From Gabriel to Lucifer: A Cultural History of Angels

by Valery Rees

'Fiery the angels fell; slow thunder rolled around their shores, burning with the fires of Orc.' Whether in recent popular culture, or back across countless centuries, angels have perpetually enthralled and even terrified us. 'Every single angel is terrible,' wrote the German Romantic poet 'and so I hold myself back from the dark bird-cry of my anguished sobbing.' For skeptics, angels may be no more than poetic devices to convey, at least for those with a religious sensibility, an active divine interest in creation. But for others, angels are absolutely real manifestations of cosmic power with the capacity either to enlighten or annihilate those whose awestruck paths they cross. Valery Rees offers the first comprehensive history of these beautiful, enigmatic and sometimes dangerous beings, whose existence and actions have been charted across the eons of time and civilization. Whether exploring the fevered visions of Ezekiel and biblical cherubim; Persian genii; Arab djinn; Islamic archangels; the austere and haunting icons of Andrei Rublev; or Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire and the more benign idea of the watchful guardian angel, the author shows that the ubiquity of these celestial messengers reveals something profound, if not about God or the devil, then about our perennial preoccupation with the transcendent.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction, History, Angels, Mythology, Philosophy

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

Reviews

[William2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

A learned and textually dense overview. For the layman, an unmatched resource. There's nothing like it out there in English, not with such breadth. The author has taken over two millennia of speculation about angels—what she calls "the four levels of discourse: literal, moral, allegorical and mystical"—and transformed it into something genuinely readable. Praiseworthy.

[Dev · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of good info here but it was a little bit dense for my personal taste and I also didn't really think it was arranged in the best way possible, or at least not in a way that I could easily pay attention to and absorb. I think I would have liked it better if there were sections on different prominent angels [although we did get a Lucifer chapter at the end so that was nice] or maybe if it was arranged more chronologically with how attitudes towards angels changed over time instead of just kind of being random chapters about different aspects of angels. Still an interesting book if you're interested in angels though.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book’s title, as well as Melvyn Bragg’s recommendation, made it an obvious choice for me. I must say that there were stylistic, syntactical, and organizational anomalies throughout. There was more material on non-Jewish/Christian/Islamic angelic beings, genii, and daimons than expected (which I mostly enjoyed), as well long forays into medieval angelology and neo-Platonism, but surprisingly little material on fallen angels and how existing traditions (say, the seven archangels of Roman Catholicism) came to be.

The epilogue partly explains this, with the author clearly interested in medieval angels, Jungian psychology, and spiritual openness rather than dogma or the development of more fixed traditions. That’s fine, but she also clarifies that she initially planned to exclude the fallen angels. And it certainly felt that way reading it. Of course, the more I think about it, it’s an enormous topic, and a more methodical approach to these long, overlapping histories likely would have made for a much longer (though arguably better) book.

[hazel ❀ · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic scholarly approach to the subject of angelology. It's very well written and contains a wealth of historical information that is seldom brought to light in other works. I would recommend it for anyone interested in the origins of angels as we know them today.

[Kris Raah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read many books about angels, including Enoch, I didn’t have to read every word of this one, but I did find references to some new books, the Book of Jubilees and Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, which I am reading next.

[Boom Baumgartner · Rating 1 out of 5]

So much knowledge, but the unorganized fashion in which it was presented makes it a difficult and ultimately unrewarding read.

[Stephany Reynoso]

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[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting enough, but I wish the back half had been less rushed and that the book was on the whole less Jungian.