I first heard the Luciferian call something like ten years ago, now. It came, perhaps oddly, the same year that I began conjuring archangels as a part of the Ceremonial Experiment. I was still, in a very real sense, new to working with gods of any kind, and god-like powers at that scale. And I was still the product of my youth in the tail end of the Satanic Panic: I had spend the first five, maybe ten, of my practice trying to convince onlookers that we were not Satanists, that most witches don’t even believe in the Devil. So, though the metaphorical phone kept ringing, I refused to answer.
The call kept coming. Little signs. Songs. Visions. And I kept putting it off. Putting him off.
I don’t remember exactly when I changed my mind and decided to answer the call. I think it was a craft night with the coven. I was making a mask and it … went in a direction. And I figured that was as good a place to start as any. And I recommitted to the work in Beltane of 2019, when I made a star talisman in Luciferian colors during another Lunar Shenanigans craft extravaganza. I put those tokens on a shelf in the spare room where I kept my personal altar, but it didn’t really go any further than that.
The work really only started in the fall of 2020, when the daily offerings to my familiar spirits escalated into daily offerings for the gods who shared the space of my altar room. From there it was slow escalations.
The visions began early this year, when I quit my day job to pursue art and magic full time. I was going around the altars, each day asking one of the gods in that room to initiate me into their mysteries. And I had put Lucifer off for so long that, at first, he refused. Since then, though, he has begun revealing aspects of himself to me.
Whether or not you believe that the being I am calling Lucifer is the Devil at odds with That One God depends a lot on how you see him.
To me he is a Promethean figure: a bringer of light and magic, a teacher of art and mysteries. He is the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis. He is Melek Taus of the Anderson Feri tradition.
He is a Gnostic power: bringing light and wisdom to mortals, kindling and sheltering their fire against the dark of the universe and the malice of the demiurge and the archons.
He has presented himself to me as the Dweller on the Threshold: the terrifying image meant to keep the weak from the mysteries. To pass him, one needs only sufficient courage.
He has presented himself to me as the Light in the Darknesss: the light-bringer, literally.
And he has presented himself to me as transmasculine, or perhaps as an androgyne opposite and equal to the full-breasted and tumescent androgyny of Baphomet.
In this image, I have done my best to evoke all of these, and to recreate the visions of Lucifer that I have seen in my morning meditations. This is a first attempt. It will not be my last.