Seduced by the False Philosopher

Hidden Meanings in Paradise Lost

May 25, 2025

Home sweet home… (*Hell* by François de Nomé, 1622, source)

Exiled from Heaven for rebelling against God, the angel Lucifer falls into Hell and gathers his followers to make a new home out of his prison—and so Satan, the arch-fiend, is born. Far from broken, he continues to stick by his convictions and oppose God.

Paradise Lost gets little attention compared to other classics but the words Milton has given Satan are some of the most famous in literary history.

(...) thou, profoundest Hell,
Receive thy new possessor - one who brings
A mind not to be changed by place or time.
The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. (1.254)

To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell:
Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven. (1.263)

These words have fascinated me for a long time. Some weeks ago, I finally tackled Paradise Lost to find out where they came from. I was hooked.

Milton’s Satan knows of the power of the mind, has ideas about governance, and is described as beautiful and charming even after his fall from Heaven – what’s not to love? It was baffling to discover this portrayal of Satan. Paradise Lost retells the biblical story of Adam and Eve submitting to the temptation of the snake. As a reader, I’m not supposed to like the villain – or am I?

Apparently I’m not the only one suspecting hidden meanings in this work.

I have a feeling, just a sense, that something much stranger than the double intention of a subtext runs through Paradise Lost: that Milton’s judgments denigrate what his representations magnify, that his characters contradict his condemnations and justifications.1

Encouraged, I decided to dig deeper into possible interpretations. First, I wanted to know more about Milton’s religious views.

The Apostate

Milton was a reformed Christian or protestant. One possibility is that through rewriting a well-known Biblical story, he sought to criticise orthodox Christianity. Consider, for example, his portrayal of Heaven vs. Hell.

Heaven is portrayed as an absolute monarchy, realm of eternal bliss and harmony, where the angels praise every statement of God or the Son with sweet music and song. There is no criticism, no debate. Moral good, by definition, is uneventful and unchanging, light without shadow.

Hell, on the other hand, is a republic of equals, characterised by universal human rights such as free speech and liberty. One of the first things we see Satan doing after his arrival is call his leaders together to discuss what is to be done next. Thirteen of his generals are named and described in detail, as opposed to only four archangels of Heaven.

Satan is no monarch but the first among equals.

Or if not equal all, yet free,
Equally free; for orders and decrees
Jar not with liberty, but well consist.
Who can in reason then or right assume
Monarchy over such as live by right
His equals, if in power and splendor less,
In freedom equal? (5.791)

There is philosophy, healthy debate on topics such as providence, free will, and fate. At the same time, Milton dismisses Hell as “vain wisdom all, and false philosophy”. One has to wonder which was his honest opinion—the vivid portrayal or the dismissal that feels like an afterthought?

As Hell remains evil and Heaven good, Milton subverts their ethical meaning.

The poem abounds in conversions of good to bad and bad to good, in missed intentions and antithetical transformations. Our labor must be, says the Arch-Fiend, “Out of our evil seek to bring forth good… And out of good still to find means to evil” (1.163). On the brink of Paradise, it is no longer transformation he intends but identification: “Evil be thou my good” (4.110); here the distinction between good and evil is not, as in Hell, perverted but simply obliterated. The angels, on the other hand, sing in unison: “his evil / Thou usest, and from thence creat’st more good” (7.615), and God repeats it, meaning just the opposite from Satan. How is the human reader not to be absorbed into all this relativistic confusion?2

Confusion or not, I suspect anyone reading Paradise Lost would rather live in self-determined, lively Hell than in the vapid, never-changing monarchy of Heaven. Was Milton criticising orthodox Christianity or just the secular government he lived in?

In the end, Milton gave us no reason to believe he wasn’t a devout—though reformed—Christian3 but he was definitely criticising the institutions of church and monarchy. He was so vocal in his political views and criticism of the corrupt King Charles I. that he was persecuted and temporarily imprisoned. Only his reputation as a great poet saved him from being executed.4

It seems safe to say that Milton portrayed Heaven and Hell as he did only to emphasise his political opinions, not to renounce his religious beliefs.

The Gnostic

Milton was a follower of Calvinism, which teaches the sovereignty of God and the authority of the Bible. However, readers of Paradise Lost have suggested that he was actually a Gnostic and that his work serves as an abstract of Gnostic beliefs, hidden under a thin veneer of orthodox Christianity.

What is Gnosticism? Originally, it was a Christian sect most active during the first century AD, claiming hidden knowledge as the basis for salvation. According to the Gnostic worldview, the world and humanity was not created by the one and only God but by an evil demiurge called Yaldabaoth. We are flawed but also carry the divine spark from the true divine realm within us, making it possible for us to achieve divinity. The snake tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is actually a divine messenger helping them break free from the material world by opening their eyes to the truth.5

This is the exact opposite of the orthodox Christian belief that salvation is available to everyone through faith and study of the Bible as the only source of truth6. It’s certainly one explanation for our fascination with Milton’s Satan and his rebellion against the tyranny of an unforgiving and jealous God today.

The Gnostics were a Christian group that existed after Jesus until a few centuries AD. Before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library in Egypt in 1945 that held a wealth of information on early Christian communities and schools of thought, there were little sources on Gnosticism available to us.

This makes it difficult to believe that Milton could have known enough about Gnosticism to pack its worldview into Paradise Lost. Indeed, I could find no evidence of Milton having been a Gnostic.

The Occultist

Milton might not have been a Gnostic but could he have been an occultist? Paradise Lost features many references to alchemy and astrology.

Hell is associated with sulphur, whose alchemical meanings include the soul of a thing, consciousness, intellect, or the true will.
Hell and Paradise are divided by a “dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss”—initiation into occult knowledge or practice is often described as “crossing the abyss”.
Times of day or seasons are given in terms of astrology, such as “when the Sun with Taurus rides”.

Milton lived from 1608 to 1674, in the Age of Discovery. After the Middle Ages, characterised by violent contempt for so-called heathen or demonic practices, the Renaissance brought with it a breath of fresh air. Magic came to be seen as hidden knowledge to be used responsibly by scientists and scholars for good.

Alchemy in particular commanded wide respect. Its known practitioners include many physicians and scientists such as Isaac Newton. Astrology was popular as well, with known practitioners such as Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Nostradamus. Many Renaissance scholars practiced some form of magic (Hermeticism seemed to have been popular) and studied hidden knowledge alongside natural sciences such as medicine or physics.7

Even if Milton wasn’t a practicing magician or occultist himself, Paradise Lost tells us that he was intimately familiar with alchemy, astrology, and other occult fields of study that would’ve been taboo in the Middle Ages but came to be more acceptable in his lifetime. At the same time, his work also includes Middle Age notions of demons inspired by the Bible and related apocrypha.

Grimoires such as Malleus Maleficarum were written by clergymen as instructions on how to summon demons. Summoning was fine as long as you exercised control over the demon—selling your soul to it was considered black magic. Demons are listed and described in detail in works such as The Key of Solomon and in the Ars Goetia of The Lesser Key of Solomon.8

The common Christian notion is that God has complete control over the actions of Satan and his demons. They can’t defy His commands and even their efforts to tempt humanity into sin only serve to glorify Him.

Milton, too, could have portrayed Satan as appealing to readers because that is what Satan is supposed to be. He’s supposed to tempt us into accepting his words and following his way.

In other words, Milton could have constructed Paradise Lost in such a way that through reading it, the reader is faced with the same decision as Adam and Eve: Tempted by Satan the snake to eat the forbidden fruit, they are free to risk a taste or keep their faith and trust in God. We’ve been given free will and so it’s our decision how to interpret and act on this story.

In light of everything we know about this work and its historical context, I believe this might have been Milton’s intended meaning—adding another layer to his mastery of poetry and storytelling.

If you’ve read Paradise Lost, what do you think Milton was trying to say? Were you seduced by Satan too? And what was your favourite quote? Let’s chat about this beautiful classic in the comments!

Straw Hat Scribe

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