Lucifer

Sitting in the Heavens among the clouds, on the liminal threshold between night and day, lies the Son of Dawn, under the very stars he shepherds, the constellations he puts together. He who is called Lucifer and Vesper, the Morning and Evening Star, who heralds the coming of day and night, beautiful Venus in her male guise, the first cosmic Light itself, son, twin and consort of Diana, the first cosmic darkness, out of which everything emerges and unto which everything will return. With one hand pointing up and the other down, he reminds us of the constant ebbs and flows and cycles of life and of the Sun and also that as it is above, so it is below, as is the Universe, so is the Soul. Misunderstood, vilified, vied, chased, loved, desired. Love, lust, fertility, life, beauty, magic, knowledge and light belong to him, the torch that lights up the Cosmos.

In Roman mythology, Luciferus or Phosphorus for the Greek (meaning "Light-Bringer"), the Morning Star, is the son of Aurora (Dawn) and the male personification of the planet Venus as heralding the approach of dawn and the coming of the Sun. As the Evening Star the Greeks called him Hesperus and the Romans called him Vesper or Noctiferus (Night-Bringer), heralding the descent of the Night. He's usually depicted holding a torch and it was believed he was the one who organized the heavens. He was so beautiful that Venus Herself vied with him.

In his “Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches”, Charles Godfrey Leland tells that Lucifer is both the brother and consort of the goddess Diana, and father of Aradia, at the center of the Italian surviving witch-cult. In Leland's mythology, “Diana was the first created before all creation; in her were all things; out of herself, the first darkness, she divided herself;(...) Lucifer, her brother and son, herself and her other half, was the light. And when Diana saw that the light was so beautiful (...) she yearned for it with exceeding great desire. Wishing to receive the light again into her darkness, (...) she trembled with desire. This desire was the Dawn.”

The association of Lucifer with Satan was due to the capitalized use of the Latin word Lucifer as “shining one” and “son of dawn” as a metaphor referring to the King of Babylon in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 14:12. This use of the word gave rise to an association of it with the original name of the Devil before his fall from Heaven, linking Isaiah 14:12 with Luke 10 ("I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven") when in actuality it has no connection with the Devil.