Who is an Angel?
Is it God’s Messenger?
An angel as a concept stands for righteousness and goodness akin to what the concept and notion of God stands for. Angel in essence is a messenger or avatar of God. When somebody is called an angel it is viewed as a complement. Angels are fair skinned, they have a beautiful face, glowing composition, wear white robes, have wings and a halo.
Biblical angels are not so pleasant, sometimes frightening and creepy. They are hybrids having human, lion, eagle and ox faces joined together at the neck and rotating wheel as their eyes. This multi headed Angel can really strike terror in us. Angels can take up various corporeal forms.
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Comments
Judaeo-christian understanding of angels evolved through biblical times and took its present form in the post-exilic period, the second half of the first millennium bc. Devils were believed to be fallen angels, and their leader Satan was thought to be a fallen archangel. The Christian mythos of angels and devils became blended with the pagan mythos of the Celtic, Germanic and Slavonic peoples. The British Celtic peoples believed that Halloween was a time when a fearsome spirit, Gwyn ap Nud, was operative in the world.
It's interesting that blue and red are associated with devils since blue is an Our Lady Mary color in painted artworks and red links Saint Luke with spirituality.
The children's debut picture book The Many Colors of Harpreet Singh by Supriya Kelkar mentions white as a mournful, mourning, sad, sorrowful color in the Sikh religion. Would that also be generally true in Indian subcontinental cultures and religions?