Lucifug — Flight from the Light

The principle of materiality and form, necessary for the self-knowledge of the Great Spirit across its differentiated aspects, is traditionally expressed by the sephira Bina (Heb. בינה‎; bīnāh; “Intelligence”; “Mind”; “Thought”), which corresponds to mind as the space in which thoughts, ideas and other elements of mind and the unconscious arise and dissolve. Bina constitutes the “substrate” of the psychocosm — the very waters in which all its processes unfold (hence another name for Bina is “Mara,” the “Great Sea”).

As mentioned, being stages of application — “filters” — the sephirot include two aspects: the sephira proper, the “light” component, and the “shadow,” the “shell” — the klippah, which appears as a result of the incomplete transparency of any sephira.

The shadow cast by Bina is called Satariel (“the Concealment of God”), which points to the dark aspect of Amma, the barren mother — that is, a mother not manifesting her generative activity. The point is that an emphasis on the “substrate,” on “matter,” conceals the spiritual origin. In this aspect, the Mother blocks the manifestations of the Father; spirit becomes entangled in matter, a captive of it, crucified upon it. In this aspect, the Concealment corresponds to the image of the Sumerian Mother of Monsters — Tiamat — and this dark component of the maternal principle is also called Kharaziel, Divine Destruction (that is, chaos and decomposition).

The masculine, active component of the Concealment principle is expressed by the Demon Lucifug (“the one fleeing from the light”), whose name likewise indicates the destructive, dissolving, de-embodying aspect of “homogeneous materiality.”

This figure is central to the “Great Grimoire“; the 41st goetic Demon — Focalor — is one of its manifestations (the name Focalor and the epithet of Lucifug — Rofocal — are anagrams), and the demons Marbas and Agares (according to the “Great Grimoire” — and Bael) are its “subordinates.” Focalor corresponds to Lucifug’s aspect as the demon of false reliance (that is, erroneously leaning on the illusory value of materiality), Marbas expresses his de-spiritualizing, mechanizing aspect, and Agares the mind’s loss of itself, the turning away from oneself toward those same false values.

As a “false unity,” Lucifug is in a sense the alter-ego of Lucifer (the two principles express different modes of opposition to true unity: Lucifug’s “darkness” appears homogeneous, Lucifer’s “light” endlessly fragmented), and for that reason, it is sometimes held that the name Rofocal is ‘Lucifer’ spelled backwards, is from “Reficul.”

Modern demon-worshippers call Lucifug the “Living Darkness,” thereby emphasizing this force’s antagonism toward light and its Saturnine nature.

Deprived of the mind’s luminosity, left to itself, closed in on itself, the material world loses not only its vitality but the very possibility of sustained existence; therefore, the “flight from the light” embodied in Lucifug always signifies total and final destruction.

Grimoires call Lucifug the “Prime Minister” of Hell, indicating this Demon’s executive power, the distortion of Bina’s principle of realization, and the danger of falling into mere activity and obsession with the material.

It is Lucifug who speaks in the mind that “you must take everything from life,” “you must hurry to enjoy life,” always implicitly meaning the exclusively material, shadow aspect of such “enjoyment.”

We have already mentioned that, as the shadow aspect of intuition and understanding expressed in Bina, Lucifug gives a false sense of grasping “how the world is put together,” the same false sense of unity that disdains multiplicity.

Lucifug’s danger is not merely in relying on the material as such; his falsehood lies in presenting that reliance as the highest truth, wisdom, the fruit of “understanding” and “experience.” Under the influence of this destroyer, the mind is deprived of the living sense of the reality of spirit and of the mind’s luminosity, loses its inner sources of motivation for development, and sinks into the darkness of Satariel.

Opposing false unity is highly problematic: a mind shadowed from its luminous roots finds it very difficult to summon the desire to develop, to see that its world is “inverted,” and that what seems real to it is in fact secondary, while what it does not feel the reality of is the true foundation.

It is no accident that the breakthrough of the Concealment occurs almost simultaneously with the overcoming of the Abyss, and that the encounter with Lucifug’s darkness is the flip side of the battle with the demon of the abyss. A Magus who has looked upon Choronzon inevitably drowns in Lucifug’s darkness, and overcoming these destructive forces brings him to the degree of Master.

At earlier stages of the Way, the Tradition recommends opposing the Concealment by relying on a Master (or School, Line), which allows one to perceive the glints of Chokhmah’s light as impulses toward development and one’s own search. Mutual support, aid, and inspiration on the Way are precisely what are important for overcoming the Concealment. It is very difficult for one who bogs down in the cynicism of false wisdom and the cold of false unity — which prove on inspection to be merely disguised fear and loneliness — to break through to the light.