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Do angels have wings ? Or did we paint it on them ?
- Thread starter zacariah88
- Start date
Saying an angel has wings is really a figure of speech implying that by some method it is able to ascend. It (Jewish scripture) says the sun has rays and no wings: Malachi 4:2.
Angels do not really have or need wings, at least not in Genesis. The wings of Zoroastrian religion are not related to Judaism, far as I can tell. Zoroastrian wings are related probably to Etruscan and Viking myths about death. Contrary: Judaism does not evolve from other religions but borrows and repurposes stories and symbols, completely repurposing them. It rejects the myths of the superstitious past. While angels in Etruscan and Zoroastrian religions are about being carried to heaven or hell, this is not the purpose of malakim. The purpose of malakim is more abstract. For example in Jacob's vision the malakim ascend and descend upon stairs. They are not carrying souls to heaven but are providing communion between this world and the ideal world. In modern times it is styled "The world to come." This is very different from the Zoroastrian heaven which is disconnected from our world and different from the Etruscan and Viking afterlife also disconnected from our world. Rather the malakim bring changes our world. So angels use stairs, not wings. I can think of one other means of ascent used by a malakim.
In the story of Sampson's father (Manoah) the angel ascends in the smoke of a burnt offering, but the meaning of this seems less clear to me since smoke never descends and only ascends. The implication may be that the angel leaves rather than staying in contact with Manoah, but Jacob (and his family) remains in contact with heaven since in his dream the angels also descend.
- [Mal 4:2 NIV] 2 But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. (Most translations say 'Wings' rather than 'Rays', but the NIV seems to do better in this case.)
- [Gen 28:12 NIV] 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
- [Jdg 13:20 NIV] 20 As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground.
Angels do not need wings
Angels are not physical beings and can take on various forms, such as appearing as humans. They can only be described in symbolic terms to us mortals.
zacariah88
Member
They are more than that we cannot see them with the naked eye but they are beings of fire because in the throne of God their in there with him and fire and holy fire we cannotlive near God for he is fire that destroy all of us only some angels can be near him. Deuteromy 4:24 God is consuming fire and Ezekiel prophet vision.
Ella S.
Well-Known Member
In esotericism, angels are often treated more like particular aspects of God's will. They're less like individual beings and more like abstract forces, which are merely parts of the greater whole of God.
You see this approach in particular in Enochian magic. In Enochian, each angel is a word or a concept that God used to literally speak the world into existence, making their true names double as words of power. They have no concrete form, but they can appear to humans in forms that we're better able to comprehend through divination mediums.
Further back, Agrippa describes angels as lower reflections or manifestations of God as well, describing them as a part of a celestial realm of forms. They exist on a sort of plane in between our world and God, and it's through them that creation is made manifest in the physical world. In a very similar way, they're still thought of as abstract forces that are an extension of God.
Whether they even have free will is disputed. While demons are often thought of as "fallen" angels, they take on a bit of a different character in esotericism. Rather than being fallen angels, demons are more like chthonic or heavily material spirits, if not a lower order of angels that are just as much under the command of God as the higher ones. Satan himself can be viewed this way, being given the important role to test and punish humanity.
That's not the only approach, of course. Demons can also be thought of as jinn, a separate class from angels entirely, or even as dark reflections of God that represent levels of separation from him, which we see evoked in Qliphothic sorcery, for instance.
When angels do have a free will of their own, they are sometimes also thought to have a corporeal form composed of pneuma or aether. This is a much older idea that is no longer held by most theologians today, but the idea was that the "true form" of angels is actually a kind of vapor which is so light that it normally floats above the earth in the heavens.
Generally, though, you don't see many conceptions of angels as literally having wings and halos, and it's accepted that these are symbolic representations adapted from Roman artistic conventions. The word "angel" itself is Greek for a kind of messenger spirit, sometimes regarded as an equivalent of daimon, and the ancient mesopagans did not conceive of these angels as having a physical human form, either.
Ezekiel complicates this with its depiction of the celestial beings, such as the seraphim and cherubim, who are explicitly described as having physical forms that are winged. They look dramatically different from the artistic renditions of angels that are essentially humans with pairs of wings and halos, though.
In Christian angelology, these celestial beings are not always strictly classified as angels. When they are, they're usually considered their own special category of angel, distinct from the types of angel that are normally discussed when the topic comes up. In fact, the word "angel" itself normally refers specifically to the lower two choirs of celestial beings in the lowest order, corresponding to archangels and angels respectively, right underneath the principalities.
That particular concept of an angel usually describes them as taking a form that is indistinguishable from a human, and that's the kind of angel that Lot offered his daughters up in order to protect.
Islam and Judaism have their own ways of dividing the angelic hierarchies and describing their concept of angels, with some overlap and some division from what I've described here. It's worth noting that the word "angel" did not have a direct analogue in Aramaic, Hebrew, or Arabic for a long time and was used to translate a variety of different words depending on the context, which can complicate the idea a bit.
You see this approach in particular in Enochian magic. In Enochian, each angel is a word or a concept that God used to literally speak the world into existence, making their true names double as words of power. They have no concrete form, but they can appear to humans in forms that we're better able to comprehend through divination mediums.
Further back, Agrippa describes angels as lower reflections or manifestations of God as well, describing them as a part of a celestial realm of forms. They exist on a sort of plane in between our world and God, and it's through them that creation is made manifest in the physical world. In a very similar way, they're still thought of as abstract forces that are an extension of God.
Whether they even have free will is disputed. While demons are often thought of as "fallen" angels, they take on a bit of a different character in esotericism. Rather than being fallen angels, demons are more like chthonic or heavily material spirits, if not a lower order of angels that are just as much under the command of God as the higher ones. Satan himself can be viewed this way, being given the important role to test and punish humanity.
That's not the only approach, of course. Demons can also be thought of as jinn, a separate class from angels entirely, or even as dark reflections of God that represent levels of separation from him, which we see evoked in Qliphothic sorcery, for instance.
When angels do have a free will of their own, they are sometimes also thought to have a corporeal form composed of pneuma or aether. This is a much older idea that is no longer held by most theologians today, but the idea was that the "true form" of angels is actually a kind of vapor which is so light that it normally floats above the earth in the heavens.
Generally, though, you don't see many conceptions of angels as literally having wings and halos, and it's accepted that these are symbolic representations adapted from Roman artistic conventions. The word "angel" itself is Greek for a kind of messenger spirit, sometimes regarded as an equivalent of daimon, and the ancient mesopagans did not conceive of these angels as having a physical human form, either.
Ezekiel complicates this with its depiction of the celestial beings, such as the seraphim and cherubim, who are explicitly described as having physical forms that are winged. They look dramatically different from the artistic renditions of angels that are essentially humans with pairs of wings and halos, though.
In Christian angelology, these celestial beings are not always strictly classified as angels. When they are, they're usually considered their own special category of angel, distinct from the types of angel that are normally discussed when the topic comes up. In fact, the word "angel" itself normally refers specifically to the lower two choirs of celestial beings in the lowest order, corresponding to archangels and angels respectively, right underneath the principalities.
That particular concept of an angel usually describes them as taking a form that is indistinguishable from a human, and that's the kind of angel that Lot offered his daughters up in order to protect.
Islam and Judaism have their own ways of dividing the angelic hierarchies and describing their concept of angels, with some overlap and some division from what I've described here. It's worth noting that the word "angel" did not have a direct analogue in Aramaic, Hebrew, or Arabic for a long time and was used to translate a variety of different words depending on the context, which can complicate the idea a bit.