Margit Sandemo: The Ice People 29 - Lucifer´s Love

Saga was also strange in the sense that she seemed fearless – as if she didn’t know what fear was. So she would find herself in situations that could have been dangerous if her parents hadn’t kept an eye on her. She was immensely good and kind, and couldn’t bear the idea of hurting anybody. It was important to her that both people and animals led a happy life. But many people didn’t understand or see the empathy she felt for others. The first thing they noticed in Saga was her dignity. She struck people as very poised – a quality underlined by her green eyes. Strangers would often take her for a noble young lady who wasn’t interested in other people, cold and stiff. That wasn’t true. Saga had a delightful, dry sense of humour, which you could see in her eyes – if you looked closely – but never on her lips. She rarely smiled. The corners of her eyes might pucker but that was all. But her swift, sharp replies showed that she had a sense of humour and was very intelligent.

She was however, quite unable to conjure.

As a child she had been a fairy-tale princess. As a young girl, with her dark colouring, she was a real beauty. She was sixteen years old now, and she had not yet stopped asking questions. So far, her curiosity was unlimited. That evening, sitting by the fire, she looked up from her book and raised her finely shaped eyebrows: “Tell me, Mother: who is Lucifer?”

Anna Maria had finished her darning, and was carefully putting away the stockings, having rolled them up into a neat ball. Her dark-brown hair was now quite silvery – she had had her daughter late in life and was now fifty-six years old.

“I suppose you mean who was Lucifer? He doesn’t exist. However, people tend to call villains and evil men by the name of Lucifer, but it’s just a nickname.”

Saga replied: “That’s what it says in this book: ‘You’re crazy! You’re Lucifer personified, you wretch!’”

Anna Maria said thoughtfully: “It’s a bit unfair on the real Lucifer ...”

“Oh, please tell me! I want to know!”

Anna Maria smiled tenderly. She glanced at her daughter’s profile and her lovely colouring and felt as if she could die with love for her only child.

“You know, Saga, many legends and myths have been spun about the characters in the Bible through the ages. The same can be said about Lucifer.”

“Well, who was Lucifer, really?”

Anna Maria wrinkled her brow slightly for a moment. “He’s a bit difficult to define. He appears in so many guises and has so many names. If you want to get a proper impression of him, you also need to read the Quran, which has many people and characters in common with the Bible.

Saga put her book away and pulled her chair closer to the open fire. She sat with her legs tucked up, ready to listen. Her mother was her most important source of information.

Anna Maria went on: “If you gather all the fragments about him in the Bible and the Quran, and the many myths that exist about him, you’ll get something like this. The Lord had many angels. (I’ll call him the Lord because it’s easier: it will have to be a generic term for God and Allah.)”

Saga nodded. That sounded fair enough to her.

“The Lord, the highest, had made Lucifer – the most beautiful of all creatures and appointed him to an elevated position in the realm of angels.”

“So he was an angel then?”

“Yes, he was made to rule over their realm. Lucifer carried out that task so well that the Lord also made him treasurer in Paradise.

“Lucifer belonged to a tribe of angels created by the fire of the desert wind. All angels were created from fire and that also went for this tribe. However, it was created from a flame without any smoke – the way they appear at the extreme edge of a bonfire. So those angels were slightly different from the others. In the Quran they are called djinn.

“Then the Lord created the earth. The djinn were the first creatures that were allowed to live there. However, they were unable to live together in peace. They killed each other so that their blood ran into the earth and soiled it. Then the Lord sent Lucifer with an army of angels and Lucifer made war against the djinn, driving them out to islands in the sea or to remote mountainous, barren regions. After this, Lucifer felt that he was better and more exalted than the other angels. He had fulfilled a major task, and was unable to forget it.”

Saga was listening intently. She adored legends and fairy tales.

“Then the Lord created man from clay, because somebody would have to live in the paradise that the djinn had been forced to leave. And He ordered all the angels to bow to this human being, whom he called Adam. Lucifer refused to do so. Was he, one of the highest of the angels, supposed to laud a creature made of clay?

“Then the Lord said: ‘My hand created him. You must praise everything that I have created!’

“Lucifer – whose name means ‘Carrier of Light’ – refused to go down on his knees before Adam. He said proudly: ‘I am more valuable than he is, and far more powerful. You created me from fire, and he’s merely made of clay.’

“The Lord wouldn’t tolerate this. He became angry, because Lucifer’s words were treacherous: by refusing to praise what the Lord had created he was refusing to worship the Lord. This offended the vanity of the Lord because He had never tolerated other gods beside Himself ...”

This wasn’t how Anna Maria would have expressed herself if Kol had been at home. Kol was a fervently devout Catholic, and Anna Maria and Saga respected his faith completely. But even though Anna Maria went to church every Sunday and prayed to God in her lonely hours, she regarded certain aspects of His work with some distrust.

Anna Maria continued: “Therefore, the Lord said to Lucifer: ‘Your arrogance and your disobedience shall be your undoing. Henceforth, I deprive you of all your privileges!’ And the Lord plunged Lucifer into the abyss.”

Saga said slowly: “Oh, now I understand.”

“Yes,” replied Anna Maria. “Lucifer became Satan.”

“Well, yes. Of course,” said Saga, nodding.

“This is the fundamental account of Lucifer. However, there are a great many other legends about him, and how his handsome appearance slowly changed so that he became repulsive to look at. Over the years, artists have been inspired by oriental demons, and have developed his physiognomy in the most horrible ways. He had to become as grotesque and hideous as possible.”

Saga said: “I suppose Christianity has been happy to borrow from other religions, hasn’t it?”

Anna Maria replied: “All religions borrow from one another. Take, for instance, the account of the Flood! It appeared as a historic account in ‘Gilgamesh’, the epic of the Sumerians and Babylonians. Then the Old Testament borrowed it and made it its own. The prehistoric Utnapishtim became Noah!”

Saga smiled her quiet smile, which was only just perceptible. “That was a distraction, though. Go back to Lucifer!”

“He became the evil power of Christianity and Islam. People were quick to blame him for all mistakes, great and small. Then the Old Testament caused confusion by naming the fallen king of Babel after the morning star, which is called Lucifer in Latin. The people of Israel tended to give the name Lucifer to all their enemies, whom they believed their ruler, Yahweh, would plunge into the abyss. This was very practical wishful thinking when their enemies’ power was very great. Anyway, those enemies were of this world, and had very little to do with the Lucifer in Genesis.”

Anna Maria fell silent for a while, and her gaze became distant. “There’s also a less well-known legend – the one about Lucifer’s love ...”

Saga said: “That sounds exciting! Tell me about it!”