Lucifer

In Poul Anderson's "Kyrie" (Going For Infinity, New York, 2002), human beings have named a space-dwelling energy being "Lucifer." The woman who telepathically communicates with Lucifer, thinks:

"They named you better than they knew, Lucifer, she wanted to say, and perhaps she did. They thought it was a joke; they thought by calling you after the devil they could make you safely small like themselves. But Lucifer isn't the devil's real name. It means only Light Bearer. One Latin prayer even addresses Christ as Lucifer." (p. 351)

I did not know about the Latin prayer. When I was Master in Charge of Religious Education at Bentham Grammar School in the single academic year, 1980-81, an English Teacher asked me why the Devil should be called the Light Bringer. I added, "...when he is also called the Prince of Darkness?" A Geography Teacher who was a Bible-reading man was present but did not comment. My only answer at that time was that "Lucifer" was supposed to have been his name before he fell. (I have since come across "Samael" as a pre-Fall name.)

The answer that I realized later was that, in a sense, darkness is the light bringer because light is recognized as such only by contrast with darkness. "The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it..."

It is appropriate to compare Poul Anderson with other writers of powerful fantasies. In a work by Alan Moore, male witches conjure the Original Darkness that was before the Creation, believing that it will destroy Heaven, but, when the Hand of the Darkness emerges from Chaos and advances through Hell, fomenting demonic civil war, a Hand of Light descends to clasp it and the Taoist symbol for the interpenetration of opposites appears in the eye of the psychic witness to these supernatural events.

In Neil Gaiman's sequel to Alan Moore's work, Lucifer Morningstar retires as Lord of Hell and, amazingly, Mike Carey, presents a series about his subsequent career. But, returning to writers of prose fantasy and sf, James Blish tells us what Satan does after the death of God. As before, I urge fans of Poul Anderson also to read James Blish.

Conflicts

Poul Anderson's fantasy novel Three Hearts And Three Lions (London, 1977) has a unique flavour that I missed on first reading. It is more than a string of well-presented cliches. Things and signs are not what they seem. In particular, Faerie is not neutral.

In childhood, I was pleased to read the theory that fairies had been angels who remained neutral during the War in Heaven. That seemed to explain their status as a third class of supernatural being inhabiting neither Heaven nor Hell but Nature. It was always satisfying when one mythology explained another. A second example is the Greek mythological explanation of pharaonic zoomorphism: attacked on Olympus, the gods fled and hid in Egypt, disguised as animals.

In Three Hearts And Three Lions, in the parallel world to which Holger Carlsen has been transported, Faerie supports Chaos against Law. For this reason, Holger as guest in the castle of Duke Alfric, lord of Faerie, recalls (to me) not other visits to Faerie, as in "The Land of Summer's Twilight" in Neil Gaiman's The Books Of Magic, but the hospitality received by the damned soul Christopher Rudd in the castle of a Lord of Hell in Mike Carey's Lucifer, a sequel to Gaiman's The Sandman.

There seem to be four realms: Heaven, Earth, Hell and the Middle World, the last comprising Faerie, Trollheim, Giants etc. (Why "Middle"? In some reckonings, Earth, Midgard, is in the middle.) A woods dwarf tells Holger that the Faerie folk:

"...live in wilderness, which is why they be o' the dark Chaos side in the war." (p. 27)

Alianora adds that they:

"...canna endure broad daylight, so 'tis forever twilit in their realm." (p. 37)

This sounds like Gaiman's "Summer's Twilight."

Alianora speculates:

"If Chaos wins, mayhap yon dusk will be laid on the whole world, and no more o' bricht sunshine and green leaves and blossoms...And yet does Faerie have an eldritch beauty..." (p. 37)

Is this getting a little confused? I do not expect the Fair Folk to oppose sunshine and blossoms. And a victory for Chaos and/or Hell surely mean universal darkness, not the eldritch beauty of Faerie twilight?