Norwich Independent Spiritual Congregation

Who is Lucifer and What is the Devil really doing?

The Devil card has a lesson for us all. When you look at the card closely you see a man and woman nude, and shackled by a chain attached to a collar around their necks. The Devil, represented as Baphomet, sits on a stony throne lording over the situation.

But look closely at the collar. It is ridiculously loose. The man and woman need only lift the collar off of their heads and behold, they are free. The choice is theirs entirely.

The Luciferian archetype is that of a fallen angel. Someone who comes down from high to walk among the lowly to teach them enlightment. The child who points out that the King is not wearing any clothes is an example of this archetype. Enlightenment is nothing more than a realization that the limitations we are taught to accept are not necessarily real. Enlightenment is the cultivation of true faith. Not faith like the modern Christians teach which would have you think that merely saying “I Believe” is faith. But rather faith is a careful dicipline of the will that can take a lifetime of dilligent work for some to develop while others simply realize it by accident.

Real faith is the power to cause changes, often seemingly miraculous changes, through manifestation of pure will. The bible has a saying, faith without works is dead. There is a secret in that statement. Faith is knowing that you can cause change, but it is also mindful of the accepted order of the Universe. If you want to move a mountain through faith then it is entirely possible that you could develop faith strong enough to do so simply by a look. But, are there more efficient ways to get the mountain moved? Why are you trying to move the mountain in the first place? Is it to get to the other side, or simply to show off? Is it possible that your true desire (or will) could be achieved more economically? How much do you really need to have that mountain moved? What are the consequences to others if you move it? Will you place the mountain in some farmer’s field thus destroying his livelihood?

Every action that we take is governed by a set of consequences. Lucifer is here to teach us that we have all of the power in the universe at our disposal to use for our own benefit or the benefit of all. The Devil stands in opposition telling us we aren’t good enough to drive fast and take chances, and that we are better off accepting the false illusion of the limits we accept.

Are we ready to take responsibility for wielding that power? Perhaps it is better, until we are sufficiently wise, to accept the yoke of this world until we can learn to wield that power in a manner that will not bring about consequences contrary to our ultimate desires.

But herin lies the rub. You will never grow wise unless you have the courage to make mistakes. The dog is kept safely on the leash and never knows the thrill of the wild hunt. The stag roams free through the wood, but is sometimes struck down by the wolf, or these days, a passing motorist.

If you want to taste freedom you must learn to accept the consequences of your actions. As Tupac Shakur was once quoted as saying

“You can spend minutes, hours, days, weeks or even months over-analying a situation; trying to put the pieces together, justifying what could’ve, would’ve happened … or you can just leave the pieces on the floor and just move the fuck on.”

Or as many children are taught in kindergarden:

Humpty dumpty sat on a wall, humpty dumpty had a great fall. All the kings horses and all the kings men, couldn’t put humpty together again.

“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs”

This is the Luciferian paradox. You cannot obtain wisdom without first knowing foolishness. Like the hanged man who smiles on the tree, accept your fate for what it is. Most important, revel in your mistakes and your scars for they are your greatest teachers. Never fear death, there are things much worse than death, such as a life received but never lived.

When the wolf gets caught robbing the hen house and the farmer places an ounce of lead in his hide, the wolf does not lay there bleating for help, he runs away as best he can and licks his wounds till he either heals or dies. Next time he tries to be more careful.

As Janis Joplin used to sing:

“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to loose”

Freedom requires giving up our attachments, driving fast and taking chances. But only if you really know what you are doing. Wisdom, is learning to know when to push the pedal to the floor and when to set your cruise control for 15 MPH.

Baphomet, is a Hebrew epigram of Sophia, which represents wisdom. The Lucifer brings us the fire, but it is entirely up to us to decide whether we use the fire to cook our dinner, or to burn down the house.

Just remember, your limits are superficial, and you can lift off the yoke any time you choose. But be forewarned, with freedom comes responsibility. Freedom is not for cattle and lambs, it was always meant for wolves and rams.

I have recently made a new friend in Colorado. He has a fantastic site worth reading http://www.roage.com.

I have copied one of his stories and placed it here for your perusal, but all credit goes to him and those whom he would credit.

The Man In His Cage by Roage

What evil trick has man fallen for that lead to this life we lead? We were once awake, free and conscious of that which men call God.

One day a man, being bored, in his idle time wondered that if there was a “good” force, meaning God, then there could be “bad” force. He became frightened of these thoughts. So rattled by this fiction was he that the man asked God to build a protective barrier to keep this “bad” force at bay and to protect him from this bad mental creation. As is often the case “could” becomes “should” and the man’s confusion drove him to action. God did not want to impinge on the free thought of his creation and thought it best to warn the man rather then allow the man to learn the lesson of his mistake. God told man, “You have confused yourself. You should not dabble in this fiction as it is folly and there will be consequences.” “What consequences?” the man replied. “You could lose yourself, forget all about me and even convince yourself that you can die” God explained. The man laughed, “Never!” The man became insistent that God build him a barrier to this “bad” force.

So God constructed this protective barrier for the man as the man requested and made the walls stronger then the man could breach. The man was pleased and walked inside and tested the walls. The man said, “I feel secure in here but the walls are confining and it is dark in here. Can you make the walls invisible and such that I cannot perceive that they are there? “Shall I do so?” God asked. “Yes, and can I leave at any time?” the man asked, “Yes” answered God. The man thought about it. He asked, “Can you make it so the barrier moves with me so that I cannot accidentally leave it even if I tried?” “Yes”, answered God. “Can you make the barrier larger then the earth so I can go where I please.” “I will not do that”, answered God, “There are other men and women on the earth that are not afflicted with your confused fear and I will not subject them against their will to your confusion.” The man thought about it for a while and asked, “If I can convince them all that they are better of within the barrier then without and they choose to enter then you will expand the barrier to accommodate them?” asked the man. “Yes”, answered God. “Under these conditions”, God added, “You cannot use force to bring people inside the barrier. They must enter willingly and know what they are giving up. Also”, God continued, “When a man or woman convinces themselves that they died then they will be removed from the barrier and rendered unable to return.” The man agreed.

The man set about his task of recruiting companions. Most shook their heads and said, “You are confused. There is no “bad” force.” The man was undeterred, “You cannot know this bad force as it looks just like God and speaks with his voice.” Soon, as word of his protective barrier spread, more people willingly entered the enclosure fearing this unseen “bad” force.

The man choose a wife from the multitude that now inhabited the ever expanding barrier and she bore him a child. “I wish my child to be protected within the barrier.” The man declared. “No!” God said, “The child is free to come and go until he is at an age where he can choose for himself.” The man was not pleased and since the child could not see the barrier the man choose to withhold that knowledge from his child. When the time came when the child grew to the age of consent the man told him that he was better off within barrier then without and used fear to influence his child’s will.

It was not long before all men and women had chosen to enter the barrier. As God predicted those that had died were removed from the barrier and never returned. God said, “This is madness! When will you cease this nonsense?” The people within the barrier became afraid and said, “You are the ‘bad’ force. Be gone from our sight and never trouble us again!” God reluctantly complied.

Many generations had come and gone. The people did not pass on the knowledge of the barrier to their children had all forgotten of the barrier’s existence. Without the counsel of God, men and women engaged in ever more self-destructive behaviors. They were now firmly convinced that death was the end and God was a powerless force as only “bad” things were happening. Many did not even believe in God and tried to make friends with this fictional “bad” force by employing more and more complicated fictional procedures and rules.

God, complying with the wishes of their parents, was left outside of the barrier unwilling to break his word, by the people’s request, kept from taking action. The people within began suffering in ignorance and pleaded to God for help. God sent messengers into the enclosure to try to teach them where they went wrong. God continued to honor his word. A few people listened and heeded God’s direction and although they remained in the cage their lives became better for doing so. However, most had become confused and a few people even sought to dominate the rest. They used the fear of the “bad” force to scare people into submission. Things became worse.

God decided that he would enter the enclosure in the form of a man and teach those inside of the barrier and what it is like to live free on the outside and the proper ways to live. He said death is not the end and you can live free and not be confined in the barrier. The people would have none of it. Those that dominated the rest attacked God in his disguise and attacked those people that choose to listen to his words. They tortured and destroyed the disguise and it became lifeless. God left the barrier to observe if the lesson had been learned. Some had retained the knowledge of the barrier and how to escape. Those that dominated sought out those who were free and convinced them that they would be provided everything if they would not reveal the secret on how to become free. Those who were free conceded and lived like kings. Those that dominated then located all writings and references to the secret and killed all people that were still trying to learn the secret. The people were threatened with torture and death if they sought to escape and be free of the barrier. They lied and said if you do not obey us then the “bad” force will make you die forever.

Even with that, the secret was spreading. It became necessary to create a structure to manage the people who were looking for God. Those that dominated had destroyed all references to the secret of freedom but allowed some of the proper ways to live to remain. They then made a hero of the disguised man. They codified the proper ways to live among other things in a book and threatened the people that they should look no farther then the book for answers.

The children of those that escaped by listening to the words of the disguised man, after a few generations, themselves forgot the secret to escape and the secret remained only with those that dominated. The people were not only firmly under the domination of the few but captive within the barrier. As time went on a few of the enslaved people, through following the proper ways to live, began stumbling upon the secret. They created a nation and began living outside the power of those that dominated. That again would not do, so those that dominated decided that they had to corrupt the people and confuse them that God was a fiction. They invented new fictions to confuse the people and made those that sought to obey the proper ways a laughingstock so that the people would abandon their search and once engage is self-destructive behaviors.

Then one day, an odd man thought, “what if what is happening in my life is a lie? What if the man in the disguise was right? What if I do live forever? If there was a God then what do I need to do to find him and ask him to make me free?” So he set about his life to find this God that people referred to but could not see. God saw this initiative and began giving this odd man clues. The clues were subtle and only for the odd man to see. Men standing right next to the odd man attributed these strange occurrences to chance or luck. The special occurrences and events stuck out in the odd man’s mind because he had thoughts come to him coincidently about what was about to happen had already prepared him for what he was to see. The odd man noted that he could not relay these thoughts to others as they would not listen or believe. It raised even more questions in the odd man’s mind like, “What if these curious coincidences, that are happening more frequently, are not coincidences at all? Where were these thoughts coming from? How is it that I became perfectly positioned to see these wondrous events and had this foreknowledge?”

As time went on the odd man noticed that he was being led and sometimes had no choice but to see the clues that God was sending him, in his mind, in his life and that he was amassing interesting knowledge and views that no one around him shared. The odd man then concluded that these wondrous things could only be the work of this unseen God. He began to address the open air to prompt this unseen God to communicate in a voice that he could hear. God did not answer but more thoughts came to his mind. They were specific rules by which he would be allowed to perceive God without seeing God or hearing God. The odd man then studied the rules so that he knew them by heart. The rules provided all that he must do and they were surprisingly simple.

God watched from outside of the barrier and decided that those, like this odd man, who could not be logically held to the original agreement, truly wished to be free and acknowledged that God would free them would be given the secret and could count on God’s assistance. To protect these free people, like the odd man, God would allow them to live unnoticed by the confused people and even unnoticed by those that dominate. These free people remain undetectable and appear as any other man or woman but they are free of the barrier. God communicates with them in ways the confused, or those that dominate, are not able to perceive. The secret is only available to those who really want to be free and are willing to allow God to protect them.

Years went by as the odd man mulled over the rules and procedure in his mind. He noticed that things in his life were changing. He found he was not free to do certain things and he was being led somewhere. He could not yet discern the reason but he had attributed it to God. Towards the end he found that had little freedom to do anything he wanted. In a fit of frustration the odd man decide that he would try to comply with the rules and the procedure.

Suddenly, the odd man was startled when he was able to perceive God. He was able to communicate with God freely. It was not that he could see God or hear God but he could know in his mind with absolute certainty that God was there and what God was telling and teaching him. The odd man then understood why man had chosen that God remain silent and that God was simply complying with man’s will.

The odd man was allowed to share his secret only with those others that God deemed ready to be free and only those people. Those that were not ready would not understand, not believe or simply be distracted from the secret knowledge the odd man relayed.

The odd man also realized that God decided that the original experiment had run its course. He could not allow the confusion to continue. God decided that most people had become so confused that they had no chance of ever returning on their own. God would decide to allow the rest of the people to “die” their painful “death” and at last break free of the barrier. It pained God but most people willfully decided to remain confused and engage in self-destructive behaviors. God simply complied with their wish. To allow them to suffer in the cage no longer served a valuable purpose as the lesson was learned but the way back for these people was obscured and out of their reach as they chose to be so confused.

Now if you are such a man or woman that wishes to be free. The only thing that keeps you enslaved is fear of this thing called “death” or the intimidation of those that dominate. One can easily live free on this earth, free from the confused and free from those few people that dominate. The barrier is a fiction that we have ourselves constructed along with the fictional reason for the barrier in the first place. When we really want out and we can face our unfounded fear, we can live free of this fictional barrier or this fictional “bad” force. We are then free on this earth and live side by side with the confused. They will not know. How can they? God does not permit them to know. That is the protection that God offers. They cannot see or think that we can be free while they remain enslaved. Those that “die” are also free but they are not allowed return to the cage. Why would anyone want to anyway? It is, after all, a stupid idea.

If you are interested in knowing how things are instead of what we are told and want to know how to escape then Click Here.

You must remember that if you truly do not wish to be free and you do not want to meet God then the words will not have meaning, they will be confusing or you will not be able to allow yourself to believe.

By Fionndamnh 

My roots and ordination are tied to the Universal Life Church.  So to begin this essay it seems only proper to look first to the definition that the ULC gives to “god” or the “almighty”. 

Typically the term has come to be accepted as being a reference to a supreme being, or creator.  In other words a divine intelligence from whence all things spring.  In the Judeo-Christian realm, this intelligence has largely masculine qualities hence the term “god the father”, other qualities that have been attributed to “God” by the predominate religious institutions in this Country are:

1. God is omnipotent - all knowing all seeing
2. God is love
3. God is the creator of all that exists
4. God is jealous and will not tolerate anything having a higher place in the hearts and minds of men than himself.

In Islam, there is the belief that “Allah” (e.g. god) is everywhere and has no form or gender.  The Islamic belief in god is more akin to a belief in a super-intelligent field that permeates the universe and is the root cause of all things that happen. 

In the aforementioned religions there is a shared belief that if you do not submit to the will of “god” and declare your belief in him to be first and foremost in your life, that ultimately you will be punished by exquisite tortures in an afterlife that follows.  The interesting thing to note here is that while these belief systems declare on the one hand that you have been made by perfect “hands” to fulfill a specific purpose preordained by your creator, you have been given a nature by those hands that leads you to behave in a way that is displeasing to the creator and will ultimately cause you to be punished eternally unless you subscribe to a belief system that teaches you to deny your nature, and adhere to a set of practices that for most of us feels quite unnatural. 

It is only by behaving in a manner that is out of sorts with the way your perfect creator has made you that you might find salvation from “his” wrath.

Many who follow the path of Wicca (an increasingly popular spiritual belief system in this country) see “god” as a duality consisting primarily of a male aspect (e.g. the Lord) and a female aspect (e.g. the Lady).  This has the interesting benefit of allowing both sexes to have the same kinds of polar relationships with “god” that were only available to nuns of the catholic church.  

It is a very difficult thing for a purely heterosexual male to think of himself as the “bride of Christ” in the same way that a purely heterosexual female is able to.  However it is no great stretch for a heterosexual male to think of himself as a corporeal “consort” to “the Goddess”.  This brings back a sexual dynamic between man and divinity that had previously only been available to women, and homosexual men.

So the Wiccan way gives each sex a two parent family essentially whereas the Christian faith relegates the role of the female in the divine family to a purely reproductive capacity (a.k.a Mary) or a reformed Whore (a.k.a. Mary Magdalene).

The Buddhists see “god” as the re-integrated synthesis of all enlightened souls who have achieved a state of ultimate bliss and been re-integrated into the universe.  As such, they are closer to the belief that we are all a part of the mind of god.

The followers of the Church of Satan (ala Anton LaVey) see “god” as an unconscious force or field which acts upon all things in a pair of forces “sa” and “tan” loosely related to the oriental concept of “yin” and “yang”, or the Hindu paired forces of “creator” and “destroyer”.

Thus Satanists see “god” as a motivating and balancing dark force in nature.  Satan is also described as being the “Black Flame”, representing a person’s own inner personality and desires. Satan is seen as synonymous with the nature and even, metaphorically, with certain conceptions of a supreme deity or God.

Satan is said to appear in mythology and literature around the world as a trickster, rebel, and hero. Figures such as the Greek Prometheus are said to perfectly exemplify the qualities of Satan, the prideful rebel. Other deities, such as Ahriman, Apep, and Loki, are seen as examples of different manifestations of the same archetype.Satan is seen as the powerful individual who acts regardless of what others might say.

The word satan is Hebrew for “adversary”, and Satanists claim to be adversaries of mainstream behavior which they define as “herd conformity”, seeing it as stifling to individuality, creativity, and progress.

Satanists do not believe that Satan is a god; rather, the function of God is performed and satisfied by the Satanist him/herself. That is, the needs of worship, ritual, and religious/spiritual focus are directed, effectively, inwards towards the Satanist, as opposed to outwards towards a God.

LaVey proposes instead that as all gods are creations of humans, worship of an external deity is worship of its creator by proxy. He suggests, then, that the rational Satanists should instead internalize their gods and therefore worship themselves; hence the Satanic maxim, “I am my own god.”

The Thelemic tradition most widely popularized by Aleister Crowley takes a slightly different bent on the subject of who or what is “God”.  To best illustrate this viewpoint, consider for a moment that all things that are part of what we commonly perceive as “existence” or the “universe” are composed of infinetesimally small elemental objects called monads (for those of a classical training in the sciences atoms will do for the purpose of visualization so long as you keep in mind that even a subatomic particle is actually comprised of possibly millions of monads).

These monads, are unchangeable in their most elemental form, they have the properties of locality, and dimension, as well as motion.  Furthermore, they have the properties of thought, and memory and bliss.  Consider that these monads are each and every one a god in their own right, in that they are unchanging and have been here all the time.  Consider further that they participate in combinations of increasing complexity from subatomic particle, to molecule, to man, to archilect (the synthesis of many intellects interacting in superorganizations such as Gaia).  The purpose of this is to explore the ramifications of these combinations to essentially find the most blissful pairings (kind of like finding your soul mate(s) but at a microatomic level).  It is interesting to note that should all the monads in the universe achieve such a bliss, that this might be akin to the notion of Heaven on Earth, or Kingdom Come, or even the Hindu postulate of ultimate Nirvanna.

Such a viewpoint certainly explains why a universe could be created in which there is disease, death and war.  The monads are not terribly interested in preserving any particular configuration (e.g. people, nations, worlds) but in experiencing new combinations.  War, death, disease, old age, extinction, planetary destruction… these sort of cataclysmic events do tend to reorient large sets of monads into entirely new and possibly more interesting configurations.  This is not unlike the notion of evolution.

I am reminded of an interesting quotation at the end of the book “Stranger in a Strange Land” in which the main character looks into the eyes of a grasshopper as he is being beaten to death by a crowd of people who simply don’t like the religeon he is teaching and says to the little grasshopper “thou art god”.

So what is God?  Nearly everyone who believes in a supreme being sees that being as the driving force behind the course of their life, some see god as benevolent to them because they subscribe to a particular set of beliefs and practices and malevolent to anyone else who doesn’t fit in, some see god as benevolent to all and tries to do what is best for each and every individual insofar as it is possible given that we often have competing interests, some see god as an indifferent architect who has no particular interest in any one individual but simply has a divine plan which “he” seeks to unfold.  One thing that all “believers” in god have in common is that they see  god as the “one (group?)  in charge”. 

There is greater distinction as to where exactly the throne of god sits (e.g. Inside each of us, or outside somewhere). Some see god as a being that is separate from us and watching “over” us.  Others see god as a manifestation of the best in each of us (e.g. god comes from within).

Maybe one reason why so many religions fail to ascribe a particular name to god is due to the intangiable “unknowable” nature of god.  It is sort of up to you to decide who or what god is now isn’t it?