Angels Among Us, A History of Angels

Angels Wings - During the 1600s, angels pervaded the world of literature and art, depicted by a vast array of images and writings. Angels were accessible to the laity through these arts than through church doctrines. Perhaps those earlier inspired visions and translations in the human way of what the spirit of God was to these people became a style. It wasn't so much that every artist that was experiencing a spiritual flow necessarily saw an angel. But the image was strong, the wings, the concept of wings and their meanings in many symbolic ways held over. The church and various religions picked up on this angelic form, the winged figure, retranslated it in different ways - whether it was a woman with wings or a man and wings - and retranslated in there own fashion. But each of them capturing a sense of the reality that's really there about those images.

With bright seraphim and burning row, their loud uplifted angel trumpets blow, and the cherubic host and thousand choirs touched their immortal harps of golden wire with those just spirits that wear victorious palms. Hymn devout and holy songs, singing everlastingly. - John Milton.

Near the end of the 17th century in America's newly established colonies, Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, published 6 sermons on the subject of angels. The subtitle of which was Fearers of God. "Generally", Mather said, "there is no need now for angels to appear to man, because the scriptures have now been perfected". He warned his readers against the demons who may appear as angels. Thus, in Puritan New England, the angelic tradition fell away.

Continuing into the 18th century, the influence of angels still waned. The angels held their place in the liturgy of the church, but with the steady advance of scientific thought they were seen mainly as images of the past. The mystical poet and painter William Blake and the Swedish scientist and mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg approached the spiritual world from an inner point of view. Swedenborg said he was in close contact with angels.

When a person died they are met in an intermediary level called World of Spirits, where angels meet them and their education and spiritual process continues. Angels are also thought to raise children who die in the natural world. . Angelhood, if you want to call it that, is definitely a process and we need to go through this process, we need to be adults, we need to be mature beings before becoming angels. Could it be that angels in the spiritual world educate infants and children who have passed on because they have not yet reached their intellectual maturity for angelhood?

In his book Heaven and Hell, Swedenborg described some of his ideas about the different levels of angels and their roles as educators and guides. He said there are 3 degrees of angels, 3 levels of angels. The natural level, the angels closest to us. The next level are the spiritual angels working and communicating, living in communityof love of neighbor, involved in our ongoing regeneration.

The purpose of creation is to form a heaven of angels from the human race. After the spiritual experiences, which Swedenborg had, he claimed to have lived simultaneously in both the natural and spiritual worlds. Consequently, he conversed daily with angels.

The highest form of angels are described by Swedenborg as celestial angels or heavenly angels and they are the angels who are closest to God, if that is your understanding of the source of all of creation, the source of the universe. And they live goodness for the sake of goodness. While in the Swedenborg system angels are not separate creations, angels are highly evolved humans who have passed on to other levels of spiritual awareness in our everyday language we mean they have died and gone on to other things.

People who claim to have experienced near death experiences talk about going through and being met at the end of a tunnel by angels. Some people describe meeting a being of light, others say they meet Jesus.

Swedenborg suggests 3 places after physical life. There is heaven and hell and there is the world of spirits. And when a person dies they enter the world of spirits. That is similar to the phenomenon that many people have talked about when they have had a clinical death situation through trauma or accident.

Blake's idea of angels differed somewhat from Swedenborg's, although he was strongly influenced by him. Blake diverged from Swedenborg's conception of angels as a status attainable by humans. Blake believed angels were a separate order of creation. He attributed his visions to the manifestations of his inner world. For Blake, the angel was a symbol of the world of the spirit. In the 19th century, newly formed scientific principals were causing fervor amongst religious thinkers. As our knowledge of our material world increased, the spiritual realm was pushed farther away. The idea of the angel was becoming more detached from its religious foundations. Angels became more romanticized, more secular. The word angelic applied to women and an angel was seen as epitomizing womanly grace. The 2 most widely read poets of the age were Tennyson and Browning. Both writers made numerous references to angels. Angels were becoming figures of fantasy and imagination. In his poem Pauline, Browning claims the angel as his muse.

There appeared to me very beautiful rainbows as on former occasions, but still more beautiful, with the light of the purest white, in the center of which was an obscured earthly something, but that most lucid snow white appearance was beautifully varied by another lucidity. And if I rightly recollect, with flowers of different colors round about. - Emanuel Swedenborg.

"And of my powers, one springs up to save from utter death a soul with such desire confined to clay. Of powers, the only one that marks me, an imagination which has been a very angel, coming not in fitful visions but beside me ever and never failing me".

They need neither tongue nor ears but without the help of any spoken word they exchange with each other their thoughts and their counsels. - St. Thomas Aquinas.