Lucifer
Lucifer is a translation of the Latin words lucem ferre (from lux "light" and ferre "carry") meaning the "light-bearer". It was the name given to the morning star, i.e., the planet Venus when seen at dawn.
The only time the name "Lucifer" appears in the old testament is in Isaiah xiv:12, where he calls the King of Babylon "Helel" (הֵילֵל, "Shining One"), a Hebrew word that refers to the Day Star or Morning Star (the Latin term for which is lucifer).[1] The verse was interpreted as a reference to Satan in early Christianity. H. P. Blavatsky claimed Pope Gregory I was the responsible for this:
It was Gregory the Great who was the first to apply this passage of Isaiah, 'How art thou fallen from Heaven. Lucifer. son of the morning,' etc., to Satan, and ever since the bold metaphor of the prophet, which referred, after all, but to an Assyrian king inimical to the Israelites, has been applied to the Devil.[2]
H. P. Blavatsky wrote:
Lucifer (Lat.). The planet Venus, as the bright “Morning Star”. Before Milton, Lucifer had never been a name of the Devil. Quite the reverse, since the Christian Saviour is made to say of himself in Revelations (xvi. 22.) “I am . . . the bright morning star” or Lucifer. One of the early Popes of Rome bore that name; and there was even a Christian sect in the fourth century which was called the Luciferians.[3]
So absurd and ridiculous is that prejudice, indeed, that no one has seemed to ever ask himself the question, how came Satan to be called a light-bringer
Notes
Further reading
- Lucifer at Theosopedia