‘We all have angels guiding us . . . They look after us. They heal us, touch us, comfort us with invisible warm hands . . .’
As a child I totally believed in angels, God, the whole nine yards. In my extended Irish family Mary, Jesus and the guardian angels were part of the wallpaper – almost literally in the case of my grandparents, who displayed pictures of Mary and Jesus in cheap gilt frames with a flickering red light underneath to represent the Holy Spirit.
Catholic kitsch at its finest.
My parents had brought us up with it out of a kind of cultural loyalty. That and a desire to have us in a good school. God, it was understood, was a strong enforcer of good spelling and manners, so from the age of four to eighteen I was in a convent school where I believed in God with such certainty I thought that people were lying when they said they didn’t believe. I thought they were trying to be cool, like I was when I pretended to like The Cure. Saying that God didn’t exist was like saying there was no sky or trees. It was ridiculous. God was a fact.
Every night I’d say three prayers before I went to bed – first Our Father, then Hail Mary, topped off with a chat to my guardian angel.
O angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom God’s love commits me here, ever this day be at my side to light, to guard, to rule and guide. Amen.
My guardian angel was a daily companion who got me through exams and my ever-present fear that a burglar would break in while I slept. Every night I’d pray to her, turn off the lights, and then when I was practising playing dead (I figured murderers wouldn’t kill me if I was already dead in my bed), I’d imagine her flying over me, her golden wings flittering, like Tinkerbell. She was pretty. As all angels should be.
Then, at eighteen, quite suddenly, all the God stuff stopped. When I left school I left my faith behind, the way you ditch a childhood teddy bear – without even being aware I was doing it. I’d sit in church at weddings waiting to be moved but I felt nothing. Nothing at all. Then, in my late twenties, my antipathy turned to anger when the child abuse in the Catholic Church came to light. After that I found it hard even to set foot in a church. Having spent all my childhood praying like a good girl, religion became repellent to me and the idea of guardian angels, nothing more than a childish fantasy.
And so it completely and utterly baffled me to discover that so many grown-up people believed in them.
Go into any bookshop and you’ll find whole shelves devoted to helping you communicate with your angels, as well as angel cards (cards with inspirational messages on them, supposedly sent by angels) and angel meditation CDs.
So I decided to investigate – happy, at least, that I was now getting paid to do self-help. And, who knew, maybe I could get back some of the faith that gave me such comfort as a child?
If traditional self-help is the kind of thing you associate with pumped-up American men like Tony Robbins, then ‘angel therapy’ is the kind of self-help I associate with crystal shops and wind chimes. And the queen of this crystal world is Doreen Virtue, who has written forty books on the subject. Forty.
Doreen discovered angels during a carjacking, which is a pretty exciting way to discover angels, I guess. She says that before she got into her car she heard a male voice in her head telling her not to drive, but she ignored it. Then, as she was parking, two armed men came at her. The voice spoke to her again and told her to scream.
She did. Help came, disaster was averted and Doreen now talked to angels for a living, travelling around the world, giving angel workshops and selling a proliferation of angel-based products.
I went to Waterstones in Piccadilly and found three books by Doreen stacked on a shelf marked Angels. She was next to Angels in my Hair by Lorna Byrne, the Irish woman who claims to have seen angels since she was a child, and Diana Cooper, whose tomes include an angel colouring-in book.
I covered my bases by buying three Doreen classics: Angels 101, How to Hear Your Angels and Messages from Your Angels. It was only when I got home that I realized this was me all over – why buy one book on something you don’t believe in when you can buy several?
I started reading How to Hear Your Angels and learned that we each have at least two guardian angels: one is an extrovert angel who pushes you, the other is more gentle and is there to comfort you ‘when your Friday-night date doesn’t show up’.
My Friday-night date never shows up, Doreen.
Guardian angels are not the spirits of loved ones who died, they are messengers from God. Doreen argues that we don’t have to be religious to talk to them – but that confused me. If we don’t believe in God, how can we believe that he has messengers – with wings?
And they really do have wings, according to Doreen, who says they look similar to the angels we see on Christmas cards. However, they don’t use the wings for ‘transportation’. ‘I’ve never seen an angel flapping,’ she adds. Who has, Doreen?
I ended up skipping through the first few pages, hoping it would get better – only to find myself reading the CVs of the fifteen Archangels, who are above guardian angels on the angel managerial structure.
It turns out that Archangel Jophiel is the ‘Feng Shui’ angel, who can help you clear out clutter. Archangel Michael, on the other hand, is a handyman: ‘You can ask him to help you fix any mechanical or electrical problems.’ But, never let it be said that Mike is not versatile, because you can also ask him to ‘assist you in remembering your life purpose and then give you the courage to follow through on it’.
I started annotating the pages of these books with a highly complex literary note system: ‘WTF?!!!’
A couple of ‘WTF’ passages included the one where Doreen suggests that you ask the angels to give you ‘an extremely nice, warm, friendly and competent customer-service representative when calling an airline to book reservations’ (you can also use the angels to avoid queues at the check-in, apparently). Or the one where she says she’s also seen ‘a few horses and even one guinea pig hanging around like guardian angels’.
It was enough to make The Secret look rational.
With every page I turned I thought, ‘Here’s five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.’ I didn’t believe it. Not at all. Actually, it made me livid. But what were millions of other people getting out of this? What were they seeing that I didn’t see?
Doreen says that we can ask angels for help with anything at any time. I didn’t really know what to ask for so I started with some basic chit-chat.
‘Hello, angel!’ I said out loud in the kitchen when Rachel had gone to work.
I felt like a tit. There were no feathers, flashing lights or sweet perfume – signs that Doreen says the angels give to show they are there – just the sounds of the ticking kitchen clock and radio left on upstairs.
‘Do you have a message for me?’ I asked the empty room.
More ticking and music from upstairs. ‘Uptown Girl’.
So I tried another approach.
Doreen suggests closing your eyes and asking what your two angels are called, so I sat at the kitchen table and did just that. The names Mary and John came into my head. I tried to picture Mary and John as angelic beings, with feathers and lights and love pouring out of them, but I couldn’t. With Mary, I just pictured my mum. Not really a shocker, given that Mary is my mum’s name. And with John, I pictured a builder in a vest with a gut and builder’s bum. He was like Bob the Builder with stubble. I didn’t even want to think about what this guy was doing in my subconscious.
‘Do you have a message?’ I asked Angel Mary (Mum) in my head.
‘Get on with it,’ came the reply.
Typical. I tried Bob the Builder.
‘Just do it,’ he said.
‘What should I get on with? What should I be doing?’ I asked out loud in the kitchen but there was no reply. Bob and Mary had left the building.
So then I tried writing my angels a letter.
Doreen suggests something called automatic writing – where you write a note to your angels and they write back (well, you’re doing the writing, but apparently you’re channelling them). She reports that some people see the angel replying in different handwriting, using words that you would never use. Weird.
So I tried it. I ditched John the builder and Mary (Mum) and I imagined a generic, pretty angel. I started writing in the notebook that contained my tragic money love story.
Me: Dear angel, are you there?
Angel: No.
Me: Why not?
Angel: Because you don’t want me to be.
Me: Why don’t I want you to be?
Angel: You tell me.
Me: Cos I think it’s all bullshit, fairy-tale stuff.
Angel: Life is a fairy tale.
Me: Is it?
Angel: Yes.
Me: What am I supposed to say now, then?
Angel: You only believe when you need to believe.
Me: What do you mean?
Angel: When bad things happen, then you’ll believe.
Me: So I don’t need to believe now?
Angel: No.
Me: OK, bye.
Angel: We’ll see you again.
Me: Do you think so?
Angel: Yes.
Me: I’m now worried that a bad thing is going to happen . . .
Angel: It’s not, not for a long time.
Me: What’s going to happen?
Angel: Nothing major, you’ll be OK.
I did not remotely believe that this was an angel talking, it was me having a conversation with myself.
For the next week Doreen’s books annoyed me. I read all three in the hope that one of them would make more sense to me, but they seemed largely the same book repackaged in different ways. She may spend her days in the ‘angelic realm’ but she’s no fool when it comes to business. Sell the same thing forty different ways and you’ll find someone to buy it. Including me, which was infuriating me.
But everything about angels was irritating me. I felt like I was running away with the fairies. Literally.
‘I think you’re having this reaction because you are sad that you’ve lost faith in the Church,’ said Rachel, making salad.
‘No, I don’t think it’s that. I just don’t believe what this woman is saying and it makes me mad that so many people are spending money on her books and cards and putting all their faith into something that’s not true. It’s like being asked to put your faith in a unicorn or seeing a fortune-teller. She actually sells mermaid cards too – with messages from your mermaids. Mermaids, for God’s sake!’
‘So stop reading the books,’ said Helen, who was over for dinner.
‘But I don’t want to knock something that so many people believe in. I want to keep an open mind.’
‘Just make sure you don’t open your mind so much your brain falls out,’ said Helen.
‘Why do you have to be so cynical all the time?’ I snapped.
‘Marianne. Lighten up. At this rate you’re going to find yourself and lose your sense of humour.’
As a last-ditch attempt I bought some ‘angel cards’ (£12) to look at instead of the books. The idea is that you pick one every day and it gives you guidance for that day. Rachel and I had been doing them for a laugh while watching telly. So far we’d always pulled out generic messages that meant nothing to me. ‘Have Faith.’ ‘Be Confident.’ Blah, blah.
Alone in bed on Friday night, I started shuffling the cards. This time I asked the small bits of cardboard whether I’d find love. I picked out three cards. I flipped the first one over.
‘God is in charge,’ it told me. What a cop-out.
The second one was just as unhelpful: ‘Let go of fear.’
But then I turned the third.
‘Romance angels are helping you,’ said the card, with a picture of Archangel Michael in a forest flirting with two naked cherubs. My heart quickened.
I sat up. What did that mean? Was that just a coincidence? Or were there angels up there? It was a coincidence, surely.
Two days later my phone beeped.
‘Is that your angel texting?’ asked Rachel.
‘Ha, ha.’
It was Geoff: ‘In London on Thursday. Dinner?’
I got my hair done, bought a new top and squeezed myself into jeans that were too small. My valiant effort to say F**k It to the societal pressures to stay skinny was all well and good, but it’s hard to feel empowered when your legs look like over-stuffed sausages.
When I walked into the restaurant, he was at the bar, even better looking than I remembered, in a fitted blue shirt, dark jeans and an even deeper tan.
He stood up and went in for a kiss on my cheek and I felt my cheeks flush.
Be cool, Marianne, be cool!
‘You look nice,’ he said.
‘So do you!’ I said, too excited. ‘How was the trip?’
‘Fantastic . . .’
He told me about it all – LA, Vegas, Palm Springs . . . I tossed my hair and leaned in to his every word.
‘And –’ He paused.
‘Yeah?’
‘I met someone . . .’
A cold stab in my stomach.
‘Oh, wow.’
‘Yeah, she’s really great.’
‘That’s great,’ I said.
‘She’s the sister of one of the guys in the band,’ he kept talking but I was not listening. ‘You’d really like her . . .’
I kept nodding and saying ‘great’. This seemed to be the only word I had at my disposal. Great. Great. Great.
There was a whistling sound in my head.
I went to the toilet and willed myself not to cry.
Then I sat back and listened some more to how perfect this new woman was. How talented. And beautiful.
Great. Wow. Great. This all sounds Grreeeeat . . .
When I got home Rachel was waiting for me on the sofa.
‘Why am I not good enough for him? Why doesn’t any man I like like me back? What’s wrong with me?’ I said.
‘Nothing’s wrong with you.’
‘Why don’t men ever like me?’
‘Loads of men like you. You just got invited to a Greek island, for God’s sake.’
‘I mean guys I fancy. Solvent, grown-up men. Geoff has a job, a house. He’s sorted. Why can’t I have a man like that?’
‘I think you have a knack for putting your attention on the wrong guys. You only like the ones who don’t like you – and that’s not their problem, it’s yours.’
My non-date with Geoff was the end of the angels. We’d spent just nine days together. It was too weird and wacky for me.
In Italy, I had got a glimpse of something bigger than me, something beautiful. When I stood in that sun-filled hall and felt my feet being pulled to the ground, I tapped into powers I did not understand. When I was lying in the pool, I felt loved by the world. I had been moved in the way that you feel moved in front of a piece of beautiful art, and the way I had been moved in the past by the beauty of the Church.
But I was not being moved by anything sacred here. There was no feeling of awe.
I worried about how much money vulnerable people were spending on these cards and books and how much they handed over responsibility for their lives to something that might not exist. Was this any different to the Church selling pardons and telling people they could buy their way into heaven?
Desperate to understand just why so many rational adults felt differently to me, I did some research. I read articles that quoted psychologists who argued that in periods of economic gloom people look for comfort – which is why angel books, cards and tattoos, are now so popular, even in our non-religious times. We can’t handle what’s happening on earth so we put our faith in something else.
They said that when people had stories about being saved by angels, they may be suffering from hallucinations. Others said that in moments of crisis a feeling of calm descended on us not because there was an angel present, but as a survival mechanism. This is what the brain does to help you find a way through the worst experiences of your life. In other words – the guardian angel is us.
Doreen says that we should ask the angels for guidance, but surely most of us knew, deep down, what was right for us, if we would just take the time to sit still and listen to our own instincts? I figured that when you got messages from angels, it was your own wisdom speaking, not a higher force.
I remembered talking to a life coach for an article, years before. We were talking about this guy I liked and who I saw a lot as a friend but who never made a move.
‘I think he likes me too,’ I said, ‘it just doesn’t happen for some reason . . .’ and I started listing all the various things that had got in our way at various occasions. The life coach told me to close my eyes and take ten deep breaths. Then with my eyes still closed she asked me: ‘Do you think there is a future with this man?’
My answer was clear as day. ‘No’.
‘So why are you thinking so much about him?’ she asked.
‘Because I have to think about something.’
And I had done the same with Geoff: he had never said anything to lead me on. He just saw me as a friend, I’d made up the rest in order to do what I always do, which is run like hell from something real. I messaged The Greek. He didn’t reply.
I ended September feeling angry – at Doreen, at angels, at Geoff – but mostly at myself. Nine months into self-help and what had got better for me? I’d ignored a man who liked me by becoming obsessed with one who had no interest. I was more stupid with money than I’d ever been. After finally ripping off the sticker with my pretend weight of nine stone nine pounds, I saw that I’d put on nearly a stone since The Secret by saying F**k It, let’s have the ice cream/pasta/cake for breakfast. And now I’d wasted two weeks trying to talk to angels? Who had I become? I mean, really? What was I doing to myself?