This morning: the sky bleached grey and anemic - no glorious sunrise to welcome the spring equinox. Probably more appropriate anyway– the shift towards the light seems metaphorically out of reach. And with all the dreadful goings-on it doesn’t feel as if the light and darkness are held in any kind of balance; instead, it seems like the darkness is crushing it, all this evil weighing us down. Can’t help but turn one’s thoughts to the Devil.
But the very binary of light/dark itself can be confounding when considering Lucifer, ‘the bringer of light’. Odd, no? The devil himself cast as this numinous fallen angel. There he is in Dante’s Divine Comedy, initially described by Virgil as the ‘beauteous one’. And right there in the Bible itself: Isiah 14, Lucifer as the “morning star, son of the dawn’. What a being, this prideful one, stretched out across the sky, all the colours of the dawn - violets and pinks and golds, even thin swirls of absinthe to be found in his huge wings. Yes, back in the day, Lucifer must have been quite something to behold.
So really, one does have to wonder, are the grubby likes of Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk really who Lucifer was courting when he made his big power move, when he thought ‘I will raise my throne above the stars of God’ - the great Archangel deciding to go his own way. How could Lucifer not have buyer’s remorse?
Well, maybe because of the glamour. Not the extravagant ball gown-chandelier-yacht kind of glamour, but the other kind. From the old Scottish glamer (1715):
//
evolved from gramary, a term from the Dark Ages meaning learning in general; astrology and magic, hence the secondary meaning of “occult knowledge”, which evolved in Scottish into glamour; especially the phrase ‘to cast the glamour’;
to cast the glamour over, to put a spell upon; to gain influence over (a person) by using one’s charm, an exciting and often illusory and romantic attractiveness.
//
Yes, of course, the Devil’s own smoke and mirrors, tricking us into thinking he is magnificent, fooling us into feeling that something is beautiful when really, it’s repulsive, that’s something is worthy when it is base. Illusions indeed. Dante shows us this once Virgil finally escorts him down into the 9th circle of hell.
There, the giant form of Lucifer is forever trapped in the ice of a great lake, half above, half below, his huge wings – all leathery and bat-like, no luminous feathers here – endlessly beating, creating cold winds that keep the lake perpetually frozen. The once beauteous Lucifer is now revealed as trapped, impotent, completely foul: three-faced, gnawing on human bones, ‘tear-drops and the bloody drivel’ staining his three chins. A creepy loser.
We wonder about that endless parade of people who sought out Epstein’s company, the businessmen, scientists, philosophers, spiritual guides. How could they? All those tubby creeps with their pants down around their ankles may have imagined themselves as sophisticated playboys, but they weren’t. The people drawn to the likes of Jeffrey Epstein were trying to benefit from the smoke and mirrors, became collaborators and enablers because of the irresistible lure of his money and all that it can buy. Aiden McLaughlin, writing in Vanity Fair, said this about Steve Bannon, a meagre dark lord in his own right:
“Rather, he [Bannon] seems to fit into another archetype of Epstein associate: Someone who put aside any reservations they may have had about Epstein’s horrific abuse of children because they were seduced by his wealth and connections and shadowy multi-continental existence. Epstein’s currency was part money, part mystery, and Bannon found both seductive. “Bannon wanted what Epstein had,” said one source close to both men. Was it the cash? The network? The pond-hopping for upper-crust get-togethers? “All of the above,” the source said.”
The manifestations of evil are many – sometimes ideological, but often just covetous. More land, more power, more money. And our own desire to have what rich people have turns us from proper independent moral agents into enablers, some of us scuzzy and some of us almost unwitting. But as long as the structures that favour the rich over the poor, the powerful over the disenfranchised, are upheld, we keep the Devil’s workshop running. As long as getting more and more money is the driving force oiling our dreams and imaginations, then in the end only rack and ruin will come our way.
So on this equinox, best to look for those weapons that can pierce through the glamour, tear down those structures, things like radical justice, relentless kindness and mutual aid. Courage not complicity. Solidarity not sycophancy.
Out here, under a dawn that seems to be holding its breath, I’m feeling that it’s not a prayer of exorcism I need, no, I just need a simple chant, a prayer that directs my attention in the right direction, away from the glamour, an incantation to break the spell. And I have just the thing, will say it over and over: No war but class war, No war but class war.
Sources & further reading:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/glamour
“Inside Steve Bannon and Jeffrey Epstein’s Disturbingly Close Friendship” by Aiden McLaughlin, February 13, 2026. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/steve-bannon-jeffrey-epstein-files-trump-maga#intcid=_vanity-fair-article-bottom-recirc_d3bb8bd3-1dec-46a4-953c-8bff870b7219_text2vec1Bannon
Illustration of Lucifer for Canto 34 of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno by Gustave Dore; sourced from public domain: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gustave_Dore_Inferno_34_caption.jpg
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