The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code by Lynn Picknett
Authors: Lynn Picknett
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snares and obstacles, saying `... for I am great of magic, with the knife that issued from Seth, and my legs are mine for ever.')" Set also appears in the Old Testament in human form as Seth, `the supplanter' of the Good Shepherd Abel92
Nevertheless, Set ruled over a physical realm - an actual, geographical location - that the Egyptians knew from their everyday experience to be nightmarish. With only their narrow strip of verdant land hugging both banks of the Nile, on which they were totally dependent for food, they were vulnerable to famine and recognized the hellishly inhospitable nature of the surrounding `red' desert - which was Set's kingdom. The Egyptians hated anything red, as can be seen from an invocation to Isis: `Free me from all red things' 93 In his alter ego as Typhon, Set was called `the red-skinned one' 94
Yet Set's desert was exactly the same environment that the Old Testament God Yahweh seemed to favour, as he led Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt, as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Indeed, he seemed curiously loath to let his nomadic people escape from the never-ending wilderness, managing to keep them wandering on its sand for `forty years' (usually taken to mean simply `a long time'), while they managed to travel just as many miles, apparently going round in circles. And like a typical desert dweller, in the story of Adam and Eve's fall, Yahweh prefers to walk `in the garden in the cool of the day' 95 Luckert writes:
As a desert god, Seth was known among Egyptians as the god of foreigners, of thunder, lightning and earthquakes ... It has been told that Moses spoke to the Pharaoh in the name of the God of the Hebrews. (Exodus 5:3). To an Egyptian pharaoh that meant in the name of Seth. [• •] The God who killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians would have been Seth to them, the very god of desert-dwellers 96
It is interesting that Set combined the characteristics of both Yahweh and Lucifer, especially his association with lightning. The Egyptian pharaohs also descended into the earth as the serpent Sata, father of lightning, before their triumphant ascent into the heavens as the resurrected Osiris, where they literally became a star. The devout believed they could become immortal like Sata, by repeating the prayer in which they identified with him:
I am the serpent Sata, whose years are infinite. I lie down dead. I am born daily. I am the serpent Sata, the dweller in the utter most parts of the earth. I lie down in death. I am born. I become new, I renew my youth every day 97
In the Gospel according to Luke Jesus describes Satan `as lightning fall from heaven.'98 Yet the nearest Egyptian god to the bright star Lucifer was the hawk-headed Horus, magically conceived by Isis and the murdered Osiris. Horns was Set's sworn enemy - so reminiscent of the Israelites' Yahweh, was no benevolent deity. But although he delighted in human folly, as we have seen, he had his uses. The Gnostics, like the ancient Egyptians - who rejoiced in the ultimate balancing triad, their Trinity of Father, Mother and Child - also saw a sort of essential balance in Good and Evil, the glue that kept the cosmos together. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip (rediscovered after nearly 1,500 years at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945)99 makes the point that: `The Light and the Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers one for another."00
A contemporary of the heretic Marcion, the Egyptian Valentine, arrived in Rome in 139 CE and caused an enormous stir, not least because of his `complex, cluttered, emanationist mythology aimed primarily at the problem of evil' .10' Yet running beneath all his babblings about eight `higher aeons' and at least twenty-two lower ones that in his fevered world view encompassed the nature of the deity, was a straight challenge to the notion of original sin. He believed that Adam and Eve's rebellion against the evil Creator god was a gift to humankind, and the snake its benefactor
Nevertheless, Set ruled over a physical realm - an actual, geographical location - that the Egyptians knew from their everyday experience to be nightmarish. With only their narrow strip of verdant land hugging both banks of the Nile, on which they were totally dependent for food, they were vulnerable to famine and recognized the hellishly inhospitable nature of the surrounding `red' desert - which was Set's kingdom. The Egyptians hated anything red, as can be seen from an invocation to Isis: `Free me from all red things' 93 In his alter ego as Typhon, Set was called `the red-skinned one' 94
Yet Set's desert was exactly the same environment that the Old Testament God Yahweh seemed to favour, as he led Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt, as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Indeed, he seemed curiously loath to let his nomadic people escape from the never-ending wilderness, managing to keep them wandering on its sand for `forty years' (usually taken to mean simply `a long time'), while they managed to travel just as many miles, apparently going round in circles. And like a typical desert dweller, in the story of Adam and Eve's fall, Yahweh prefers to walk `in the garden in the cool of the day' 95 Luckert writes:
As a desert god, Seth was known among Egyptians as the god of foreigners, of thunder, lightning and earthquakes ... It has been told that Moses spoke to the Pharaoh in the name of the God of the Hebrews. (Exodus 5:3). To an Egyptian pharaoh that meant in the name of Seth. [• •] The God who killed the firstborn sons of the Egyptians would have been Seth to them, the very god of desert-dwellers 96
It is interesting that Set combined the characteristics of both Yahweh and Lucifer, especially his association with lightning. The Egyptian pharaohs also descended into the earth as the serpent Sata, father of lightning, before their triumphant ascent into the heavens as the resurrected Osiris, where they literally became a star. The devout believed they could become immortal like Sata, by repeating the prayer in which they identified with him:
I am the serpent Sata, whose years are infinite. I lie down dead. I am born daily. I am the serpent Sata, the dweller in the utter most parts of the earth. I lie down in death. I am born. I become new, I renew my youth every day 97
In the Gospel according to Luke Jesus describes Satan `as lightning fall from heaven.'98 Yet the nearest Egyptian god to the bright star Lucifer was the hawk-headed Horus, magically conceived by Isis and the murdered Osiris. Horns was Set's sworn enemy - so reminiscent of the Israelites' Yahweh, was no benevolent deity. But although he delighted in human folly, as we have seen, he had his uses. The Gnostics, like the ancient Egyptians - who rejoiced in the ultimate balancing triad, their Trinity of Father, Mother and Child - also saw a sort of essential balance in Good and Evil, the glue that kept the cosmos together. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip (rediscovered after nearly 1,500 years at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945)99 makes the point that: `The Light and the Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers one for another."00
A contemporary of the heretic Marcion, the Egyptian Valentine, arrived in Rome in 139 CE and caused an enormous stir, not least because of his `complex, cluttered, emanationist mythology aimed primarily at the problem of evil' .10' Yet running beneath all his babblings about eight `higher aeons' and at least twenty-two lower ones that in his fevered world view encompassed the nature of the deity, was a straight challenge to the notion of original sin. He believed that Adam and Eve's rebellion against the evil Creator god was a gift to humankind, and the snake its benefactor
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