Luciferian Order
I stand naked in front of a red fire, in the thick of the midnight-blue forest. The first large, clumsy drops of what will eventually blossom into a violent downpour fall around me. They strike the leaves nearby, and my skin with gentle pats, and the glowing logs with zesty sizzles. I slowly become conscious of less and less that surrounds me. The raindrops have reduced to forest noise, like the wind in the treetops above.
The tent that lies somewhere in the dark behind me, beyond the fire’s glowing reach, offers a sense of cover – perceived safety from the rain and the unseen fauna. It serves as a bastion of order, erected within this fungal, primal kingdom of worms, teeth and gnash. It is a manufactured, neon-green beacon of sanity, in an otherwise insane, chaotic landscape.
I slowly meander around the steel fire-containment vessel, chasing the billows of warmly scented smoke as they waft from one direction to another. I try to soak them into every pore of my skin – my face, my feet, my hands and arms, and those parts of me which piety has decided to be unholy. As I bathe myself in the warmth, I find, throughout my sporadic returns to conscious agnosis, that I cannot actually see the tent, or where it lies in the shadows of the tall trees. However, I can see my discarded clothing, set on the stone that lies halfway between the fire and my shelter – the shelter inside of which I had been sleeping only moments ago, before the dancing tongues of the spontaneously rekindled fire (and the need to pee) had drawn me out from my synthetic sarcophagus, and hypnotically – devilishly – towards the flame.
I am reduced, staring into this fire. Whereas only minutes ago, I had been pontificating in formal sentences, such as, “Is it really worth going out there? It’s starting to rain – perhaps I can wait ’til morning?”, now I am brought to carnal, autonomic response. My clothing did not feel appropriate in this moment, standing next to this fire, and so I removed it. My bare arms and feet become too warm, so I move them. As the smoke laps around my legs, my chest, and my face, I instinctively try to work it deeper into my skin with my hands, and chase it as it flits away from me again. It is a primordial dance that I perform.
There is God to be found within the elements depicted in this scene. There is also Lucifer. And my sense is that we could all be forgiven for attributing the wrong elements to the wrong elemental being.
My mind wanders to a beautiful, heavenly chapel. Many chapels, in fact. I’ve seen the Duomo in Florence, and the ceilings of the Sistine. I’ve stared up in awe at the Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík. I’ve been inside the cathedrals of Chicago, Salt Lake and Pittsburgh, and I grew up singing and praying in churches (both historic and new) all around the eastern seaboard.
In my mind, I conjure up a fluid amalgamation of these Christian temples, with brilliant chandeliers that illuminate wondrous, painted ceilings, and ornately carved cross-timbers and rafters of colossal spans. Shimmering sets of immense pipes reverberate out sounds which shake the unsettlingly lofty balcony on which I stand, while smaller pipes produce sharpened daggers which pierce through my skin and rupture my soul. And I gaze into the unflinching eyes of Christ, painted into a wondrous mural that spans the width and breadth of the masterfully plastered ceiling, which itself is held up away from the earth by stone, monolithic columns, carved to the likenesses of the apostles and the saints. Outside, this structure pierces the skyline of the town, which has seemingly huddled around it as a means to seek shelter from the open and exposed skies above, and to provide safe-keeping from the invisible, yet no less penetrating, eyes of the Almighty. The perfect, pointed spires, which extend up to confront His gaze, serve as an act of defiance against the putrid bogs and sordid wood which once ruled in this place.
No greater tribute to Lucifer has ever been built, than those churches in which I have stood. There is no room for God in a place so wholly preoccupied with the exaltation of the Prince of Light and Order.
But human power structures shift and translate over time. Whereas once we built our offerings to the King in the shape of religious structures, now we focus our efforts towards fabricating new monuments to His Eminence, of similar awe-inspiring splendor. White-domed marble halls with gold filigree, dedicated as sanctums to Science, Governance, and the Arts; yet, somehow still reflective of the charm and majesty of those religious temples of the past.
I stand here, at this moment, torn between two gods. For most of my life, I have worshiped and followed Lucifer – “Light Bringer”, and bearer of the forbidden fruit (the knowledge of all things that lie between good and evil). The Morning Star. And yet today, though my feet were trained on cobblestone and concrete, they have begun to crave bare silt and moss, without the interceding layers of vulcanized rubber and 420D polyester, which they were once molded by. I have seen brief glimpses of life as it was intended in the garden, carnal and pure – and the more that I experience, the stronger the call becomes. I sense the balance of my life’s path slowly tipping back towards a Godly existence – though never in totality. While I suspect that it could be possible to live in full immersion of all things Godly, I do not want to. I am afraid to. I don’t want to live without my Luciferian comfort. So here I sit – a naked, primordial being, bare ass on a polypropylene office chair, bare feet on a warm, nylon carpet – an animal mind with a 0.5 mm rolling ball pen in my hand.
“When they ate from this tree, their nakedness appeared to them, and they began to sew together leaves from the Garden for their covering.”
I would imagine that I have some explaining to do, as it’s likely that I’ve ruffled a few scales. Fine, oh Shining One. I’ll begin.
Chernobyl. What a fascinating story. Truly, I think that the gravity of the events by which that name has come to represent – no longer signifying a now-decommissioned Ukrainian nuclear power plant, but instead a pivotal marker on the timeline of human progression – often goes understated. Life on the Eurasian landmass nearly halted in April of 1986. I would highly recommend you watch the HBO series on the subject. It’s illuminating.
What you come to understand is that the fate of a quarter of the planet (which, mind you, does not function as a vacuum within our flowing, interconnected world) was possibly, for a brief moment, in the hands of three men. These men were tasked to venture into the irradiated underbelly of the destroyed and flooded building, to turn a series of knobs that would essentially diffuse a 3 to 5 megaton dirty bomb.
The true, theoretical threat posed by Chernobyl to the rest of the world is, of course, widely contested. It’s difficult to know for certain what might have occurred, given a change in circumstance. But regardless of its world-ending potential, the tale of Chernobyl feels Tolkienesque to me – it is the Battle for Helm’s Deep, or Minas Tirith, and the ultimate showdown between light and dark, Lucifer and God. Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant – from the moment that the first shovels broke Soviet soil in 1972, up until today as it sits caged within its restraining sarcophagus – has been the site of a great battle in a very old war. And that battle, for the moment, has stood as a stalemate, neither side having truly won or lost. And so, mankind has been permitted to continue on his trajectory, able to momentarily forget that that battle ever occurred.
I could simply come out and say what it is that I intend to say with all of this. But I would rather be elusive and use illustrations, as it feels more honoring of the one whom has made this post, and every word contained within it, possible. Besides, it’s more fun to bend light and sound than it is to simply display truths in the bare. So bear with me: as I would like to now present two disparate visuals, in order to better define these two warring factions of which I speak – and to explain how they might possibly connect to churches and Chernobyl.
Illustration 1: I would like for you to imagine a man, standing at a large window, staring out at a beach ball-sized Earth, which slowly rotates miles below him. The gentle, warming hum of the climate control and atmospheric systems whirl away unnoticed by the man, as he drinks his warm drink and leisurely scans his eyes over the features of the earth. Within the expanding sliver of dark along its edge, he sees specks of light – cities and townships, not yet keen to go to sleep. If he squints, the man can see the faint, square bumps and ridges of man-made structures, criss-crossing the entirety of the blue-green sphere. The man smiles as he looks around at all that he has created, and sees that it is good.
Though it lies hidden and entombed by seemingly-impenetrable barriers within the bowels of his satellite, somewhere beneath the man’s feet exists a singular, unstable atom. This atom has been restrained and harnessed, and is slowly being dismantled by the man’s technology so that its elemental energy might be subdued, harvested, and utilized to power the station in which the man comfortably stands. And likewise, similar atomic systems are being used to power each and every life support system on the green, white and blue (and increasingly gray) sphere that stands picturesquely outside of the window. From the now-habitable oceanic cities to the titanium towers which ornament the Himalayas, to the far reaches of space, humanity is now unlimited and fully empowered to continue its expansion, without any thoughts of compromise.
Illustration 2: Another man sits in a cave, or perhaps a stone hut with thick, slabby walls, surrounded by his kin. He smiles, and his eyes shimmer, as he looks into the fire before him. It’s cold – he’s wearing clothing (begrudgingly), fashioned from the warm materials that he, himself, could gather – though only in the service of his own survival, as determined by this cold environment. But even still, he feels the chill. So he drags another log onto the fire. He listens to its crackle, and the conversations and arguments going on around him, and again he smiles. Then he longingly glances outside from where he sits, hoping that the harsh weather has subsided enough for him to go venturing out to do the things which he hopes to do. But it has not subsided, and so he sits, returning his eyes and ears to the present fire and those around him, who idly banter, play and craft with one another. He takes delight in the feeling of soft clay as it compresses beneath his feet, for soft clay is not frozen clay. He looks out at all that he has been given, and he sees that it is good.
These two individuals each point towards one side of the scale upon which humanity blissfully dances – this war of which I speak. On one arm of the scale resides submission and humbled gratitude, and on the other, order and control, attempted mastery over the chaos, and creative power (like that of a god).
It is of no significance whether you perceive Lucifer to be a fanciful creation myth or a genuine historical figure. His importance to the development of our species stands uncontested either way. For as long as we have been “mankind,” we have had this Lucifer-like figure to point towards, in answer to the great question of our species. Lucifer is the one whom breathed that final spark into us, and thus transformed us from the naked ape (as we were created to be) into Man.
Whereas once we passively roamed the garden in the same way as the animals do, today we find ourselves possessing the unusual ability and desire to design and shape our own gardens. And with this capacity has come the need to explain to ourselves why it is that we might be separated from the animals which we were molded along side. Many historic cultures and traditions (if not all) have had a Luciferian figure – the carriers of light and wisdom knowledge, and the ones who propelled us from humble animals into seekers of this light.
In the Christian tradition, Lucifer dangled the apple – the fruit of knowledge – and forever altered the path of mankind. Once man had been afforded the ability to ration and to resolve complex problems with complex, godlike systems (agriculture, husbandry, selective breeding, engineering, civility, crafting, law and order) he was finally free to choose between humbly submitting to the will of the chaotic forces (like the naked ones of the past) or defiantly striving to scrub such influences from his daily toil. Rather than huddling in a cave, man could now construct a better cave than God might have built, and could clumsily wield fire and atoms in a way that would artificially alter the climate of his cave. He could create fabrics and machines and chemicals which would further insulate him from the destructive, killing chaos of this universe. Medicines, engines, weapons – all serving to craft a climate-controlled spaceship inside of which mankind could crawl, shielding himself from the fiercesome, unpredictable destruction and creation of God.
Lucifer has, of course, had many aliases around the globe throughout the ages. Maui, Quetzalcoatl, the Raven and, most obvious of all: Prometheus, the bringer of fire. And yes, even modern Scientism is in the process of developing its own Luciferian legend, to explain to its adherents the process by which Man rapidly developed the intellect needed to step forward from the rest of the animal kingdom. As you might suspect, Lucifer does not play a personified role within the handful of tepid theories that Science has thus far brought to the table, as he often did in the old myths. But make no mistake; his essence is most assuredly written into the subtext, as a system rather than a man.
God is the approaching asteroid, the tempest and the wildfire. It is the chaos, from which all of creation draws breath, and also the chaos by whose hand all of creation will die. God has formed everything that exists between the heavens and the earth and the sea. But God is not the salamander itself, nor the naked ape, the water droplet, the moon or the tree – God is the series of systems which have come together into the perfect storm to allow these formations to come into being. And God is the series of systems that will generate the forces that will inevitably destroy those same formations. Gravity, evolution, entropy, combustion, thermodynamics, decay (nuclear and otherwise), and life itself (along with the accompanying litany of systems which were required to bring about life in the first place). God is the source of the rage within this universe, under which whose thumb man has always found himself pressed. However, God is also the peace and the bliss – bringer of the periods of warmth and plenty – which has ever provided man with the subsistence and soulful purpose by which to continue on. God is the reason we feel love: yet another system, which affords us the inspiration to survive. God is creator and destroyer. Without God, there is no chaos or death. Without God, there is no value to the word “Life.”
I hear autumn crickets chirping as I sit here writing, and it reminds me of a scene in the film Interstellar, in which Matthew McConaughey, captain of the space craft Endurance, reveals that he is listening to a recording of the unrhythmic songs of crickets and thunderstorms. He does so in order to sooth his soul, as he and his crew float onward through space within the millimeter-thick aluminum walls of their spacecraft. It is the purposeful re-introduction of chaos, back into an environment which was fabricated, controlled and ordered with the intent to exclude it. The Luciferian path is one of order, security and progress. It is the path which results in the (perceived) exclusion of God, and the selective allowance of only those attributes which we deem agreeable. 68ºF air temperature, 50% relative humidity, 40 lumens of light per square foot in a work space, 3000K color temperature lighting in a sleeping space, and only nonporous surfaces for food preparation.
But I see two major issues with this Luciferian path, which all of humanity – with its many bankers, lawmakers, engineers, party leaders, bosses and clergy – seems to be fixated upon (including religion, with its towering, imposing, defensive monuments). Firstly, it is illusory, and it always will be. Mark my words, there will be many more Chernobyls scattered along the timeline of humanity. Once we are done with nuclear and progress to the next stage of our technological evolution, we will again find ourselves pitted in vicious battle with the chaos that opposes our will to control forces which we were never intended to control. That one nuclear facility – arguably representing the pinnacle of mankind’s achievements in its time and place – nearly ushered in humanity’s end, by way of the most insignificant of design flaws.
But to bring things closer to home, even this warm, beautiful brick house, inside of which I grew up and now comfortably sit, could be brought to rubble in 30 seconds or less by at least 7 different earthly forces of which I can quickly conceive (explosion, earthquake, sink-hole, tornado, asteroid, lightning, thermonuclear detonation), and countless others of which I cannot possibly conceive of (yet which, I promise you, God can).
But then there is the second issue: man cannot survive when fully severed from the chaos which formed us. We take delight in violent storms, and dance alongside the searing fire’s edge, intentionally situating ourselves on the line between warmth and destruction. Our digestive systems thrive when subjected to periods of famine, our muscles strengthen when exposed to strain, and our minds sharpen with adversity and dull with peace. We are creatures born and nursed and guided by the chaos, yet oddly determined to tame and quash that very same chaos. And this is not society’s doing, or our government’s. It is my own doing, as I wake up in some shitty, $250 tent with futuristic angles in the middle of a severe rainstorm, wishing that I had a warm, safe bed and clothes. Rather, I should be embracing the chaos of this storm and cherishing the gifts with which I am still bestowed: food, water and purpose with which to continue on. I should smile at the mushy, wet mud beneath my feet – for wet mud is not frozen mud.
There is God within this scene. God is in this fire, into which I hypnotically stare, and within the raindrops which promise to soon put it out. God is in the hands and the body which dance in the smoke, and in the mind which takes delight in the freedom and the warmth. But there is also Lucifer. Lucifer manipulated the wood and the steel and these hands in order to craft this fire, and the neon green tent – though it was God that carnally drew me out of the tent. It is God who might, at any moment, utilize a falling tree or embers (or the unleashed power of atoms) to dispel my mistaken sense of order and security – the clothes, the tent, the car and house. God is in the fall of the walls of Jericho; it was Lucifer who had me convinced that they should never topple.
I will always love Lucifer. I will always cherish his influence in my life – I have come to understand that I will never possess the strength to live without the order and perceived understanding which he permits. Perceptive readers will have noticed that even my description of the Godly cave-dweller, living in his hovel, still allowed for traces of Luciferian technology: controlled fire, language, clothing, shelter, crafting. Lucifer, Bringer of Knowledge, will always play a role in my life. Yet as I grow, I yearn for more moments with God. I seek to embrace the carnal chaos of my world and my being more, and aim to control them less – for my own delusion of control and security has already begun to topple – my defensive walls and spires have begun to fall.
But no, I will never live fully exposed to the chaos of God, for it is too frightful for me. I will never wander the wilderness naked, eating only that which I find, and taking bliss in all of the unfeeling, carnal creation that surrounds me (though I do increasingly feel drawn to try to relinquish at least some of my perceived power back to the chaos). I will never be rid of the fearful understandings, passed down to me from the apple. But I do find myself being given more and more Godly moments – staring deeply into this red fire, forgetting myself and my ambitions, my fears and my civility; moments in which I nakedly embrace the uncertain, stormy chaos of my future. And the more that I do, the more that I am called to remember: This is the womb in which you were made.
