Four
The Archangels
THE WORD “ARCHANGEL” comes from the Greek archangelos, which is made up of two words, arch, meaning “first,” “primary,” or “chief,” and angelos, “messenger.” Among other angels, we are introduced to three of the archangels in the following midrash:
When God prepared to create humankind, He summoned His angels to Him to take counsel. They were not of one mind. The Angel of Love applauded the idea, saying that these new beings would know true love and affection. The Angel of Truth, however, thought little of the idea, arguing that humanity would become masters of the lie. The Angel of Justice sided with Love and argued that humanity would practice justice. But the Angel of Peace stood with Truth and warned that the way of humanity was war.
God was not happy with the opposing arguments and to make plain His displeasure, He tossed the Angel of Truth down from heaven to the earth. Such contempt outraged the other angels and they complained loudly. God replied, “Truth will spring back out of the earth” (Genesis Rabbah 8:5).1
God then summoned the archangel Michael and his band and inquired of them as to the creation of humanity. Michael and his band opposed the creation saying, “What is humanity, that You remember them?” (Psalm 8:4). God was angry with this challenge, and, stretching forth His little finger, consumed all of Michael’s angels in a great blaze, leaving only Michael remaining. The same fate befell the angels of archangel Gabriel when they too raised the same objection.
A third band of angels was summoned before God, these led by the archangel Labbiel. Hearing of the fate of the prior bands, Labbiel spoke to his angels saying, “We have heard of the fate of those who challenge God’s decision, therefore let us not suffer similarly. When asked regarding the creation of the human say not, “What is humanity, that You remember them?” but rather, “Lord of the Universe, it is well that You consider such a creation. Create humanity according to Your will, and we will attend to them, and reveal to them all our secrets.”
Well pleased, God changed Labbiel’s name to Raphael which means Rescuer and Healer, for he had rescued the angels from the wrath of God, and God placed into his safekeeping all the cures used in heaven and earth.2
Labbiel/Raphael reinforces our understanding of the role of angels in human life. They safeguard the ego-centered mind even as they reveal the cure for the state of achad that maintains the illusion of separation between us humans and the divine Whole. But what are we to make of the other angels in this midrash who oppose the creation of humanity?
Not every encounter with the angelic faculty is a positive one. There is a dark side to the angelic consciousness, one that leads us even further into the delusion of separation. How is this possible? If the ego-centered mind is strong enough it can pervert the inkling of what the angels have to offer and read their message not as an invitation to transcend the self but to deify it—not to move toward God, but to insist that the self is God.
Archangels have a unique significance in bringing us the divine message. Their names are difficult to determine since the archangel traditions found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam provide us with multiple and conflicting lists of names. Indeed, when all the lists are compared we find a total of thirty angels competing to be named as one of the seven archangels. There is no way to agree which of these are the “true” archangels. Most likely there is no definite list of archangels at all. Rather, there might be a general sense of an angelic hierarchy that isn’t all that concerned with names.
The need for a hierarchy stems from the explosion of angels in the minds and tales of the Jewish and Christian sages. According to the ancient rabbis, there is not a blade of grass on earth that lacks its protecting angel in heaven.3 And St. Augustine wrote, “every visible thing in this world is put under the charge of an angel.”4 Angels are everywhere, but some are especially important to humankind.
The canonical books of the Hebrew Bible do not present the concept of archangels at all, and the angels that are mentioned are not named—except for Michael and Gabriel in the book of Daniel. The names given to the angels come from rabbinic midrash and are, according to Rabbi Simeon ben Lakish of Tiberias (230–270 CE), influenced by the names of Zoroastrian angels about whom the Jews learned during their captivity in Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. This is why, Rabbi Simeon said, in the book of Daniel, which deals with events that took place during that captivity, the angels carry names unknown to previous Jewish writers.
The New Testament book of Revelation, written by John of Patmos at the close of the first century CE, makes multiple mention of seven angels but does not call them archangels (Revelation 8:2; 15:1–8; 16:1; 17:1; 21:9). Archangels are mentioned twice in the New Testament, but only one such angel is named: in Jude 9 the angel Michael is identified as an archangel in dispute with the devil. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16 we are told that the return of Jesus to earth will happen “with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet,” and Christian tradition assumes that the archangel mentioned here refers to Michael as well.
The Book of Tobit, a second-century BCE text that is part of the literary collection called the Apocrypha, from the Greek meaning “those having been hidden away,” is the first to introduce us to the angel Raphael who says (Tobit 12:15) that he is one of the seven angels who stand before the divine glory, ever ready to do the bidding of God. The Apocrypha are Jewish texts of uncertain authorship. Their authenticity is questioned by both Jewish and Protestant authorities, and they are excluded from the Bibles of these two faiths. The Catholic and Orthodox canons on the other hand include these texts and consider them holy and divinely inspired.
Another apocryphal text, 2 Esdras, refers to two additional angels, Uriel and Jeremiel, and labels the latter an archangel as well.
The rabbinic midrashim identify seven archangels, though they do not agree as to their names. There is consensus that Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel are archangels, but the sages differ as to who the other four archangels are, with different rabbis backing one or another of the following named angels: Uriel, Sariel, Raguel, Remiel, Zadiel, Jophiel, Haniel, and Chamiel. The rabbis may have been inspired by the apocryphal Book of Enoch where seven archangels are identified: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Raguel, Seraqael, and Haniel.
Islam, in its Aqidah, the Six Articles of Belief derived from the Hadith, the sayings and deeds of Muhammad, include a belief in angels along with belief in Allah, the Prophets, the Books, the Day of Judgment, and Destiny. While Islam recognizes many named angels, four are designated as archangels: Jibril (Gabriel), who dictated the Qur’an to the prophet Muhammad; Mika’il (Michael), the archangel of mercy; Israfil (Raphael), who will blow the trumpet on Judgment Day; and ‘Izra’il (Azrael), the angel of death.
Fortunately, given the number of angels contending for the rank of archangel, our concern is with the potential of angels rather than their individual status, and thus we will focus on the following four archangels: Michael/Mika’il, Gabriel/Jibril, Raphael/Israfil—since Judaism, Christianity, and Islam agree on these three—and Uriel, because Judaism and Christianity both name him as an archangel. In a later chapter on the angel of death we will look at the fourth of Islam’s archangels, ‘Izra’il, and comparable angels in Judaism and Christianity.
Here is a midrash introducing us to the four archangels (Numbers Rabbah 2:10): As the Holy One blessed be He created four winds (directions) and four banners (for Israel’s army), so also did He make four angels to surround His Throne—Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael. Michael is on its right, corresponding to the tribe of Reuben; Uriel on its left, corresponding to the tribe of Dan, which was located in the north; Gabriel in front, corresponding to the tribe of Judah as well as Moses and Aaron who were in the east; and Raphael in the rear, corresponding to the tribe of Ephraim which was in the west.
Michael
The Hebrew name Michael, mi k’El, means “Who is like God.” Judaism and Christianity consider Michael the chief of the angels, though perhaps not the most powerful of all angels.
In Judaism Michael first appears as a named angel in the book of Daniel, alongside the angel Gabriel, to defeat the Persians (Daniel 10:13). As we have seen, Jewish tradition identifies him as the angel who announced to Sarah that she would give birth to a son (Genesis Rabbah 48:9–50:2). In addition he is said to have recorded the sale of Esau’s birthright to Jacob (Genesis Rabbah 63:14), rescued Abraham from the fiery furnace (Genesis Rabbah 44:13), accompanied God to Mount Sinai (Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:34), instructed Moses (Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:10), was sent but failed to take Moses’s soul at his death (Ecclesiastes Rabbah 9:11), stood by Moses’s side after his death (Deuteronomy Rabbah 11:10), defeated the army of the Persian king (Exodus Rabbah 18:5), and aided the Jews of Persia when Haman sought their destruction (Esther Rabbah 7:12).
According to the rabbis Michael is made up entirely of snow while Gabriel is composed of fire. Whereas in the natural world fire and snow cannot coexist, in the divine realm they do (Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:12). The fact that both archangels appear together in so many stories, and that the rabbis place them together around God’s throne, is meant to show that God reconciles all opposites in the nonduality of the I-I.
While often accompanied by Gabriel, Michael is thought to be his superior (Babylonian Talmud, tractate Berakhot 4b), and is identified with the Shekhinah or Holy Spirit (Exodus Rabbah 2:5).
The canonical book of Daniel that first introduces Michael is a mid-second-century BCE text that tells the story of an Israelite named Daniel who was taken captive and exiled to Babylonia in the sixth century BCE. There, according to the story, Daniel’s intelligence gained him some fame, and he was trained as an advisor in the court of the king, a task at which he excelled.
Though true to his calling as a counselor to the king, Daniel maintained his identity as a Jew and a follower of the Jewish religion, a decision that made him vulnerable to attack by jealous rivals. His rivals convinced the king to issue an edict ordering a thirty-day suspension of all worship to any god but the king. Violators of the edict would be fed to the lions (Daniel 6:6–7).
Despite the edict Daniel continued his practice of praying to God three times each day. Daniel prayed in his house, in an upper room with windows facing toward Jerusalem. Those who conspired against him waited until Daniel was praying and then turned him over to the authorities.
The king was loath to cause any harm to Daniel, but was forced by his own edict to condemn his counselor to death. That evening Daniel was sealed into a pit with lions. At dawn the next day the king raced to the pit to discover the fate of Daniel, and found him safe and well, for “God sent his angel and closed tight the lions’ mouths so that they could not harm me” (Daniel 6:22).
As the story continues, Daniel is in the third week of a modified fast in which he abstained from “fine bread,” meat, and wine (Daniel 10:3). He was standing on the bank of the Tigris River when he looked up (Daniel 10:5–6) and saw a man dressed in fine linen tightened at the waist with a golden belt. It seemed to Daniel that the man’s body was chiseled like rock crystal, with legs and arms that gleamed like polished bronze. The man’s face flashed like lightning, and his eyes danced like torch flames, and the sound of the man’s voice sounded like a thunderous cheering crowd.
The “man” is really an angel, and while he remains nameless, he is probably the archangel Gabriel. The angel speaks to Daniel about fighting the Persians, and thereby mentions the archangel Michael: “I battled the Persians for twenty-one days and would have died had not Michael, one of the chief angels, come to my aid. He battled the Persian prince and I escaped” (Daniel 10:13). The man then says (Daniel 10:20–21) that he must return to battle the Persians and soon the Greeks as well, but that he was sent to tell Daniel what is written in the book of truth—that there is no one to defend against these enemies except Michael.
As in so many angelic encounters, Daniel sees the angel on the bank of the Tigris in the shape of a man, suggesting that the angel is a projection of Daniel’s own inner potential. To make it clear that Daniel is having a psycho-spiritual encounter, a vision, he tells us that during the encounter he became physically weak and grew deathly pale (Daniel 10:8). Daniel is shifting from the normal waking state of ego-centered mind that is linked to the physical world of the body to a higher world-centered soul state that transcends the body. Then, when Daniel hears the sound of the angel’s voice, he falls face first to the ground, lost in a trance (Daniel 10:9).
As Daniel lies on the ground (Daniel 10:10–12) the “man” walks over to him, touches him, and pulls him up to a kneeling position. The angel then orders Daniel to stand up so that the two of them can speak, presumably as equals. Here again is a hint that the human and the angelic are one. The angel tells Daniel not to fear, and explains that God has been watching over Daniel ever since he committed himself to the pursuit of wisdom. Daniel’s words drew God’s attention, and it is because of his words that the angel now stands before him. The angel is revealing two things to Daniel and through Daniel to us. First, that setting our minds to gain understanding initiates the process of angelic encounters, and second, that words can be a tool for invoking angelic consciousness. Angels are symbols of understanding and wisdom.
Daniel is overwhelmed by the conversation and protests that he, a mere mortal, cannot dare to talk with an angel. In fact, he confesses to the angel, the conversation has left him trembling, weak, and unable to catch his breath (Daniel 10:16–17). The angel revives Daniel and warns him that the Babylonians are only the first in a series of foreign powers that will threaten Israel. Yet Daniel need not despair of the future, because in the end the angel Michael, the guardian of the Jewish people, will rise up and deliver the people from their oppressors (Daniel 12:1).
Just when this time of redemption is to occur is not revealed to Daniel, nor does it matter with regard to our own interpretation. What does matter is that the archangel Michael is called the protector of Israel. As we have seen earlier, in the world of angelic archetypes Israel represents that state of human-divine unity granted to Jacob in his wrestling with the angel (Michael, according to the midrash) at Jabbok’s Ford. In the book of Daniel, as in the midrashic retelling of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel, we learn that when we achieve the status of Israel we will have access to the powers of Michael.
The book of Daniel reveals that Michael is our guardian angel, and he protects us by waking us up to the greater Whole we have been ignoring since leaving Eden under the false notion of achad, alienated ego-centered mind. Michael helps us shift from ego-centered mind to the broader awareness of world-centered soul.
One of the Dead Sea Scrolls, entitled War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, supports this understanding of Michael, referring to him as the “Prince of Light.”
The Dead Sea Scrolls, consisting of approximately one thousand documents, were discovered in eleven caves in the Qumran region of the Judean desert. The first discovery in 1947 was accidental and made by a Bedouin sheepherder named Muhammad Ahmed ed-Hamed. The scrolls reflect the life of the Jewish community at Qumran sometime in the first half of the second century BCE. The Qumran Jews saw themselves as the elect of Israel who held to the true faith prescribed by God. The Qumran Jews believed that a coming war with the enemies of Israel would be divine and apocalyptic, and they themselves would be its victors.
The War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness is their strategic manual for this coming battle. Written sometime in the late first century BCE or early first century CE, the text deals with the forty-year war that the remnant of the tribes of Israel, here called the Sons of Light, will wage when they return from the “wilderness of the nations” and return to the “wilderness of Jerusalem.” According to this manual, God will send an angelic army led by the angel Michael to fight alongside Israel (War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, chapter 14).
What is of interest here is not so much the angelic army, but the reference to two types of wilderness, that of the nations and that of Jerusalem. The “nations” refers to the countries and peoples among whom the Jews were exiled. Calling one’s place of exile a “wilderness” is not surprising. But to also use the wilderness metaphor for the heart of one’s homeland—Jerusalem, the City of Peace—suggests something else may be implied here.
The Hebrew word for “wilderness” is midbar, sharing the same root, dvr, as the Hebrew words for “word,” “speech,” and “thing.” A wilderness can be both a desolate and silent terrain where things are few and far between, and a place filled with things and sounds and rife with overwhelming consumption, both material and intellectual. The scroll may be saying that the human challenge is to survive not only the wilderness of want, but also the wilderness of plenty.
Given our understanding of angels as mythic expressions of inner spiritual capabilities, we read this War Between Light and Dark as an inner conflict. It takes place only when we have exhausted the promise of things and sounds—words and ideas—and have nowhere else to turn but to the heart of the city itself. A wilderness of words surrounds the City of Peace, and this too must be passed through and left behind. Neither things nor ideas are enough to bring us peace. Only when both are discarded can we enter the city. And who guides us there? The archangel Michael, the Prince of Light.
Light doesn’t defeat darkness; it dispels it. In the “wilderness of the nations” we are mostly under the spell of the thing. In the “wilderness of Jerusalem” we are much under the spell of the word. And the second is the greater spell—the word “spell” itself teaches us that. “To spell” is to break a word into its alphabetic parts. “To cast a spell” is to build up those parts into words that create psychic delusions. “Spell” is all about words. To be under a spell is to be lost in the illusion cast by words.
The great spell of the wilderness of Jerusalem, its great illusion, is that words can lead to truth. The great darkness of that wilderness is the realization that they often do not. The Sons of Darkness are the feelings of despair that overcome us when we realize there is no salvation in things or words. We are creatures of matter and intellect, and if neither can save us we cannot be saved—or so says the ego-centered mind.
This is the ultimate exhaustion of ego. And it is only when the ego is drained, when there is no breath left in the body, as Daniel puts it, that we are at last open to the presence of the angelic consciousness that dispels—or “dis-spells”—the darkness threatening the ego-centered mind. Michael simply appears. We cannot make him come. We cannot summon him. We can only reach the end of our options. When there is nothing left that we can do, when we have run out of idols to worship—then the angelic emerges.
The archetypal war between light and darkness finds its Christian expression in the book of Revelation. Here we meet the angel Michael in combat with the Great Dragon who symbolizes this darkness: “And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Revelation 12:7–9).
With the defeat of the dragon in heaven, the war now shifts to the earth:
So when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. Then from his mouth the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus. (Revelation 12:13–17)
While John is writing for Christians, the implication of his writing is far more universal. The Dragon is the Deceiver, the one who spreads lies, illusions, and delusions, and the ultimate delusion is the ego-centered mind’s insistence that the “I” is like God, not in the sense of the I-I nonduality, but in the false sense of I-It duality. By casting the Dragon down to earth, into the human sphere, the myth is telling us the dragon must be found and slain in our ego-centered minds.
We may assume that John of Patmos was quite familiar with the older book of Daniel and the legend of the dragon that it contains. By reading how Daniel defeated the dragon in his day we can discover how best to slay it in ours.
In the Apocrypha we read that after Daniel had proven to the Babylonian king that his god Bel was a fraud perpetuated by the false god’s priests, the king demanded that Daniel worship a dragon god instead. Daniel refused and claimed that he would slay the dragon without using weapons of any kind. The king accepted Daniel’s challenge to test his dragon god, telling him that should he fail he would forfeit his life.
Daniel made cakes of boiled tar, animal fat, and hair, and fed them to the dragon, which promptly ate them (Daniel 14:27). The cakes exploded in the dragon’s stomach and the beast burst open and died.
This is one way to slay the dragon of delusion: feed it to bursting. Applied to our inner dragon which demands that the I-It perspective of the ego-centered mind be worshipped as the sole reality, this myth suggests that if we are to free ourselves from the worship of the false god of self, we might need to develop greater openness and mindfulness—“feed ourselves with the world’s knowledge”—until we can no longer maintain the illusion of achad, the separate, isolated, and alienated self.
Dragon slaying is a recurring theme in Christianity, and it is always linked to the archangel Michael. St. George, for example, a third-century CE Roman soldier from Anatolia, has become one of the most venerated saints in the Anglican Church and in Eastern Churches. Because his role as the dragon-slayer is reminiscent of the book of Revelation, St. George is thought by many to be the human incarnation of the archangel Michael.
According to legend a monstrous dragon ravaged a city in Libya and its surroundings. The dragon’s breath carried plague, and the people fed the beast two sheep each day in the hopes of keeping it full. When this failed they resorted to offering the dragon a human victim chosen by lots.
It so happened that the king’s daughter drew the fateful lot and was to be sacrificed to the dragon. While the king offered to pay handsomely for a substitute, the people had agreed in advance that no substitutions would be allowed, regardless of who requested them. Just as the young woman, dressed in a bridal gown, was being led to her death, St. George rode by.
The woman urged him to ride on, but St. George refused, and when the dragon appeared St. George attacked it. Using his lance like a hypnotist would use a pendulum, St. George put the dragon into a trance. He asked the woman for her girdle, which he tied tightly around the dragon’s neck, thus making it impossible for the beast to breathe deeply enough to spit fire and fight back. Then St. George handed the other end of the girdle to the princess, who could now lead the dragon around as one might walk a dog. The three of them returned to the city where St. George converted the people to Christianity, then slew the dragon by cutting off its head. The king offered the good knight half his kingdom, but not the hand of his daughter in marriage. St. George declined and departed.
What are we to make of this story? Because of the possible link between the archangel Michael and St. George, and remembering that Michael threw the dragon down to earth where St. George killed it, we suggest this interpretation: the dragon is the insatiable craving of ego-centered consciousness. At first we think we can placate the dragon with offerings of food, but we soon discover that the only thing it wants to devour is humanity itself. In order to survive, the dragon must eat the human.
Here the human is symbolized by the bride. She represents the human half of a human-divine union. Israel, the Jewish people, for example, sees itself as the Bride of God, and the Church speaks of itself as the Bride of Christ. The bride seeks out her husband and desires union with him. The dragon interferes by desiring to eat her. In other words, the dragon symbolizes that which keeps humanity from realizing (with the aid of angelic consciousness) its greater unity with God.
St. George, the human expression of the archangel Michael, is that aspect of angelic consciousness that first controls and then slays the powerful illusion of achad.
Thus it is the king’s daughter, and not St. George, who leads the dragon about on a leash. Angelic consciousness tames the beast, and then places it in the hands of the ego-centered mind, suggesting that the ego is not evil in and of itself, but in the grips of evil as long as it allows the dragon to dominate it.
In the Middle Ages the archangel Michael became very popular among Christians, eventually giving rise to his own cult. From Mont Saint Michel in France to the Monte Sant’Angelo in Italy, many churches and chapels were named after the archangel. His feast day, called Michaelmas, was (but is no longer) an obligatory holy day. Today Michaelmas is called the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, and is celebrated on September 29. Its close relation with the autumnal equinox and the coming days of darkness suggests that Michael, as the central warrior angel, battles against the forces of darkness, and is thus the perfect angel upon whom to call as winter approaches.
The cult of Michael grew so large over the centuries that modern scholars have been suspecting that more than just angel worship had been at work. There are several theories, but many scholars link the popularity of Michael to the ancient god Mithra and the end of the religion of Mithraism under the evolving Church.
Mithra was the pre-Zoroastrian sun god of ancient Persia who became very popular in the Roman Empire during the early centuries of the common era. By the third century CE Mithraism was officially recognized as one of the religions of Rome, and temples devoted to his worship were found throughout the empire. With the conversion of Emperor Constantine and the transformation of the polytheistic Roman Empire into the monotheistic and exclusively Christian Roman Empire, Mirthraism was outlawed, and those who followed the faith were forced to convert to Christianity.
As is common with forced conversions, the followers of Mithra found ways to integrate their original faith into their new one. In this case the legends of Mithra as a warrior god and the adoption of Mithraism as a faith for many Roman soldiers may have led his followers to elevate the archangel Michael, the archangel in charge of God’s armies, to the status of a disguised Mithra. This would explain why so many former temples dedicated to Mithra over time became churches dedicated to the archangel Michael, and why Michael is even today the patron saint of warriors.
Concerned by the large number of “Michael worshippers,” Pope Zachary officially “demoted” Michael, along with Raphael and Uriel, from archangels to saints in the year 745. Nevertheless, the angelic status of these newly minted saints was never lost to the common people, as is evident in the much later Prayer to Saint Michael, Archangel, added to the Catholic liturgy by Pope Leo XIII in 1886: “Saint Michael, Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And you, Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, thrust into Hell Satan and the other evil spirits who prowl the world for the ruin of souls. Amen.”
In Islam, the archangel Mika’il is mentioned only once in the Qur’an, in the second and longest Sura called Al Baqarah, “The Cow” (because it contains a story about Moses and the Israelites debating over the sacrifice of a cow). Unlike Jewish and Christian traditions that place Michael above Gabriel, Islam always sees him as inferior to the higher ranked Jibril. Also unlike the Christian understanding of Michael as a warrior, Mika’il is the archangel of mercy who brings rain to the earth, a precious commodity in the desert lands from which Islam came, and who bestows material blessings on the righteous in this life.
Gabriel
If Michael is the power that slays dragons of the mind and frees us from the idolatry of things and words, the archangel Gabriel (Jibril in Islam) is the power that illuminates the next step in human awakening: transformation from ego-centered mind to world-centered soul.
The Hebrew name Gabriel, gav-ri-El, or “God’s Strength,” is derived from two Hebrew words, gever, man, and El, God. Gabriel is the angelic faculty that points the human in the direction of the divine. Gabriel calls us to transformation, and is often depicted carrying a trumpet to get our attention that we might heed the divine call. Hence it is not surprising to find Gabriel as the angel of annunciation, death, resurrection, and revelation, for each of these has transformation at its core.
Gabriel appears four times in the Bible, twice in the book of Daniel and twice in the Gospel according to Luke. In Daniel 8:16–26, the first time he is mentioned in the Bible, Gabriel interprets one of Daniel’s visions. In Daniel 9:21–27 he comes to bring the prophet “wisdom and understanding.” In Luke he foretells the births of John and Jesus (Luke 1:19 and Luke 1:26).
Right before Gabriel’s first biblical appearance, the prophet Daniel has a vision that surpasses his understanding (Daniel 8:1–15). The angel Gabriel then appears to Daniel in human form to help clarify this vision for him (Daniel 8:16). Daniel sees himself standing by the river Ulai in Susa, the capital of Persia. He looks up and sees a two-horned ram, with one horn longer than the other, charging wildly to the west, north, and south. Nothing can withstand its attacks, and its strength grows. A male goat then appears out of the west, with a single horn in the center of its forehead. This goat savagely races toward the ram, moving so fast that its hooves seem not to touch the ground. The goat tramples the ram, breaking both its horns, and killing it. The goat then grows ever stronger, but at the height of its power it breaks its single horn and four horns take its place. From one of these comes a fifth horn, and this one, small at first, grows to an extraordinary size reaching from earth to the host of heaven where it throws down to earth both angels and stars and tramples them. The goat challenges the prince of the host, toppling the burnt offering he was bringing to God, and destroying the heavenly sanctuary. Daniel then hears a voice crying out, “How long will the offering and the sanctuary lay fallen?” A second voice answers saying, “The sanctuary will be restored after twenty-three hundred days.”
Daniel is confused by what he has seen and heard in his vision. Suddenly a man appears before him and he hears a human-sounding voice calling to the man saying, “Gabriel, explain this vision to him.” Daniel prostrates himself before the man, whom he now knows to be the angel Gabriel. Gabriel says, “Know this: this vision is for the end-time.” As the angel Gabriel speaks Daniel falls into a trance, his face pressed to the ground, and remains in this state until the angel touches him and raises him to his feet.
The ram, like the dragon, represents chaos. It runs round and round and nothing can escape it or stop it. It grows in strength but not discernment. Its two horns represent the dualism that is the hallmark of the ego-centered I-It view of things.
Opposing this ram is the male goat from the west. Why the west? When Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden they travel eastward, the one direction not mentioned by Daniel regarding his rampaging ram. “East” is symbolic of the alienation from the Garden and the wholeness the Garden represents. The ram of chaos is as east of Eden as one can get. The goat from the west is coming from the direction of Eden. This goat has a single horn growing between its eyes, symbolizing a more singular vision, like the I-Thou, the “We” of the world-centered soul.
The single-horned goat slays the dual-horned ram, and grows strong by destroying it. But the death of the ego-centered mind is not yet true awakening. True awakening is realizing that the ego-centered mind and the world-centered soul are each legitimate expressions of the God-centered spirit, the I-I that embraces both the I-It and the I-Thou.
Because the goat is not yet fully God-realized, it slays the ram. The slaying of the ego-centered mind does not lead to peace and tranquility, but to further chaos, for now the goat has no means to function on the plane of seemingly separate things. The goat is plunged into a wild state in which its single horn, its symbol of unity and unified direction and purpose, is broken, and four horns appear in its place.
The single horn represents unity without diversity, the four horns represent diversity without unity. The fifth horn that emerges from the four represents a false unity to which humanity can fall prey. This is the unity of totalitarianism and conformity that eliminates all diversity in favor of a lifeless homogeneity. This is not the nonduality of God-centered spirit. This imposed rather than organic unity tramples down the divine order that embraces both the one and the many in a greater nonduality, topples truth from its place, and does more damage than even the rampaging two-horned ram with which Daniel’s vision opened.
By interpreting Daniel’s vision, Gabriel is the announcer, the foreteller, the pointer of the way. He is telling us that we cannot go quietly from ego-centered mind to world-centered soul, and from world-centered soul to God-centered spirit. The transition from one state to the other is not smooth but chaotic. Yet we need not despair: by working through the stages we will eventually achieve the fullest level of awareness.
Gabriel’s role in all of this is quite different from that of Michael. As we saw, Michael was an active player in subduing the dragon of chaos. Gabriel is the giver of wisdom and insight; he explains what is happening but is not an active participant in that happening.
The book of Daniel makes this explicit in its second appearance of the archangel Gabriel. Daniel relates that during his time of afternoon prayer when he was confessing and making supplication to God, “the man Gabriel” descended from the sky “in swift flight” to speak with him. Daniel recognizes Gabriel from his earlier vision, and the “man” addresses Daniel by name, saying that he has now “come out” to bring Daniel understanding (Daniel 9:20–22).
The fact that Gabriel is referred to as a “man” shows that angels are aspects of ourselves. The two phrases “swift flight” and “come out” make this all the more plausible.
The image of Gabriel in swift flight suggests a sudden appearance. Daniel was not consciously evoking the angel, but rather praying to God. The angel Gabriel simply appeared out of nowhere—in other words, Daniel’s prayer state opened his ego-centered mind to its angelic faculty. Why? Perhaps, as Daniel says, because he was involved in confessional prayer, an act that deflates and humbles the ego, making it more open to the angelic.
This interpretation is supported by Gabriel’s statement that he has now “come out.” If Gabriel had descended toward Daniel from the heavens he would have said that he had now “come down.” “Coming out” suggests that Gabriel is coming out from Daniel himself, i.e., that he, and all angels, are aspects of human consciousness.
In the Gospel of Luke, Gabriel is again the announcer of the coming transformation. According to Luke, in the days of Herod, the king of Judea, the priest Zechariah was in the Temple in Jerusalem to burn incense:
Then there appeared to him an angel of the Lord, standing at the right side of the altar of incense. When Zechariah saw him, he was terrified; and fear overwhelmed him. But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you will name him John. You will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord. He must never drink wine or strong drink; even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God. With the spirit and power of Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” Zechariah said to the angel, “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” The angel replied, “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.”
Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah, and wondered at his delay in the sanctuary. When he did come out, he could not speak to them, and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary. He kept motioning to them and remained unable to speak. When his time of service was ended, he went to his home.
After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favorably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her. (Luke 1:11–38)
Gabriel the explainer reveals what God is about to do, while he, himself, does nothing. In the first event a man named John is to be born carrying within him the spirit and power of the prophet Elijah. In the second event a man named Jesus is to be born carrying with him the spirit and power of God. Elijah and Jesus, both of whom are taken bodily into heaven, represent fully God-realized human beings who have attained a higher level of consciousness than the angelic. They have integrated the human and the angelic into a greater whole, the divine.
Gabriel is telling Zechariah and Mary, and through the two of them all of us, that there is a more inclusive unity of human and divine, and that there are individuals among us who have achieved this unity. The fact that Elizabeth is elderly and childless, and Mary is a virgin, were the ways ancient storytellers told their audiences that the children about to be born were unusual, coming from outside the natural way of things, and hence were going to change the world, to bring a new consciousness to bear on humanity.
Of course there are tens of millions of people who read these stories not as myth, as we are doing, but as history. We need not quarrel with this. Our mythic understanding of these events does not deny or affirm their historicity; it only enhances and deepens our understanding of the text when we ask, “What do these texts mean?”
This is the question behind all our investigations into angel myths. We don’t ask, “Did this happen?” but “What does it mean?” The meaning of a Virgin Birth or a birth from a barren woman is the same: something deeply transformative is coming into the world, something outside the norm is emerging. And it is this transformation that the angel Gabriel comes to announce.
The angel Jibril plays a comparable role in Islam. He announces not a new birth but a new revelation, and is the voice through which the word of Allah is given to Muhammad. In the Qur’an (53:9) we learn how physically close Jibril was to Muhammad when the Prophet received the Message, and in a Hadith (4:54:455) we are told that Muhammad saw Jibril with six hundred wings.
Ibn Ishaq (d. 767), perhaps the most famous biographer of Muhammad, wrote that Khadijah bint Khuwaylid (d. ca. 618), Muhammad’s first wife, sought to test her husband’s visions of the angel Jibril to be certain that it was an angel with whom her husband spoke and not a jinn.
She asked Muhammad, “Can you tell me when your Visitor next comes to you?” Muhammad said he could, and Khadijah asked him to do so.
So when Gabriel came to him, as he was wont, the apostle said to Khadija, ‘This is Gabriel who has just come to me.’ ‘Get up, O son of my uncle,’ she said, ‘and sit by my left thigh’. The apostle did so, and she said, ‘Can you see him?’ ‘Yes,’ he said. She said, ‘Then turn round and sit on my right thigh.’ He did so, and she said, ‘Can you see him?’ When he said that he could she asked him to move and sit in her lap. When he had done this she again asked if he could see him, and when he said yes, she disclosed her form and cast aside her veil while the apostle was sitting in her lap. Then she said, ‘Can you see him?’ And he replied, ‘No.’ She said, ‘O son of my uncle, rejoice and be of good heart, by God he is an angel and not a satan.’5
Apparently Jibril fled when Khadijah exposed herself. Given the emphasis on modesty in Abrahamic traditions, we can say that Jibril fled not from fear of Khadijah, but from fear of being immodest. What Khadijah proved was that Jibril was from God because he placed modesty in high regard. From our perspective what she proved was that Jibril, as a part of Muhammad’s unfolding angelic faculty, reflected the Prophet’s sense of propriety, reinforcing our contention that angels are not independent of humans but aspects of them.
As in Judaism and Christianity, the Muslim Jibril (or Jibriel) is also primarily a messenger, and, echoing the Gospels, the Qur’an tells us that Jibril informed Maryam (Mary) of the conception of Isa (Jesus): “She said, ‘How can I have a son when no man has touched me? I have not been unchaste,’ and he said, ‘This is what your Lord said: “It is easy for Me—We shall make him a sign to all people, a blessing from Us” ’ ” (Qur’an 19:20–21).6
Muslims also believe that it was Jibril who accompanied Muhammad on his Night Journey (about which we will read in a later chapter).
In summary, Gabriel/Jibril functions most often as an announcer of great transformation, whether it be the Virgin Birth in the New Testament, or the revelation of God to the Prophet Muhammad in and as the Qur’an. An encounter with Gabriel symbolizes that the old ways need mending, and that something new is about to happen in the world.
Raphael
Raphael (Israfil in Islam) is, as his name makes clear, the agent of God’s healing—rofeh is the Hebrew root for “healing” and “healer.” Raphael isn’t named in the Jewish biblical canon, though, as we have seen, the rabbis do mention him in the midrash as the angel who accompanied Michael and Gabriel on their visit to Abraham after his circumcision—Raphael was sent to promote Abraham’s healing. Midrashic tradition also tells us that Raphael was one of the four angels (along with Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel) sent to lead the Israelite armies, taking his place at the rear of the Israelite formation with the tribe of Ephraim (Numbers Rabbah 2:10).
Raphael plays an important role in the Book of Enoch, a composite text written over several hundred years, but much of it in the second century BCE. In chapter 22 of this book Enoch tells us that he went to a mountain of solid rock in which there were hollowed out three great caverns with smooth walls. The angel Raphael explains to Enoch that these caverns are the places in which the souls of the dead reside, and in which they await the Day of Final Judgment.
One of the souls of the dead catches Enoch’s attention, and Enoch marvels as the soul pleads its case before God. Enoch asks Raphael who this soul is, and learns that it is the soul of Abel, and that he is pleading for the destruction of his brother Cain and all those who descended from him.
Looking at the three caverns, Enoch notices that each is set apart from the others, and inquires of Raphael why this is so. Raphael explains that each of the caverns serves a different function. One is for the righteous who will be rewarded on the Day of Final Judgment, and in it these souls find a spring of clear water. Another is for sinners who die without having tasted justice in life. They will suffer great torment on the Day of Final Judgment. A third is for those who sinned but suffered their punishment while yet alive. They shall stay in this cavern for all eternity but will not suffer on the Day of Final Judgment.
Why is it that Raphael, the angel of healing—rather than, say, Gabriel, the angel most associated with explaining matters to humans—explains Enoch’s visions of the underworld? What is the connection between healing and death?
To answer this question we first have to note that the underworld is not Raphael’s realm. He is a guide to this world, but not its lord and master. Second, what he reveals to Enoch is the fate of both the good and the wicked, assuring Enoch that there is justice in the grand scheme of things: the good are rewarded and the wicked are punished. Thus Raphael is easing any fear that Enoch may have regarding this issue, and in so doing provides him with a spiritual healing, one that allows Enoch to trust in and bless God all the more fervently. So the healing role for Raphael in the Book of Enoch may be more psychological than physical.
Raphael’s role as a healer of the flesh is found in the Book of Tobit that is part of the Apocrypha.
Tobit lived during the Assyrian exile when Assyria conquered the northern tribes of Israel sometime around 730 BCE. Tobit was a righteous Israelite known for his generosity and honesty, traits that secured him a lucrative position at the court of the Assyrian king in Nineveh.
It was the law in Assyria that the bodies of dead Israelites slain by the king’s command were to be left exposed to be eaten by vultures as a sign to others not to challenge the king’s rule. Tobit made it his task to secretly bury the bodies of these, his fellow Israelites. When his secret was exposed Tobit was forced to flee for his life, losing all he had.
In time the king was killed, and Tobit’s nephew Ahikar became part of the new royal court. Using his influence, Ahikar restored Tobit to his family and his fortune. His first day back, Tobit sent his son Tobias to invite the neighborhood poor to a feast celebrating his return. As Tobias walked about Nineveh to seek out the poor, he came across the body of a dead Israelite, and ran back to report this to his father. Tobit left his meal untouched and raced out to bring the body to one of his sheds for safekeeping.
At sundown Tobit went out to bury the deceased. Exhausted by the task, he washed himself and lay down by a wall in his courtyard to rest. The night was hot and he lay there with his head unprotected. Sparrows lived in the wall, and their fresh droppings fell into Tobit’s eyes, causing a white film to cover them and restrict his vision. Tobit went to doctors for help but their potions made matters worse and he became blind.
Unable to work, Tobit and his family again lost their fortune, living now off the labor of Tobit’s wife, Anna. Tobit was so depressed that he prayed for death. Just then he remembered that he had left money in trust in faraway Media. Calling his son to him, Tobit ordered Tobias to go to Media and retrieve the money.
Tobias was not a seasoned traveler and his father sought to hire a guide and bodyguard to protect his son on this journey. The angel Raphael, disguised as an Israelite, presented himself to Tobit and took the job.
On the first night of their journey, Tobias went to wash his feet in the Tigris River. Suddenly a great fish leaped up and swallowed his leg. Crying out for help, Tobias heard Raphael command him to lay hold of the fish and drag it onto dry land. Raphael then instructed Tobias to gut the fish and to save its gall, heart, and liver as medicine.
Tobias inquired as to the medicinal powers of the fish, and the angel Raphael, still in disguise, explained that when burned the heart and liver would give off a smoke that could free the possessed from the demons that haunt them, and that when placed on the eyes the gall could heal the blind whose blindness was caused by bird droppings.
When Tobias and Raphael arrive in Media, Raphael convinces Tobias to stay at the home of Raguel, a relative of Tobias (and no relation to the angel Raguel mentioned in Enoch). Raguel has a beautiful daughter named Sarah who is still single, and Raphael suggests that Tobias marry her.
But Tobias objects. He has heard that this Sarah is a serial killer. Seven times was she married, and seven times her husbands fell dead before consummating the marriage. What no one knows, no one except the angel Raphael, is that Sarah is being stalked by the Demon King Asmodeus, who desires Sarah for himself and has been killing off the competitors.
Raphael urges Tobias to ask for Sarah’s hand in marriage, and, despite his fears, Tobias does. Sarah’s father consents to the union. Raphael then instructs Tobias to burn the heart and liver of the great fish he had caught (or rather, which had caught him) in the censor of his bedroom before Sarah comes there to join him. The stench is so offensive to the Demon King that as soon as he enters the room to murder Tobias he is forced to run from the bedchamber and keeps running until he has reached the far end of Egypt. There Raphael attacks him, and binds him hand and foot.
Tobias returns with Sarah to Nineveh, places the fish gall onto Tobit’s eyes, and thus restores his father’s vision.
At the end of the story (Tobit 12:14–15) Raphael reveals his true identity to Tobit and his son. “I am Raphael, one of the seven angels attending before the glory of God, ever ready to do His bidding. I was commissioned to appraise you, and to heal Sarah, your son’s wife.”
When Raphael reveals himself the two men fall on their faces seemingly in worship. The Jewish author of the Book of Tobit, for whom the worship of angels is anathema, makes it clear that such worship is not appropriate. Raphael says to them (Tobit 12:20–22), “Stand up and acknowledge God! Behold! I am returning to the One who sent me. Record all these events you have witnessed.” Tobit and his son stand up, but Raphael has already risen so high that he can no longer be seen. The two men begin to bless God, and sing hymns to him, and they bear witness and give thanks to God for the wonders that had befallen them when the angel Raphael had come to them.
Raphael in the Book of Tobit is the angel of healing, yet he acts in a hidden manner disguised as a human and working through the agency of human beings, suggesting once more that angels are not beings in and of themselves, but levels of consciousness that we humans can obtain.
Uriel
Uriel means “Light of God,” and this archangel was understood to be one of the ways God’s wisdom could be made known to us. In Judaism he is associated with the TaNaKH, the acronym for the three sections of the Hebrew Bible: Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim (the Five Books of Moses, the Prophets, and the Writings). Why was he named Uriel? Because of the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings by means of which the Holy One, blessed be He, atones for sins and gives light (ur) to Israel (Numbers Rabbah 2:10).
While Uriel is not mentioned in the New Testament, and also does not appear in Islam, he had a certain presence. And despite his demotion from archangel to saint by Pope Zachary in 745, Uriel must have maintained a following among the people. In the tenth century, for example, a Bulgarian heresy called Bogomilism arose in opposition to what it felt was an oppressive church hierarchy. Bogomilism returned Uriel to his status as archangel, and it may have been the growing popularity of the Bogomils that caused Pope Clement III in the late twelfth century to order all images of Uriel removed from the churches.
Uriel, who is also called Phanuel, “Face of God,” since God is imagined as pure and blinding light, plays a major role in the Fourth Book of Ezra (also referred to as 2 Esdras). This apocryphal text is part of the Pseudepigrapha, a word derived from the Greek pseudes (false) and epigraphe (inscription). Pseudepigrapha are texts that falsely claim to be authored by famous figures from the past. Claiming such authorship was not an act of trickery, but of modesty. The actual authors felt they were speaking the wisdom of the ancients and should give credit where credit is due.
In the case of the Fourth Book of Ezra the credit is given to Ezra, the fifth-century BCE Israelite priest and scribe whose religious reforms set the stage for the revival of Judaism that would emerge after the end of the Babylonian exile around 538 BCE.
The book itself, composed around the year 100 CE, was written to address the concerns of the Jews whose Temple had been utterly destroyed by the Romans some thirty years earlier. Rather than address the issue head on, however, the author revives the character of Ezra who was instrumental in rebuilding the Temple after its first destruction in 586 BCE. Together Ezra and the archangel Uriel explore the meaning of the First Temple’s destruction and thus, by extension, that of the Second Temple as well. Uriel says, “I have been sent to show you three puzzles. If you can solve one of them for me, I will then show you what you desire to see, and will teach you why the heart is evil ... Go and weigh for me the weight of fire, or measure for me a blast of wind, or call back for me the day that is past ...”7
Uriel makes clear the need for angelic intervention: without Uriel, the Light of God, the ego-centered mind is in the dark. Yet Uriel doesn’t simply shine the light of truth on us, he challenges us to solve puzzles, to earn our way to the light by exercising our imagination.
This is very important. The light of God is available to us only when we have learned to use our mental faculties creatively. God—“I will be whatever I will be”—is pure creativity, and we, made in the image and likeness of God, must ourselves become creative. Solving Uriel’s puzzles is the way this challenge plays out in the Fourth Book of Ezra.
Ezra replies to Uriel by saying,
“Be not angry with those who are deemed worse than beasts; but love those who have always put their trust in your glory. For we and our fathers have passed our lives in ways that bring death, but you, because of us sinners, are called merciful ... For the righteous who have many works laid up with you shall receive their reward in consequence of their own deeds. But what is man that you are angry with him or what is a mortal race that you are so bitter against it? For in truth there is no one among those who have been born who hasn’t acted wickedly ... There is no one who has not transgressed. For in this, O Lord, your righteousness and goodness will be declared when you are merciful to those who have no good works.”8
It is clear from this passage that Ezra is addressing God through the archangel Uriel, and thus is providing us with a strong example in support of our premise that angels are faculties of the human mind that allow us to transcend the ego-centered mind toward God-centered spirit.
It is also worth noting that Ezra’s questioning of Uriel mirrors the psalmist’s question to God, “What is humanity, that You remember them? And the children of humanity, that You are mindful of them?” (Psalm 8:4). Ezra says, “But what is man that you are angry with him or what is a mortal race that you are so bitter against it?” The Psalmist sees a God who is concerned with humanity and eager to see us succeed. Ezra envisions an angry God who is bitterly disappointed in humanity.
These two texts, separated by centuries, reflect two different political realities. The Psalmist was writing at the time of Israel’s independence under King David, while the author of Ezra was writing as Jerusalem fell to Rome and the next great exile began. It is an act of audacious hope on the part of the author of the Fourth Book of Ezra to use the historical Ezra as his foil. The real Ezra lived as the Babylonian exile was coming to an end and the Jewish people were reconstructing their homeland. To put these painful words into Ezra’s mouth when in fact the historical Ezra would be far more optimistic about Israel’s future is yet another twist of this book.
Ezra is making the case that God’s obsession with those few humans who are truly wicked is misplaced. God should recall those who did right in his eyes. Similarly, if God wishes to be known for mercy, why focus on the mistakes all people make? Forgive instead. Yet Uriel, and by extension God, is unmoved, telling Ezra, “For this is the way of which Moses, while he was alive, spoke to the people, saying ‘Choose for yourselves life, that you may live!’ But they did not believe him, or the prophets after him ... Therefore there shall not be grief at their damnation, or much joy over those to whom salvation is assured.”9
God’s justice trumps his mercy in the Fourth Book of Ezra. Why? Because the Second Temple has been destroyed, a fact that the author cannot mention but also cannot ignore. Yet the author cannot leave us bereft. While each of the four archangels has his own role to play, at the end of time, on Judgment Day, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel will gather again to bring the wicked to justice, those who served Satan in order to mislead humankind.
While the judgment of the agents of Satan is assured, Satan himself seems to escape unscathed. Is this optimistic or pessimistic? Wouldn’t it be better if Satan were defeated?
Better, perhaps, but not realistic. Satan is the shadow side of narrow ego-centered mind. If Ezra can stand before Uriel, the Light of God, behind him will of necessity be Satan, the Shadow of God. Light and Dark cannot be separated—a truth that the ego-centered mind cannot grasp, and which the angelic potential of humans cannot deny.