Three
Humans and Angels
IN MANY OF the great myths involving angels, the angels are mistaken for people. If we understand angels as symbolic personifications of higher and more inclusive levels of human consciousness, and stories about angels as mythic signposts pointing us toward the insights such consciousness reveals, then the reason for the blurring of the distinction between angels and humans is to remind us that angels are indeed us.
One of the clearest examples of this confusion is found in the book of Joshua, the first book of the Former Prophets in the Bible. Written by several writers during the eight and seventh centuries BCE, the book tells the story of the Israelite invasion of Canaan.
Once while in Jericho, Joshua looked to see a man standing across from him, his sword drawn in his hand. Joshua approached him and asked, “Are you one of us or one of our enemies?” And he answered, “Neither. I am the chief of the Lord’s army; I have just arrived.” Then Joshua prostrated to the ground and said to him, “What does my lord wish to say to his servant?” And the chief of the Lord’s army said to Joshua, “Remove your shoe from your foot, for the place upon which you stand is holy”—and Joshua did so. ( Joshua 5:13–15)
This is a strange story. Joshua, warlord of the Israelites, is suddenly confronted by a stranger brandishing an unsheathed sword. The defensive reflex of any soldier would be to unsheathe one’s own sword, yet Joshua does not do so. Rather he asks the man to state his allegiance to Israel or to the enemy. The fact that Joshua entertains the notion that this could be a mortal enemy makes his action all the more odd, and it is the strangeness of the story that suggests we are dealing with a dream encounter rather than a waking one.
In this dream Joshua encounters his angelic self. Because the encounter is recalled from the ego’s perspective, the angel appears separate from Joshua, fully human and hence bound by time and space. “I have just arrived,” the angel tells Joshua as if he traveled in the manner of humans. The phrase “I have just arrived” should be understood to mean that the projection of the angelic Joshua outside the dreaming ego is happening in the moment.
The angel reveals himself as the chief of God’s armies, suggesting that he is Joshua’s cosmic counterpart. Joshua then asks what it is that the angel has come to say to him. One would expect the angel to say something encouraging with regard to the coming battle over Jericho. Instead he closely echoes God’s words to Moses at the burning bush: “Take off the sandals from your feet” (Exodus 3:5).
The difference between the command given to Moses and that given to Joshua is subtle and significant. Moses is told to remove both sandals from both feet, Joshua is told to remove only one sandal from one foot. Given that the writer of the Joshua story is consciously linking his hero, Joshua, to his hero’s mentor, Moses, why change the command from the plural in Moses’s case to the singular in Joshua’s case?
To find an answer we have to remember that we are dealing with mythic symbols. What do sandals represent in these encounters? Sandals are a protective barrier between the human and the earth. In Hebrew, the language of both Exodus and the book of Joshua, the link between these two is clearer than it is in the English translation.
As noted earlier, the human is adam, the earth is adamah. Adam comes from adamah, indeed is adamah made self-aware. To remove the barrier between adam and adamah is to stand in direct contact with the Ground of one’s being. Moses does this fully, Joshua only halfway. Joshua is not yet Moses, and his angel does not push him further than he can actually go.
Moses’s encounter with the angel is even more suggestive. While shepherding the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro, “YHVH’S angel appeared to Moses in a fiery blaze amidst a thornbush” (Exodus 3:2). This angel has no shape, a hint, perhaps, that Moses need not be reminded that his vision is an inner journey. Once the angel has caught Moses’s attention he is no longer part of the story, and God himself speaks directly to Moses, commanding him, “Do not come nearer! Take off the sandals from your feet, you are standing on holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).
Unlike Joshua, Moses has no moment of confusion; he knows he is dealing with an angel, and with God. The fleeting nature of his encounter with the angel suggests that Moses moved swiftly through world-centered soul awareness and directly into God-centered spirit. It is because Moses is fully engaged with the ultimate Ground that he is told to remove both sandals. And what does this God want with Moses once the barrier between them is removed? We find the answer in Exodus 3:10: “I will dispatch you to Pharaoh to take my people, Israel’s children, out of Egypt.”
In other words, the encounter with God is the call for liberation from the narrow places of enslavement. Moses’s encounter with God has worldly political ramifications. This is not a minor point. Having moved out of ego-centered mind and through world-centered soul Moses knows that self and other are one, though not yet the One. His encounter with God does not result in a Jesus-like exclamation, “The Father and I are one” ( John 10:30), but rather in a command to return to the world of I-Thou and liberate it from the narrowness of I-It symbolized by the oppression of Pharaoh.
But Moses is an exception; most men and women in the Bible perceive angels as physical appearances, as human beings. That rule is nowhere more clear than in the eighteenth chapter of the book of Genesis when God visits Abraham while “he sat by the door of his tent in the heat of the day” (Genesis 18:1).
According to rabbinic midrash this visit takes place after Abraham has circumcised himself, his son Ishmael, and all the males of his household. He and the rest of the men are in agony over the cutting of their foreskins and, according to rabbinic midrash, God says to his angels, “Come let us go and visit the sick and see to the welfare of Abraham.”1
The Bible itself does not mention angels but speaks of “three men” who approach Abraham’s tent. In the midrash spun from this Bible story we are told that these “men” are in fact the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael who accompanied God on his visit to Abraham. Here is the biblical version:
YHVH appeared to him [Abraham] at the oak groves of Mamre, as he sat by the door of his tent in the heat of the day. He [Abraham] looked up and noticed three men standing near him. As soon as he saw them he ran from the tent door to meet them, and bowing to the ground he said, “Gentlemen, please do not pass by your servant, but let some water be brought to wash your feet, and rest underneath this tree. I will bring some bread to pacify your hunger before resuming your journey—after all, you have come to your servant’s place.” They replied, “Do as you have said.” (Genesis 18:1–5)
It is important to see that it is God who plans to visit Abraham, yet it is three men that actually appear to him (and clearly the Bible itself does not tell us they are angels). The confusion here is between God and these three men, hinting again at the ultimate unity of God, humankind, and the angelic.
It may be that the early rabbis were troubled by this confusion, and did not want those who heard the story to imagine that God took the form of humans (unlike the Christian writers, who understood God to be the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit). So in the rabbis’ interpretation of Genesis 18:1–5 the men become angels, allowing God to avoid any anthropomorphism in this case. Here is the version from Genesis Rabbah:
Abraham was talking with God when he saw three men approaching his camp. He said to God, “Please, Lord, excuse me while I tend to the needs of these travelers.” The men were in fact angels—Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael—sent by God that Abraham might fulfill his desire to provide hospitality to travelers. Each of the angels had a mission: Raphael came to heal the wound of Abraham’s recent circumcision; Michael came to announce Sarah’s future pregnancy; and Gabriel came to destroy Sodom.
Abraham ran to greet the “men,” inviting them to eat, drink, and sit beneath the shade tree growing by the entrance to his tent. This was a special tree, revealing the character of anyone sitting beneath it. If the visitor was just, compassionate, and receptive to hearing of the true God, the tree would spread its branches protectively. If not, the branches would shift and provide the visitor with no shade. The tree spread its branches wide and all three men were given shelter from the sun.2
Two points must be made here. First, Abraham leaves God to be of service to these three travelers. Abraham does not know them to be angels, and thinks them to be men like himself. Yet he tells God to wait while he serves these men a meal. In Abraham’s hierarchy of concern, God comes last. This is no small teaching, and it tells us that in the mind of the rabbis the true way to serve God is to serve humanity. Coupled with God’s command to Moses to liberate the Israelites, it also suggests that all encounters with God result not in an absorption into the godhead but in a return to humanity to be of service to its needs. Once an individual has experienced higher levels of consciousness, he or she cannot help but see all beings as part of the One and thus feel called to love God as both self and other, I and Thou.
The second point is that even with the aid of his magic tree, Abraham is still unaware that his visitors are angels. That is to say the goodness that the angels embody is not different from that which human beings can embody. While we can assume that the branches of Abraham’s magic tree will shade the angels, we must realize that in Abraham’s mind this is what is to be expected whenever good human beings sit beneath his tree. Again, the angels are not superior to humans, but symbolic of human potential.
When the meal was finished, so the midrash goes, Michael announced the birth of Isaac and returned to heaven, while Raphael, who had come to heal Abraham’s wound but found him in no need of healing, accompanied Gabriel to Sodom.3
Normally angels have the capacity to travel at the speed of light, but Raphael and Gabriel were in this case angels of mercy, and they hesitated to execute their work of destruction, hoping that Abraham might turn aside God’s decree against Sodom. They stalled until evening, but since no reprieve was given, they assumed the fate of the city was sealed and arrived there in a flash.4
That evening the two angels entered Sodom and, in a replay of their encounter with Abraham, they found Lot, Abraham’s nephew, who also urged them to lodge with him and partake of his hospitality. The Bible is clear however that where Abraham saw “men,” Lot saw “angels” (Genesis 19:1). Why did Lot see these strangers for what they really were, while Abraham confused them with humans? One would assume that Abraham, being closer to God, would see things more clearly than Lot. Again this hints at our premise. Lot saw the angels as “other,” different from himself, while Abraham saw them as human, similar to himself. Abraham saw the matter more clearly, for he understood the nature of these travelers to be not unlike his own.
While the Bible remains silent on the matter, the midrash says that Lot sought to defend the city and its inhabitants, arguing with the angels as his uncle Abraham had argued with God hours earlier. He, like Abraham, told the angels that there were righteous people in the city who did not deserve to die for the sins of their neighbors. The angels were moved by his argument and were about to petition God to rethink his plan, when the citizens of Sodom stormed Lot’s house demanding that he turn his visitors over to them to be raped.
At first the angels were persuaded by Lot’s defense of Sodom, but when the men surrounded the house and demanded that Lot’s visitors be surrendered to them, they turned a deaf ear to Lot. Raphael grasped the hands of Lot, his wife, and their unmarried daughters, while Gabriel pushed his little finger against the foundation stone of the city causing Sodom to collapse. As Raphael and Gabriel led the family out of the city, they warned against looking back. Despairing over the fate of her married daughters who remained with their husbands in the city, Lot’s wife glanced back and was immediately turned to a pillar of salt. From that day on, cattle came to lick the salt, and by evening it was gone. But each morning the pillar returned and with it the cattle.5
Now what shall we make of these stories of angelic destruction in the context of God who is Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, “I will be whatever I will be” (Exodus 3:14), the unpredictable creative force that liberates humanity from enslavement to narrow-mindedness? In Lot’s case the enslavement was to be comfortable even in a place of immorality. Here creative liberation required massive destruction. What happens to Lot’s wife deepens the story’s meaning.
We are used to perceive the fate of Lot’s wife as a punishment, but, taking our text as myth, it is really something quite different: Against the express orders of the angels, she looks back on the crumbling city, fearing for the fate of her daughters. Is it a mother’s love that is being punished here? No. While our myth reminds us that looking back prevents us from moving forward, the image of an eternal pillar of salt licked by cattle is not negative.
A salt or mineral lick is part of a healthy ecosystem, providing cattle, deer, and other animals with the nutrients they need to grow healthy bones and muscles. Animals will travel for miles to ingest these much-needed nutrients. Lot’s wife has become a source of life for the cattle who are themselves an almost universal symbol of motherhood and fertility. In other words, God did not punish Lot’s wife for loving her daughters; he transformed her into a pillar of life, thus allowing her to love and be of help to God’s creation.
Another angel myth of a mother’s love for her child can be found in the biblical story of Hagar, Sarah’s Egyptian slave and Abraham’s consort, found in the book of Genesis, chapters 16 and 21.
Sarah begins to doubt God’s promise that she will bear a son. Taking matters into her own hands, Sarah gives her slave girl, Hagar, to Abraham, hoping that any child born to Hagar will belong also to Sarah. When Hagar becomes pregnant, however, Sarah becomes jealous and treats Hagar harshly. To escape her mistress, Hagar flees into the desert. She is found at an oasis by an angel of God who asks her why she is running away. The angel tells Hagar to return to Sarah, and assures her that she is to give birth to a boy who is to be named Ishmael, Man of God. The Bible goes on to say that Hagar then “called the Name of YHVH Who spoke to her, ‘You are the God of Vision,’ for she said, ‘Could I have seen God here, and after seeing him survived?’” (Genesis 16:13).
We are dealing with myth rather than history. How do we know? The Bible itself tells us something deeper than history is afoot. The angel says to the clearly pregnant Hagar, “You are pregnant and shall give birth to a son” (Genesis 16:11).
Why tell Hagar she is pregnant when that is so evident? The myth is pointing not to a biological birth but a psycho-spiritual one. This second conception is not physical but metaphorical: Hagar is to give birth to a level of awareness that realizes the unity of the human and the divine—Ishmael, literally Ish/man m’/from El/God. Whether or not we take Ishmael to be a historical figure, we can see the myth as saying something important about Hagar. She is the vessel from which a child of God will emerge—Hagar, here symbolizing all humans, carries within herself a level of consciousness that is fully in tune with the divine. The angel tells her this because it is the role of the angelic to point the human toward God and the greater unity in which all life resides.
Hagar returns to Abraham and Sarah’s camp, gives birth, and raises her son Ishmael. In time, within a year of the destruction of Sodom, Sarah, too, gives birth to a son, Isaac.
The birth of Isaac does nothing to lessen Sarah’s jealousy toward Hagar and Ishmael. While the majority of English translations of the Hebrew Bible seek to excuse Sarah’s jealousy by telling us that Sarah saw Ishmael “mocking” Isaac, the Hebrew itself says only that Ishmael was “playing” with his younger half brother (Genesis 21:9). Again Sarah seeks to remove Hagar, this time along with her son, in this way ensuring that Isaac and not Ishmael will inherit Abraham’s fortune and the mantle of leadership.
Sarah goes to her husband and demands that he “drive out this slave woman and her son” (Genesis 21:10). Not wishing to see any harm come to either Hagar or Ishmael, Abraham seeks counsel with God, and God urges him to follow the advice of Sarah, promising that he will see to the welfare of Abraham’s firstborn. “So Abraham awoke early in the morning, took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them on her shoulder along with the boy, and sent her off. She departed, and wandered about in the desert of Beer-sheba” (Genesis 21:14).
While the image of Abraham lifting Ishmael onto Hagar’s shoulder may be touching, it is, given the time frame of the story itself, a bit absurd. Ishmael is a teenager at this point, far too big to be carried by his mother. The ancient rabbis noticed this discrepancy and derived yet another midrash from it. Sarah, they taught, had cast an evil spell on Ishmael as he was about to be expelled from the camp. The evil spell cast by Sarah made the boy sick and feverish, so that Hagar had to carry him, grown-up as he was. In his fever he quickly drank all the water that Abraham had given them. It soon became obvious to Hagar that they would die in the desert, and she placed her son under a willow shrub and walked a ways off so as not to see him suffer.6
While the Bible tells us nothing of Sarah and her spells, both the biblical authors and the rabbis agree that it is when Hagar walks away from Ishmael that an angel of God calls to her (Genesis 21:17–19) saying, “Hagar, why are you distressed? God has heard your son’s cry and will protect you both.” God then opens Hagar’s eyes and she perceives what she hadn’t noticed before—a well of fresh water! Hagar fills the skin with water and helps her son to drink.
Importantly, it is not the angel that opens Hagar’s eyes, but God. Again, the fluid passing from human to angel to God is the way this mythic tale hints at the greater unity of the human, the angelic, and the divine.
We notice, too, that the Bible does not say God creates the well for Hagar, but only that God opens Hagar’s eyes that she might see what she had not seen before. This is what happens to humans when they move from ego-centered consciousness toward divine consciousness: our eyes are opened and we see what has been there all along, but which the ego-centered mind could not see.
One of the most famous angelic encounters found in the Hebrew Bible is Jacob’s wrestling with the angel.
Jacob has left his father-in-law, Laban, and is making his way home along with his wives, children, servants, and herds. Hearing that his brother, Esau, is coming toward him at the head of four hundred warriors, Jacob assumes his brother plans to carry out his threat to murder him. Jacob seeks to protect his family by taking them across the river ford, and then to confront his brother alone. The Bible says, Jacob “got up that night and took his two wives, his two handmaids, and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. When he had taken them across he sent for his possessions to follow them” (Genesis 32:22–23). He then recrosses the ford to face his brother.
And Jacob was alone when a man wrestled with him until dawn. Seeing he could not defeat him, he wrenched Jacob’s hip, pulling it from its socket. Then he said, “Release me, for the day is dawning.” But Jacob said, “I will not release you unless you bless me.” He said, “What is your name?” and he answered, “Jacob.” He said, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Yisra-El [Israel], since you have wrestled with God and with men and have prevailed.” Then Jacob said to him, “Now, please tell me your name.” He answered, “Why should you be asking for my name?” and he blessed him there. Jacob named the place Peniel [Face of God] saying, “I have seen God face to face and yet my life continues.” (Genesis 32:24–30)
The parallels of this story with the first Hagar story (Genesis 16) are striking. Both Hagar and Jacob are alone in the wilderness. Both are certain that they will shortly die. Both have encounters with beings greater than human. Both are moved to name either the being (in Hagar’s case) or the place in which the being is encountered (in Jacob’s case), and both use the verb “to see” in doing so. And both ultimately recognize that the “angel” and the “man” are both God.
Once more these myths are telling us that humanity, the angelic, and God are One, and there are some mortals among us with the capacity to see through the most narrow manifestation of Being, the human form, to the most inclusive manifestation, the divine form.
A rabbinic midrash regarding Jacob’s wrestling with God makes this clear:
As Jacob prepared to take his wives, consorts, children, and possessions across Jabbok’s ford he noticed a shepherd seeking to cross with his sheep and camels. The shepherd approached Jacob proposing that each help the other in their quest to cross the ford. Jacob agreed so long as his family and possessions crossed to safety first. The shepherd agreed saying that he would transport Jacob’s things and then Jacob would bring the shepherd’s flocks and herds.
Jacob nodded in agreement, and no sooner had he done so that all of his possessions suddenly appeared on the far side of the ford. Jacob then set about to take the shepherd’s camels and sheep across. The crossing itself was easy, but no matter how many sheep and camels Jacob led across, when he returned to the other side still more awaited him. He persisted in this trial all night before finally losing patience.
Jacob, thinking his tormentor was a wizard, suddenly leaped at the shepherd and strangled him crying, “Sorcerer!”
The shepherd laughed and said, “You think me a wizard. Let me show you with whom you are wrestling.” The shepherd then touched his finger to the earth and the ground beneath the two of them burst into flame.
“You seek to defeat me with fire?” Jacob screamed, still choking the man. “I am made of fire!”7
Before we continue with this midrash, we must briefly explore Jacob’s notion that he is made of fire. The Hebrew word for “man,” ish, is comprised of three letters: aleph, yod, and shin. The Hebrew word for “fire,” esh, contains two letters: aleph and shin. The word “fire” is thus incorporated into the word “man.” The additional letter yod is one of the letters of God’s Name, Yod-Hey-Vav-Hey, or YHVH. Hence a man is a holy fire, a fire who burns with the passion for truth and justice that is at the heart of God. The Hebrew word for “woman,” isha, also contains the word esh, fire, followed by the letter hey, the second and fourth letters of God’s Name. Thus woman is no less holy or fiery than man.
What does it mean that humans are holy fires? Fire both comforts and consumes. It can be used for good or evil. The same is true of people. We are consuming beings whose consumption can decimate a place and an entire planet if not held in check. Our consumption must be in the service of life and peace, and only then is it holy.
But who is this mysterious shepherd? The rabbis take him to be the archangel Michael, a master of fire, but not himself fire. Not realizing the true nature of humanity as holy fire, the angel Michael expects his fire magic to impress Jacob. But this is like a wave seeking to impress the ocean. The midrash continues:
Failing in his efforts to defeat Jacob, Michael called upon the host of angels under his command and was about to mortally wound Jacob when God Himself appeared and sapped His angels of their power.
God said to Michael, “Why are you seeking to harm Jacob who is My priest?” To which Michael replied, “Not so! I am Your priest and this one is a pretender. Only the unblemished can serve You as priest, and the wound I caused him disqualifies him.”
God replied, “Michael, you are My priest in heaven, and Jacob is My priest on earth. Restore him!”
Michael then called to Raphael, the Angel of Healing. “Raphael, my friend, help me out of my distress! Cure this Jacob!”
And God said, “Now that you have restored him, tell Me why you sought to harm him?”
“I sought only to honor You.”
“Then,” God said, “I will give you that opportunity for you shall guard Jacob and the people that shall come forth from him until the end of time.”
Then Michael turned to Jacob and said, “How is it that one who fears not angels stands in dread of his brother, Esau?”
All this time Jacob never once let go of Michael’s throat. As day dawned, Michael said to Jacob, “Now let me go, the day breaks.”
“And how is it that an archangel fears the daylight like a thief or a gambler?” Jacob said.
Then many angels appeared each calling to Michael, “Come, Michael, dawn breaks and you must lead the choir in song. Without you we cannot sing!”
Fearing what might happen if the morning songs fell silent, Michael pleaded with Jacob to let him go. Unmoved, Jacob demanded a blessing from Michael before he would release him.
“What? Is the servant to bless the master? You heard what was said, I am to serve you and your descendants, how can I bless you?”
Still Jacob held on. So Michael said, “I was not empowered to bless you, but I will tell you a secret and if God blames me for doing so you must come to my defense. A time will come when God will change your name from Jacob to Israel, for you have wrestled with men and gods and have survived.”8
This rabbinic version of the biblical tale not only embellishes the original, it solves a puzzle in the text itself. In the Bible Jacob’s name is changed to Israel twice: once by the angel at the ford of the Jabbok (Genesis 32:29), and again by God a short time later (Genesis 35:10). Rather than imagine that God did not know about the first name change, the rabbis rework the story so that the angel is not actually changing Jacob’s name but foretelling that God will do so later.
What are we to make of this midrash? The key is in the explanation the archangel Michael gives for wanting to kill Jacob. Michael claims that Jacob cannot serve God as a priest because he is wounded, a wound that Michael himself inflicted. This is no explanation at all since Michael sought to kill Jacob before injuring him. What really troubles the angel is that he suspects the human is usurping the angelic role. From the point of view of our metaphoric reading of angels, the myth is saying that the ego-centered mind cannot do without the angelic capacity, nor can the angelic do without the human.
“Michael, you are My priest in heaven” means that the angelic faculty is the way the human can move out of the slavery of ego-centered mind and toward the liberation of God-centered spirit. “And Jacob is My priest on earth” means that the human is the way the wisdom revealed by the angelic faculty, the wisdom of the I-Thou and I-I, is brought to bear on the events of the ego-centered world.
Yet if this so, if the two are somehow equal, why does God order Michael, and by extension all angels, to serve Jacob and humanity? The rabbis are reflecting the same insight revealed in the Bible, namely, that the circle of seeing begins with the human and ends with the human. The point is not simply to see beyond the human, but to look through the angelic and divine lenses of knowing back at the human so as to reveal humankind for what it is—a microcosm of the divine, the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26).
According to both the myths of the Bible and midrash, despite the healing efforts of Raphael, Jacob’s wound could not be healed. The Bible tells us that Jacob limped because of his wound. Raphael kept the wound from being fatal, but not from being a constant reminder of Jacob’s encounter with Michael. But there is more to this wound than a painful reminder of wrestling with an angel. Angels cannot be wounded. Woundedness is unique to humans, and in that woundedness may be a key to human spiritual maturation.
Jacob is called Jacob (Ya’acov) because he was born grasping the heel (ah-cave) of his brother, Esau. Jacob spent much of his life grasping: first his brother’s birthright (Genesis 25:29–34), then his father’s blessing (Genesis 27:1–37), then the daughters of Laban, then the sheep of Laban, and finally the blessing of the angel. Then as now, receiving a new name is symbolic of beginning a new life. The angel is telling Jacob that his life of grasping has come to an end. He is no longer the Heel-Clinger but Yisra-El, the God-Wrestler.
This is of crucial importance. Israel is not only Jacob’s name but the name of the people that come after him, the people that the angel Michael is to serve. What does it mean to be Israel? It means one is a wounded warrior, one who, the Bible tells us, walks not at the pace of the warrior but at the pace of the nurturer, “a slow pace”—matching those of the cattle and the children (Genesis 33:13–14).
Israel the God-Wrestler walks at the pace of the toddler, the calf, and the nursing mother. Israel, unlike the earlier Jacob whose life was all about accumulating wealth and power, often by means of stealth and magic, is concerned with the weak, not the mighty. The trickster has become the nurturer. To borrow intentionally from the Gospels, Jacob who would be first is now Israel, who chooses to be last (Matthew 19:30); Jacob who was concerned only with himself is now Israel, whose passion is for the least of those among whom he dwells (Matthew 25:45).
This story adds greatly to our understanding of what it is to be transformed by God. We are not made to be more, but to be less. We are not to “play god” and lord it over others, but to be God, the God of compassion in the immediacy of our humanity. This is why Michael must serve Israel, the awakened human soul, and not Jacob, the unseeing ego-centered mind. Like the opening of Hagar’s eyes that she might see the human world in a new way and drink from the well to which she had been blind, Israel is to be in the world in a new way and provide milk to the children and calves.
Israel in this case refers to anyone who has wrestled with the angelic and the divine—anyone who is attempting to integrate the ego-centered mind with the world-centered soul, and then to integrate both of these with the still greater and more inclusive God-centered spirit.
This transformation can only happen when we, like Jacob, overcome our aloneness, our alienation. In other words, the fundamental aspect of our consciousness that we must overcome is the illusory notion of the narrow mind that each of us is all alone—separate and alienated from God and everyone and everything else. This sense of alienation is the original error of humanity, and the angelic potential helps us to overcome it. To understand this feeling of alienation more clearly, we need to look at the underlying myth.
We find the original myth of alienation in the Bible in a story so well known that its familiarity might hinder our understanding: When God discovers that Adam has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God says, “‘Behold the man has become achad mimenu, knowing good and evil. Now he might reach out and take also from the Tree of Life, and eat it and gain immortality!’ So YHVH God banished him from the Garden of Eden, to work the soil from which he was taken. And having driven out the man, He stationed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and the flame of the ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:22–24).
To understand this myth we have to understand the Hebrew phrase achad mimenu, usually translated as “like one among us.” The Hebrew, however, literally means “unique from us,” or “one separate from us.” Eating from the tree does not make Adam like God, as the serpent promised (Genesis 3:5); rather he becomes alienated from God, first psychologically and then physically. Becoming achad means that humanity can no longer see itself as a part of the divine whole. Instead, humanity imagines itself to be apart from both God and nature—a separate volitional force, an ego-centered mind only.
Most of us suffer from this notion that we are somehow other than the whole. The truth is so very different. There is no “I” separate from the Whole, and that feeling of separation is simply an experience of maya, the Sanskrit word for illusion. Mythical angelic encounters often push the ego-centered mind to realize the greater Whole in which it rests (and this is the purpose of angelic encounters in the first place). It is the ego-centered mind that meets the angelic, thereby offering the I-It level of human consciousness the opportunity to open to the truth of I-Thou and perhaps even I-I.
The God-centered spirit of I-I does not negate the ego-centered mind of I-It, but it places it in the larger Whole in which all things exist. Our myths of angelic encounters do not entail the negation of the human who meets the angel. It is not that we, in our human-angelic encounters, forget our names, homes, and belongings, but that we realize that we are so much more than the self that is defined by the material.
In the Eden story, God is going to expel Adam from the Garden not simply because God fears Adam could eat from the Tree of Life and thereby gain immortality (God had actually never prohibited the first couple from eating of the Tree of Life or any other tree in the Garden, except for the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), but that by eating from it without first overcoming this state of achad, alienation, Adam would be eternally cut off from God, from Adam’s highest and most inclusive self; he would be forever locked in a world of seeming separation and duality. Thus the expulsion from the Garden is not so much a punishment as it is a preventive.
With this deeper reading of the story of the Expulsion from Eden we can also take a fresh look at the role of the cherubim in this myth: “[God] stationed at the east of the Garden of Eden the cherubim and the flame of the ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the Tree of Life” (Genesis 3:24).
We assume that the cherubim are violent figures who will use their flaming sword to keep Adam from returning to the Garden and eating from the Tree of Life. Yet the only other time we learn about cherubim is in Exodus where God commands Moses to place two carved cherubim on the cover of the Ark (Exodus 25:18) and tells Moses, “I will talk with you from above the Cover, from the space between the two cherubim that are on the Ark of the Covenant” (Exodus 25:22). The cherubim are in fact symbols of God’s presence.
There are two ways to understand this notion of guarding “the way to the Tree of Life.” Either the cherubim are there to protect the Tree from any invasion Adam might think to mount, or they are there to safeguard the way to the Tree when and if Adam, i.e., humanity, is ready to return and take the next step on the journey of human spiritual evolution. In our understanding the second is the more accurate reading.
This very first meeting of humans and angels in the Bible reveals them to be protectors of our way home. If we follow the light of the flaming sword we will find the angelic power protecting the path we must walk. What is true of this first meeting is true of subsequent meetings as well. Angels—our angelic potential—can take us out of the alienated and narrow ego-centered mind and reveal a more inclusive consciousness that is our great awakening. And the angels who are at the forefront of leading us toward this awakening are the archangels.