Offerings to Lucifer: what the grimoires record and what is practised today

One question, two answers

People who ask what offerings are made to Lucifer usually expect a ready-made list. But the written tradition says little, and what is practised today is almost entirely modern. Separating the two is the best way to start.

What the grimoires record

In the classic grimoires, the relationship with Lucifer is not one of worship. The magician commands in the name of God and, when he offers something, it is as payment or as part of a deal.

• Grimorium Verum. Lucifer is the first of the three great chiefs. The book recommends giving the spirits some small thing in return for their service, such as a coin, a scrap of paper or an object, and insists the magician never give anything of himself.
• Grand Grimoire. The magician negotiates with Lucifuge Rofocale, Lucifer's minister. The book is famous for its pact scene, in which the magician refuses the spirit's demands and compels it, by the power of the divine names, to hand over a treasure.

These texts date from the 18th and 19th centuries and were sold in popular editions. Owen Davies shows that they fed the image of the pact more than they recorded any real devotion. The overview is in Lucifer in the grimoires.

Contemporary Luciferian practice

Devotion to Lucifer as a figure of light and knowledge is modern. It comes from 19th-century Romanticism, which turned Milton's rebel into a hero, and from 20th-century currents such as the Fraternitas Saturni. The historian Ruben van Luijk traces this transformation in Children of Lucifer (2016).

Among Luciferian practitioners today, the most common offerings are:

• Light. Candles, often on days or hours of Venus, since Lucifer is the morning star. See the planetary hours and the guide to candle colour meanings.
• Incense. Resins such as frankincense, myrrh and benzoin.
• Drink and flowers. Red wine and flowers are common, with no fixed pattern.
• Personal work. This is the most characteristic offering: study, discipline, a work of art, a habit overcome, a project finished and dedicated. In Luciferian logic, the best offering is your own transformation.

Precautions

• Do not mix traditions you do not know. Some lines of Quimbanda work with entities whose names are linked to Lucifer, but within an Afro-Brazilian tradition with its own foundations, hierarchy and initiation. A Quimbanda offering is learned in a terreiro, not from an article.
• No blood, no animals. The classic grimoires give no basis for this in relation to Lucifer, and it is not needed.
• Be wary of "guaranteed formulas". Anyone selling a pact with a guaranteed result is selling the Grand Grimoire in an internet edition.

Going further

The difference between commanding, worshipping and allying is at the heart of the debate between currents; see Luciferianism and Satanism and the guide to Luciferianism.