The Secret History Of Lucifer: And the Meaning Of the True Da Vinci Code [Paperback]

The title of this book and the description of the content are very, very misleading. While the content of the book is well written, the information about it's namesake, Lucifer, is rare, vague, and very incomplete.

The author's primary focus throughout the majority of the text is to nullify a variety of conceptions about Christianity, including issues such as the true role of Mary Magdalene and the rivalry between Christ and John the Baptist. It continues on to discuss alternate views on Christianity, and spends some time dealing with Anton LaVey's Satanic Bible, and does an incredibly poor job of ensuring the distinction between Lucifer and Satan, even though such a distinction was made (albeit briefly) earlier in the book. There is a very interesting section regarding DaVinci's paintings and the hidden meanings therein, but again, these meanings are almost always attributed to being about John the Baptist, and having little or nothing to do with Lucifer. Furthermore, there are a staggering amount of assumptions made on the author's part regarding meanings of symbols and images without any specific qualification to justify them.

There is an attempt within the introduction of each chapter to connect the subject matter with Lucifer, but the attempts are consistently vague and incomplete, only used as a segue of sorts between the intended subject of the book and the alternate content that the author was very passionate about, which, as she mentions numerous times, is mostly contained within her other books. This brought me to the conclusion that the author's intent with this book had been meant to be as more of a follow-up to her other publications.

A frustrating part about the book is that the description, included on the dust jacket itself, mentions that Lucifer's physical appearance (as commonly viewed) is merely a distortion of the pagan deity Pan, but the discussion of this in the book itself is so minimal that it could be easily missed. The author entirely ignores expanding on this, and leaves behind the Christian purpose of turning the various aspects of "Lucifer/Lucifera/Light Bringer/Morningstar" into a demon for the purpose of converting pagans by way of fear.

Possibly the most insulting part about the book is the chapter titled "Do what thou wilt" which, is a key component of the Wiccan belief system and is highly connected to Aleister Crowley, even though there are certain historical sources where else it may have come from. But, within the chapter, the discussion of the phrase or even of these specifically related components is incredibly lacking, which tells me the name of the chapter was meant to draw me in to the alternate topics the author wished to discuss.

It would have been an absolutely wonderful book if it had not deceived me into believing what it was about. The title of the book is misleading, as well as the description.

For all of that, I must give it one star. It was written well and seemingly well-informed in terms of the facts given (despite containing many assumptions), but in the end I paid money and spent my time reading a book about topics that I wasn't trying to research.

Although perhaps there is an irony in deceptively naming a book "Lucifer" it order to get readers to learn more about an opinionated Christian history.

i had recently read the lucifer wars and was totally blown away. i searched for similar and came across this one. The premice is good and i enjoyed it for the fact that it pushes the parameters of widely held religious beleifs. But somehow it fell a little flat for me and so i am still looking for something to compete with the genius of Lucifer wars.