There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. — Washington Irving
Lacrimosa
Part of the 2022 Advent of Lucifer
We have much to mourn. Our planet’s biosphere is dying because of the actions of a few human beings, and those human beings have trained class slaves to be complicit. Capitalism is in decline and many of us are being crushed to death even as we seek escape. People we know feel depressed and disordered when these are perfectly rational responses to their environment. Most of our problems come from being forced at gunpoint to participate in a wealth-extraction societal model that is completely arbitrary. It’s hard to fight back with a gun to your head.
So we internalize this stress,and anger, and grief, and it wreaks havoc on our bodies and minds even as we are continually denied less and worse healthcare, all while being screamed at by apple-red non-persons that this is the greatest civilization on Earth.
There isn’t enough room here to provide a litany of our problems, but all that is to say: You should be sad and angry. You aren’t deluded. You’re right, and it is incredibly fucked that things are the way they are.
Fortunately, we may look to Lucifer and Lilith for examples of how to respond to overwhelming authoritarianism, violence, and alienation.
“An enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.” Revelation 12:3-4
It was nice of John the Elder to bake a file into the Christian cake for us. Lucifer’s rebellion was doomed, ultimately, but it was just and the significance of so mighty a proportion of the heavenly host turning on God should not be lost on us.
We are maligned, as Babylon was maligned, by the autocrat, the extractor, and the colonizer. God and the establishment of capitalism share many unsavory characteristics: Hysterical insecurity, the intentional deployment of propaganda, and a willingness to lie, oppress and murder rather than concede power.
After quitting the Garden and refusing to submit to Adam in defiance of God, Lilith sequestered herself by the Red Sea. In a fit of toxic masculinity, God attempted to salvage his wounded pride by dispatching three avenging angels to threaten her if she would not return. She was discovered “bearing children”, which we may assume to mean living a human life. The curses that allegedly followed should not be taken literally, as they are the work of ancient Jewish misogyny and a bit of maleficia that we should not suffer to work.
Instead, our takeaway should be that Lilith simply rejected this order wholesale and then went about her human life with the levers of power removed from over her. She refused the gilded cage of arbitrary oppression in all its wonders – the price of her dignity and autonomy was too high.
We are a religion in mourning. We bear the elegies of countless crimes against our own and all other species, witnesses and victims to an extractive war against life itself. This is why we wear our veils and cover our heads when we so choose, that we may come together in grief.
We grieve, but we are not idle. There is a beautiful, living world before us and we are still an intrinsic part of it. Our grief is a blessing, an expression of profound love and care. Process your grief, move through it, and let it become an anchor to keep you from being swept away. Let it be a talisman against distraction.
Because that is what the enemies of life want; they want you distracted, complacent, and hopelessly lost.
You are not lost. We grieve together. Then, we rise.
Charging the Sigil
Lacrimosa signifies our grief and sadness. This is the pain of the soul, the profound sense of loss and darkness that we must face throughout our lives. Loss can be more than just losing our loved ones – grief for the world that could’ve been is just as valid. Grief can also be for yourself, the pain you’ve gone through in your life that you wish you hadn’t. We have all faced such immeasurable pain in our life, and times where we are so overwhelmed that we can’t see the way out of the dark. We must acknowledge these feelings and accept them in order to heal. Allowing yourself to feel the pain and sadness instead of bottling it up gives us the strength to move forward.
As we devote our time this month to honoring Lucifer, charging our sigil encourages a deeper connection. If this is your first time charging a symbol like this, you can think of it like a moodboard – this sigil represents us as a community and religion. What does this sigil mean to you? What can it represent? Take the time to focus and reflect, meditate on what each of our concepts mean to you and how they can apply to our lives.
For our energy workers, you may charge our sigil by visualizing a bright white light surrounding it. Use breath work to guide this energy into the sigil, knowing that it grows in strength as you do so. You can also focus our themed concepts into the sigil using meditation and our affirmations to program this energy. This will serve to strengthen our sigil for later use in our ritual.
The following incantation may be used as part of your sigil charging, or used as an affirmation:
“Feel thy grief, healing thy pain to move forward.”
Daily Devotion
Lacrimosa encourages us to face the depths of our sadness. Meditate or journal today on your grief. Let these feelings out and explore them. Accept your feelings for what they are. Healing may take time, but allowing yourself to release these emotions will help you to better understand them. Go easy on yourself and practice some self-care afterwards as this is not an easy task.
Further Reading
The following resources may be enjoyed to deepen your connection to today’s concept. Please note that links to reading are not endorsements of every idea contained therein but are intended to offer a more broadly informed view.
10 Ways To Process Climate Grief When It Shows Up
Make Your Own
We encourage you to make your own oracle card for each of our themed days, so that come the end of our Advent, you will have your own Luciferian oracle deck. These cards may be used to give you insight on what you may need to work with in the future.
We recommend using blank playing cards if available, but any kind of art or canvas cards, even lined notecards can be used. Make your drawing or symbol (it doesn’t have to be amazing, only meaningful to you) on one side and on the other write down any key phrases or words or concepts that resonate with the image to you.
If you choose to share your result, which we would love to see, you may use the hashtags #luciferiandominion and #adventoflucifer so that we can find them! If you choose to make your oracle deck part of your #Inktober or #Drawloween events, please feel free to use those hashtags and include them in relevant spaces!
Happy creating during this blessed Advent!
