On Angels, Part I

In the previous post, “A Space for the Spiritual,” I briefly wrote about the Evangelical environment in which I was raised. For a time, my father decided that we would attend a different church (for reasons I am still unaware of). This other church was Baptist, which appeared to me to be Evangelicalism with a slightly cooler youth group. Insofar as the sermons were concerned, it felt very much the same. Satan was everywhere, and The Gays and the Democrats were subverting traditional family values. Nothing new there.

One thing I hadn’t mentioned was the church’s stance on angels. With the popularity of ABC’s Touched by an Angel and WB’s 7th Heaven (too racy for our household), you might expect that angels would be a safe and approved topic of interest. You would be mistaken. Angels existed, but they were better left within the pages of the Bible and on top of the Christmas tree. The understanding was that if a miracle occurs, it does so because of God and not His messengers. The belief in Guardian Angels persisted among the congregation, although they acted more as invisible hands of God, never to be directly perceived or even acknowledged.

Above all else, Evangelicals fear idolatry.

Being God’s “first draft” of perfection, angels were thought to be inferior to humans. We were made in the perfect likeness of God. The angels grew jealous of His love for us and so rebelled against God; hence the reason why Satan, a fallen angel, tempted Eve into eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden of Eden. Over the centuries, entire volumes of theological musings have been written on his very subject; most of which can be boiled down to men fearing the roles of women as midwives, healers, councilors, and warrior-leaders in pre-Christianized societies, and then blaming them for mankind’s separation from God.

The trouble here is that Evangelicals are literalists. To them, the Bible is not a collection of lessons on how to live a meaningful or holy life. It is a factual and historical document. God literally wrote the Bible. Noah literally put two of every animal on the ark. They do this because if one particular event, the raising of Jesus from the dead, were made allegorical, their entire belief structure would crumble.

I got a little distracted here, but all of this is to say that angels were both a dangerous distraction from God and a near non-factor in the modern world. This helps explain why the following experience was both so impactful and terrifying.

During the summer of ‘07, at the age of seventeen, I had, what is called in Jungian psychology, a “Big Dream” in which I met with the Archangel Michael. While asleep, I had been transported to the top of a mountain. This mountain, much like the pond in my previous post, was floating in Space, though its base was covered in a dense fog that extended far past my perception. Above me were countless dazzling stars. No larger than a coin did the Earth look from this distance. In front of me, a brilliant cobalt blue light flashed, and from this light, a figure was formed. I was able to gaze at their face for only a moment. Their visage was drastically unlike the popular portrayal of him on candles and statues. I saw not a handsome winged man but a face so non-emotive and genderless that I thought it to be a glazed ceramic mask. Unable to tolerate the intensity of their light, I fell to my knees and shielded my eyes. They placed their hand atop my head and, in a low yet silvery voice, said, “I am Michael. Your time has come.” With that, I saw visions of mass destruction. Meteors crashed into the Earth, floods carried away entire cities, people clawed atop one another within deep chasms, and I saw all of humanity perish.

This Big Dream was a pivotal encounter with daimonic reality. Nonliteral imagination understands this dream not as a portent of doom but as a transformative initiation into the daimonic realm. In another post, I will explain to the best of my ability what I mean by “daimonic reality,” a term coined by author Patrick Harpur in his book, “Daimonic Reality: Understanding Otherworldly Encounters.” Daimons, such as Archangel Michael, have a long tradition of sending Apocalyptic visions to those who become initiated into the daimonic. Never have they come to pass, especially when a doom date is given, but this does not make them unreal. They are real in that they expose the uninitiated to the power and severity of the daimonic realm. The initiate’s previous self is destroyed, and in its place is a new self, neither of this realm nor the daimonic; they straddle between.

A Space for the Spiritual

Those of you who know me only as an artist or an educator may be surprised to learn that I am also a Magico-Spiritual Practitioner. “Magico” meaning I practice magic, and “Spiritual” meaning I deal with and work with spirits. I am not religious in the traditional sense, though I value many of the lessons which can be found in the world’s five major religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, & Buddhism).

My personal history with religion is… complicated. I was raised in a small Evangelical church in the rural woodlands of southeastern Connecticut. Some members of the church followed a literalist’s interpretation of the Bible while other’s simply did their best to live a life like Jesus; but the beliefs they all had in common was that The Rapture was imminent (Y2K), homosexuals were doomed to Hell, and that Harry Potter and Pokémon were of the Devil (who was everywhere). This was the 90s/early 00s, and the ‘Satanic Panic’ era was still very much alive amongst rural Evangelicals. Once the anticipation of the new millennium had passed and Jesus had not returned to gather his flock, their attentions turned towards condemning gay rights and Dan Brown.

During my time in the church, I was beginning to experience things that the church could not adequately explain. After all, it was the Devil who was behind everything “not of God.” From Rock ‘n Roll to Nickelodeon, there was no escaping him. There are no allowances for visions or spiritual visitations within Fundamentalist Evangelicalism; that is for the Catholics, who are heretics.

One such heretical experience has stuck with me all these years later.

I was about nine years old and was very sick with chronic kidney disease. I was born with polycystic kidney disease in my right kidney and an absent left. Frankly, it was astonishing that I had lived that long without dialysis or a transplant (the transplant came a year later at ten years old). What I remember of that time is feeling very sluggish and would sleep as often as I could.

One night, I “awoke” facing myself in my bed. I shared a bunk bed with my younger brother and could see that he was asleep on the top bunk and that my body was on the bottom bunk. Very suddenly, my perception of self shifted towards the corner of my room. From a bird’s eye perspective, I could see my room, then the house, then the town, etc., until I was in Space looking at the Earth.

I was seated by a pond which had a large but withered tree growing by its edge. This tree looked very sickly and was losing all of its leaves. However, by its side grew a young and small sapling with healthy leaves. It was then that I could sense a presence with me, but could not see one. I looked to my left and saw a row of cypress trees, beyond which was a beautiful marble city. No light shone upon it, but rather from it; the buildings emitted a soft and warm glowing light. I also saw a massive bridge with a river as black as obsidian flowing beneath it. The black water was so reflective that it mirrored the stars above it. On the river sailed majestic ivory white ships, which patrolled up and down continuously. The ships were intricately made and had motifs of plants and animals carved into them. I could not see across the bridge to know what was on the other side, though I had a knowing that it was Earth.

As I turned my attention away from the city and back to the pond, I noticed that I could peer into it and view the Earth as if on a movie screen. I was being shown the deaths of many people. I still remember the name of one child, about my age, named Zach. Zach had died in a car accident. He had red-orange hair, sapphire blue eyes, and lots of freckles. As soon as I had witnessed his death, he appeared next to me by the pond. I remember showing him with excitement the screen in the pond, and together we witnessed from afar the deaths of more and more people. One death I remember in particular was the murder of a young woman in an alley in the UK. She too sat by us. Eventually, the pond became more and more populated by the recently deceased. I remember thinking, ‘Oh, am I dead too then?’

It was at that moment that I was sent back into my body at an impossibly fast speed. When I came to it was morning. I had felt disoriented but empowered, like I had been given a juicy secret which I could not wait to share.