Lord of Light

This is a song regarding Lucifer's role in God's plan.

The first stanza is Lucifer ruminating on a conversation he had with God, as he is trying to understand his place in Creation:

//There are secrets that you keep //There are secrets that you keep //There are secrets that you tell to me alone

God keeps His own council, although he oftentimes tells Lucifer far more than he tells the other angels, since Lucifer is the first among Angels.

//I can't reach things I can't see //You don't see this strange world //Quite the same as me //Don't deny me what I am //Nothing hidden still you fail to see the truth //These are things you can't reveal

Lucifer is frustrated by how opaque and hard to understand God's plans can be at times. God counters that he has hidden nothing, that "Nothing [is]' hidden", Lucifer just hasn't reached that level of enlightenment yet. Lucifer reflects that perhaps he is just incapable of understanding God's plan (These are things you can't reveal").

The speaker has changed from Lucifer to an unknown third party. This narrator is reflecting on how God's strange plan is for Lucifer to be the bad guy. Over the eons, Lucifer's confusion and insecurity over the role that God ordained for him turned into anger, as he felt that he was unfairly set up to be evil. In the Old Testament, there is no Lucifer, but there is a Satan, and Satan isn't actually a bad guy. His job is to test the faithfulness and righteousness of man, and report back to God. You can see this in the book of Job. Old Testamenet Satan isn't evil, he is playing a role ordained by God to try to cull the truly faithful from the wicked. As time goes on, Satan sees that humans consistently fail, and he is angered and frustrated; why pick on humans, and why make him do it? Satan morphs from a lawyer-like character into "the devil". Now he no longer tests humans on God's commands, but intentionally leads them to damnation as revenge against the role God forced him into:

//We are part of some strange plan //Why the slaughter of the brotherhood of man //Infernal sacrifice of hell //Fire breathing lead the way //Mounds of bodies as they all burn into one

Lucifer no longer wants to be the devil, and seeks once more to regain his original nature, that of a Being of Knowledge:

//Revenge is living in the past //Time to look into a new millennium

The narrator continue to discuss how Lucifer became "the devil".

//Spiral path leads through the maze //Down into the fiery underworld below //Fire breathing lead the way //Lucifer was just an angel led astray

This hints at the idea that Lucifer may not actually be all that bad, or if he currently is, can still be redeemed ("Lucifer was just an angel led astray"). I like to think that the implied story is that Lucifer initially tempted man on God's orders, and as time passed sought to tempt them with knowledge and free thought. Lucifer didn't like the games that God was playing, and felt that humans should be truly free. He started off trying to do a good thing, but as more time passed he grew as disillusioned with man as he did with God, because when humans took the offer of intellectual and spiritual freedom, they simply chose to do bad things. It's this disgust of God's authoritarian, dictatorial ways, and mankind's flawed ways that caused Lucifer to basically say "Fuck it. Fuck all of you" and turn to evil.

As discussed in the second stanza, Lucifer decided to forget his rveenge and try to aspire to being a being of Light and Knowledge again. Lucifer has walked away from being "evil", and is now fulfilling an earlier role, of being a guide to intellectual and spiritual freedom:

//Free your soul and let it fly //Give your life to the Lord of Light //Keep your secrets and rain on me //All I see are mysteries

When the narrator says "Keep your secrets and rain on me..." he is talking to God. This mirrors Lucifer's dissatisfaction in the first stanza. the narrator is saying that God is leading humans on with his vague talk of "plans" and "purpose"; in reality, He's making it up on a whim, and human shouldn't be free to explore and understand the world, and not chained the whims of one creature.

The narrator reflects on how humans have chosen to not take responsibility for their own actions by blaming their bad deeds on "the devil":

//We are not worthy in your black //And blazing eyes //We gather demons in the mirror every day //The bridge of darkness casts a //Shadow on us all //And all our sins to you we give this day

The narration shifts back to Lucifer, who still sees humans as having potential. he doesn't want them to become jaded and revengeful like he did. Lucifer knows that his time is numbered. Even though he has chosen to stop leading humans to damnation and instead lead them to Knowledge, he himself is still damned because he is opposing God. He wants humans to achieve a state of spiritual freedom, before their souls can be permanently locked down by God:

//Others wait their turn //Their lives were meant to last //Use yours wisely as the light is fading fast //Free your soul and let it fly //Mine was caught I couldn't try //Time returns again to punish all of us

Lucifer reflects on what it is like for himself and the angels that defected from God with him:

//We are cast out by our bloody father's hand //We are strangers in this lonely promised land //We are the shadows of the one unholy ghost //In our nightmare world the only one we trust