Angels (and Occasionally Demons)

Angels, as far as Christianity is concerned, have been a source of debate for as long as the religion has existed.  Do they have a gender?  Are they simply God's messengers or do they shape the destinies of those here on Earth?  There is some speculation by experts that angels may have even had sexual relations with humans.

 

The idea of angels has changed a great deal throughout the ages, in both their abilities and their significance to everyday people.  They play a role in other religions as well.  They appear at key events in the Bible.  The angel Gabriel delivers the news of the immaculate conception to Mary, and angel informs the shepherds of Christ's birth, and, according to the gospels, angels were present during the crucifixion and the resurrection. Gods and spirits, in ancient religions were frequently portrayed with animal-like characteristics, sometimes given horns, or the head of another animal, or even wings.  Winged gods were depicted during the time of the pharaohs, long before the birth of Christ.  They were often figures that assisted the soul in getting from this life to the next.

 

In the Greek and Roman world, winged figures not unlike today's familiar angels were often depicted in statues and art.  Some examples of this is Nike, the winged goddess of victory, or Cupid, a winged child with a bow and arrow, or Hermes, the messenger god.

 

The most famous of all of the angels in today's Christian culture is Gabriel.  His name literally mean "God's hero", which suggests that he is an archangel.  This same angel appeared to Mohammed and recited the verses of the Qur'an to him.  The Qur'an is the holy book of Islam.  He also takes the role of messenger earlier in the Hebrew Bible.  The Christian Bibe also tells of Gabriel escorting certain souls from this life to the next.  The world has traditionally been thought of with three levels: the underworld, the Earth, and the heavens.

 

During the Middle Ages, the hierarchy of the heavens was depicted in many pieces of art all across the globe.  The idea that there were levels of angels came from a monk named Psuedo-Dionysius.  He divided the angels into 9 levels and ranked them in the order of their importance.  The top levels were the Seraphim and Cherubim, who were closest to God and existed only to worship him.  The next levels were the Virtues, who performed miracles, then the Thrones, who were the bringers of justice.  After that, there were the Dominions, who regulated the heavens, then the Powers, who protect mankind from evil, and the Principalities, who looked after the welfare of nations.  Last, were the archangels and angels, serving as guides and messengers to human beings.  It seems odd now that they should be so low on the list.  The reason for the hierarchy of angels was because it mirrored the hierarchy of the Catholic church.  These choirs were relevant to Christianity until about the 15th century.  The original book that described these levels, "Celestial Hierarchy", named 7 archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Chamuel, Jophkile, and Zadkiel.  The latter four were eliminated in the 8th century because they had first appeared in apocryphal works.

 

St. Thomas Aquinas was a prolific about angels and his writings answered many questions about the nature of angels such as: Do angels eat?  How fast do they move? Do they die? Do they have children?  How do they communicate with one another? (and, of course, the most infamous) How many angels can stand on the head of a pin?  (The answers to these questions, apparently, are: they eat manna, they move at the speed of thought, they cannot die, I believe their children are called the Nephilim, they talk through mere act of will, and possibly an infinite number of angels, because they take up no space.)

 

However, in the 16th century came the Protestant reformation and the idea of angels was not at all popular with the Protestants.  In scripture, when Gabriel visits Mary, there is no physical description of the angel.  Also Mary never says that she has seen an angel, only that she has heard an angel.  The idea of what angels look like has come almost exclusively from artists.  The Hebrew Bible shows the angels as having taken on the guise of men, so no wings, however, when they are shown in artwork, this is a staple of their appearance.  This may be because the Romans began to adopt Christianity as its state religion.  Thus, the angels because more and more female in their way of dress and sprouted wings.

 

No more than three angels are referred to by name in either Christian, Jewish, and Islamic scripture.  However, there are literally thousands of angels who show up in more obscure texts.  Many stories of them and their abilities conflict with one another.  None of the angels in the texts are described as having wings.  They walk just as ordinary humans walk.  Likewise, fallen angels have also been depicted in numerous ways.  Often they have horns, leathery wings and share traits with serpents or dragons.  However, in early Christian art, demons were depicted as small, dark, fly-type creatures.  This represented how small demons were when compared to the might of God.  The first appearance that we see of angels in the Hebrew Bible is when God calls the cherubim and the flaming sword to guard the garden of Eden.

 

There are different stories of fallen angels and how they came to fall.  The most traditionally known version comes from Revelations and talks about the Great Fall and how Satan and his angels came to be cast out from heaven.  The first time that Satan appears in the Hebrew Bible is in the Book of Job.  His name means "the accuser" and he appears, not as an enemy of God, but a devoted servant.  In fact, Satan, on God's orders, is the one who forces suffering upon Job.  There is another story of Lucifer being cast out for the sin of pride and bringing a third of the heavenly host with him.

 

In the earlier parts of the Hebrew Bible, angels are poorly defined figures that are shrouded in mystery and have no real description.  However, in the 6th century, the Jewish people were suffering and turned to angels to help them out of their perilous times.  Thus, the idea of angels would undergo an immense reimagining.  Around this time, Jewish literature began to emerge that vividly depicts angels as heroic protectors of the Jewish people.  They become more defined and tangible than the mysterious figures in previous texts.  They acquire different names, purposes, and personalities.  One example of this is the fact that there is a detailed description of the angel Gabriel in the book of Daniel.

"I looked up and saw a man dressed in linen clothing, with a belt of pure gold around his waist.  His body looked like a precious gem.  His face flashed like lightning, and his eyes flamed like torches.  His arms and feet shone like polished bronze, and his voice roared like a vast multitude of people."

-Daniel: 10:6

During the Jewish exile, the angels acquired their most notable trait: wings.  This may have been adapted from the winged gods of the Babylonians, whom the Jews were living with at the time.  Most of the Apocrypha, where most of the angels appear, was written during this time.  It is here where angels are endowed with their extraordinary supernatural powers and also here where they become the protective guardians that we are familiar with today.

 

Along with the increased fascination with angels came a backlash against them.  People began praying to angels instead of  to God and it became almost pagan in nature.  The officials felt that the worship of angels had begun to take precedent over the worship of the Lord.  This is the reason why none of the Apocrypha appears in the Hebrew Bible and has, as a result, faded into obscurity.  The rabbis excluded the text where almost all of the evil angels and most of the named angels appeared.  Many of the Apocrypha ( literally meaning "the hidden books") borrow characters from the Hebrew Bible, but often added things to the traditionally known stories.  Sometimes they added in angels and demons to embroider the accounts.   One of the best examples of this comes from the Book of Enoch, where the prophet Enoch journeys to heaven and describes the angels in vivid detail.  Enoch appears in only three verses in the Bible in Genesis.

 

The first book of Enoch tells of lustful angels who seduce beautiful human women , which enrages God.  The angels then send Enoch to heaven to plead their case to God.  The Lord recognizes Enoch's righteousness but is not persuaded, so He sends a massive flood to destroy the angels illicit offspring.  However, God still looks favorably upon Enoch and transforms him into Metatron, the super-angel (I know.  Stay with me.)  The second book of Enoch describes a demon named Samael, who is called the prince of all demons.  He is also sometimes called "the Angel of Death".

Satan's fall does not actually appear anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, but appears in great detail in an apocryphal text called "the Life of Adam and Eve".  God orders all of the angels to worship Adam, but Satan refuses, claiming that he was made first and is therefore of higher rank.  Satan is then expelled from heaven and later becomes the prince of darkness that we al know today.  This is the basis for the story of Milton's "Paradise Lost".

 

Similarly, Lilith only appears in apocryphal texts.  Lilith appears as a result of the Hebrew Bible containing two separate accounts of God creating womankind. Genesis 1:27 says, "So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."

However, Genesis 2:21-23 says, "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man."

 

The explanation given in several of the apocryphal texts is that Adam had a first wife, before Eve, named Lilith.  She refused to obey Adam on the topic of sexual relations.  She was more powerful and more willful than Eve was, and Adam did not like her disobedience, so they parted ways, but she cursed Eve out of jealousy.  She was banished to an unknown ocean and then became the mother of all of the she-demons and married Samael.

 

In the New Testament, there are very few mentions of angels during the life of Jesus Christ.  In fact, despite popular belief, there is no mention of any kind of angelic being in the Nativity.  They appear to announce the birth and the resurrection.  However, at the resurrection, the angel no longer appears particularly angelic.  he simply looks like a young man dressed in white.

 

These early Christians also adopted some apocryphal books from Judaism, which they granted full status as sacred canonical texts.  The most prominent of these is the Book of Tobit.  The central character of this book is the archangel Raphael.  He serves as a mentor to Tobias, the son of Tobot, who is on a mission to find a cure for his father's blindness.  The interesting part of this book, from an angel-centric perspective is that Raphael does not simply arrive to deliver a message then leave.  Instead Raphael and Tobias have an ongoing relationship.  The central villain of the Book of Tobit is an evil angel named Ashmedai (also called Asmodeus).  He is actually the embodiment of a Zoroastrian god Aesma, the god of wrath.  He also appears in the Kabbalah, the Talmud, the Testament of Solomon, Malleus Mallificarum, and the Dictionnaire Infernal.  The Book of Tobit was later demoted to the Apocrypha when the Protestants broke from the Church in the 1500s, which officially removed Raphael from the list of canonical archangels, leaving only Gabriel and Michael.  Today, Raphael can only be found in the Catholic version of the Old Testament.

 

Early Christians were beginning to face persecution by the Romans and, just as the Jews had found comfort in the angels in their times of trouble, so too did the Christians.  Thus came by Book of Revelations.  However, instead of images of compassionate guardians, these angels were fierce warriors, carrying out the divine retribution of God on a host of unbelievers.  Revelations tells of a great war that erupts among the heavenly host.

"Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.  But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven."
-Revelation 12:7
This passage tells of Satan's expulsion from heaven, along with the angels who fought alongside him.  Michael defeats "the deceiver", but the Earth is still doomed to experience its final days.  It describes the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  These are angels that sit at the right hand of God and will kill approximately one fourth of the world's population.  The angel Michael, though he is predominately described in war scenarios, is often shown holding scales and weighing souls and their destiny to heaven or hell.

 

When persecution of Christians died down, the belief in the coming apocalypse died down with it, and Christianity began to rise in popularity in Europe.  The belief in angels stayed strong throughout this time.  It is during this time when the nature of angels was discussed, as shown above.  It was theorized at this time that angels were made out of a substance called "subtle matter".  It is things like this and more that St. Thomas Aquinas wrote about.  It was during this time when Dante, a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas would write down his opinions on angels and heaven in the world famous book "The Divine Comedy".

 

Islam also has a distinctive depiction of angels in it's own holy books.  Islam carries a similar ancestry and mythology to Christianity.  Many of the same heritage that appears in Judaism and Christianity appears in Islam, even in the Qur'an (which means the Recitation).  This includes a belief in angels.  Gabriel, in the Qur'an, is known as Jibrael the angel of revelation.  He escorts Mohammed on the Night Journey, where he travels through the heavens, encouraged by angels, and eventually meets with God.  This is where the ritualized Muslim prayers come from.  The Qur'an also mentions being called "watchers" that greatly resemble the idea of guardian angels.

 

Islam also has its fair share of evil forces.  Shayateen, not unlike the Jewish Satan, are adversaries of humans, but not God.  Most of the shayateen, those who seduce humanity from the ways of the Prophets, are called jinn.  The most prominent of the jinn, and the closest to the Christian-style Satan is Iblis.  He, too, refused to bow to Adam when ordered by God and was banished.  His name before his banishment was Azazel.

 

Islam also has an image of what judgment day will look like.  However, instead of the big showdown between good and evil like in the Christian mythology, they envision an angel named Israfil blows his horn twice, triggering the resurrection of the world.  There is then a radical transformation of heaven and earth.  The dead rise to face their final judgment.  God and the angels come down and the judging takes place.

 

The idea of using magic to invoke angels transcends religion, but much of its origin can be traced to the Jewish Apocrypha.  One of these, the Book of Razael, takes its name from an angel whose name means "secret of God".  The book first appears during medieval times, but legend says that it dates back to the dawn of creation and Adam himself.  This book claims to be the very first, and the only book ever written in heaven, given to Adam.  It contains things like a magical alphabet for summoning angels and a lot of incantations for asking angels to perform various supernatural feats.  A number of similar spells are attributed to King Solomon.  Legend has it that, as a result of his memorable wisdom, he was able to control demons.  The secrets that he learned from his various interactions with these paranormal beings was compiled in a book called the Testament of Solomon.  It was filled with incantations.

 

The mixing of magic and religion was also accepted by the Coptic church, which was Egypts form of Christianity.  Though they believed in one god, their culture was greatly shaped by the ancient religion if the pharaohs.  The angels took the place of the numerous gods.  The Coptic text called "In Praise of Michael the Archangel" contains several spells and rituals for summoning the Supreme Guardian.  The book lists 21 specific concerns that Michael can address.

 

The Gabriel that appears in these texts was frequently sought as well for his reputation as an other-worldly, extraordinary, and powerful character.  Another Coptic text, "The Magical Book of Mary and the Angels" invokes nine other angels with lesser known, exotic names.  The text invokes these angels in groups of three.  These angels address all of the problems that mere humans cannot solve.

 

The belief in invoking angels for magic is shared with Islam, although its texts are not as well known as those of Judeo-Christian mythology.  While some of this magic invokes the power of angels, some of it is to specifically ward off evil angels.  One of these would be Lilith.  When Lilith was banished, she vowed to kill Adam and Eve's descendants for all time, so for centuries, the death of an infant was blamed on Lilith.  Magical amulets were made to ward her off and protect babies from harm or to invoke the three angels who protected Adam and Eve from Lilith in the book of Razael.

 

However, by the 17th and 18th centuries, angels no longer carried the heft that they once had.  The witch trials in Europe had lessened any sort of impact the belief had on the world and they became almost exclusively an art piece.  Even the cherubim, once fierce defenders of the garden of Eden were transformed into harmless flying babies.  With every passing century, angels are pushed further into irrelevance.