Lucifer
3 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Lucifer. All 3 are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)
Literally light-bringer, a name applied to the conception of the devil, who has often been likened to a fallen star or angel. The Miltonic conception of Lucifer as a force potent for good or evil, one who might have done good greatly, intensely proud and powerful exceedingly, is one which is inconsistent with enlightenment. represents simply the absence of good; a negative not a positive entity. He He presides over the east, according to the ideas of the old magicians. He was invoked on Mondays, in a circle in the centre of which was his name. As the price of his complaisance in appearing to the magician he asked only a mouse. Lucifer commands Europeans and Asiatics. He appears in the shape of a beautiful child. When he is angry his face is flushed, but there is nothing monstrous about him. He is, according to some students of demonology, the grand justiciary of Hades. He is the first to be invoked in the litanies of the Sabbath . (See Devil-worship.)
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the morning star. A name given to the planet Venus when she Also a name commonly, though inappropriately, given to the prince of darkness; Satan. Also a term originally applied to matches tipped with a mixture of chlorate of potash and sulphuret of antimony, which were inflamed by friction on a piece of emery paper. These have been superseded by a variety of mixtures containing phosphorus. In ornithology, a humming bird of Mexico and the S. W. of the United States. It has a forked tail and its throat feathers form a ruff. LUCIUS II., Pope, succeeded Celestine II. in 1144, led out his troops to suppress a disturbance, and was killed by a paving-stone, in 1145. was the first Pope plected solely by the cardinals, in consequence of which his reign was very turbulent. He died an exile in Verona in 1185.
1000 Classical Characters (1900)
The name of the planet Venus , or morning star. It is called Lucifer when appearing in the morning before the sun, but when it appears after its setting it is called Hesperus. Lucilius, C. A Roman knight, who is regarded as the first satirical writer among the Romans. Of thirty satires which he wrote only a few verses remain. He died at Naples в. c. 103.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The identification the Occultism volume took for granted in 1920 "a name applied to the conception of the devil" has largely dissolved in the century since. Modern translations of the Bible almost all drop the word: where the King James Version rendered Isaiah 14:12 "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning," the Revised Standard Version (1952), the New International Version and their successors give "Day Star" or "morning star," and mainstream scholarship reads the passage as a taunt against a Babylonian king rather than an account of Satan's fall. Collier's other senses have parted ways too: the friction match tipped with chlorate of potash, still worth defining in 1921, is a museum object, while the Lucifer hummingbird of Mexico and the American Southwest is alive and well as Calothorax lucifer. The oldest sense, Venus as the morning star, is the one that has not budged at all.
Written for this edition, 2026.