Opinions differ as to the precise nature of what happened in the past that could have caused angels to fall, but what is unarguable is the persistence with which this idea has shown up in most planetary belief systems. Christianity and Judaism have their Satan and Lucifer and, depending on the sect, any number of fallen angels. Islam has its Eblis, or Shaytan as he is sometimes called, who is clearly the counterpart of Satan.
Even in this day and age, films like 'The Omen', 'Rosemary's Baby', and 'The Seventh Sign' evoke horror because they tap into the possibility that we may be influenced in some way by universal messengers of evil.
However, according to our angelic informants, the situation, thank God, is not like that at all.
Lucifer, it is said in one tradition, was one of the seven great archangels of our solar system, serving as the guardian of the planet Venus. God asked for a volunteer from among His top angels who might be willing to go down to Earth and help strengthen humanity's spiritual resolve by offering constant temptation. Lucifer volunteered. Despite his loving intentions, slowly, over the ages, Lucifer has become identified in our mind as the devil, instead of an aspect of God dedicated to our growth by helping us strengthen our spiritual muscles.
'The devil made me do it' is a tempting excuse for just about anything, and we've allowed this to blind us into depicting Lucifer as the source of everything we consider 'evil' in the world.
One of the heavenly tasks of Lucifer, whose very name means 'light giver' or 'light bearer,' is to teach us about the necessary dark side of life. Lucifer is the shadow that reveals the light by contrast. In many ways we can't see the true light until we first experience the darkness.
We tend not to value something until we lose it and then regain it through our own efforts. The parable of the prodigal son touches on this quirk of human nature.
This interdependence of light and dark, of joy and sorrow, of good and bad, and all the other opposites in our dual system of reality, yields to an understanding that, within the larger context, Christ and Lucifer, while not exactly complementary to each other, are at least on the same side, integral parts of the same whole.
Many contemporary Christians have begun to abandon the concept that there is a real devil, recognizing once again that there is only one omnipotent force in the universe. 'Evil,' as poet-philosopher William Blake wrote, 'is only the deprivation of good, and when the soul emerges from this illusion of evil, Lucifer resumes his original status as one of God's great archangels.'
THE END OF ILLUSION
Slowly, surely, we are collectively emerging from this illusion of evil. To do this means to hold firmly to the understanding of God as One Power, as One Ultimate Life Principle, from which all else emanates. naturally, the illusion of fear and loathing still stalks our cities and can sometimes convince us, if we pay too much attention to the media, that it has some degree of objective reality. But isn't this exactly the challenge being presented to us....to come more fully to terms with the shadow side of our own nature? As we learn how to release and finally let go of negative and self-destructive behavior, we also cease to project our own negativity onto a fictitious devil, or fallen angels, or onto other people. When we reach this point we have no further need to hang onto the illusion of evil.
In reconciling these apparently opposite characteristics we also demonstrate those qualities the angels revere so highly in us. and, in turn, we can free the so-called fallen angels from the negativity we have externalized onto them for all these long millennia. By so doing we can allow them once again to pursue the functions for which they were originally created.
A CELESTIAL TOP TEN
In the case of the better known angels of the West---Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, and some of the others in our Top Ten---their influence and prescence can be seen extending down through the ages, touching the human process in ways that invariably change us. Fascinatingly, sometimes the same angel, Samael for example, has been viewed as a force for good in one era and as a devil in the next. But on the whole, the overall tone of angelic relationships has been one of good humor, mystical exploration, high adventure, and a wonderful, almost overwhelming level of unconditional love.
So let's meet our selection of among the best-known angels in the Western world. Before each encounter you might want to repeat the angel's name a few times slowly with your eyes closed. Then, while you are reading, take deep breaths and consciously slow your breathing down. Allow yourself the time to simply observe how you feel as you are coming to know about each of these beings, and open yourself to possible contact with them.
Michael
Michael, whose name is a question---'Who is like God?'---is surely the best known of the overlighting archangels.
Michael is acknowledged by all three Western sacred traditions. He is believed to have appeared to Moses as the fire in the burning bush, and to have rescued Daniel and his friends from the lions' den. To Christians, he's the angel who informed Mary of her approaching death. Islamic lore tells us that his wings are the color of 'green emerald and are covered with saffron hairs, each of them containing a million faces and mouths and as many tongues which, in a million dialects, implore the pardon of Allah.' The Koran also paints the touching image of the cherubim being formed from the tears of Michael.
In the Dead Sea Scrolls Michael emerges as the Prince of Light fighting a war against the Sons of Darkness in which he leads the angelic battle against the legions of the fallen angel, Belial. Most recently, in 1950, Pope Pius XII declared Michael to be the patron of all policemen.
Gabriel
Gabriel, whose name means 'God is my strength,' seems to be our most frequent visitor from the higher realms. He astonished Mary, and her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, with his pronouncements concerning the births of their respective sons.
To the followers of Islam, Gabriel is the Spirit of Truth who dictated the Koran to Mohammed. In Jewish legend it was Gabriel who parted the waters of the Red Sea so that the Hebrews could escape from Pharaoh's soldiers.
According to court testimony of the time, it was Gabriel who came to Joan of Arc and inspired her to go to the aid of the dauphin. Gabriel's apparent ongoing interest in this planet is most probably due to his function as heavenly awakener, the angel of vibratory transformation.
Metatron
Metatron, in the world of the Jewish mystics, came to hold the rank of the highest of the angels despite his not being mentioned in the Scriptures. The meaning of his name has never been satisfactorily explained although one interpretation of it is 'one who occupies the throne next to the Divine throne.' It could also be derived from the Latin METATOR, a guide or measurer.
In a number of traditional sources, Metatron is said to have been the prophet Enoch, who was taken up to Heaven and transformed into an angel of fire, with thirty-six pairs of wings, to continue his days as a celestial scribe. Metatron has also been identified as the Liberating Angel and the one who wrestled with Jacob; the angel who stayed Abraham's hand from sacrificing his son Issac; and the one who led the Hebrews through the forty years in the wilderness. In certain schools of mysticism, Metatron, said to be the tallest of all the heavenly beings, became known as Lesser YHWH. In Hebrew, the letters YHWH stand for the most sacred and unprounceable name of God.
As God has many names, so, too, Metatron was thought to have many names, the use of which was believed to offer the user protection and access to this great angel's powers. Yahoel, Yofiel, Surya, and Lad are just a few of his other names.
Uriel
Uriel's name means 'Fire of God,' and he is ranked variously as a seraph, cherub, regent of the sun, flame of God, presider over Hades and, in his best-known role, as the Archael of Salvation.
Like Metatron, Uriel is said to be one of the angels of the Presence, a most high posting since only the highest voltage angels can sustain the presence of God.
Uriel is thought to have been 'the spirit who stood at the gate of the lost Eden with the firey sword.' The Book of Enoch tells us that itwas Uriel who was sent by God to warn Noah of the impending flood, and elsewhere it's written that he disclosed the mysteries of the heavenly arcana to Ezra, and that he also led Abraham out of Ur in the Chaldean region.
Some have claimed that the divine art of alchemy was brought down to Earth by Uriel, and that it was also this angel who gave the Kabbalah, the Hebrew mystic tradition, to humankind. John Milton describes Uriel as 'the sharpest sighted spirit of all in Heaven.' The angel also showed up to berate Moses for neglecting to circumcise his own son Gershom. Sharp eyes indeed!
Moroni
Moroni is the angel of the Latter-day Saints. While there seems to be a dearth of indigenous American angels, in 1823 Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith in upstate New York and led him to discover buried golden tablets inscribed with dense lettering. When translated by Smith, again with Moroni's help, this text became THE BOOK OF MORMON, which tells us that in about 600 B.C., prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, a Jewish family fled the city and made its way by ship to what is now North America. Their descendants became two nations---one the ancestors of the Native Americans, the other lost and gone. However, records kept by one of the last elders of that vanished people tell that Jesus appeared to them after His death on the cross.
The elder's name was Mormon, and it was his son Moroni who buried the tablets his father had kept, in about A.D. 400. According to the story, Moroni thus joins the ranks of Enoch and Elijah who were transformed into angels, and follows in the tradition of Gabriel in being the angelic giver of a book of revelation.
There is a forty-foot-high statue of Moroni that stands on top of a hill near Palmyra, New York, where Smith discovered the buried tablets. The angel is shown as it appeared to Smith, wthout wings and clothed in a long robe. Smith, who went on to found the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, described Moroni as a 'being of light with a face like lightning.'
Melchizedek
Melchizedek, the Sage of Salem, is another one of the few known cases of a high angel taking a human, very male, body. According to THE URANTIA BOOK, he appeared fully formed, some two thousand years before Christ, announcing that he was a servant of El Elyon, the Most High. He then set up a teaching center over which he personally presided for ninety-four years.
It was Melchizedek who delivered God's Covenant to Abraham and introduced the revolutionary concept of salvation through pure faith to the thinking of the planet. He established an extraordinarily wide-flung missionary program, centered in Salem, the ancient site of Jerusalem, sending out thousands of missionaries who literally circled the globe.
Called Sydik in Phoenician mythology, Melchizedek was believed to be the father of the seven Elohim---more Angels of the Divine Presence. In the third century A.D. a group of 'heretics,' calling themselves Melchisedans, claimed to be in touch with 'a great power named Melchizedek, who was greater than Christ.' His sojourn here as the Sage of Salem was said to have been a concerted effort on behalf of the celestials to bring some much-needed light to a dark and chaotic time, and to set the seeds for the coming of the Christ.
Ariel
Ariel means 'Lion of God.' However, some confusion exists as to exactly whose side Ariel is on. He's ranked as one of the seven princes who rule the waters and is also known as Earth's Great Lord. To the poet John Milton, however, Ariel is a rebel angel who is overcome by the seraph Abdiel on the first day of the great war in Heaven.
Jewish mystics used Ariel as a poetic name for Jerusalem. In Gnostic lore, that first-and second-century melting pot of revelation, Ariel is the angel who controls the demons. Ariel has also been associated with the order of angels called the thrones and is known to have assisted the archangel Raphael in the curing of disease.
John Dee, magician, occultist, and court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I, reckoned Ariel to be a conglomerate of Anael and Uriel, which sets him among the overlighting archangels!
Ariel makes an appearance in William Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST, which may well have been the source of why Percy Bysshe Shelley, the nineteenth-century poet, liked to refer to himself as the angel Ariel.
Raziel
Raziel, which means 'Secret of God,' is believed to be an 'angel of the secret regions and Chief of the Supreme Mysteries.' There is a legend that Raziel is the author of a great book, wherein all celestial and Earthly knowledge is set down.' When the angel gave his tome to Adam, some envious angels stole it away and threw it in the ocean. After it had been recovered by the primordial angel/demon of the deep, Rehab, the book passed first to Enoch, who apparently claimed it as his own, then to Noah, who learned how to make his ark from it. Solomon, too, was thought to have possessed the book, which allowed him his unusual knowledge of magic and control over the demons.
The Zohar, the major work of Jewish mysticism, claims that set in the middle of Raziel's book there is secret writing 'explaining the fifteen hundred keys [to the myster of the world], which were not revealed even to the angels.' Other Jewish mystics report that 'each day the angel Raziel, standing on Mount Horeb, proclaims the secrets of men to all mankind.'
What we didn't know when we began this book, but what Abigrael, our recording angel, told us later, is that Raziel is its boss.
Raphael
Raphael is perhaps the most endearing of all the angels, and the one most frequently depicted in Western art. His image is featured on the canvases of such masters as Botticelli, Titian, and Rembrandt. His name means 'God Has Healed.' Not only does he appear to be the high archangel charged with healing the Earth, but according to the Zohar, 'the Earth furnishes an abode for man, whom Raphael also heals of his maladies.'
Indeed, Raphael's career seems to be peppered with medical missions. He healed the pain of circumcision for Abraham as the old man had not had the procedure done when he was young. Raphael was then sent by God to cure poor Jacob's thigh after he'd been roughed up by Samael. And it's also claimed that Raphael gave Noah a much-prized 'medical book' after the flood.
There's a legend that when Solomon prayed to God for aid in building the great temple in Jerusalem, Raphael personally delivered the gift of a magic ring with the power to subdue all demons. It was with this 'slave labor' that the Hebrew king completed the construction.
Raphael has also been called 'a guide in hell,' which after all is where healing is needed the most.
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