Touched by the Angels

Angels in most traditions are heavenly messengers, and modern pop culture has greatly exaggerated almost every feature. While it makes sense to assume that there are female or feminine angels, each one named in Abrahamic scriptural tradition is a man.

The word Angel comes from the Greek Aggelos (lit: messenger), and the Hebrew word Malak has the same meaning. 

In this episode we explore the groups of archangels listed in various sources, most notably Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, but also including Raguel, Sariel, Remiel, and the Metatron.

But more than just a handful of favorite messengers, there are also different kinds of angels, from the baby-faced Cherubim (think of the Renaissance Cupid, though Ezekiel gave them interchangeable animal faces), to the brilliantly dazzling Seraphim (aka fire-folk), to the cosmic horrors known as the Ophanim (the famous "biblically accurate angels" that are simply haunting wheels of eyes and wings and twisted metal)--that last one is dubious in angelic status....

Angels show up all over the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and the entire Quran is said to have been delivered by the same angel that brought Mary and Joseph the news of her pregnancy. In more recent times, works like Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy have contributed a lot to how we see angels in Western tradition.

Angel is also a fair label for demi-god-like beings in other traditions, such as the Devas of Dharmic tradition, the Vördr of Norse tradition, the Yazata (lit: holy) of Mazdeism (aka Zoroastrianism), and the Daemons of Greco-Roman tradition. We consider each of these, and how some are better fits than others for this label.

Interpreting Colossians 1:16 to contain a list of angels is ridiculous, and nobody should be that bad at reading.

All this and more....   

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[00:00:11] Katie Dooley: There's a fine. You can go to jail if you... And a fine. There's both.

[00:00:19] Preston Meyer: Oh, good.

[00:00:19] Katie Dooley: Both a fine and jail. If your phone goes off.

[00:00:23] Preston Meyer: That's a bad time.

[00:00:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It is. You could always ask an angel for help if you go to jail.

[00:00:34] Preston Meyer: Ah, there's a lot of stories of people meeting angels in jail. Makes you wonder about those angels, doesn't it?

[00:00:39] Katie Dooley: Right. Well, we're gonna explain more on today's episode of. 

[00:00:43] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast.

[00:00:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So. I like that. This is. I feel like we haven't done an episode like this in a minute where we talk about a whole bunch of. We talk about a concept in a whole bunch of religions.

[00:01:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it has been a minute.

[00:01:03] Katie Dooley: I'm excited. So we're talking about angels.

[00:01:09] Preston Meyer: Say it ainn't so.

[00:01:12] Katie Dooley: Or if you were a really bad speller in junior high an angle.

[00:01:16] Preston Meyer: I feel like. Yeah, I must have shared it on our discord this Christmas of somebody who shared a collection of angles that they brought to their family.

[00:01:25] Katie Dooley: Yeah, there was a girl in junior high with me. I won't call her a friend because she wasn't. But this was when everyone was on MSN, so you had everyone's email. And her email was sweet angle and then some number. I was like, oh boy.

[00:01:41] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. Spelling is important.

[00:01:45] Katie Dooley: Yeah. We all have those cringey emails.

[00:01:47] Preston Meyer: Well, it's like most people just cannot spell rogue.

[00:01:52] Katie Dooley: Almost every time I see somebody try to say rogue they spell rouge. Now, being a Star Wars fan in a French immersion program growing up, I was not going to make that mistake. Instead, I made all kinds of other mistakes of spelling words the French way in an English context.

[00:02:07] Katie Dooley: Well, that's good. Um, but speaking of words, tell us where the word angel comes from.

[00:02:13] Preston Meyer: So the word angel as it is known in English. Yes, the the word angel, as you know, it comes from the Greek word Angelos, spelt with no Ns but two G's. Huh? You can complain about that, but English does stupid things too. The word means messenger, which is speculated to have been derived from the older word for mounted courier, which I think is just a cool extra layer of meaning to that. The Hebrew word that typically gets translated into angel in the Greek Bibles is malak, which also means messenger. So there's also the last of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible prophets. In the Christian Bible format because remember they arrange the books differently is Malachi and he's got the perfect name it basically just means my messenger. Was that his name? We'll never know.

[00:03:20] Katie Dooley: Interesting. And yeah, messenger, mounted courier. I'm getting a lot of mailman vibes. Even. Malak. Malak. Malak. Yeah. Mailman.

[00:03:36] Preston Meyer: Most of the angels that we see in the Judeo-Christian tradition are men rather than women. So yeah, mailman's great. So the frustrating thing is that the ideas that come along with this word over centuries of thought and baggage collection there's there's a lot of variety and meaning. And most traditions have gotten to the point where the word doesn't mean messenger anymore. Uh, usually it it's just thought of as this is a demigod. The word means some sort of class of demigod, usually with multiple classes. We'll get into that later. And in a lot of religions, you'll see them treated basically as demigods that have dominion over various elements because they can't be gods, because usually you're looking at them in a monotheistic lens.

[00:04:36] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I can, especially when when you said it, we'll get into the hierarchy of the angels. But like it's like, how does this even work in a monotheistic tradition to have all of these layers of divine beings?

[00:04:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they're they're residents of heaven, so they're better than you and me, but they've got great powers, is the deal.

[00:05:00] Katie Dooley: And I guess we don't worship angels. I guess saints would actually be a worse sort of like knock to the monotheistic than an angel.

[00:05:09] Preston Meyer: Oh, but see, I think it's a mistake to separate them In the Catholic tradition specifically, or any of the the Orthodox, the saint traditions. Lutherans whatever. If you if you're into saints, Saint Michael is one of them. Michael the Archangel, he's a demigod, just like Mother Teresa. Yeah and maybe with better reasons. I. 

[00:05:43] Katie Dooley: Mean, can't be worse.

[00:05:45] Preston Meyer: One has tales of actual divine power, the other is known to be just awful.

[00:05:52] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Cleaned and reuse needles. Yeah.

[00:05:54] Preston Meyer: I want to believe that there is a way to clean needles safely. But I know that actual health care professionals say, don't do that. And there's good reason for that.

[00:06:04] Katie Dooley: I mean, you're probably right. I'm sure there is. But to, like, guarantee its safety is probably near impossible. Just donated blood this week. Right? Like it's such a small little needle. How would you make sure it was maybe the syringe part, but the little needle anyway. Gross. Don't do it, don't. Clean needles for all.

[00:06:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Adding angels to monotheism. It does look an awful lot like demigods in a system where there is just one greater God. And we've had this conversation about how Hinduism, you've got a lot of lesser gods under Brahma.

[00:06:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I mean even Shinto, all the kami, there's greater kami, there's lesser kami.

[00:06:51] Preston Meyer: It's complicated. And it just makes the argument for strict monotheism the way most people define it, a lot harder to argue.

[00:07:01] Katie Dooley: Yes. And all the Abrahamic religions have angels, and those are the monotheistic ones. And people are vehement about the fact that they're monotheistic. And it's like, but then they're saints and angels, whether you group them together or not. I mean, even in Christianity, there's the Trinity.

[00:07:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I saw a meme on Reddit the other day, and it was it was definitely a Mormon kid posting a meme slamming the Trinity in a group that has historically not been friendly to Mormons. And they roasted him hard in the comments, but all of the arguments they offered were absolute nonsense. It's frustrating. Like, it's it's okay to believe in the Trinity if you're going to believe in anything, whatever. But if you're going to slam somebody for not getting it, make sure you get it. 

[00:07:22] Katie Dooley: This is such an old movie, but in Bill Maher's Religulous.

[00:08:07] Preston Meyer: Oh, that's a lot of fun.

[00:08:08] Katie Dooley: It is. He asks one guy about the Trinity, and he, the guy explains it that it's like water. It can be ice, or it can be steam, or it can be water. And that's the Trinity. And I was like, well, that or Bill Maher was like, well, that sounds good on paper, but it really doesn't explain it. They're different, but they're the same. Anyway, we're digressing a bit, but let's jump into talking about angels in the Hebrew Bible.

[00:08:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So there's. A lot of appearances of angels. It's kind of a recurring theme.

[00:08:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and not just in the Hebrew Bible, but there are also angels in rabbinic literature and in the Apocrypha as well.

[00:08:46] Preston Meyer: Oh for sure. Yeah, the angels are, I would say, a pretty prominent part of this faith.

[00:08:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And from my research, it feels like there's more angels in the Hebrew Bible than in the Christian Bible.

[00:08:59] Preston Meyer: There's definitely more angels named in the Hebrew tradition than there are in the New Testament. The New Testament names Gabriel outright and then just mentions, oh yeah, and other angels showed up for this event.

[00:09:15] Katie Dooley: And I guess also like the whole last half of the Christian Bible is just letters. 

[00:09:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, not a whole lot of narrative storytelling. Whereas the Hebrew Bible has a lot of really great storytelling in it.

[00:09:32] Katie Dooley: Right. Uh, in the Hebrew Bible, the angels visit many people, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and Hagar, and they're typically used as messengers, like the name implies. But sometimes they appear as warriors and they're supposed to look like regular people without wings.

[00:09:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's just dudes. They're just here doing stuff. And not a whole lot of religions love that. They gotta have the wings. We talked about this before. We recorded the biblically accurate angels that are so popularly memed right now, specifically one type of type of angel. We'll talk about that later. These angels look like men.

[00:10:12] Katie Dooley: Yes, but all the angels with wings don't just have a pair of wings. They have multiple pairs of wings.

[00:10:18] Preston Meyer: Well, you got angels with one pair. You got angels with two pairs. You got angels with three pairs. Four pairs. And then you've got the absolute cosmic horrors. Lovecraftian nonsense with gears and wings and eyes without number. Yeah. There are options.

[00:10:37] Katie Dooley: There is some frustrating ambiguity on angels in the Hebrew Bible, obscuring the relationship between Yahweh and the angels.

[00:10:46] Preston Meyer: In our Patreon exclusive Bible study. We're not yet to the really interesting. Well, I guess we have covered a few scenes where this has happened for you. Um, there's going to be more. So the appearance of the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible does have a pattern to it that I think is really interesting, that it does make it hard to tell who we're talking about in the story because of everything that's going on when it happens. The narrator introduces the Angel of the Lord, and then this angel feels pretty godlike in the way he shows up. He does huge miracles, sometimes annihilating a whole army like in 2 Kings 19. It's pretty epic. Not a thing you'd expect somebody who isn't imbued with God-like power to accomplish. And then the witnesses worship him, which, whether he's the creator or not, you're going to receive a great deal of gratitude for saving a bunch of people from a devastating army.

[00:11:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah, in that instance for sure.

[00:11:56] Preston Meyer: And this is a pattern that goes on several times in the scriptures. And I think it's interesting. Though it's always treated as though he is the Lord himself, not a messenger and there's a couple of different explanations for what's going on there. But I think whaneighbourst's very likely happened is that this text tradition that we have simply originally said that the Lord showed up and did this thing he's called the Lord of armies. That's one of his titles, kind of a big deal. He was a God of war as far as the neighbours were concerned, and fairly so since they often lost to the Israelites. And then later editors, I think, decided that their God wouldn't do this thing himself. He's too far beyond us, so he would send an angel to do it. And so they added this Angel of the Lord. That's my hypothesis. Pretty hard to prove what an ancient editorial process would have been without variance in the text that back me.

[00:13:08] Katie Dooley: Right? The Jewish scripture also introduces four angels that will become the Christian archangels that surround God's throne. So Michael shows up in the biblical book of Daniel as the victor in a battle between nations. The name means "Who is like God?" most prefer to read that as a question. Who is like God?

[00:13:28] Preston Meyer: As a challenge. God is the greatest, which is a weird name. latter-dayThe Latter-Day Saint tradition says that this name was given to Adam because he was like God, not terribly popular in the broader Christian community.

[00:13:47] Katie Dooley: Gabriel also shows up in Daniel more as a messenger than as a conqueror. The name indicates the power of God usually has a bearer.

[00:14:00] Preston Meyer: Somebody who conveys. 

[00:14:01] Katie Dooley: I do know what the word means, but I'm like that feels like a lot of Rs. The name indicates the power of God usually has a bearer of an empowering message. These are the only two mentioned by name in the Bible. 

[00:14:14] Preston Meyer: Gabriel and Michael. But, you know, there's lots more angels. There was an angel that Jacob wrestled with who later came to be known as Israel. And maybe that was the Lord himself? Maybe it was just an angel. Maybe it was Michael. Maybe it was Gabriel. Maybe it was somebody else that we don't know their name because he's not outright named. Except for maybe that Angel of the Lordbusiness.

[00:14:46] Katie Dooley: Right. Then there's Raphael, who's features prominently in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, a story with notable similarities to the Bhagavad Gita. The name Raphael highlights the healing power of God. I'm just thinking of the Lucifer TV series. I'm like, I know that character, Uriel. I think he was a bad guy in Lucifer. He rounds out the set of four showing up in the apocryphal additions to the writings of Ezra. His name means God is my light suitable to his role as guide and instructor.

[00:15:19] Preston Meyer: But wait. There's more.

[00:15:21] Katie Dooley: What? There's so many.

[00:15:23] Preston Meyer: So for a long time, it was really nice that we had a set of four, and they matched the four cardinal points of the compass, the four corners of the world. They took care of the world and the dealings of men within it. And then we got our Enoch literature. And we throw away this need for four and say, well, wait, we can do better. There's seven. And one of the ideas that makes this look good is that it matches the lampstand that's in the temple that has seven branches. So that's kind of nice. And then we get Raguel, whose name means "God will pasture" like a shepherding kind of business. He's connected with justice. He's supposed to watch the damned to make sure they stay within their bounds, which is kind of weird. Like, I guess without him, demons would just absolutely ruin this planet. Like humans couldn't do well enough on our own.

[00:16:24] Katie Dooley: It also gives me, like, big, like, Hades vibes.

[00:16:26] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. He guards the demons that are locked away in Tartarus. Tartarus being a Greek place where the Titans are held. Yeah. You notice how there's going to be problems here of ideas crossing national boundaries. Yeah. Um, then we have Sariel. His name means "God is my Ruler". Uh, basically serves the same purpose as Raguel without being connected to the idea of justice so explicitly. Sidekick, I guess? Then there's Remiel, which means "God has Thundered". We talked about Thunder as a great nickname a couple episodes ago. I think that was. This is an interesting situation. He's connected to hope, and he's supposed to be the one responsible for all true visions, and he is also a bit of a psychopomp. That he would be the guide that takes you to heaven if that is your destination. Yeah, kind of interesting. This name is too similar to Ramiel, who, according to the same book, liked the human ladies too much and became the father of many of the watchers, the great giants in the early part of human history, when the one legendary version of our religious history has angels mating with humans to make giants, and they just ruined everything.

[00:17:54] Katie Dooley: So there's Remiel and Ramiel. That is very confusing.

[00:17:54] Preston Meyer: Especially when we're talking about a language that was originally written with no real differentiation between vowels. The vowel marks we have today are pretty new. So it's just a tradition. And so the confusion that exists today is certainly an old confusion. And then of course, there's lots of other angels that are named in the apocryphal literature. And some of them get multiple names, including some of the ones we've talked about. They're also known by other names sometimes. And the great thing about having a list of your favourite angels is you can swap them out sometimes and just say, no, this dude wrote this list. I don't like that one. I'm gonna pop in my guy over here. Just cause. Did you ever watch Dogma?

[00:18:49] Katie Dooley: No.

[00:18:50] Preston Meyer: We need to fix that.

[00:18:51] Katie Dooley: Okay. Movie night?

[00:18:53] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Okay. Dogma is an absolute treasure. Part of Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob saga but this features Alanis Morissette as God and Alan Rickman as the Metatron, and oh, why can't I think of the names right now? Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are fallen angels.

[00:19:18] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow. It's ridiculous, isn't it?

[00:19:20] Preston Meyer: It is so much fun. But the Metatron is just this really weird figure in religious angeology. I guess it never made any sense to me ever. And my first exposure to it was Alan Rickman.

[00:19:36] Katie Dooley: But it is in actual religion, the Metatron? 

[00:19:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Everything you see in dogma is taken from real religious ideas  and then twisted for humor, which is great, except for I don't I haven't found yet any validation for the Golgotha poop demon but, the ideas behind it are validated in many religious ideas so there's that. But so this Metatron, according to Kabbalistic sources, is the name of Enoch after his transformation into an angel when he was promoted to the great office of Heavenly Scribe. So he would be the one who writes down the book of life for God. Which is completely different than the job that he has in dogma, where he speaks for God. Because if you were to hear the voice of God, your head would explode and you would die. A lot of religions actually really buy into this idea, even though it absolutely contradicts what we have in the biblical text.

[00:20:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah, because God talks to a lot of people.

[00:20:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Well, so the idea that a lot of people have bought into as well. Yeah, it says God talked to them, but he talked to them through the Metatron. It's a stretch that I don't love. The name I think is really interesting for the Metatron, and people are going to argue about it forever, probably because we still haven't come to a solid conclusion on it. Some say that it's the Hebrew word for some sort of keeper. Others say that it comes from the Greek construction of Meta Throne, so that we have the guy in the chair beside the chair. Remember, we've talked about the very obvious and well-documented polytheistic origins of the Israeli religion. Yahweh is the son of El. There was never only one throne. So the guy on the chair, beside the chair, beside the chair, beside the chair, who knows how many chairs there are? Whatever.

[00:21:50] Katie Dooley: I mean a lot. There's a lot.

[00:21:53] Preston Meyer: Right. Well, in the theology that is evident a little bit in the book of Job, there is a council of God.

[00:22:03] Katie Dooley: I mean, because even they talk about Michael being the right hand of God, but Jesus is also the right hand of God. So they're going to wrestle over that.

[00:22:09] Preston Meyer: Well, so that's something that the Jehovah's Witnesses think they've fixed. They say Jesus is Michael.

[00:22:20] Katie Dooley: Perfect. Wrap it up.

[00:22:21] Preston Meyer: Rather than admitting that the Bible is very clear that Jesus is Jehovah. Every time you try to come up with a really good, tight little bow to simplify things there's a really good chance you're screwing it up.

[00:22:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah, because it's religion.

[00:22:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Nothing's ever as simple as you want it to be.

[00:22:44] Katie Dooley: So I just threw this wrench in our notes because I started explaining the angelology of the Hebrew Bible. And then I realized everyone has angelology and it just be easier to explain what that is right now. So angelology is the ranking system of angels. That's how many angels there are.

[00:23:09] Preston Meyer: And it's never as simple as you want it to be.

[00:23:11] Katie Dooley: No, it's like I saw a ranking and then I saw different rankings and then I saw different ranking. So I don't think we've included any rankings in here.

[00:23:21] Preston Meyer: Just to keep it simple. Stick with the basics.

[00:23:24] Katie Dooley: If you're curious on how angels are ranked, pick your favorite scholar and go for it. So in the Abrahamic religions, Islam has no standardized hierarchy, but scholars divide up the angels into different groups depending on the scholar. This can be anywhere from 8 to 14 different groups. So while they're all on par, there's different species of angels? Categories? 

[00:23:47] Preston Meyer: I think species is a fair classification, I guess we'll talk about some angels that definitely feel like they would be different species from others.

[00:23:58] Katie Dooley: Then there are different types of angels that appear in Judaism and then therefore Christianity. And they have been ranked a variety of different ways depending on which rabbi or kabbalist you're reading.

[00:24:14] Preston Meyer: Yay! Complicated.

[00:24:16] Katie Dooley: Very complicated.

[00:24:18] Preston Meyer: Um, the Hebrew Bible differentiates between different kinds of heavenly beings as well. And they're all called angels, generally speaking. But sometimes you'll get other great titles like Seraphs or Seraphim.

[00:24:32] Katie Dooley: I think the best way to compare this is that there's dogs and then there's dog breeds, there's angels, and there's types of angels.

[00:24:41] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah.

[00:24:43] Katie Dooley: They're all dogs. They're all angels. They're just... They got special features.

[00:24:48] Preston Meyer: Sure. I don't know if it's a perfect analogy, but it definitely helps with explaining what's going on here,

[00:24:53] Katie Dooley: That they're all angels, but there's cherubs and seraphs.

[00:25:00] Preston Meyer: So my whole life I've, I've never heard people say cherubs. But that's definitely the way the word is spelled. Yeah.

[00:25:13] Katie Dooley: In Hebrew?

[00:25:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah and even when we spelled it c h, it was meant to be like the ch in Loch Loch Ness. We just we've gotten used to doing all the CHs as cha- so we went with cherubs.

[00:25:31] Katie Dooley: I'm going to start calling them cherubs at Christmas.

[00:25:33] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Even though a cherub is a thing you eat, that's fine.

[00:25:39] Katie Dooley: Sorry. Go through your types of angels.

[00:25:41] Preston Meyer: So cherubs are best known for being painted in Rome as children. That's just the deal. But it was one of these who protected the tree of life with a flaming sword in Genesis. We see cherubs on the the Ark of the Covenant with their wings and all that. Ezekiel gives them more wings than everybody else but Ezekiel was getting, maybe a little too much of that temple oil that we now know for sure had hallucinogens in it.

[00:26:15] Katie Dooley: Nice. How many wings? Was this the three and four pairs?

[00:26:20] Preston Meyer: I think Ezekiel's cherubs only had two pairs of wings. 

[00:26:24] Katie Dooley: That's still four full wings.

[00:26:26] Preston Meyer: Right. He also gave them interchangeable faces of lions, oxes, men and eagles. It's a little bit weird. Um, the same faces that we have described in Ezekiel. They get used again in the Revelation of John. So the name cherub, hard to know for sure, it may have been derived from an Old Assyrian word caribou meaning mighty. 

[00:26:52] Katie Dooley: Interesting. So where we get caribou...?

[00:26:54] Preston Meyer: No. Entirely different.

[00:26:56] Katie Dooley: Okay. Well, because those are pretty mighty creatures. Yeah. Majestic even.

[00:27:01] Preston Meyer: Haul Santa's fat ass across the sky at Christmas.

[00:27:05] Katie Dooley: Um, tell me more about seraphs.

[00:27:07] Preston Meyer: Seraphs, the name means burning, and they're always illustrated verbally or in art, in visual arts, as being surrounded by light. So these guys get described by Isaiah as having six wings. Other than that, they're people-shaped, but lots of wings. And so those are the two reasonable ones, because cherubs are always described as children for a long time as a kid or not as a kid, as a teenager trying to figure out angels from the Latter-Day Saint perspective, where we really don't talk about angels very much at all relative to the things we're talking about today. It's mostly you've got either spirits who haven't got bodies yet or people who have got bodies, died. And thus are still unembodied, or those great spirits who have come back resurrected with their bodies in full glory. And so you got cherubs would be the young ones who haven't got bodies yet. Seraphs are the glorified ones who have got their bodies and all the glory of God, whatever. Ophans have never been part of this discussion. The ophanim, the name means wheels, and this is a class of angels described only by Ezekiel and depending on your version of the Bible, you might not even recognize that he's talking about angels. So there's some argument on whether or not these even belong here. But when people talk about biblically accurate angels, the ones that are absolutely terrifying and monstrous, it's the ophanim. Sometimes they're called thrones because these gear monsters support the throne where God sits. And that's their deal. They don't visit Earth. They're not messengers.

[00:29:07] Katie Dooley: Good, good.

[00:29:09] Preston Meyer: So the whole be not afraid meme of no, this is the most terrifying moment of my life. The ophans. 

[00:29:16] Katie Dooley: Were not those messengers. That's good. They remind me of the Bhagavad Gita. The guy with infinite eyes and infinite mouths, like. I don't want to be visited by that.

[00:29:28] Preston Meyer: No, I don't think anybody would.

[00:29:30] Katie Dooley: I think... That's is that Krishna or Vishnu in their, like, real form? I think that's what it is. I forget now, but, um, someone will listen to our... 

[00:29:39] Preston Meyer: The Messenger was Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.  So these these guys are just wild. It's really hard to know what Ezekiel was experiencing, but I feel like he was definitely getting the best of the temple oils and the way that eyes are described here with all these wing imagery. My instinct is to say that he was also seeing and failing to interpret correctly because of it, wonderful intoxication, a peacock.

[00:30:18] Katie Dooley: That's interesting. Yeah. That's a not a terrible theory.

[00:30:21] Preston Meyer: Well, so the the tail feathers, they all got eyes. Yeah. And wings might be hard to see where one wing ends and the next thing might be a wing if you're high, especially the peacock just feels right.

[00:30:38] Katie Dooley: Okay. All right. 

[00:30:43] Preston Meyer: But yeah, so they are not visitors to Earth. They're not messengers. They're their own special thing built out of wheels and gears and eyeballs and feathers that support, apparently, according to Ezekiel's vision and some creative license and interpretation, the throne of God. And taking that into consideration and the description of the cherubs with the weird heads of all these various animals, it makes sense that there's some interesting sorts of ideas, like the they're chimeras of one sort or another, that we see all over the old world. And it makes sense that a lot of scholars would agree that some of these ideas are coming in they're very odd forms from neighboring nations.

[00:31:35] Katie Dooley: Fair, you gotta make it popular to the public.

[00:31:37] Preston Meyer: Right? Plus, people love stories about that. Weird monsters thing. So yeah, popular to the public helps.

[00:31:46] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So in the Christian Bible, angels appear only as messengers and teachers, though there is a scene in the Revelation of John illustrating Heaven, where the four faces of Ezekiel described as cherubs, are represented.

[00:32:02] Preston Meyer: We also get Gabriel. He's the one who showed up to Joseph and Mary, both of them separately, to let them know, "Hey, there's a baby in there. Don't freak out. It's Jesus."

[00:32:16] Katie Dooley: Though I do love the memes about Joseph.

[00:32:19] Preston Meyer: Yes, they are certainly entertaining.

[00:32:22] Katie Dooley: Have you seen the one where Joseph is like, "I made you a cherry pie", and Mary's like, "we don't have cherries." And he was like, "God gave them to me. Do you see how stupid that sounds?" Uh, and then the stepdad, ones "I'm the dad that stepped up".

[00:32:43] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah, yeah. I feel weird about Joseph being left out of the story after the nativity. Like there's the sons of the carpenter or whatever, because Jesus had brothers. There's no arguing against that. But we never know about him dying. But also, he wasn't there when Jesus died. People just lost track of where his stepdad was.

[00:33:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Angels who go undescribed appear at a few crucial points of the end of the Jesus story, presumably in regular human form. No wings.

[00:33:20] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We got angels who were there when Jesus came out of the empty tomb. Well, when he made the tomb empty. We got angels standing around in Jerusalem when Jesus ascends up into the clouds. Reminding people. This what I'm doing, that they said he'll come back the same way he left. So if you find somebody claiming to be Jesus reborn, biblical contradiction. And then we have more angels in medieval writings.

[00:33:55] Katie Dooley: Which is pretty cool.

[00:33:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Have you ever read Paradise Lost?

[00:34:00] Katie Dooley: I haven't, but I want to.

[00:34:02] Preston Meyer: I also have not read Paradise Lost. I've only read about it. It's one of those great popular things that just hasn't hit my table yet. John Milton's Paradise Lost, written so, so long ago, 1667, was when it was published. Great couple of great poems. Angels are super important. We got the story of Satan / Lucifer. Because for so long, everybody just assumed Lucifer means Satan.

[00:34:32] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the two we're going to talk about, I, tell me if I'm wrong and maybe, maybe we don't know because we haven't read it, I think this is where the connection of Lucifer and the Bible is to the devil, because Lucifer in the Bible is not the devil,

[00:34:45] Preston Meyer: Right? Lucifer in the Bible is not ever the devil.

[00:34:48] Katie Dooley: So this must be where...

[00:34:50] Preston Meyer: I feel like that's. 

[00:34:51] Katie Dooley: And even in, uh, Dante as well. 

[00:34:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I've talked with a couple of doctors of theology in my time at university, and there's not any solid consensus on whether Dante Alighieri, who wrote The Divine Comedy, was super influential on Christian theology, or if he was writing about things that he'd been learning at church. Um, there's not a strong consensus there, by the sounds of it, but very fascinating stuff. Not that Dante agrees with all of the thoughts on angels, but his thoughts are very well preserved.

[00:35:34] Katie Dooley: Sorry, we are jumping ahead a little bit, but Paradise Lost is an epic poem. And yes, it talks about Satan, Lucifer. It also talks about Adam and Eve in a separate part. It outlines the hierarchy of angels. It talks about Lucifer, Satan's rebellion, the war in heaven, and what fallen angels are, which I read that there's parts of this all pulled from, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. So there is a...

[00:36:00] Preston Meyer: Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls weren't available when Paradise Lost. It's been like 70 years.

[00:36:08] Katie Dooley: But anyway it had biblical or Apocryphal references.

[00:36:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a lot of rabbinical literature that would have been some good source material for,

[00:36:18] Katie Dooley: Because there is no fallen angels in the Bible.

[00:36:22] Preston Meyer: There is a couple of passages that allude to huge swathes of angels being cast out of heaven before the foundation of the world. What that looks like is the matter of many hypotheses.

[00:36:38] Katie Dooley: So we started talking about the Divine Comedy.

[00:36:40] Preston Meyer: It's even older.

[00:36:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and most people are familiar with Dante's Inferno, which is a part one of the three parts of...

[00:36:47] Preston Meyer: Dante's Inferno, is great drama because it's the first part of a trilogy. And so if you're going to get tired and quit, at least you'll have read some of Inferno. But it's also the great part where Dante gets to slam on all the thinkers and popes that he didn't like and say, "Ha! You guys are in hell. I know, because I'm the dude who wrote the book".

[00:37:12] Katie Dooley: So this is also written in a poem format, and he wrote it between 1308 and 1321, and it describes the afterlife. Obviously, the inferno is the hell part and Paradiso is the part that describes heaven.

[00:37:29] Preston Meyer: And then there's the part in between. Purgatorial. For purgatory. 

[00:37:29] Katie Dooley: So Paradiso describes the nine spheres of heaven. There's what? Seven circles of hell. Nine circles of hell anyway. Inferno describes the circles of hell. I don't remember how many. And Paradiso describes the nine spheres of heaven in the ninth sphere. I'm reading the notes wrong. The ninth sphere of heaven is where the angels reside. It's called Prima Mobile. There's one more sphere where God resides. So according to Dante, angels are beings that are most familiar to God, and they are made of an immaterial.

[00:38:07] Preston Meyer: Now, what sort of substance is immaterial, Katie? But light is matter as well. Light is a particle and a wave. It's like when people say that God exists outside of time and space.

[00:38:21] Katie Dooley: I'm, uh. I'm rereading His Dark Materials. They're probably made of dust. Have you read? 

[00:38:21] Preston Meyer: No

[00:38:29] Katie Dooley: Oh. They're great. They were very controversial when they came out of the 90s.

[00:38:33] Preston Meyer: Sure. That's the, um, the Amber Spyglass.

[00:38:37] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so probably dust is what I'm going to call it.

[00:38:40] Preston Meyer: Sure, but dust is matter too. 

[00:38:43] Katie Dooley: No, in the book it's a divine matter, but they call it dust. Capital D dust.

[00:38:47] Preston Meyer: Okay. When I think of immaterial substance, it sounds like they're just holograms. But I'm always reminded of, I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said, you know, if you if your God exists outside of time and space, that's how you describe a thing that does not exist.

[00:39:06] Katie Dooley: So like tug on the collar...

[00:39:08] Preston Meyer: It's a really popular description for a lot of Christians and people of other traditions as well. And I don't see the need to describe God as outside of time and space, especially when it causes you the problem of now you've described something that doesn't exist.

[00:39:26] Katie Dooley: Maybe out of time, but definitely not out of space.

[00:39:30] Preston Meyer: Even outside of time doesn't make any sense to me.

[00:39:34] Katie Dooley: I guess time would be irrelevant for God, I guess is my point.

[00:39:37] Preston Meyer: Right and yeah, if you live long enough, time might not matter but you still exist in a state where there's an event and things before and after that.

[00:39:46] Katie Dooley: Now we're getting into the multiverse and.... It's all great in theory, but very confusing in practice. So we touched briefly on angels in Islam because of their non-hierarchy but groupings. In Islam, they believe they are heavenly beings originating directly from God. Like little God offspring.

[00:40:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but usually in the creation sense, like molded because in the Islamic tradition, the Quran is very clear that God does not have children. The Quran is also very clear he had three daughters.

[00:40:24] Katie Dooley: What a holy book that contradicts itself? Say it ain't so. Colour me shocked.

[00:40:30] Preston Meyer: It's tricky. But they would have been angels, not gods, even though they were definitely figures that were recognized as goddesses among the heathens.

[00:40:43] Katie Dooley: It's fine. So the Quran is the number one Islamic source referring to angels, but there's also angels in the hadiths and elsewhere in Islamic literature.

[00:40:53] Preston Meyer: I mean, the whole thing wouldn't have happened if not for an angel at least allegedly appearing to Muhammad. Um, good old [00:41:02] Jibril. The same figure that we called Gabriel earlier in this [00:41:06] episode. They're messengers, servants for God. And Jibril is the greatest messenger. I don't remember hearing anything about Michael and looking up things in Islam.

[00:41:18] Katie Dooley: Um, they have sort of a 1 to 1 comparison I put in the notes. Um. But I don't know where they appear in the Quran.

[00:41:27] Preston Meyer: So, like in Judaism, angels are super great for protecting against terrible things. Angels are attracted to sacred places. The whole guardian thing makes sense. And every now and then, you'll find them protecting people. With it an angel will not enter an unclean place. This is pretty typical of most religions. That an angel that is supposed to be so good and pure, not going to go to places that could be called haram or go near a dog even because that's dirty.

[00:42:04] Katie Dooley: My dog was an angel, so. 

[00:42:04] Preston Meyer: Many are.

[00:42:10] Katie Dooley: I disagree with that. Maybe they're more powerful angels. And so other angels are scared to come by.

[00:42:19] Preston Meyer: Uh, there are many classes of angels. Or maybe Paige was just a jinn.

[00:42:24] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow. But it's probably more accurate anyway. Angels in Islam, are believed to be older than humans and the jinn that Preston mentioned. And they have no human desires. They don't tire, they don't get hungry. They're never angry.

[00:42:38] Preston Meyer: So they're often described this way in Jewish literature and the trouble that I have with this idea is that they saw in most versions of early Judeo-Christian Abrahamic origins of the world. They saw the daughters of man and said, that's a really good place to play hide the sausage, and that's not an angel that doesn't have passions. Oh, well.

[00:43:18] Katie Dooley: Um, Muslims do not believe in the concept of the fallen angel like in Christianity. Rather, they believe that angels are infallible.

[00:43:25] Preston Meyer: Right? And the Iblis isn't a fallen angel, but a terrible jinn. I'm pretty sure, if I remember correctly.

[00:43:34] Katie Dooley: So they, as Preston, sort of asked, Islam shares three out of the four archangels with Christianity. So we have Jibril, who's Gabriel; Mikhail, who's Michael; Israfil, who's Raphael. And then the fourth one is Azrail, or Azrael is the English name, but that's not Uriel. Those are their archangels.

[00:43:57] Preston Meyer: And, um, Azrael would be a little bit more familiar with the Angel of death called sometimes Malak Hamad. There's another name that I can't remember, Samael, I think. I might be confusing with another angel. I have to look that up later.

[00:44:16] Katie Dooley: I mean, that sounds correct to someone who watched the entire series of Lucifer, but that's my only frame of reference right now. That's terrible. 

[00:44:27] Preston Meyer: Popular culture is a great tool for education as long as it's well-written.

[00:44:32] Katie Dooley: So the Quran describes angels as well-formed human beings. Nice build. Sure. Uh, made of pure light. And they have multiple pairs of wings. So I read two, three, four pairs of wings.

[00:44:47] Preston Meyer: Right. So we get very similar descriptions for the jinn. But the jinn are newer and a lot more selfish and a lot more likely to do sexy things so than the angels in this tradition. And then we can change gears a little bit to Zoroastrianism. And I think a lot of the ideas of angels that we get in Judaism probably find a much more comfortable home in Zoroastrianism. Um, the writings of Ezekiel. Are generally thought to have come post-exile. And so this influence would have been definitely a part of this deal. If that is how that worked out. So then in Persian Zoroastrian tradition, there are several forms of yazata. I like that word. Any word that has a bunch of syllables and the same vowel every time. I don't know why it gets me just right.  Like Canada.

[00:45:52] Katie Dooley: How patriotic you are. Rococo. Rococo.

[00:45:58] Preston Meyer: Rococo. That first I was a little soft, but I can appreciate it.

[00:46:04] Katie Dooley: It's a great art movement.

[00:46:05] Preston Meyer: So anyway, the Yazata are a class of beings defined nominally as worthy of worship. Gods, in the simplest sense. This is complicated by the fact that we still don't have a good definition of what is a God that everybody can agree on. If it is worshiped, it is a god. That's the deal. That's for today's discussion. I feel like that's pretty fair. So this same word, yazata is applied to all the really good things, including some plants and even prayer formats. So because of that, I feel like a really fair way to translate that into English instead of worthy of worship would be anything that is holy.

[00:46:54] Katie Dooley: Holy, sacred, yeah.

[00:46:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and like the Most Holy One, would be your Most High God, which in this case would be Ahura Mazda, the greatest of the Yazata. So in the earliest writings, Yazata is anything good, and in slightly later early writings the Yazatas are completely and absolutely divine, and so it quickly went from holy things as opposed to profane things, to holy things, as in the gods and God adjacent things in a religion that's mostly monotheistic but isn't quite either. Tricky business. We've talked about this in our Zoroastrian episode. The Persian, the Legend of Persian Zoro. Yeah. Tricky business. So the most popular yazatas received a formal ranking. Relatively late in the Zoroastrian time frame. In about the fourth or fifth century BCE, a calendar was instituted that used the names of the angelic Yazatas to name the months, the days, and even the portions of the days. There's five parts of the day, and each of them are named for various yazata angel figures and so based on that, we got what became of well known because everybody needs to know how you're measuring time, angelology. That was kind of nifty. And so for the Mazdaists, the seven Amesha Spenta, we've talked about them before, they're roughly equivalent to archangels. And so it feels like maybe the shift from 4 to 7 might have been influenced from this time of exile with the Babylonian.

[00:48:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, this is all happening in the same place at the same time in the world, so.

[00:49:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so Ahura Mazda is often described as the father of the Amesha Spenta, but it's generally not taken literally. Just like the Muslims say that Allah is the creator of these angels, not the father, father.

[00:49:16] Katie Dooley: Though there was one Amesha Spenta that is described as his daughter. Do you remember that?

[00:49:20] Preston Meyer: Well, they're all described as his children.

[00:49:22] Preston Meyer: No, there was one specifically that was like, it's his daughter.

[00:49:25] Preston Meyer: This one is definitely a daughter. Oh, and he's got other sons, too, right? But they're more godly and less angelic. But they are all yazata. Not that it's not confusing.

[00:49:38] Katie Dooley: I haven't said this in a long time. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square.

[00:49:44] Preston Meyer: The trouble with that is that for a long time, a square was also called a rectangle.

[00:49:52] Katie Dooley: Oh, I thought you were gonna, like, correct me on the yazata. Like, not all yazata are gods, but all gods are yazata.

[00:49:59] Preston Meyer: No, that's... Yeah, you got that right. But there's even more. Because why stop with just the Judeo-Christian and immediately Judeo-Christian adjacent? There is other great ideas.

[00:50:13] Katie Dooley: There's so many. So the Dharmic religions, this is Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism all have Devas, which means heavenly, shining or divine being. The word is generally applied to the gods of the Hindu peoples, as well as to cosmic principles that might manifest during meditation. It is a worthy goal to ascend from this human level and to be reincarnated as a deva. Devas are said to be mortal, expected to die after thousands of years, and be reborn if they don't escape samsara.

[00:50:47] Preston Meyer: Imagine being demoted from Deva back to human.

[00:50:50] Katie Dooley: I mean, it happens.

[00:50:51] Preston Meyer: I mean, the story is that it must.

[00:50:58] Katie Dooley: Each has their own... Each of the devas has their own identity, different than an avatar, right? So there's different avatars of Vishnu and different avatars of Krishna, which is a temporary embodiment of a god. 

[00:51:10] Preston Meyer: When they just come down for what for them is a weekend. And I think it's really interesting that for Zoroastrianism, the Devas are, well, not the Devas. Deva was an evil god. He's the bad guy.

[00:51:30] Katie Dooley: Oh yeah.

[00:51:32] Preston Meyer: So I'm curious if that label comes from conflict between the two nations.

[00:51:40] Katie Dooley: I don't know.

[00:51:41] Preston Meyer: And I haven't been able to find anything that says, oh yeah, sure, "this idea is good, Preston", but I still like it in my head. Next on our list, we have the border. In ancient Norse tradition, we have the Vördr as basically essentially guardian angels. Some of them will follow people around, some of them are trees that you might have in a yard that have been around for a while. And so they'll house minor guardian angels in their root.

[00:52:13] Katie Dooley: That's cool.

[00:52:14] Preston Meyer: It is kind of cool. The name Vördr basically evolved into what we have in English as warden means watcher, but the word wraith also comes from this root and wraiths, as far as I've been able to find meaning in it is like the scary.

[00:52:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah, never positive. I always just think of the ringwraiths but...

[00:52:38] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. Bad times. Yeah, they're they're not good friends, but the Vördr are our guardian angels, basically. It's hard to tell how much the idea changed when Christians showed up into their neighborhood, but it probably did change a little bit. Or maybe they're partly responsible for the way we see guardian angels in our Anglo tradition.

[00:53:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Well. And then it's interesting. There's also demons in ancient Greek mythology spelled d-a-e-m-o-n-s so pronounced the same but not to be confused with demons.

[00:53:19] Preston Meyer: In so many words we just drop that A it's interesting that we allow it to persist in this word, but I think there's a good reason for it.

[00:53:30] Katie Dooley: Well, and then topical in His Dark Materials, in one of the worlds, everyone has a daemon, which is an animal spirit attached to you.

[00:53:40] Preston Meyer: That's spelled with an A. 

[00:53:40] Katie Dooley: And it's spelt with an A. And when I was a kid in reading, I had no idea how to say it.

[00:53:46] Preston Meyer: Did you say a damon the whole time? Yeah. That's fair. 

[00:53:52] Katie Dooley: So demons with an A are positive. And just like the Vördr, they are minor deities that would act as guides, guardian angels or whatever. And it's the same thing. We kind of have this, cuple of traditions that are very influential on Judeo-Christian and Western, therefore Western culture of this idea of guardian angel.

[00:54:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Looking up angels across all these religious traditions has been pretty cool. There's something like the idea of an angel in almost every religious tradition, though naturally, they're not all going to be called angels. But the idea that there's somebody watching out for you is pretty universal. In the more primal religious traditions, it makes a lot of sense that usually we're talking about ancestors.

[00:54:44] Katie Dooley: Right? Their ancestor worship. And we haven't actually talked about... I guess Shintoism, has some ancestor worship, but we haven't talked about Daoism at all, right. Which is a big ancestor worship religion. Maybe that's one we should add to our list right away. I think you're right. But that's basically Mulan. Where she...

[00:55:05] Preston Meyer: The good animated one.

[00:55:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah, absolutely. Where's she? lights some incense and prays to her ancestors for guidance.

[00:55:13] Preston Meyer: And then has to try to keep a straight face while traveling with Eddie Murphy. Oh, now I want to watch Mulan. Thanks. Yeah, so that is a big. topical guardian angels.

[00:55:29] Preston Meyer: Right.

[00:55:29] Katie Dooley: Mushu is a guardian angel.

[00:55:30] Preston Meyer: Here we are in a year of the Dragon.

[00:55:32] Katie Dooley: What? It's all coming together.

[00:55:35] Preston Meyer: But it's not the year of the Fire Dragon. In the 60 year cycle, it's the year of the Wood dragon.

[00:55:40] Katie Dooley: Wow, interesting I didn't know that. You, dear listener, congregant, could be our guardian angels.

[00:55:48] Preston Meyer: We would love it so much if you would support this podcast financially.

[00:55:55] Katie Dooley: I was going to say you can do that a few ways. So, um, spreadshirt is great. If you want to buy someone a gift, buy yourself some merch, one time fee. You have our Patreon with bonus episodes, extra content from our interviews, if you like a subscription model, there's more coming down the pipe there as well. We also would love your support your warden watcher wraith on our social media. What social media are we on, Preston?

[00:56:22] Preston Meyer: We are on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and of course Discord, where we have some pretty great memes and discussions organized into great little channels. I love discord! You can also share this podcast with a friend and give us five stars on Apple Podcast. It's a great way to help us out.

[00:56:39] Preston Meyer: Thank you so much for joining us.

[00:56:41] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.