Lynn Picknett - The Secret History of Lucifer: And the Meaning of the True Da Vinci Code

By the same author

Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess

The Encyclopaedia of the Paranormal (Ed.)

The Mammoth Book of UFOs

With Clive Prince

Turin Shroud: In Whose Image?

The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ

The Stargate Conspiracy

With Clive Prince and Stephen Prior

(additional historical research by Robert Brydon)

Double Standards: The Rudolf Hess Cover-up

War of the Windsors

Friendly Fire: The Secret War Between The Allies

LYNN PICKNETT

For Debbie Benstead, with love Is there a tenth gate? Are we there yet?

ix

xi

PART ONE: A STAR IS BORN

PART TWO: LEGACY OF THE FALL

The Fall of Man, 1549 (oil on panel) by Cranach, Lucas the Younger (1515-86), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA, Edith A. and Percy S. Straus Collection

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Glad Day or The Dance of Albion, c.1794 (etching with w/c) by Blake, William (1757-1827), British Museum, London, UK

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

The Egyptian god Set

Statue of the god Horus making a drink offering, Third Intermediate Period c.750 BC (bronze), Louvre, Paris, France

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Diana Lucifera (Lucina)

A late Roman statue, she carries the torch symbolizing spiritual resurrection and illumination

Pan, c.1880 (bronze on stone plinth) by Thabard, Adolf Martial (1831-1905), private collection/Agra Art, Warsaw, Poland

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Negative of the Turin Shroud

Aggemian's 1935 portrait taken from the cloth

Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) engraving by English School, (19th century), private collection/Ken Welsh

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

The Virgin and Child with St Anne and John the Baptist, c. 1499 (charcoal, chalk on paper) by Vinci, Leonardo da (1452-1519), National Gallery, London, UK

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Mary Magdalene, 1877 (oil on canvas) by Rossetti, Dante Charles Gabriel (1828-82), Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, USA/Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft Memorial

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

The Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-goat, (one of `The Black Paintings'), c.1821-23 (oil on canvas) by Goya y Lucientes, Francisco Jose de (1746-1828), Prado, Madrid, Spain/Giraudon

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Three Witches Burned Alive, pamphlet illustration (woodcut) by German School, (16th century), private collection/The Stapleton Collection

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Edward Kelly (b.1555), a magician, and his partner the mathematician and astrologer, John Dee (1527-1608), raising a ghost, private collection

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Anonymous, Petworth House, West Sussex, UK

Courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library

Everyone knows what evil is. Everyone carries iconic pictures in their heads that symbolize the horror of real wickedness: smoke and flames pouring from the Twin Towers on the September 11 that stopped the world in its tracks; piles of emaciated bodies at the Nazis' death camps; thousands of grinning skulls in Pol Pot's killing fields; a naked little girl running screaming towards the camera, covered in napalm ... Terror, agony, war, death upon death. Although entirely of humanity's doing, we use words such as `satanic' to describe these deeds of historic atrocity, evoking the name of the Old Enemy, Satan, personification of all that is terrible, disgusting, beyond belief. Satan may or may not exist as a literal entity, but he is a potent metaphor for the worst of the worst. However, this book will sing the praises of another hugely powerful metaphor - Lucifer - who is emphatically not the Evil One, but the spirit of human progress, the fight to learn and grow, to be independent and proud, but also spiritually free. `Lucifer' simply means `the Light-bringer', the enlightener, and it is in that spirit that this book will examine the way that a belief in the values he represents has shaped our world, the Judaeo-Christian West, in which the very freedoms he seeks are fast becoming eroded.

As the great 19th-century French occultist and sage Eliphas Levi wrote `What is more absurd and more impious than to attribute the name of Lucifer to the devil, that is, to personified evil. The intel lectual Lucifer is the spirit of intelligence and love; it is the paraclete, it is the Holy Spirit, while the physical Lucifer is the great agent of universal magnetism."

In the dire past, the days of witch burning and mass bigotry, there were few recognizable freedoms. Today, when we are trying to force-feed democracy to eastern cultures, it would seem that we have all the freedom we want or need. Not so: the insidious fascism of political correctness - with its chillingly Orwellian undertones - and the growing threat of fundamentalism of all sorts mean that our everyday freedoms are under threat. On both sides of the Atlantic the radiant figure of the real Lucifer is being obscured by red tape, yet rarely have we needed him more. With the breakdown of the education system, ignorance, nihilism and the non-existence of selfrespect abound, turning into rage, violence and crime on the one hand and dangerously rigid religious belief on the other. Both represent their own form of evil, both threaten the future of our culture - but if we permit ourselves to be still, honest and objective for just a few moments, we will be able to hear the rousing cry of the Morning Star, Lucifer, all brightness and hope. Let the Light shine in!

When I began this book I had little idea how neatly it would follow on from my previous work, Mary Magdalene: Christianity's Hidden Goddess (2003), which examined the real role of one of Christendom's most maligned saints, revealing her to be nothing less than Jesus' lover and even his chosen successor. For two millennia the Church has deliberately obscured the truth about her, terrified that her status would inspire other women to fulfil their own destinies as intelligent, spiritual leaders. In the light of all the evidence, it is incredible that there is still heated debate among churchmen about the validity of female priests - or, if `stuck' with them, of female bishops. Yet if the truth about Mary Magdalene were widely known there could be no debate: she set the pattern for women to be equal with the men in religious debate and leadership - and in that, she was Jesus' own choice. And it is hugely significant that to her devotees in the south of France, she was known as `Mary Lucifer' - `Mary the Light-bringer'.