Light and Dark

The Canaanites - an ancient civilisation in what is now Israel/Palestine, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon - had a myth about a god called Helel, who vainly tried to supplant the supreme god and was condemned to rule the underworld as a punishment. Helel was associated with the planet we call Venus, which they observed appears as a 'morning star' for a while before dropping below the horizon and reappearing as an evening star

The Jewish prophet Isiah co-opted this myth as a metaphor for the ill-treatment of the Jews by the King of Babylon, and the fate that he forsees for a king who has esteemed himself too highly. This became part of Isiah chapter 14 in the Christian bible. When the translators of the English Reformation rendered the bible into English, they translated Helel as 'Lucifer' - the 'bringer of light' - the name by which the Romans called the planet Venus. A bit of confused theology about the biblical Satan - whose mythology also includes a fall from angelic grace into the underworld, after challenging the authority of god - led to the name 'Lucifer' being pinned on him, and it stuck. A pity, as 'bringer of light' is rather lovely

It was the Romans who associated the planet they called Lucifer with their goddess Venus. She was co-opted from the Greek love goddess Aphrodite, but built up to much greater importance - regarded as the mother of Aeneas and thus an ancestor of Romulus and Remus, the wolf-raised foundlings who founded Rome itself. Her importance was emphasised by attaching her name to the third brightest object in the sky, and it was her name that was chosen for the planet by western science

A legend attached to Saint Andrew (one of many!) has him journeying up the Dnieper river to the location of present-day Kyiv. Here, he preached to the 'Kievan Rus' - a Slavic people in today's Ukraine, Belarus and Western Russia - and prophesied the founding of a great Christian city. In a bitter irony, he thus became patron of both Ukraine and Russia. The Russian navy has St Andrew's cross as its ensign to this day

You could imagine a latter-day Isiah prophesying against an over-mighty Putin, foreseeing his fall into the abyss - perhaps by way of the international court at which the government of Isiah's people now find themselves arraigned. Isiah was not backward in applying coruscating criticism to his contemporary leaders of Israel either, preaching guilt and repentance. I feel he would have things to say today