Isabella Anderson - Angels: Traditions, Stories, and Miracles

AVON, MASSACHUSETTS

No, I never saw an angel, but it is irrelevant whether I saw one or not. I feel their presence around me.

PAULO COELHO

If you believe in angels, you have plenty of company. According to a recent Associated Press survey, 77 percent of Americans believe that angels exist. Look around youtheyre everywhere. Women wear angel charms, babies sport little angel T-shirts, cherubs are featured in home dcor shops, and just about everyone knows someone with a tattoo of angel wings. Angels have a large role in our popular culture. Theyre featured in movies like Its a Wonderful Life, City of Angels, and even Angels in the Outfield. Angels interact with humans in popular book series including The Mortal Instruments, Halo, and Fallen. Pop music especially reflects our fascination with these heavenly creatures. Its estimated that one in every thirty pop songs refers to an angel.

Celestial beings are found in just about every religion and culture. Ancient Egyptians believed that every person had a ka, a kind of supernatural alter ego. Winged spirits are part of the mythology of many civilizations. Valkyries in Norse mythology carried slain warriors to Valhalla. Persian fereshta and Hindu apsaras were angelic forces associated with the afterlife. The Old Testament is full of angels acting as guardians, messengers, and even warriors. The archangels, including Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, were not passive ethereal creatures. They served in Gods armyand they were fierce!

While angels have long been loved as symbols of heaven, all-seeing guardians, and heralds of the Christmas season, recently the idea of angel communication has become increasingly popular. There are angel boutiques, angel coaches, and angel card readingsall to help people get in touch with angels. This divine communication can be done in a variety of waysthrough meditation, journaling, affirmations, and chanting.

of this book is dedicated to helping you to connect with the angels. You will learn how to open yourself up to receive divine messages and gain insight into different aspects of your life. Youll discover the magic of signs, synchronicities, and coincidences and learn how to interpret their meaning as messages from angels. Angels can help you release worry, gain patience, let go of guilt, and live in the present moment with a positive attitude. And they will help you to heal physically and emotionally, find a soul mate, enhance relationships, create prosperity, find the perfect job, and manifest your dreams.

So get ready for a magical ride. Open your heartinvite the angels into your lifeand expect miracles!

Angels, in the early morning

May be seen the Dews among,

Stoopingpluckingsmilingflying

Do the Buds to them belong?

Angels, when the sun is hottest

May be seen the sands among,

Stoopingpluckingsighingflying

Parched the flowers they bear along.

EMILY DICKINSON, ANGELS, IN THE EARLY MORNING

Angels are spirits, but it is not because they are spirits that they are angels. They become Angels when they are sent. For the name Angel refers to their office, not their nature. You ask the name of this nature, it is spirit; you ask its office, it is that of an Angel, which is a messenger.

SAINT AUGUSTINE

It is unknown if the idea of angels arose in different cultures independently, if the idea traveled from culture to culture, or which cultural ideas seeded the beliefs of others. For thousands of years, merchants and mercenaries, wise men and priests, prophets and pagans, and those uprooted by famine or war have wandered and intermingled. Thus it is that you can find the concept of angels in the mythologies of nearly every known ancient culture. Their appearance and purpose may vary throughout the world and its history, but their universal influence over mankind is a presence of love and guidance, and a reminder that we are not alone.

Angels have been recorded in history by many different cultures throughout the world. Some scholars say that the earliest religious representation of angels dates back to the city of Ur, in the Euphrates Valley, c. 40002500 B.C.E. A stele, which is a stone slab, showed a winged figure descending from one of the seven heavens to pour the water of life from an overflowing jar into a cup held by the king. Other records show that in Mesopotamia there were giant, winged creaturespart human, part animalknown as griffins. And in Egypt, Nepthys, the twin sister of the goddess Isis, is shown in paintings and reliefs enfolding the dead in her beautiful wings.

Without doubt, based upon archeological evidence and other prehistoric information, angels were depicted long before Christianity appeared on the religious stage. Descriptions of angels are ancient, predating even early Judaism. Images of angels appear all over Asia Minor, in different cultures of the ancient civilized world, and westward into Greece and Italy. Iris and Hermes, messenger of the gods and guide of souls, both wear wings and serve angelic functions such as carrying messages and bringing aid to humans. The famous Greek sculpture of Nike, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, served as a model for the angels depicted in Renaissance art, firmly establishing the concept of angels in that period.

H ERMES, MESSENGER OF THE GODS

The word angelos in the original Greek means messenger, and in this respect, angels may be related to the function of Hermes, one of whose daughters is called angel by Pindar. A daughter of Zeus, Iris, the goddess of the rainbow, is also described as an angel by the writer Hesiod. Such terms suggest that an angel is a special carrier of messages from the gods, an idea that permeates the writings about angels of many cultures.

I RIS, GODDESS OF THE RAINBOW

Winged spiritsangelsare part of the mystery of every culture.... The Vikings called them valkyeries. The Greeks called them horae. In Persia they were fereshta, and sometimes they were confused with peri or horis, which are sexless (yes) female celestial beings who give sensual delight to the inhabitants of Paradise; or with the Hindu apsaras, the beautiful fairies of heaven who dispensed sensual and erotic bliss to the gods, though later (especially Christian) teachings insist that angels are without carnal desire,... Still, in those early Indo-European myths, angels could have children, which sprouted like cabbages on their laps, already five years old at birth.

SOPHY BURNHAM, A BOOK OF ANGELS