Raw material
So one of the things I've been working on a lot is developing the cross-connections between traditional Faery lore, what for clarity's sake I'll call folkloric Faery, and Feri tradition. I was working with folkloric Faery before I came to Feri Craft and I've always felt they belonged together. Lately I'm discovering that certain elements of Feri trad that felt alien before, because they weren't a big part of practice as I learned it in Vanthe, are coming home for me in unexpected ways as I find how they link into folkoric Faery.
One such thread is the Luciferian aspect of Feri trad. It was never a big focus in Vanthe. We didn't work with the Peacock Angel, really at all. They told me some stuff about Him, and passed some liturgy with the post-initiation dump ("Here's a bunch of stuff that belongs to the trad and you have a right to but we don't use"). I never 'felt' Lucifer, or Malik Ta'us as a presence; and I think part of the reason for that is that our focus was pretty strongly toward the Celtic sources, and He just didn't kinda fit in the mythological landscape. But. Recently (as in, last two years or so) I've gotten very curious. I've got good friends in the trad to whom the Luciferian current is quite central.
He started to take shape for me when I was reading up on Grail mythology (part of a whole 'nother line of investigation: the Guardians and elemental attributions and 'weapons' of the Craft etc) and I came across a range of sources in which the Holy Grail comes to Earth by way of Lucifer. Well! That's counterintuitive, eh? It comes to this: Lucifer is identified with the Light within the Land, which is brought into the Underworld from the Heavens by way of his fall. And here there is a connection with the Faery people too: they arrived with Lucifer, or in some variants they were the neutral angels who were cast out of Heaven but didn't fall all the way to Hell. This, of course, I remember from early studies of RJ Stewart's work in Faery/Underworld tradition, but for whatever reason hadn't connected to the Luciferian Feri thing before recently.
So. There's a lot here, a lot of different strands and variants of lore that feel connected and that I'm trying to collect and sort through in my mind:
*Lucifer rebels against God, falls into the Earth and becomes the Light within the Land
*Lucifer offers forbidden knowledge to humankind
*Prometheus rebels against the Gods, brings fire and forbidden knowledge to the Earth
*Malik Ta'us falls to Earth and teaches humanity about compassion beyond good and evil
*The hosts of Heaven are split in three: the rebellious angels that fall to Hell, the loyal angels that stay in Heaven, and the neutral angels that are cast out but fall only partway
*The neutral angels OR the fallen angels are identified with the Faery races and exist under the Earth
*The neutral angels/Faeries bring the Grail and Hallows to the Earth indicating truth beyond moral dualism
*The Grail itself is identified with a jewel falling from the crown of Lucifer; or all four Hallows are derived from this jewel
*Faery ballads identify Faery as an Otherworld which is neither Heaven nor Hell
*Tuatha de Danaan bring Four Treasures to Ireland which correspond closely to Grail Hallows
*Faeries in various ballads are said to "pay a tithe to Hell"
*Faery mystics in the Celtic Twilight era write about a fountain of fire from which the Faeries drink or which they tend
*Feri guardian below the land is called "Fire in the Earth" and associated with Underworld power and fire
*Guardians are identified with Nephilim of Biblical/apocryphal tradition and said to bring forbidden knowledge to humankind
*Guardians are also identified with Archangels or other angelic types
*Both Nephilim and Tuatha are associated with clouds and mist
Um, there's a lot more, too that is too inchoate or too vaguely recalled to write down at the moment. It's all weaving into something. I have a lot of work to do.