from the analysis above, most of the respondents do not believe in the supernatural but they identify Lucifer with Satan. In few isolated cases Lucifer is identified with nothing or respondents believe in occult sciences.

Conclusion

This paper required a long and serious study about the theme and its variations. In my opinion, the subject I treated is very interesting, but also very vast. The theme can be treated from very many other perspectives. I choose the literary, religious and the social one because they seem to me more complex. What I realized while I was studying for the project was that all these subjects were so vast that it would have been enough to treat just one of them. But I tried to evidence the main ideas in all these areas where Lucifer and Luciferianism are very clear illustrated or present.

The literary, artistic and movie based ideas for illustrating this theme are so numerous that I dedicated for them a wider number of pages. Beginning from the social beliefs about the subject and extending until the treaties of the most authors, painters, or film directors I was more impressed than I usually was when I read for the first time those books, or seen the paintings, or the movies.

While Dante Alighieri chooses to walk through Hell like an Orpheus, while Milton chooses to describe his point of view about the whole story of Genesis and more, while Baudelaire presents the Luciferianism through putrefaction, or Wilde and Marlowe give us an insight about what means to make a pact with the devil, the film directors choose to present another perspective of Lucifer, full of priests, demons and exorcists, and the world’s most famous painters like Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Rafael used their imagination and colors to present their own views about creation, Jesus’ last supper, and the triumph of good over evil.

I have chosen this theme because I wanted to deal with a subject which is not usually of a much interest to people. This is an aspect of our social life and of our literary life that has almost been forgotten since the era that Baudelaire revolutionized all the literature and society, since the day Dante decided to present the life after death and to bring back to life people that no linger were among the living ones.

When I have chosen this theme I knew little about the beliefs in Lucifer and the long debates about whether he is Satan or not. I only knew what the famous writers I talked about earlier wrote. But while I was studying and reading, and writing on this paper, I realized that this is a theme that would take me a lifetime to learn everything about and that this lifetime will not be enough.

Now, when I am writing on these pages, I realize that I became more conscience about what variety of things is there in the world. I know that, beginning with this theme, I found myself a passion and that I do not have enough from what Dante, Milton, Baudelaire, Poe, Marlowe, or Wilde gave us, but that this theme deserves a longer treatment, longer than a lifetime, longer than the world.

Referring to my beliefs related to the subject, if I were to answer the questions I asked my respondents in the survey, when I began this paper work I would have answered differently from now. I think that the first thing I would have thought about when I heard the word Lucifer would have been Satan, the supernatural I would have believed in would have been God/Satan, and I would have certainly associated Lucifer with Satan.

But now, even tough my answers would not differ too much, what I do know is that I look at the questions from another very different perspective. Lucifer is not just Satan, he is the fallen angel, he is the rebel, and he is not just the connotation of evil, but a very much complex entity.

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