THE ECOLOGY OF ANGELS: Angelic Hierognosis in the Eastern Orthodox Tradition

"That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us to have, courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions", the whole so-called 'spirit world', death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out by life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God..." Rainer Maria Rilke

"The way people feel now and the ruling ideas of the modern age have made the angels weak". William Blake

This lecture has a rather imposing title, not because it is particularly academic or abstruse, but because it seemed to be the only way I could get into the title the three points I want to discuss today. The first is that the recognition of the existence of angels--acknowledging the reality that angels actually do exist--has as a consequence the absolute requirement of a change in our picture of the universe, in other words, our cosmology. Why do I wish to speak in terms of an 'ecology of angels'? An 'ecology', scientifically understood, is essentially a picture--as complete as is scientifically possible to determine--of the total if limited physical environment in which a given organism or organisms "live and move and have their being" in organic and harmonious relationship with all other entitles, organisms, forces and fields of that environment. Every ecology presupposes a cosmology, a kind of universal, all-inclusive ecology within which it is reciprocally situated. A cosmology, then, is in a sense an ecology of ecologies. The question we want to explore is: what kind of cosmology does an ecology of angels require?

The second point I wish to make, of equal importance, is contained in the phrase "angelic hierognosis". By angelic hierognosis I mean that certain mode of knowledge by which angels may be and are perceived. The word 'hierognosis' indicates that the kind of knowledge by which angels are perceived is not (usually) ordinary perception and implies the existence of 'degrees' of knowledge or a hierarchy of perception and knowledge. The word 'gnosis' is used to suggest that the mode of perception and the degree of knowledge by which angels and the angelic realm may be perceived and in which communion or contact with angels may occur is in some sense--in the best Christian sense--esoteric: that is to say, normally hidden, hedged about by barriers and safeguards both natural and Providential, and lawfully accessible only through grace, ascesis and theosis.

The third point upon which this lecture is intended to focus in a sense underlies both the idea of an 'ecology' of angels and the concept of our perception of angels or 'angelic hierognosis'. It involves a clear and sober recognition of the actual quality of the state of conscious awareness which is habitual and 'normal' for our fallen human nature, which we may refer to as 'ordinary waking consciousness'. It also involves paying attention to the kinds of belief and expectations that are aroused in our minds and hearts when we begin to consider the existence or non-existence, the reality or non-reality of the angelic world or the world of spirits, and the possibility or impossibility of "seeing angels".

Adopting the perspective if not the language of the Eastern Orthodox ascetic tradition, we may define ordinary waking consciousness as the untransmuted and unregenerate consciousness of human beings in their fallen state. This state of consciousness is actually a state of un-awareness or unconsciousness, and is as it were 'asleep' to the spiritual world. This habitual state, which is unfortunately our 'normal' condition, has been thoroughly mapped and exhaustively analyzed by the Eastern Orthodox ascetic tradition, which characterizes it as "unsober", unstable and perpetually prone to delusion. From this perspective, which provides us with both a reliable safeguard and a spiritual key, we are advised to acknowledge humbly our spiritual infirmity and walk circumspectly and with discernment if we seek to reflect profitably on the problem of the existence and perception of angels in the here and now of our post-modern, technocratic, cybernetic, rationalistic, relativistic, pluralistic, information-besotted age.

Our age has become enthralled with 'virtual reality'. It has become possible with cybernetic meta-machines to image almost anything one can imagine. We are tempted to see this burgeoning, nearly ubiquitous information technology as transforming our world into a more 'spiritual' place. But we must not confuse the cybernetic with the spiritual, nor 'virtual' reality with actual, concrete spiritual reality. If we were truly sensitive to the physical-spiritual interplay of our body/soul/minds, would we not notice a certain deadening of awareness, an almost imperceptible dulling of our minds, a slight feeling of emptiness in our souls, when we spend a lot of time working with computers or staring at television screens or video monitors? That vague restlessness or uneasy feeling may well be a signal that virtual reality is closer in essence to the infra-natural rather than the supra-natural, consuming our psychic energies without return. Be that as it may, our organisms register exactly the opposite effects when we are in touch with virgin nature or, as we are told by the lives of the saints and the personal accounts of ordinary people, when our nature is touched by the grace of the angelic realm. A day at an ocean beach, a hike in the mountains or a walk in the woods is invigorating, life-enhancing, always leaving us more lively, more integrated, more aware than when we began. As we shall see, encounters with angels also have this quality in abundance. The spiritual world, as well as the natural world that reflects it in virgin wilderness, seems to have a life-enhancing, almost paradisal dimension. This is not to say there are not dangers to be aware of in both the angelic realm and in wilderness, but as C.S. Lewis wrote of Aslan-Christ in the Narnia series, he is after all "not a tame lion". The spiritual world of angels, in which we humans were originally created by God to participate, has its own laws, but it is not tame.

Mother Alexandra, founder of the first Romanian Orthodox monastery for women in America, and author of one of the best books on angels in English, The Holy Angels, observed that "at the present moment, the bookshelves in airports, shops, and whereever books are sold, display any amount of volumes concerning satanic cults, but we do not see anything about the holy angels who are God's messengers, and the heavenly counterparts of hell's emissaries". Her observation was certainly true at the time she wrote that paragraph, but there has been a noticeable change since then. Quite a few books have been published concerning angels during the past few years, from a variety of perspectives, including popular Christian, new age, occult, other religious traditions, and secular scholarship; and one can even find them on the shelves now in airport bookstores. There has also been a surprising increase of movies incorporating angelic visitations or other angelic themes (and such movies almost always turn a profit), as well as television programs on the subject of angels. This is an indication that in our popular culture, in spite of being inundated with positivistic, materialistic, scientistic propaganda, and in spite of the virtual absence of preaching on the subject of angels and the angelic world from the pulpits of almost all denominations, there is a strong nostalgia for the spiritual world and contact with the things of the spirit. One of the most powerful expressions of nostalgia for the world of the angels that I have ever read is contained in these lines from the great Welsh poet, David Jones:

I

Contemporary academic theology has given very little attention to the subject of angels. One of the few recent studies is by Karl Rahner in his Theological Investigations. He has shown that historical-critical exegesis of Scripture, coupled with support from psychology, parapsychology and sociology, has been used to relativize the Scriptural statements on angels and demons as nothing but projections and personifications of human experience in this world. Angelology is decidedly not a hot topic in theology departments around the world, as a cursory look at the table of contents of the various theological journals and periodicals in any university or seminary library would indicate. Nor is it likely that on any given Sunday in any given church that you would be listening to a sermon preached on angels. In short, Christian clergy are unfortunately as susceptible as anyone else in today's world to the widely accepted rationalistic error of assuming that angels are but personifications of psychological realities, to which 'mythological data' the disciplines of psychology or psychoanalysis are considered the best suited to furnish the interpretive keys. The temptation to turn to psychologist Karl Gustave Jung when faced with the question of angels and demons has proven well-nigh irresistible for many Christian theologians. But psychological reductionism will not be our approach today.

Diametrically opposed to the rationalistic error just mentioned, and often in justifiable reaction to its reductionist tendencies, is the approach of an uncritical naive spiritualism. Although this approach readily accepts the reality of a 'spiritual world' and spiritual beings, by combining a thoroughly contemporary interest in experimentation with an imprudent and naive lack of spiritual discernment, it exposes its adherents to disappointments, delusions and even worse dangers. Nevertheless, it remains true that, throughout the spiritual vicissitudes of the last 30 or 40 years, the spiritual explosion in the Sixties, the solipsism of the Seventies, the cynicism of the Eighties and the cautious searching of the Nineties, there has remained underneath it all a consistent yearning, a hunger, a genuine eros for the spiritual world. This is as it should be, because in the view of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the writings of the great doctors of the Church who embody the 'mind', ethos and worldview of Holy Orthodoxy, angels and human beings share a common rational nature, freedom of will and spiritual destiny. Hence, loss of living contact with that world, as well as our endless peregrinations in the abominable desolation which is the worldview of a godless culture, creates in our hearts a poignant, nameless yearning, a groaning in our souls which cannot be uttered(Rm.8:26), but is deeply felt as loss and desire.

The Eastern Orthodox tradition, following the witness of Holy Scripture which accepts the existence of angels as given, recognises the existence of an all-pervasive angelic realm or dimension. More than merely an article of faith, the existence and ministry of angels is celebrated by the Church in the Divine Liturgy. witnessed in the lives of the saints, honored and invoked in special prayers, canons and akathists. But the full implications of this view are seldom drawn, even by the Orthodox. If angels exist and act and interact with us, then we need to change drastically our image of the cosmos--our worldview or cosmology--to reflect the reality of the angelic dimension--the ecology of angels. An entire dimension is therefore missing from the typical, and rather mediocre scientific cosmologies associated with astrophysicists and mathematicians, such that their fanciful webspinning is obsolete before they begin. Again, if angels exist and interact with us, we need also to change our image of our own human nature. Human nature in a cosmos peopled with angels must be imaged in terms of spirit and soul as well as body and mind, in order take full account of the fact of angelic visitation and communication. In the universe as imaged by the Biblically-based Orthodox Christian cosmology, we humans are thus made to "live and move and have our being" in an angelic ecology. In a universe where hierognosis is possible, hierarchy is basic to both our image of the cosmos and of ourselves.

Once again, this is a subject about which it seems wise to sound periodically a note of caution. It is important to exercise discernment in dealing with the realm of the 'invisible', and to cultivate a healthy respect for the dangers and psychic blandishments that may likely beset a would-be 'cherubic wanderer' today. We must never lose sight of the warning of the great spiritual elders of the Orthodox Church not to seek after visions. We must always bear in mind the extreme likelihood that the psychosphere--the psychic dimension of the total ecology in which all human beings live--is at least as polluted and degraded as the biosphere which we are rapidly destroying beyond the point of no return. As Mother Alexandra writes, "To try to have a vision of angels or to hope or ask for such a thing is wrong. To seek intimacy with them by any other means than the grace of God is useless; Christ is our only way of union with the Father and with all his creatures." Above all, the spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition emphasize repentence as the only truly safe and reliable course through the spiritual world and the world of spirits. A typical example, close to our own era is this exhortation by St. Paisius Velichkovsky, the great disseminator of the Philokalia in Romania and Russia. Note the linking of Godly fear, praise, the example of angelic knowledge and wonder, and repentence:

In his study on angels that I quoted earlier, Karl Rahner takes a classical theological

approach. He divides the subject of the angels into three dimensions which he then approaches separately: 1) the existential-ontological; 2) the cosmological; and 3) the epistemological--in other words, 1)what angels are supposed to be (if they exist), 2)where and how they live, and 3)how we can know these things. That is fine as far as it goes. However, the difficulty of reading 30 or 40 pages of Rahner's convoluted prose, replete with cautions, qualifications and caveats is that the reader starts to wonder if he exists, let alone if angels do, and tends to retire from the field with a headache and a desperate, Descartian "I am confused, therefore, I am" sort of feeling.

The traditional Christian doctrine of angels is not that complicated, and in my view can be most clearly seen in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. The Orthodox Church's angelology is more or less similar to the traditional Western Christian doctrine of angels. This is not surprising since they share the same Patristic sources on angels: the Bible, preeminently, then Origen, the Cappadocian Fathers--Sts. Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, St. Augustine, St. Gregory the Diologist (the Great), St. John of Damascus and, above all, St. Dionysius the Areopagite. The main difference between East and West in angelology is, as is true in many other areas, that the Eastern Church was less systematic, more inclined to practice a kind of creative imprecision. Unlike the West, which tended to dot every 'i' and cross every 't' in theological matters, especially after Aquinas, whose treatise on angels in the Summa Theologiae is probably the most thorough and systematic ever written, the Eastern Orthodox Fathers tended to make whatever basic distinctions were necessary and then leave the rest open. For example. the Orthodox were disinclined to define angelic nature as "pure spirit", which if you really look at it is so abstract a concept as to be almost meaningless, just as meaningless as its counterpart, 'pure matter'. Rather than the oversimplified dichotomy of spirit versus matter, the Orthodox tradition tended to see a more complex relationship between spirit and matter, one closer to actual human experience than to the needs of a formal logic.

In dealing with the existence, the being and perception of angels from the Orthodox tradition, we will naturally be dealing with same three dimensions found in Rahner's study: the ontological, or what angels are in their basic nature; the cosmological, or their place in the cosmos and how they relate to the rest of the created order; and the epistemological, or how and in what manner we may perceive angels or are denied the perception and experience of angels. Following the Eastern Orthodox mode, we will not rigidly separate these dimensions but will attempt to see how all three interrelate in the total ecology of that which St. Maximus the Confessor calls the 'intelligible/sensible cosmos'. In keeping with our ecological model, we will try, following the Orthodox mystical-contemplative tradition, to arrive at an understanding of the angels and their environment together. Since an ecological understanding of any organism requires an understanding of the organism in its reciprocal relationship to its environment, and this relationship is so all-pervasive that it is impossible to conceive of the organism without its environment, it is thus possible for ecologists to deepen their understanding of the life-form by a study of the nature of the environment and to deepen their understanding of the ecology by studying the habits and activities of the organisms in it. As a grossly oversimplified example, this is merely saying that the nature of a fish cannot be understood outside its watery environment or that, although air is a tasteless, odorless, colorless and invisible gas, we know it exists because birds have wings and fly. What insights may we gather if we take a similarly ecological approach to angels?

II

In the Old Testament, we see the angels appear in the narrative as 'guardians', as messengers, as 'sons of God', 'watchers' , 'warriors' and the 'hosts of heaven'. Angels, good and bad, participate in mankind's salvation history from the beginning as guardian and tempter (Gen. 3:1-22). Abraham entertains the angels (Gn.18), a story that inspired the incomparable iconic imaging of the Trinity by Rubliev; Lot and Hagar encounter guardian messenger angels (Gn.19:1-17; 21:9-21); Jacob wrestles with an angel (Gn.28:10-14); Moses received from God the 10 Commandments, the Laws and Ordinances, and a guardian angel, in that order: "And now I am sending my angel to go before thee and guard thee on the way, and lead thee to the place I have made ready for thee. Give him good heed, and listen to his bidding; think not to treat him with neglect. He will not overlook thy faults, and in him dwells the power of my Name" (Ex.23:20-21). Then Moses was bidden to build a Holy Tabernacle, which included a "mercy seat" which was a throne of pure gold with the images in beaten gold of two cherubs. "Thence will I issue my commands; from that throne of mercy, between the two cherubs that stand over the ark and its records, my voice shall come to thee, whenever I send word through thee to the sons of Israel" (Ex.25:22). What a perfect symbol of the way God meets his people in the presence of angels, among the highest of which are the "Divine Intelligences" who uphold his throne. Already we can see the scriptural foundation for the Orthodox patristic conception of a hierarchical cosmos peopled with angels and, above all, the presence of angels of all ranks in all acts of worship, especially the liturgy. Joshua too was helped by angels (Jos.5:13-16); Samson's conception was announced by an angel (Jgs.13:3-7); an angel stirred up courage in the heart of Gideon (Jgs.6:2-24); Balaam's ass had better spiritual sight than his owner, seeing the angel thus saving the life of the prophet who was acting like an ass!. Elijah’s and Elisha's careers were also angelically aided. In the New Testament, angels appear prominently in the life and teachings of Jesus, in the life of the young Church, in the Epistles of Paul and especially in the Book of Revelation. It would take much too long to recount all of these angelic occurrences. But we must reflect briefly on two key visions that figure most significantly in the development of the Orthodox Divine Liturgy and the cosmo-conception of a hierarchical cosmos and the cosmic liturgy that is its primary activity and reason-for-being: the great angelophanies of Isaiah and Ezekiel.

The prophet Isaiah's greatest vision occurred at the beginning of his prophetic ministry. Its powerful and evocative images have dominated the imagination of all subsequent spirituality and strongly influenced the development of the liturgy of the Eucharist. Isaiah's own words are incomparable:

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. and I said: "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts! Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: "Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin is forgiven." (Isa.6:1-7)

This vision is the origin of the Sanctus rite in our Divine Liturgy; it also inspired the Orthodox spirituality of the Eucharist, as anyone familiar with the rites and prayers associated with reception of holy communion will readily recognise. Finally, it informed all patristic speculation on the Divine Nature, its glory and mystery, the nature of the cosmos and the relation between the two.

Ezekiel's greatest angelic vision, like Isaiah's. came at the beginning of his prophetic ministry. His entire ministry and teaching was a sublime synthesis of the celestial and the terrestrial. Like Isaiah's and, later, Daniel's angelic epiphanies, Ezekiel's was overwhelming; the prophet was overcome by his sense of unworhiness and impurity in the presence of God and the great angelic intelligences surrounding the Divine Throne. As with Isaiah, Ezekiel too in his vision was invited to participate with angelic beings in a ritual action of purification that was understood as a eucharistic symbol by the Fathers. Ezekiel's vision was a great theophany, involving the whole universe, so it seemed. Unlike the other great prophets, Ezekiel attempted a full description of what he experienced. The incommensurability of his vision with the limitations of human speech resulted in fantastic images that stagger the imagination, for which Ezekiel is justly famous. Here we have the 'Four Living Creatures' appearing in a storm of glory, which the prophet attempts to describe in symbols upon symbols. Before the staggering splendor of these angels, named later in the 10th chapter as Cherubim, even the prophet's spiritual symbolism, which is essentially non-linear, especially in comparison with ordinary discourse, still seems too 'linear', that is, despite the many different symbolic images piled one upon the other, the description somehow still misses that fullness of dimensionality necessary to capture the reality of these beings. So he speaks in terms of four great beings in the "likeness" of four living creatures, having the "appearance" of "the form of men" in which their faces, wings. limbs and movements had such a plenitude of being that he could only describe it in terms of simultaneously appearing four-fold images: four faces (lion, ox, eagle, man), four wings full of eyes, instantaneous movement "straight forward, without turning", full of illuminations, burning coals, bright fire, flashes of lightning, wheels within great wheels. These beings as it were stood upon the universe with the firmament over their heads, spread out and shining like bright crystal (Ez.1:1-28). Here is the Throne of God, which is the true foundation and root of all manifestation. Here is the 'terrible crystal' the Welsh poet hoped to experience. Here is the fundamental reality upon which an authentic Christian cosmology must be based. This image appears again, of course, in the Book of Revelations (Rev.4:7) and over and over in Patristic texts as the Fathers of the Church meditated and contemplated upon the mysteries of creation, gradually building through visions and theorias the world-image of a cosmos in which Cherubim as well as the other angelic choirs have an ecological niche!

But listen for yourselves to the prophet's own words, taken from the tenth chapter in which the vision recurs to Ezekiel, this time revealing the name of the great angelic intelligences he was beholding:

"Then I looked, and behold, on the firmament that was over the heads of the cherubim there appeared above them something like a sapphire, in form resembling a throne. And he said to the man clothed in linen, "Go in among the whirling wheels underneath the cherubim; fill your hands with burning coals from between the cherubim, and scatter them over the city." And he went in before my eyes. Now the cherubim were standing on the south side of the house, when the man went in; and a cloud filled the inner court. And the glory of the Lord went up from the cherubim to the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the glory of the Lord. And the sound of the wings of the cherubim was heard as far as the outer court, like the voice of God Almighty when he speaks. And when he commanded the man clothed in linen, "Take fire from between the whirling wheels, from between the cherubim," he went in and stood beside a wheel. And a cherub stretched forth his hand from between the cherubim to the fire that was between the cherubim, and took some of it, and put it into the hands of the man clothed in line, who took it and went out. The cherubim appeared to have the form of a human hand under their wings. And I looked, and behold, here were four wheels beside the cherubim, one beside each cherub; and the appearance of the wheels was like sparkling chrysolite. And as for their appearance, the four had the same likeness, as if a wheel were within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of their four directionswithout turning as they went, but in whatever direction the front wheel faced the others followed without turning as they went. And their rims and their spokes, and the wheels were full of eyes round about--the wheels that the four of them had. As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing the whirling wheels. And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was the face of a man, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. And the cherubim mounted up. These were the living creatures that I saw by the river Chebar. And when the cherubim went, the wheels went beside them; and when the cherubim lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the wheels did not turn from beside them. When they stood still, these stood still, and when they mounted up, these mounted up with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in them. Then the glory of the Lord went forth from the threshold of the house, and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted up their wings and mounted up from the earth in my sight as they went forth, with the wheels beside them...and the glory of the God of Israel was over them. These were the living creatures that I saw underneath the God of Israel by the river Chebar; and I knew that they were cherubim." (Ez.10:1-20)

A full analysis of this very complex vision or that of Ez. 1 would take far more time and energy than we have at our disposal today. A personal observation that occurred to me as I read this passage for the umpteenth time was the incredible effort Ezekiel seems to be making to give an accurate description of what he saw. He seems to be attempting to describe his vision in an objectively as precise and as 'scientifically' disinterested a manner as he possibly can, given the linguistic and symbolic tools at his disposal. There seems something very human and touching in this earnest, but impossible effort to describe the indescribable, in which even the repetitions seem to create a sense of awe and wonder at the ineffable power of this theophany. Perhaps the most succinct analysis is the following comment from Dionysius the Areopagite:

"We cannot as mad people do, profanely visualize these heavenly and godlike intelligences as actually having numerous feet and faces. They are not shaped to resemble the brutishness of oxen or to display the wildness of lions. They do not have the curved beak of the eagle or the wings and feathers of birds. We must not have pictures of flaming wheels whirling in the skies, of material thrones made ready to provide a reception for the Deity, of multicolored horses, or of spear-carrying lieutenants, or any of those shapes handed on to us amid all the variety of the revealing symbols of scripture. The Word of God makes use of poetic imagery when discussing these formless intelligences but, as I have already said, it does so not for the sake of art, but as a concession to the nature of our own mind. It uses scriptural passages in an uplifting fashion as a way, provided for us from the first, to uplift our mind in a manner suitable to our nature."

There is a profound connection between this vision of Ezekiel, the Thrice-Holy vision of Isaiah and the vision of Moses. All three are essential in the building up of the traditional patristic, Orthodox cosmology and angelology and its relationship with the unfathomable Divine Mystery which is its source. St. Gregory of Nyssa puts these elements together in the following comment:

And the sacred text, in describing the cherubim as hiding the mysterious contents of the ark with their wings, confirms our interpretation of the tabernacle. For cherubim, we know, is the name given to those powers who surround the Godhead in the vision seen by Isaiah and Ezekiel. Nor should our ears be surprised at the fact that they cover the ark with their wings. We find the same symbol of wings in Isaiah: only in Isaiah is the Lord's face covered (Is.6:2), and here it is the ark of the covenant. But in each case the meaning is the same: it suggests, in my view, that the contemplation of the divine mysteries is inaccessible to our minds.

Concerning the form in which angels appear, the New Testament also shows us: "an angel of the Lord whose appearance was as lightening, and his raiment as white as snow" (Mt.28:2-3); "a young man arrayed in a white robe" (Mk. 16:5); 'two men in dazzling apparel"(Lk.24:4); "two angels in white" (Jn.20:12). Basing itself on this Gospel witness, the Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 decreed that angels should only be portrayed in human form, and the iconographic tradition has remained consistent down through the centuries, portraying angels as dazzling, glorious youths. Wings, feathered or not, are symbolic, representing the swiftness, the agility, the verticality of dimension, the astonishing freedom or 'unboundedness' of the angelic nature. St. Basil the Great, in his work On the Holy Spirit, states that "in the heavenly powers their nature is that of an aerial spirit--if one may so speak--or an immaterial fire...for this reason, they are limited by place, and become visible, appearing to those who are worthy, in the form of their own bodies." In another place he also says, "we believe that each (angel) is in a definite place. For the angel who stood before Cornelius was not at the same time with Philip (Acts 10:3); and the angel who spoke with Zachariah near the altar of incense (Lk.1:11) did not at the same time occupy his own place in heaven."

St. Gregory Nazianzus (the Theologian) writes, "Secondary lights after the Trinity, having a royal glory, are the brilliant invisible angels. They freely go around the great Throne, because they are swiftly moving minds, a flame, and divine spirits which swiftly transport themselves through the air".

St. John Damascene, who was the synthesizer and systematizer of the Patristic period in the East, sums up the angelology of the Greek East: "Compared with us, the angel is said to be incorporeal and immaterial, although in comparison with God, who alone is incomparable, every thing proves to be gross and material--for only the Divinity is truly immaterial and incorporeal." St. John Damascene continues, "The angels are circumscribed, because when they are in heaven, they a re not on earth, and when they are sent to earth by God they do not remain in heaven. However they are not confined by walls or doors or bars or seals, because they are unbounded. I say that they are unbounded, because they do not appear exactly as they are to the just and to them to whom God wills them to appear. On the contrary, they appear under such a different form as can be seen by those who behold them".

This statement about how angels "do not appear exactly as they are" is not in contradiction with St. Basil's teaching that "angels appear in the form of their own bodies". St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his Catechetical Lectures of the 4th century shows how in the book of Daniel these two previous statements are reconciled. "Daniel," he says, "in the sight of Gabriel shuddered and fell on his face and, prophet that he was, dared not answer him until the angel transformed himself into the likeness of a son of man". But what was the angel's appearance before he transformed himself into a likeness of a son of man? If we read Chapter 10 of the Book of Daniel, where this incident is recorded, we find that the original form of the angel which so dumbfounded and overwhelmed Daniel was also a man, but of so dazzling and bright an appearance as to be unendurable to the eyes of a human still in the flesh. In fact, Daniel 10 gives us a complete scriptural paradigm for the Patristic angelology because it contains almost every element in the traditional Christian understanding of the nature, activity, mission and environment of angels. Here is the text of Daniel 10:

III

What observations and generalizations may we make so far, based on these Biblical texts and the Patristic interpretations thereof, concerning our picture of angelic ecology? Our first and most important observation is that the Biblical teaching on angels is never in the form of a philosophical analysis of the nature and being of angels. These are accepted as givens. It is always in the form of a narrative account of someone's encounter or experience of angels or a discussion about what to do or think in light of the known presence or activity of angels. This is significant. Biblical teaching on angels is experiential, not dogmatic or doctrinal. In the approximately 300 references to angels in the Bible, this experiential aand ethical pattern remains consistent. The Biblical account of angels is closer in form to popular books on angels than to a philosophical treatise on angelology. Does this mean that philosophical treatises on angels, such as those of Dionysius and Aquinas are of no importance or are unBiblical? By no means. It merely means that Biblical metaphysics is implicit, and the Bible leaves it up to each generation to render it explicit, according to the needs of each age. This is precisely what we are attempting by seeking to develop a picture of the cosmos that includes the being and activity of angels, that is understandable to us today, yet still basing our understanding on the Biblical data with the help of the Orthodox, patristic interpretation of that data.

We will build up an initial, tentative picture by dividing the Biblical data into three parts:

1) What angels are experienced as being--how they appear in the Bible.

2) What angels are experienced as doing--what they do in the Bible.

3) How humans in the Bible perceive or experience the presence of angels.

A. The being or appearance of angels.

1)They appear as generally human in form (even Ezekiel's Cherubim).

2) Arrayed or robed in white (linen).

3) Dazzling in appearance.

4) Overwhelming in the power of their presence

5) Glory seen as light or fire or lightning or blazing radiance.

6) Angels differ in glory, power, presence and knowledge.

B. What angels are experienced as doing:

1) Flying.

2) Descending and ascending.

3) Suddenly appearing and disappearing.

4) Traveling great distances instantaneously.

5) Localized in space and time: in one place at a time.

6) Talking (conversing with humans)

7) Touching (capable of physically affecting their environment).

8) Always sent by God (in visions and appearences to humans).

9) They comfort and heal and strengthen.

10) They explain or reveal and teach.

11) They defend, guard and protect.

12) They can alter the form or degree of their radiance to the acceptance-

level of the person to whom they are appearing.

13) They are somehow involved in the governance and ordering of the

cosmos at various levels, including but not limited to whole nation and peoples, individual human beings and the world of nature.

14) Above all, they signal the presence of the heavenly realm: they attend the

Divine Presence; accompany Divine manifestations and theophanies; administer

the Divine theophanic purpose through ritual actions and hymns of great solemnity

and sublimity; enact the angelic or heavenly liturgy.

C. Human experience or perception of the angelic realm.

1) Angels are normally invisible and imperceptible to the senses.

2) Angels appear at moments of great need or emotional intensity.

3) Angels appear at transition points in consciousness, such as between waking

and sleeping, or in waking visions or visionary dreams.

4) Angels are capable of bypassing the normal "doors of perception", the physical

senses, to communicate with the 'inner being'.

5) Humans are somehow capable of a higher level of sense perception, or are

possessed of spiritual senses, which though not normally in use in our present

state, are capable of being 'opened' and of communicating with angelic beings.

6) The appearance of angels at the level of ordinary waking consciousness or

untransmuted sense perception is overwhelming and incapable of being borne.

7) Humans are capable of ordinary sense perception of angels in a 'stepped down'

or diminished form of glory.

8) Human perception is susceptible to being manipulated by spiritual beings:

beneficially and in accordance with God's will in the case of angels, harmfully

and perversely in the case of fallen spirits, ie., demons.

From these textual and narrative facts of Scripture we can begin to build up or, better, rebuild a provisional world-image that will be able to incorporate immaterial, hon-human, created, powerful yet limited, intelligent, spiritual beings. Clearly the currently accepted cosmic picture of what Philip Sherrard calls "the paradigm of modern science" will not do, because whatever your scientific metaphor for the world--expanding 'big-bang universe or Hawkingesque, "no boundary", billion-light-year 'cosmic amoeba' universe, or any variation thereof, none of these, it seems, makes room for the phenomenon of the ecology of angels. I hasten to add that this is not another attack on good science, the scientific method or the products of science. It is merely an observation that the accepted cosmologies of today are unable to account for or explain or predict or incorporate the angelic dimension. To the extent that such theories do not incorporate the angelic dimension, the worldview of Orthodoxy considers them askew and deficient.

I confess that I found it difficult to come up with an 'image' that would somehow re-present the scriptural data yet be intelligible to our contemporary situation. Upon reflection I found that if I reduced the scope of the imaginative effort to just our planet earth, I could imagine a penumbra representing a supra-sensible 'atmosphere', both around the globe and interpenetrating it, and then visualise this--I am tempted to call it a "noosphere" but that useful word has been ruined by its association with the speculations of Teilhard de Chardin--peopled with countless angelic spirits, like radiant birds flying singly or in formation, all intent, all purposeful, all on missions of one kind or another, all in joyful praise to the Lord. This penumbra may be visualized as vast beyond reckoning, yet must not be seen as extending out into three-dimensional space, but as it were at right angles to it. Hopefully, this geomtrical metaphor, although strictly inconceiveable, will somehow convey the incommensurability of the angelic world, both as to its size and its relation to our physical world.

IV

Let us now turn to the "angelic doctor" par excellence of the East, St. Dionysius the Areopagite. (I do not call him 'pseudo', as there was nothing 'pseudo' about his teaching--after all, noone calls the writer of Hebrews 'pseudo-Paul'!) He lived, scholars now believe, in the late 5th or early 6th century. The earliest known reference to him is at a local council in 532. He was a great Christian neoplatonic philosopher, ascetic and speculative genius; yet his list of works is amazingly small considering his enormous influence--only four books and nine letters. His four works are The Divine Names, The Mystical Theology, The Celestial Hierarchy, and The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. The Celestial Hierarchy is his main book about angels, but angels actually figure prominently in his other works as well, especially The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, which is his commentary on the sacraments, and The Divine Names, which is his metaphysical and contemplative study of the attributes of God: the One, the Good, the Beautiful, Being, Life, Wisdom, and so on. Angels are less prominent in the smallest and most influential work of all, The Mystical Theology. In that work, he sets out the path to union with God through apophatic ascent: that is, the way to the Divine Darkness through the interplay of the affirmative and negative ways of approach. Parenthetically, Dionysius' insights on angels and their activities bear a close relation to his insights on the way to Divine union through the apophatic method, but this cannot concern us directly here.

What does concern us is his vision of the cosmos in relation to angels. Dionysius completes the picture or world-image of the traditional Christian ecology of angels as viewed from the Christian East, but also in the ancient Western tradition. (After all, Aquinas himself quotes Dionysius some 1700 times in his works.) Dionysius was not the first to name the nine orders of angels. These names are all found in the Bible (not all in one place, however) and were generally known by both the Latin and the Greek Fathers. Both St. Ambrose and St. John Chrysostom, for example, mention all nine in their commentaries on the sacraments. The originality of Dionysius was to order the nine choirs of angels into triads and the angelic triads into a great Triad: a triad of triads.

The first triad is according to the Areopagite the loftiest and most sublime of the angelic beings: the Seraphim, the Cherubim and Thrones. These are the spiritual beings nearest to God in nature and closest to Him in activity. The second rank or hierarchy, also triadic, is composed of the Dominions, the Powers and the Authorities. Although of the second rank, they are still so lofty and powerful in nature as to be virtually beyond our conception, and we are able to refer to them only in the most halting and inadequate way. The third hierarchy is the one closest to us in nature, yet still glorious beyond words at its upper levels: the Principalities, Archangels and Angels. The ninth order, the angels, are the ones who are most involved with human affairs and the natural world. They are the ones who fit most closely into the provisional world-image we began building from the Scriptural data on angels.

However, the most important contribution of Dionysius is undoubtedly his concept of hierarchy. Dionysius is as far as we know the first person in literature ever to have used the word 'hierarchy'. He seems to have coined the term. However, it is crucial to understand that our contemporary understanding of the term 'hierarchy' is from the Dionysian perspective the crudest imaginable, and does not convey at all what he intends. This profoundly Orthodox Christian concept is vital for a conception of the cosmos that includes the beings and activity of angels.

It is noteworthy that in several places in his Celestial Hierarchy and in the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Dionysius stops the flow of his narrative to give a definition of hierarchy. He seems insistent that this concept must be thoroughly grasped or the whole vision of the universe he is explaining will not be seen or be obscured. Listen to how Dionysius defines hierarchy: "A hierarchy is a sacred order, a state of understanding and an activity approximating as closely as possible to the Divine". Note the three key terms: 1) an order, or state of being; 2) an understanding, or state of knowing; 3) an activity, or state of doing--here are our three theological dimensions of the question: ontological, epistemological and cosmological. Now look at the following phrase. What does Dionysius mean by "approximating as closely as possible to the Divine"? His very next sentence gives the explanation: "It is uplifted to the imitation of God in proportion to the enlightenments divinely given to it. The key terms here are: 1) uplifted; 2) imitation (mimesis in Greek, fundamental in the patristic understanding of the cosmos); 3) enlightenments. He then goes on to describe the Divine Beauty, its unity and simplicity, how it uplifts through sacramental enlightenment by imitation, which is nothing but the conformation of the creature to Beauty as grace: "The beauty of God--so simple, so good, so much the source of perfection--is completely uncontaminated by dissimilarity. It reaches out to grant every being, according to merit a share of light and then through a divine sacrament, in harmony and in peace, it bestows on each of those being perfected its own form". A hierarchy, therefore, according to Dionysius, is created to uplift by means of grace given to the imitators of God, who are initiated by enlightenments (ie, experiences of the uncreated graces and energies of God) into the beauty of God which bestows its own form on every member of the hierarchy by means of the sacramental action which perfects the image in unity. The foregoing explanation is spelled out clearly by Dionysius in the next section of Chapter 3: "The goal of a hierarchy, then, is to enable beings to be as like as possible to God and to be at one with Him. A hierarchy has God as its leader of all understanding and action. It is forever looking directly at the comeliness of God. A hierarchy bears in itself the mark of God. Hierarchy causes its members to be images of God in all respects, to be clear and spotless mirrors reflecting the glow of primordial light and indeed of God Himself. It ensures that when its members have received the full and divine splendor they can then pass on this light generously and in accordance with God's Will to beings further down the scale".

The order, understanding and activity of the hierarchy is the sanctifying beauty of the Divine image, revealed simultaneously in the being of the hierarchy, in the knowing of the hierarchy and in the activity of the hierarchy. A hierarchy is not just a 'chain of command'; or an organizational chart representing a system of authority that is imposed from above upon a mass of individuals who are not part of the authority structure but are subject to its authority and rule. Such a conception of hierarchy, which represents the contemporary view of the matter, aridly sociological, is totally alien to the Dionysian, Eastern Orthodox conception. In this conception, hierarchy is an entire order in creation, an ecology, if you will, which includes all its members in organic unity and diversity. The invisible, angelic world is ordered according to hierarchic principles; since the visible, physical world is but the extension into the sensible realm of the cosmic order that begins with the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones in ceaseless motion of praise around the Throne of God, it too must reflect the principles of hierarchy in its cosmic extension and movement.

Dionysius fully understands this concept of hierarchy to apply not only to the world of angels but to the world of visible nature as well and also to our human world, which is why he entitled his treatise on the Church, the priesthood and the sacraments, The Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. In that work he defines hierarchy thusly: "We have a venerable sacred tradition which asserts that every hierarchy is the complete expression of the sacred elements comprised within it. It is the perfect total of all its sacred constituents. Our own hierarchy is therefore said to embrace every one of its sacred constituents. Thanks to this, the divine hierarch, following upon his consecration, will attend to all his most sacred activities. Indeed this is why he is called a 'hierarch'. Indeed, if you talk of 'hierarchy' you are referring to the arrangement of all the sacred realities. Talk of 'hierarch' and one is referring to a holy and inspired man, someone who understands all sacred knowledge, someone in whom an entire hierarchy is completely perfected and known." This is truly the Orthodox view of hierarchy in the Church, but, it must also be said that along with the sublimity of this image comes a most exacting responsibility, and one doesn't often see this point emphasized as much as it might be in the Orthodox Church, as it was once done by the great Simeon the New Theologian, for example. The greatness of this vision and its exacting standards are very humbling in light of our spiritual weakness today.

The activity of every hierarchy is to bring about the purification, illumination and perfection of all members of the hierarchy and to contribute to the purification, illumination and perfection of those below them in the scale of Being. I hope that my Evangelical Protestant brothers and sisters to whom terms such as 'illumination' might appear strange or even unChristian will realise that Dionysius is here referring to the classic stages of ascent to union with God. He places these stages, which represent the basic steps of every method of mystical, contemplative, ascetic and prayerful spirituality, the purgative, illuminative and perfective, at the center of his cosmology and angelology. By so doing he incorporates these stages of asceticism dynamically into the very being, arrangement and activity of the universe.

V

Let us leave the patristic witness on the nature of angels with this final summary from St. John of Damascus. In his work, The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, he repeats and summarizes the teaching of Dionysius the Areopagite, whom he calls "that most holy, and sacred, and gifted theologian". He also adds the following:

Seeing that they are noetic beings, they are in the noetic realm, and are not circumscribed after the fashion of a body. For they have not a bodily form by nature, nor are they extended in three dimensions. But to whatever post they may be assigned, there they are present after the manner of a mind and energise, and cannot be present and energise in various places at the same time. Whether they are equals in essence or differ from one another we know not. God, their Creator, Who knoweth all things, alone knoweth. But they differ from each other in brightness and position, whether it is that their position is dependent on their brightness, or their brightness on their position: and they impart brightness to one another, because they excel one another in rank and nature. And clearly the higher share their brightness and knowledge with the lower. They are mighty and prompt to fulfil the will of the Deity, and their nature is endowed with such celerity that wherever the Divine glance bids them there they are straightway found. They are the guardians of the divisions of the earth: they are set over nations and regions, allotted to them by their Creator: they govern all our affairs and bring us succour. And the reason surely is because they are set over us by the divine will and command and are ever in the vicinity of God...they behold God according to their capacity and this [vision of God] is their food. They are above us for they are incorporeal, and are free of all bodily passion, yet are not passionless: for the Deity alone is passionless. They take different forms at the bidding of their Master, God, and thus reveal themselves to men and unveil the divine mysteries to them. They have heaven for their dwelling-place, and have one duty, to sing God's praise and carry out His divine will.

The observations of the Biblical data on angels which we collected, coupled with the Orthodox Christian doctrine of angels, as exemplified by St. Dionysius the Areopagite, St. John of Damascus and the unanimous witness of other great Orthodox saints and sages, produces the following general conceptions which then go to build up our picture of the kind of world-image and world-reality necessary to account for the kind of ecology and cosmology necessary to support the existence and activity of angels:

1. If angels have real existence, then the our contemporary understanding of the universe and the cosmologies derived from the paradigm of modern science must be turned upside down and inside out.

2. The universe must be envisioned as hierarchical, composed of levels of existence, which interpenetrate one another.

3. The root of existence is not the smallest particle of matter that can be conceived, but the highest level of being at the boundary of created existence, beyond which is the infinite gulf separating the created from the Uncreated.

4. The visible world is permeated with the Invisible world, as body is permeated with soul.

5. Space, time and matter are not the ultimate aspects of existence, because they have no independent existence of themselves, being but modes or perspectives by which the unified spiritual-physical reality is viewed.

6. The ultimate source of all manifested existence is the unmanifested Light, the uncreated energy of God, in which all angelic beings live and move and have their being.

7. Creation is like an iceberg, the unmanifested, invisible world (like the part of the iceberg under water) is incomparably immense, compared to the visible, manifested world (like the part of the iceberg above the water).

Let us now turn again to our provisional world-image and see if we can complete it with the elements of the traditional Orthodox Christian vision of the cosmos which we have just rehearsed. Let us take the image of the sphere of the earth with its accomanying penumbra representing the angelic realm in relation to the earth. Let us envision that sphere as a circle with a central point. Then surround that circle with three concentric circles, each one three times the diametre of the preceding one, connecting all the circles with six lines radiating out from the central point to form a three dimensional cross. The result is perhads a rather crude and oversimplified but hopefully not-inadequate symbol to represent a conception of the universe that includes the unimaginable vastness, complexity, yet unity of the total, hierarchic ontology of the macrocosmos of angels, humanity and the natural world. Remember that the smallest and inmost circle represents not just the planet earth, but the full extent of the universe of space, time and matter as we conceive it today. The six lines (rather six radii forming three lines crossed at right angles) represent the presence of the Trinity in every dimension of the universe as well as the salvific and redeeming power of the Cross, which St. Maximos the Confessor sees as working dynamically in every part of the cosmos in just this way.

VI

We must now approach our conclusion by drawing back from the dizzying and vertiginous abyss of immensity of the spiritual-physical universe and look again at those angelic beings closer to us. We will look briefly at what the Orthodox hesychast tradition has to tell us about two remaining but very important aspects of the experience of angels: 1) how to communicate with them to our optimum spiritual advantage; and 2) how we should practice spiritual discernment--and the discernment of spirits--to avoid the dangers of demonic attacks and captivity of soul. These two questions are actually closely related. This is because any consideration of angelic nature has eventually to come to terms with fallen spirits or demons. If people of our day have difficulty accepting the actual reality of angels as nonhuman created personal beings, the difficulty is doubled with regard to demons. The temptation to explain the demonic as a naive personification of psychological states is almost irresistible. For example, a recent translation by an American Benedictine monk of The Practikos and Chapters on Prayer of Evagrius of Pontus, a seminal work of desert and monastic spirituality of the 4th century, is a good example of this tendency. The translator, in his introduction, advises the modern reader of Evagrius not to be put off by his seemingly 'morbid' preoccupation with demons, but just see him as putting his otherwise surprisingly acute psychological observations into an explanatory framework of his own time--i.e., when Evagrius says 'demon', we may understand him to mean personification of negative psychological state. But this, though tempting for the modern mentality, just will not do. The Orthodox patristic tradition is unanimous in this, from St. Athanasius' Life of St. Anthony, the enormously influential prototype of all saints' lives from the mid 4th century right down to the writings of St. Paisius Velichkovsky whom we quoted earlier: the world of spirits includes both angels and demons. The great spiritual master of the 7th century, St. Maximus the Confessor, sums up the traditional teaching in his Centuries on Charity: "All rational and intelligent nature is divided into two, namely angelic and human nature. And all angelic nature is again divided into two general sides or groupings, holy and accursed, that is, into holy powers and impure demons. All human nature is divided as well into only two general sides, religious and irreligious." Anyone who is seriously interested in achieving greater personal contact with the angelic world would be most unwise to ignore this teaching.

Noting well this caveat emptor, let us proceed to see what the Orthodox tradition has to tell us about cummunication with angels. In the first place, human beings are by nature made to commune with angels. The spiritual life of every human being is supported by the angels in the form of the guardian angel. The angels accompany the soul throughout the length of its spiritual life. Angels not only protect the soul against the attacks of the devil; they also try to make it progress in the spiritual life. The monastic life is seen by the desert Fathers as an imitation of the life of the angels and a participation in their life. Finally, the angelic hierarchies themselves are a kind of noetic "ladder of divine ascent," as is clearly indicated by the following text from St. Nicetas Stethatos:

This text does not refer specifically to the place of the Theotokos as "more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim," but it clearly teaches that the God-intended "place" for all of deified/perfected/glorified humanity is indeed "above" even the highest of the angelic hierarchies, and that the hierarchies themselves were created to accomplish that purpose. A fearful, humbling and incomprehensible mystery!

Nicetos Stethatos’ text is itself a confirmation of the continuity of the strong patristic tradition of the interpretation of the parable of the Lost Sheep which interprets the 99 'unlost' sheep as the orders and choirs of the angelic world and the one lost sheep as humanity, the lost order or choir of the angelic hierarchies. The joy of the 99 sheep when the Good Shepherd, Christ, returns it to the flock is the joy of the angels at the return of humanity to the angelic fold. Origen, Methodius of Philippi, Cyril of Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory the Theologian, all bear witness to this theme.

In the matter of "image of God," there is of course an extremely rich patristic body of literature on the subject, with differing views on exactly what was the nature of the image of God in man and where it was located. The only point I would bring up in this context is the fact that the patristic view of "image" is not restricted to humanity alone. In the integrated cosmology of St. Maximos, everything that exists is created according to its "logos" which is its inner essence or image, which is itself a reflection or image of the greater Logos, through which it came to be. Everything that exists, then, depending on its nature, is a distant reflection or image of God. But some creatures, in particular, the noetic beings--angels and humans--are by nature more perfect images of the Divine. Not only man, but angels also are understood to have been created in the image of God.

The noetic and intelligent nature of angels also possesses intellect, and the thought-form (logos) that proceeds from the intellect, and the intense longing (eros) of the intellect for its thought-form. This longing is likewise from the intellect and coexists eternally with the thought-form and the intellect, and can be called spirit since by nature it accompanies the thought-form. But this spirit in the case of angels is not life-generating, for it has not received from God an earthy body conjoined with it, and so it has not received the power to generate and sustain life. On the other hand the noetic and intellegent nature of the human soul has received a life-generating spirit from God since the soul is created together with an earth body, and so by means of the spirit it sustains and quickens the body conjoined to it. This makes it clear to those who possess understand that the spirit of man that quickens the body is noetic longing (eros), a longing that issues from the intellect and its thought-form, that exists in the thought-form and the intellect, and that possesses in itself both the thought-form and the intellect.

It remains true that patristic angelology never lost sight of the fact that man is the definitive image of God, because man is composed of body and soul and life-giving spirit and possesses all the elements of the created universe, while also possessing the capacity to grow into the likeness of God. As St. Gregory Palamas writes:

Since the noetic and intelligent nature of the human soul alone possesses intellect, thought-form and life-generating spirit, it alone--more so than the bodiless angels--is created by God in His image. This image the soul possesses inalienably, even if it does not recognize its own dignity, or think and live in a manner worthy of the Creator’s image within it."

Palamas writes further that:

Whenever Palamas uses the phrase "more than other natures" in this context, he invariably is referring to the angelic order. He then goes on to add:

It is sometimes said that the reason why angels are not fully in the image of God is due to the fact that their nature, unlike the human, lacks a trinitarian aspect. Note that St. Gregory here is not denying, but rather affirming that the angels too are created in the image of the Trinity by their three-fold nature of intellect, intelligence, spirit. Where they "fall short" is not that they lack spirit, but that their nature was not created with a life-giving spiritual power capable of sustaining life in a physical body, as was noted above.

Nevertheless, as St. Gregory intimates above, the angelic world was clearly envisioned as having a perfection that human beings presently lack. The struggle to grow in the likeness of God was often expressed in terms of attaining an angelic nature, or attaining "equality of honor" with the angels. St. Maximos uses this latter phrase many times in his writings. In his Mystagogia, Chapter 23, he asserts that through the Divine Mystagogy, the soul not only attains to "an understanding equal with the angels" but in the triple-splendored light of the Holy Trinity, the soul, now "equal in dignity" with the holy angels, is "brought to the adoption of a similar likeness by grace." For the Confessor, even the idea of "likeness" to God, the fullness of which is reserved for man alone, is expressible in terms of the likeness to God which angels possess.

St. Gregory Palamas, conscious here as elsewhere that he is in the Dionysian-Maximian tradition, confirms:

Since the angels are given to us for our aid, are present with us on our spiritual journey, and are constantly ready to help and instruct us, it is right and good to make their acquaintance and seek their aid. This we do by first, paying close attention to our thoughts and feelings, attempting to discern the positive from the negative." There are three things which move us to the good," says St. Maximus, "natural tendencies, the holy angels and a good will." And again, from the Confessor: "The holy angels urge us on to the good and natural tendencies and a good will assist us." That is to say, the promptings that come to us to do good are quite likely from an angelic source, our guardian angel or another angel.

The best way to get into touch with the angels is to do good, to act on the promptings of one's conscience. Then try to become aware or alert to inner signals or feelings that signal the presence of angels. Angels, we must remember above all, are in essence knowing presences. Thirdly, and most importantly, you must struggle to keep the commandments and practice the virtues in the context of the liturgical life of the Church. This is far and away the most secure and most certain way of success at beginning to turn your spiritual life into, if not an angelic life, then at least a life receptive to angelic influences, thoughts and feelings.

The Divine Liturgy itself is par excellence the richest ecology for angels, a fact which, unfortunately we can only mention here, not develop in all its richness. All of this entails practicing and growing in proficiency in what Fr. Noel O' Donahue has called, very rightly, the way of "intimation". Knowing by intimation is like seeing a luminous form out of the 'corner of your eye' while you are standing in a garden. If you suddenly turn and try to look head on at what you were seeing out of the corner of your eye, it disappears. With regard to getting in touch with angels, we might do worse than follow Blake's advice: "He who bends to himself a joy does the winged life destroy; but he who catches a joy as it flies, lives in eternity's sunrise".

VII

Finally, it is of the utmost importance to affirm the teaching of the Orthodox hesychast tradition on the ambiguity of spiritual experience, on the danger of seeking experiences without discernment. A general rule in the Philokalia teaching on unseen warfare is by no means to trust the spirits when they appear in sensuous form, neither to enter into conversation with them, nor to pay any attention to them, but to acknowledge their appearance as a great and most dangerous temptation. "The desire to see spirits, curiosity to find out anything about them and from them is a sign of the greatest foolishness and total ignorance of the Orthodox Church's tradition concerning moral and active life." So writes Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov, 19th century Russian contemplative and mystical theologian. "All of us who are in slavery to sin must understand that sensuous communion with holy angels is unnatural to us by reason of our estrangement from them by the Fall; that what is natural to us, for the same reason, is communion with the fallen spirits, to whose rank we belong in soul; that the spirits who appear sensuously to men who are in a state of sinfulness and fall, are demons and not in the least holy angels." These rather harsh words of Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov do not contradict our theme of angelic communication in the spiritual life, but should be understood as a stern warning of the danger of the lack of discernment when seeking to open oneself up to angelic experiences. The key word here is sensuous. The sensuous or sensible perception of spirits: this we must take to mean attempting to perceive spirits with our ordinary waking consciousness. The sensuous perception of spirits was closed to human beings after the Fall. This was not just a punishment by God, but was an act of mercy, because after the Fall, human beings find themselves in the realm of fallen spirits, surrounded by them. Thus the very density of our bodies and the crudeness of our senses act as barriers to the evil spirits all around us and keep them outside us as the ozone layer keeps out ultraviolet rays. However, the possibility of opening the senses or activating the spiritual senses always exists. It was perhaps more easily done in former times, which may provide a possible explanation for the need of medieval culture to people their churches and other architecture with so many gargoyles. Be that as it may, opening the senses may be done 'legitimately', in accordance with God's will or illegitimately, by self-will and psychic force. It is done lawfully through purgation, illumination and perfection, by practice of the virtues and keeping the commandments. As Brianchaninov writes. "The soul, clothed in a body, closed off and separated by it from the world of spirits, gradually trains itself by the study of God's law, or, what is the same thing, by the study of Christianity, and acquires the capability to distinguish good from evil (Heb.5:14). Then the spiritual perception of spirits is granted to it, and, if this is in conformiy with the purposes of God Who guides it, the sensuous perception of them also, since delusion and deception are for it now much less dangerous while experience and knowledge are profitable."

But it could be done illegitimately, by a person's own will, or by a person's opening himself mistakenly to demonic influences. The idea that there is anything especially important or 'advanced' in the sensuous perception of spirits is a serious mistake. Sensuous perception without spiritual perception is nothing in itself, no testimony at all to the merit of the perceiver. The lawful entry into the world of spirits is provided only by the doctrine and practice of Christian struggle. Listen to the words of St. Anthony the Great, the traditional monastic and ascetic paradigm of spiritual greatness, a man who attained the full angelic life while here in this life:

"You must know the following for your protection. When any kind of vision presents itself, do not be frightened, but no matter what kind of vision it might be, manfully ask it first of all: "Who are you and where do you come from?" If it is a manifestation of saints, they will calm you and will turn your fear into joy. But if it is a demonic apparition, when it encounters firmness in your soul, it will immediately waver, because the question serves as a sign of a brave soul."

Finally, one of the safest and best ways to foster awareness of the presence of angels is to ask for their help, to pray with them, and especially to remember them daily and celebrate their festivals. It is a real loss that one of the greatest Christian festivals, once universally celebrated in the Church from Byzantium to the British Isles, has been largely forgotten, except as a date on a Church calendar: the feast of St. Michael the Archangel and all angels. In the Eastern Orthodox calendar, there is the feast of St. Michael and the bodiless hosts on Nov. 8, but to call what is normally done on that day a 'feast' is to use that word rather nominalistically. In Celtic Christianity there was a very strong sense of the synergy of angels and humanity in creation, and a correspondingly rich cultural and liturgical emphasis on the angelic world. In the Celtic Church in the West, which was fully Orthodox for nearly a thousand years, Michaelmas was traditionally celebrated on Sept. 29. Once a festival to rival Christmas, with all kinds of customs and folk traditions, both in the family and in the community--the liturgical celebration, the baking of the Straun Bread, the Michalmas goose, the Michaelmas lanterns, the processions and singing, the dedication and blessing of St. Michael on all fields, flocks and goods of the community--now it is mostly only a fading memory, if that. It would be a very good thing for humanity, it seems to me, if we Orthodox Christians were able to lead the way to reestablish a Michaelmas festival, or a feast of all the archangels and the bodiless powers, whether on Sept. 29 or November 8.

It would be a healthy thing for a community to set aside its shortsighted concerns on the perishable things of this world, this world "bleared, smeared with toil," as the poet said, and concentrate for a day on the blessings and ministrations we receive from the unseen, spiritual world of angels. It would be a good thing for anyone to be able to sense by intimation the presence of his guardian angel. It would be a good thing if, in the hour of our death, when the angels come to lead our souls to the judgement, our souls would recognise at least one of them. It is a good thing to share your life with an angel.