38 - Sunday, Sepiember 1, 1991 - North Shore News

SPIRITUALLY SPEAKING

A feather on the breath of God

The ancient concept of angels appeals to the imagination

MOST PEOPLE associate

angels with those chubby,

rosy-cheeked cherubs we hang on our Christmas trees every

year.

Relegated to the annals of cutedom,

depicted primarily as winged creatures who inhabit the

heavens.

This was not always so.

Angels were once understood
(and still can be) by more myth-
accommodating minds as messen-
gers of God, agents of revelation,
protectors of humankind or, more
directly, as aspects
himself. They mediated between
the human and the divine world.

These days, angels are viewed,
as one encyclopedia bleakly term-
ed it, as ‘‘elements of an obsolete
cosmology.’’

Although most modern minds
are unable to accommodate that
mothballed cosmology, its con-
tents still appeal to the higher
imagination.

Dr. Charles Anderson of the
UBC Department of Religious
Studies believes the notion of
angels may be derived from a
number of sources.

“Angels may have come from
polytheism,’’ he postulates. With
the decline of polytheism in favor
of the monotheism of Judeo-
Christianity, he says, some of the
various gods may have become
angels.

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Also, in early Hebrew tradition,

he points out, ‘‘there was the idea |

of God's transcendence and im-
manence. | think later the angel
replaced that
nence."’

Other theories hold that angels
were derived from the deification
of the forces of nature.

For the ancient Jews and Chris-
tians, angels were
manifestations of potent and for-
bidding divine holiness,’’ writes

Jay G. Wiiliams in his essay ‘‘On §

Re-imagining Angels.”’
And they didn’t necessarily have

wings. In fact, in most of the Bi- 9) #/J
the Bgieese

ble passages on which
Judaeo-Christian tradition is bas-
ed, wings are not mentioned.

In the Old Testament, the angel
of the Lord is often not
distinguishable from Yahweh
himself. For instance, in the story
of Abraham sacrificing Isaac,
angels ‘‘appear’’ as attributes of

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God, not actual separate entities.

Jacob, however, is visited by a
superhuman assailant with whom
he wrestles. Although people refer
to the entity as an angel, the word
‘“‘angel’’ never appears in the
Genesis account.

Angels were not only messen-
gers, asserts author G. Don
Gilmore in ‘‘The Nature of Angel
Forms.’

**They: were, among. other
things, choirs of singers, a mili-
tary presence, members of a heav-
enly court, guardians, helpers,
sustainers, protectors and
judges,” he writes.

Closest to God were the
cherubim and seraphim. Cherubs
are not to be confused with their
modern kewpie counterparts,
however.

Described in Ezekiel as ‘‘living
creatures,’ cherubs were of an
apocalyptic nature, human in
form but having four faces —
human, lion, ox and eagle — and
four wings with human hands.
The cherubim were also said to be
Yahweh's living chariot.

Naturally, these metaphors were
used to describe the indescribable.

Says Anderson, ‘‘In the Epistle
of the Hebrews, the angels are
described as being made of fire.”’

The etymology of seraph, in

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fact, suggests iery or burning
one’' and seraphim were per-
sonifications of the tongucs of
flame of the theophany.

But these powerful images of
angels as emissaries of Yahweh of
the Old Testament have disap-
peared from the modern con-
sciousness.

Angels may still exist in idea,
but do they exist in) modern
human experience? Gilmore
maintains that although our im-
ages of angels have diminished
Gust as our mythic imagination
has atrophied), the energy forces
that they embody stili survive.

Anderson concurs with this no-
tion, although expresses it dif-
ferently.

“T think the loss of (belief in}
angels is indicative of the loss of a
sense of transcendence and
wonder, awe. However, I think
one can receive a sense of the
wonder and majesty without at-
taching it to angels.”’

Author Mircea Eliade, he con-
tinues, ‘‘had a tremendous
perception for this type of experi-
ence (of the divine).’”'

“When reality reveals itself...
he called it hierophany — the ap-
pearance of the sacred. This ap-
pearance is at the root of religious
experience,’’ says Anderson.

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