Henry Corbin on the subject of angels. It's important to remember that in the original Greek "angelos" means a messenger with news from another place, sent by the central power of that place.
This bears and sustains a lifetime of re-reading, on many levels, and is admittedly not easy at first glance. It may not be completely appropriate for this forum, but Voltaire's special relationship to his angels always brings Corbin's voluminous writings on the topic to bland's mind:
"The epiphany of the Angel corresponds to a certain moment and degree in the individuation of the soul, when, awakened to its consciousness of being a stranger in a strange land, it becomes free from this world and knows that it forms one with its celestial counterpart, the person of the Angel from whom it originates...
…the soul cannot emerge from this cosmos without its Angel, and reciprocally, the Angel needs the soul in order to perform and celebrate his divine service here within it...
…a cosmos whose physical data are transmuted into symbols...invites the soul to become the companion of the Angel, to undertake, through this universe of symbols, the mystical journey to the Orient…that is, the soul's return to its "home"…
…it is by awakening to consciousness of itself, by attaining to consciousness of self, that the soul is enabled to know the Angel and the world of the Angel, and, by thus attaining the "clime of the Angel"--that is, the Orient—is enabled to realize its exodus from the cosmos that is the Occident--that is to affirm its transcendence in respect to that cosmos." |
