Pandemonium by Simon Ed;

Author:Simon, Ed;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Cernunnos
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

With arresting chiaroscuro, English painter Thomas Lawrence continued in the trend (quickly transforming into a tradition) of depicting Lucifer as a strong, muscular, and gorgeous classical hero in his 1797 painting (also entitled) Satan Summoning His Legions, housed at the gallery of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Mammon, Mulciber, and Moloch all serve logistical roles in the government and economy of hell, even while they disagree with their leader on the proper course of action to take. Mulciber, for example, operates as the chief architect of hell, and the demon who designed Pandemonium, with Milton drawing the character from Greek mythology; while Moloch, the bull-headed god of the ancient Philistines and Carthaginians, advocates for total war against heaven, burnishing his reputation as the demon to whom children were burnt in sacrifice. Mammon, by contrast, is more cowardly than rageful. True to his role as the demonic incarnation of avarice, he initially rejects the calls to a new war, seeing military incursion as a risk to the accumulation of wealth. “Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell/From Heav’n,” as Milton describes him, “for ev’n in Heav’n his looks and thoughts/Were always downward bent, admiring more/The riches of Heav’n’s pavement, trodden gold, /Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed/In vision beatific.” Milton’s respect is clear, for though Lucifer waged war against the Lord, there’s a dignity afforded to Satan that’s denied to baser and cruder demons like greedy Mammon.

No character in Paradise Lost can match the full intensity of the greatest of demons, however. Not Beelzebub, or Belial, not Mulciber, Mammon, or Moloch. None of the archangels as rendered by Milton are as three-dimensional—Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael all fall far short of him. Adam and Eve are flat when compared to the Serpent, and the abstractions of Sin, Death, and Chaos seem more allegory than personality when measured against Lucifer. Christ appears as a sanctimonious prig and God a boring authoritarian when placed in contrast to the greatest character of English literature, for against all of them, Milton’s Lucifer is a triumph who rewrites the age itself. Never has such pathos been imbued unto a loser, never has such nobility been imparted to the rebel. “Alone the dreadful voyage; till at last/Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised/Above his fellows, with monarchal pride/Conscious of highest worth.”

Milton was, after all, a revolutionary, and one who advocated for the death of a king. Not only that, but the partisan of what would ultimately be a failed revolution, writing Paradise Lost in the seventh year of the reign of his adversary’s son, imagining that “Incensed with indignation Satan stood/Unterrified, and like a comet burned.” Blake’s contention regarding Milton is, despite the latter’s Christianity, hard not to find convincing.

Lucifer is at the center of any critique of Paradise Lost over the years, though the correct way to interpret him is ever variable. Arguably the demon of Milton’s imagination is the progenitor of much of what would come to be called the “left hand path” of theurgy in the Romantic era; that is occultism that embraced the potentiality of black magic.

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