by Larry Fyffe
In the Judeo-Christian Bible, the King of Babylon is compared to Lucifer – the King’s agonna fall because he rebels against the will of God Yahweh:
The religion known as Christianity equates Lucifer with the dark one, the Great Deceiver Satan. However, Luciferianism, (related to Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism) is a belief system having nothing to do with worshipping the biblical Devil. Instead, the followers of Luciferianism look up at the light coming the morning star, and conceive Venus as guardian of the Earth and it’s physical environment – a light in the darkness (akin to Jesus) that inspires every individual, each and every day, to seek out and test new ways of improving living conditions on Earth.
Similarly, in Greek and Roman mythology, Venus is an earthy symbol, the goddess of sex, fertility, love, and beauty.
Singer/songwriter Bob Dylan puts on a feedbag filled with notes and lyrics, and ruminates about the Poe-like lost lore of Lucifer, ‘personified’ as a female pony in a song called “New Pony”.
According to Dylan, on this macro-level of interpretation, the ideals of Dionysiac Luciferianism get broken – corrupted -, and are patched back together within the doctrines of Apollonian sun-centred Judaism, and it’s New Testament offshoot, Christianity:
On this interpretative level, Bob Dylan’s song paints Christianity, symbolized by the cross (X), as a religion of darkness because it condemns natural human behavior; nonetheless, it carries within some of its teachings the glowing embers of Lucifer’s Paradise Lost:
The Christian pony, to the narrator in the song, shines like Lucifer, and dances like Bo Diddley:
(Bob Dylan: New Pony)
Dylan messes with mythologies -Venus, the goddess of love, is there early in the morning. And you gotta serve somebody. There’s time for Lucifer, and there’s time for Jesus. In the personal mythology of poet William Blake, the bride of Luvah (Jesus) is the emanation Vala, the ‘shadowy female”:
(Bob Dylan: New Pony)
The writer of the lyrics, with humour and irony, plays word games with the central mysterious, mystical, and magical Christian command, ‘And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise” (Luke 6: 31):
Brought up in a Jewish family Dylan be, and the narrator in the song, transforms himself into a Jewish jockey – says he desires to jump on the brand new pill-box hat and the old crown of thorns worn by the starry-eyed ebony pony.
If my memory serves me well, the pony’s sister, named Sophia, was once fenced in vineyards by her other siblings, and compared by her lover, King Solomon, to “a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots”:
(Bob Dylan: New Pony)
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*Isaiah 14:12 that should be