Angel

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“”Angels, shit!

—George Carlin, on people still believing in angels

Angels are the minor deities of the Abrahamic religions, capable of amazing feats, but not as powerful as the major deities like God and Jesus. (One notable exception to this definition comes to you courtesy of the Jehovah's Witnesses, who believe that Jesus was the Archangel Michael before his birth and became Michael again after his death.)

The concept of angels evolved along with an increasingly complex imagining of the nature of God. At first, Yahweh was a hands-on sort of fellow who walked in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, had to "go down" to see what the humans were up to at Babel, appeared to Abraham as a man, and even wrestled Jacob all night without pinning him for a three-count. The Elohist source of Biblical texts had a slightly more exalted view of God: every time he appeared to men it was through a non-anthropomorphic device like a burning bush, which was called "The Angel of the LORD". When the Israelites rejected divine warnings and established a monarchy, angels began to take on the roles of courtiers and soldiers in heaven

By the time of the post-Exile period, as Jewish priests began to piece together the Yahwist and Elohist documents with Deuteronomy and their own home-grown stuff, God had been elevated even higher into the ionosphere, such that he didn't even show up as weird manifestations. He remained far off in heaven, and now the "Angel of the LORD" was one of many independent, winged, humanoid creatures who shuttled messages from God to the Earth. They even had names such as Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, Azrael, Punky Punkael, and the like.

Biblical depictions

Depiction of an angel from the 1500s.

Angels as they appear in the Bible are a very curious bunch. Sometimes they look like people, as the ones who visited Lot did, and were presumably extremely good-looking, considering the entire town wanted to roger them senseless. Sometimes they look like six-winged monstrosities that kiss burning coals, like the ones that Isaiah saw. Sometimes they were wheels in the sky with many eyes or a mix of wings, human or animal heads, and eyes, like those seen by Ezekiel.

They also did bizarre things. Some of them merely imparted information, like the heralds of Jesus. Others, however, either killed people (including babies) or else wrestled people to the ground.

They were apparently extremely terrifying to look at, and almost always preface anything they have to say with the remark "Do not fear", owing to the fact that they most often resemble something out of a work by H.P. Lovecraft.

Judaism and later Christianity has classified them on different hierarchies. Of course, there are many different ideas on where to put an angel who has received a name.

Bad angels

While most people think of angels as being of pure holiness and light (a Victorian-era image), note that they are not all good. According to both Christianity and Islam, a substantial number of angels rose up against God and were punished by being sent down to either Earth or Hell. In Christianity, it was because they wanted the same power as God. According to traditional Islam, it was because they refused to bow down before Adam, the first man. An odd A distinctive splinter-group, the Yezidi, claim that because they refused to bow before anyone other than God, these angels were in fact exalted. No matter which version you go with, Satan is the leader of these renegade angels.

There were also the grigori, or watchers, a class of angels with the job of keeping an eye on humanity. Some got a little too attached and started fornicatin' with their charges, fathering the nephilim, a race of half-human demigods (including Goliath). For this, they were thrown out of Heaven.

The aptly named Angel Moroni played a major role in inventing the Mormon religion. For this, Moroni is universally considered the worst angel of all time.

Angelic names

Most angel names end in the suffix -el, which in Hebrew means "God." In the 1800s, many magicians would claim to summon the power of angels to help them perform strange feats. In order to be really impressive, they made up lots and lots of new angels by adding el to the end of nonsense, like Jor-el and Kal-el (wait, that's comic book characters, sorry).

Angel worship

Most Christians and Muslims refuse to worship angels, claiming that only the supreme god is worthy. However, an increasing number of neopagans have begun worshipping and supplicating angels, either in place of or in addition to traditional gods. Traditional neopagans greatly frown on this practice, claiming that it makes claims to neopaganism meaningless, but at least one really popular neopagan writer (Silver Ravenwolf) has openly endorsed it, particularly as a way for young neopagans to hide their true faith.

Guardian angel

Your guardian angel is a special angel assigned to look after you personally during your life. Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism include belief in guardian angels. A lady claims that when she was upset and stressed out, she had an apparition in the middle of the night. No, it couldn't have been a dream, lucid dream, hallucination, sleep paralysis, overactive imagination, or fiction dressed up as fact — or, for that matter, some spirit or lowercase-g god or something yet more obscure originating from one of the world's massive number of religions that don't include angels and have just about as much credibility as the ones that do. It had to have been her guardian angel. Anecdotal evidence like that abounds, but somehow, proper proof is lacking.

Groups and categories

Judaism, Catholicism, Islam, and Zoroastrians each have ranking systems for supernatural beings and angels. These beings are typically grouped by their power and authority, with the most powerful and authoritative at the top of the hierarchy.

Angel therapy

Angel therapy involves the idea that our guardian angels can help us achieve better health and happiness. As is often the case, this idea tends to be pushed by people who've borrowed the words "God" and "angel" from the Bible, but then pretty much disregarded the rest of the book. Among its most famous proponents is princess Märtha Louise of Norway, as of 2023 fourth in the line of succession to the Norwegian throne and avid proponent of all things woo and holistic. She runs a rather popular "angel school", Astarte, which teaches students how to get in touch with the angels. By contrast, Doreen Virtue talks to angels on your behalf.

See also

• Spirit guide
• Incubus and succubus myths
• Enochian, John Dee's Angelic language.
• Earth angels