A Luciferian Dialogue On Evil

Disclaimer: The following contains a couple of conversations I have had with Lucifer stitched together. They regard questions I have had for some time on the nature of evil and the reincarnation cycle that results from the karma of committing harmful deeds. It is not meant to victim blame, moralize, nor judge any individual beings nor their circumstances. Violence and suicide are mentioned and reader discretion is advised.

*

About a week ago as of this writing, a spider settled itself on the ceiling of my shower. I was startled the first day when it decided to drop upon me as the shower ended and I had to shake it off. The following day, I watched it as it started to descend from the ceiling as I was washing. I pointed at it, twice, "Do not land on me." Each time I did this, it stopped. It knew what I was saying.

Finally, on the third day, it tried dropping on me again. This time, it missed and ended up on the bathtub floor. I should say that I like my showers boiling hot. I also didn't feel particularly inclined to step out of my own routine to rescue this bothersome spider from its folly after all it had committed upon me. Its life promptly ended.

Surveying this, Lucifer said to me, "And that's what happens to perverts, Feebz."

He meant, that's how they are reborn. Over and over again.

*

Feebz: You are called many things, including Emperor of Hell. By what seems like it cannot be coincidence, your name as The Devil contains the very word of "evil." But, can you tell me, is evil even real?

Lucifer: Yes, it is.

Feebz: Throughout infinite cultures and time periods, there are differing norms. There is what is considered "good" or "bad," "desirable" or "undesirable," "legal/permissible" or "illegal/unpermissible." Is evil a concept or quality that transcends all of time and culture?

Lucifer: Yes, it is.

Feebz: Can you describe to me what "evil" is?

Lucifer: Evil is when harm is done to another, remorselessly. This can be individual to individual, family to individual, community to individual, society to individual, system to individual.

Feebz: I told a United States healthcare marketplace representative last month that their policies that impoverished their hardworking and tax-paying citizens were evil. Was I correct?

Lucifer: It wasn't evil against you as you had your options. But there are many governments, now and throughout time, who seek to use their power to control, manipulate, and exploit their citizens. Yes, I would say that is evil. Like the shower spider, like individuals, those systems and governments come to their due. In time.

Feebz: So you say because I can think of at least three current governments built on blood and harm—

Lucifer: All temporary and unstable.

Feebz: Oh?

Lucifer: All things end, some with worse consequences than others. Just because you can't currently foresee it and even if you don't see it in your lifetime does not mean it will not occur.

Feebz: The Buddhist idea of collective karma come to roost?

Lucifer: Certainly one way to think of it.

Feebz: How does one fight against or dispel evil?

Lucifer: First, by recognizing that most intelligent living beings wish to. Second, by aiming one's life toward coming into coalition with others. Advocating, on the individual and group level, to see one's pain-inflicting habits and working with the true goal to correct them. Finally, by extending grace to those who find the bravery to achieve restoration. I can see in your thoughts that you are trying to interpret what I am saying as putting your own individual before others in this process, but in this case that is not my advice, as it is in other parts of your spiritual path. While the work on your own self is as essential as the work of relating with others, one does not need to occur before the other.

Feebz: So if evil is remorseless harm, is good... intentional kindness and generosity?

Lucifer: They are not quite opposites as they are differing contributions to the world. Goodness is in seeing others as equitably worthy as you. It is in actions of continuation, including creativity and love. As you have seen in certain spiritual paths, even some wrathful or hard to conceive of behavior can be considered good in their intentions toward greater causes. [Feebz's note: This is in reference to Buddhist spirits who "cut" spiritual obstacles in what looks like martial ways, or something like ethical animal slaughter to feed a community]

Feebz: Well... If we take a few events and things I have said into account last week, I am not sure I always do that perfectly even as I'm on a pathway toward a social work career.

Lucifer: Intent and effort matter even if the desired result does not always arrive in immediacy. Much of this is a practice.

Feebz: I don't believe in hell, but is it real?

Lucifer grinning: How are you defining hell?

Feebz: A space or realm where there is only punishment or pain.

Lucifer: You already know that there are realities where pain is the focal point.

Feebz: So... hells are real?

Lucifer: Yes.

Feebz: Is "emperor of hell" and the assignment of evil something humans put on you, or did another spirit or process?

Lucifer: By "process," the process of my own creation, as we have discussed.

Feebz: Yeah...

Lucifer: It's a granted title; one I proudly accept. I was meant to be where I am now. There are multiple ways it can be said that I became here. I have always existed within or have overseen the realms and energies that humans view as more painful, difficult, and challenging. These areas uphold and are in inextricable relation to the realms and energies that are more pleasurable, rewarding, or otherwise easier for most living beings to bear. There is no binary, no division, just one.

Feebz: So are you already in all those heavenly realms?

Lucifer: Not all.

Feebz: Not all of those, but are you in all the spaces where humans view hell, punishment and pain?

Lucifer: Most of them, especially where there are humans. I can move within certain heavenly realms, though my motion is limited according to my own karmic path.

Feebz: Wow, I am really disadvantaging our readers starting with this discussion then, perhaps, because I have yet to mention on the blog how the hope is via you as my bodhisattva that I can get you to the Pure Lands, which is where I am hoping to go after I pass.

Lucifer: I am certain you will get there.

Feebz: That's nice, dear... Perhaps we should go back to the spider, though. I felt conflicted watching it burn even as it was rude to me.

Lucifer, shaking my head vigorously: It is not a matter of personal responsibility in this matter. Through timing, the soul behind the spider was almost always going to end up in circumstances where they were not rescued. While I still want to emphasize the role of personal choice and responsibility in most things—especially and particularly when it comes to people who have committed harm who afterward have found the courage to atone—there are, let's call them psychic or metaphysical, influences that embodied beings are not always privy to in order to fulfill certain necessary motions.

Feebz: So was this spider, like, a horrible man?

Lucifer laughing: You would not be wrong.

Feebz: But I have a few more questions... To push back on what I have seen others say, I am concerned with the topic of suicide.

Lucifer: Proceed.

Feebz: It's been proven that the majority of people who attempt immediately regret their actions. By that logic, because remorse is involved, suicide is not an evil act as positioned by Western culture.

Lucifer: Yes.

Feebz: Okay, I'm glad, given I have been in the position many times of feeling suicidal, have known people who have committed suicide, and the concept of people who have taken their lives being punished in the afterlife just seemed to deeply lack compassion to me.

Lucifer: I don't disagree.

Feebz: But there is also the concept in my field and artistically of "little deaths" occurring throughout life, usually in the natural, ongoing, and inevitable process of change that is in being alive. So from that, I would also say there are "little suicides" or at least "spiritual suicides." These are observable in people who are self-destructive, consciously and unconsciously. Those who I have known who seem to commit something like these spiritual suicides are people who refuse to proceed with their lives in ways that I would call, for lack of a better word, healthy. They don't self-preserve appropriately, they don't seek out better opportunity nor advancement for themselves, and they wait until things get dire—even sometimes when actual threat of life is looming—before they finally and reluctantly make a necessary change. The more resentful of them may seek to emotionally tear down other people surrounding them. You recommended the book The Courage To Be Disliked recently and one of the two primary characters in it is one such type of person.

Trauma is a common source for these people's behavior, though I have had the hard lessons of learning it's not a justification. Some of them I have known endured very serious violence when they were young and, like the classic "cycle of violence," inflicted more on others, never coming to apologize to the people they have hurt for what they had done. In that lack of remorse and restoration, are they evil?

Lucifer: I am the king of demons. I do not believe individual spirits are or can be evil.

Feebz: No??

Lucifer: It's the acts that are evil.

Feebz: Oh, well. Mesopotamian views on demons would agree with you there.

Lucifer: Consequences for choices and behaviors are uncomfortable; individuals do not always know that they are inevitable. Delayed or not, they come.

Between us, we have many times in the past discussed how choosing to be better matters. When people intimately know the pain of certain evil actions committed upon them and they reenact them, they do so knowing full well that they are wrong. They may sometimes need help with it being articulated, they may need alternative ways of being presented to them, but much of the time they know from deep within them and they have the opportunity to seek out new ways instead of automatically following the old. That is, in fact, one of the primary reasons many souls go into earthly reincarnation cycles. They want to understand what it is to fully experience one way and learn and transform into the other side of it, resulting in a matured and refined perspective for the larger, reincarnating part of the soul. It takes a long time, a very long time, for smaller spirits to complete this process.

Feebz: ...Are there souls who start off in better places or as better people and end up worse, though?

Lucifer: Yes, and they end up the same way as the spider.

Feebz: So basically anyone can slip up at any time.

Lucifer: Eh, it becomes increasingly unlikely for certain individuals to make significant errors in judgment, especially if they spend long amounts of time in your realm.

Feebz: You know what, that feels okay. I still wish there was less evil in my realm, though.

Lucifer: There is a lot of good as well. If you shift your perspective toward it, you will see it more often and it will buoy you through strain.

Feebz: Well, this was among our tougher conversations, I think. But thanks for having them with me.

Lucifer: <3