Sublime

Lucifer here represents the intellectual mind without the illumination of the spiritual mind; therefore it is “the false light.” The false light is finally overcome and redeemed by the true light of the soul, called the Second Logos or Christ. The secret processes by which the Luciferian intellect is transmuted into the Christly intellect constitut

Lucilius, the addressee of both the Natural Questions and Letters to Lucilius. Little is known about Lucilius himself. Seneca is our only source for his life, and the letters do not give much substantial information about him.

Look, O LORD, and see how worthless I have become. 12 Is it nothing to you,[2] all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow, which was brought upon me, which the LORD inflicted on the day of his fierce anger.

Lucilius is presented as setting out to make progress in philosophy, in search of advice from one who has progressed just a little further down the same road. He is, we learn, considering giving up his political life for philosophical retirement—a situation suspiciously like Seneca’s own recent past, such that some commentators have suspected that

Cast your burden[114] on the LORD, and he will sustain you;

As Tarquinius Superbus fled, the story goes, Brutus and, before his imminent exile, Lucretia’s husband, Collatinus, straight away became the first consuls of Rome.

After the cremation, Livia – now called Augusta, because Augustus had formally adopted her in his will – rewarded with the sum of a million sesterces the man who swore that he had seen Augustus soaring to heaven. Augustus was now a god.