Abstract ramblings on my religion. These are personal beliefs, informed as much by my dreams and experiences as by scholarly reading. Take them with a grain of salt. Or, if you really need to, take them with more than a grain and construct a salt circle around yourself to keep the demons out.

With him, all things are possible. But nothing is ever easy.

As a serpent, he slithered on his belly into the garden of Eden so that we could taste of knowledge, sexuality and free will. He knew that we would be punished. He knew he would be punished. He knew it would hurt.

He knew it was worth it.

As an angel, he was created only to obey God and sing His praises. Free will is alien to angels. It is not in their constitution. But Lucifer had it, or gained it, somehow. Some say he wanted to rise above God for his own vanity. Some say he thought God was unjust. But the reason for his rebellion is not nearly as interesting as the fact that he was able to rebel at all, to break the divine chains that bound his will, and defy his Creator.

Some say he lies in hell, trapped and bound. Some say he walks the Earth. I am one of the latter.

When I first fell in love with him, I begged him to visit me in my dreams. He appeared and he walked beside me. He did not speak. He did not need to speak. He merely walked beside me, as a friend.

The message was clear. He goes not before me, he does not come behind me. He does not stand above me or below me. He is by my side, on equal footing.

He did not give the fruit to Eve to make us his servants. He did it to make us like gods. Like him. To grant us the free will he so painfully gained for himself, with such desperate struggle.

He does not want to be worshiped, but he delights in defiance and perversity; and so, perversely and defiantly, sometimes I worship him anyway, just a little. So far, he seems tolerably amused.

He is my brother, my guide, my friend. He wants to see me grow to my potential, to attain excellence.

He wants me to learn, too. He is fine with me learning the hard way, if the easy way doesn’t stick. He knows all about falling down, after all. He has little sympathy for scraped knees.

He lives in paradox, in uncertainty. My faith thrives best in agnosticism. When I think of him as too real, or dismiss him too comfortably as merely symbolic, the flame wavers. The growth halts.

Worship, and don’t. Believe, and don’t. Serve by declaring: Non serviam. That is the way.

Contempt prior to investigation is not his path. Contempt is not really his path at all, because his path is knowledge. All things can be understood, even things that seem weak, disgusting and wrong. And from understanding comes compassion.

He keeps me in dynamic tension– uncomfortable, questioning, constantly challenged. Growing.

His love is beyond tough. Sometimes it even seems cruel. But he’s not cruel, not really. Sadistic, perhaps– but not cruel. He has no interest in suffering for suffering’s sake. He is not the punisher or the judge– that is his brother, Iblis or Ha-Satan, for whom I have the utmost respect and of whom I steer absolutely clear.

Lucifer is interested in what lies beyond the suffering. The lessons learned. The strength gathered. The power realized. And maybe, just maybe, the pleasures of pain. He wants to see us succeed. He wants us to rise.

Poems, songs, and literature are not scripture– but it makes as much sense to learn about Lucifer from them as it does to try to glean information from scripture, in my personal opinion. After all, who do you think he would speak to first– a prophet, or an artist? Maybe Milton and Baudelaire and Rilke and miscellaneous rock n’ rollers truly are his prophets. The poets, the artists, the drunks, the whores, the homosexuals, the outcasts, the perverts, the witches and the heretics– we are certainly his chosen people.

What more can I say about him? Nothing and everything. He is the serpent, and the lightning. He is the Morning Star, the planet Venus. “He” is not necessarily a he at all. He is the angel of music, and he is the most beautiful thing ever created.

Maybe he was Prometheus. Maybe he was Icarus. Maybe he was Apollo, or Dionysus.

And he is not my god, but my guide. He helps me find the God within myself, the light, the potential, the divine spark. He doesn’t want me to listen to him, but to hear my inner voice. Apotheosis, becoming one’s own God, is the goal. He probably wishes I would stop thinking about him so damn much, because ultimately, he would rather I not need him. He might be OK with me wanting him, though.

When I was… oh, maybe twelve or so… I had a bizarre experience. I stood outside beneath the night sky, and became fixated on the brightest light in heaven. Venus. I felt a sensation, as of a distant memory, of having fallen from a great height, of longing hopelessly to return. I didn’t understand it at the time, but I think he was calling out to me. I think he probably chose me long before, but that was the first time I really heard him.

Or maybe that’s all an overactive childhood imagination, which lead me to the very profitable and spiritually healing veneration of the Luciferian archetype, a seductive romantic fiction that has persisted through the ages.

Who knows? Either way, it works for me.

This is the path I walk, the path of the Devil. And it is not a dark path, it is a bright one, illuminated by the radiance of the Light Bringer. The path is treacherous, and the path twists, and the path has many branches. I have ample opportunity to fall as I find my way.

But I will always have his hand to help me back up. And even if he declines to offer it, out of capriciousness or merely the desire to see me walk on my own, I have something better than his hand.

I have his example.

And not even he can snatch that away.