Book excerpt: Lucifer s transgression is examined, as well as the penetrating and trangressive nature of his radiance. In the popular imagination, the fallen angel Lucifer evokes such concepts as heresy, rebellion, pride, liberation from the bonds of demiurgic oppression, and impetus for human evolution. From his earliest origins, the Proud Angel has been hailed by religious and artistic countercultures as a patron saint of enlightenment his most essential quality embodying overthrow of ignorance and the inspired process of revelation. Allied to ancient Gnostic Christian cosmological conceptions, the fallen angel has also found dominion within occult traditions, folk magic, philosophy, as well as art and literature. Lucifer has also, in many enduring mystical traditions, assumed a female form in the guise of Lucina, Lucia and Diana Lucifera. In his guise as the Serpent of Eden, he bestowed the magical philosophy of the Luciferian Woman, she who was not born of the clay, and was therefore especially receptive to the forbidden powers which would render one as God. "