The Making of Angelology From Ancient Judaism to Western Esotericism

Angels did not begin as the winged beings familiar to modern imagination.
In the earliest biblical texts, the angel was first a messenger: a presence arriving at the boundary between the human and the divine. Over centuries, that messenger became a species, a hierarchy, a philosophical intelligence, a guardian, a ritual power and, eventually, an interior figure of the psyche.
The Making of Angelology traces this long transformation from ancient Judaism to Western esotericism. It follows the mysterious messengers of the Hebrew Bible, the throne beings of Isaiah and Ezekiel, the national princes of Daniel, the fallen Watchers of Enoch, the angels of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the celestial powers of early Christianity. It explores rabbinic debates, the heavenly palaces of Jewish mysticism, the rise of Metatron, the nine orders of Pseudo-Dionysius, medieval guardian angels, Dante’s moving heavens and the incorporeal intellects of Jewish, Islamic and Christian philosophy.
The journey continues through Kabbalah, Sefer Raziel, the seventy-two names, Christian Cabala, Renaissance angelic magic, John Dee’s celestial language, the Golden Dawn, the Holy Guardian Angel, Swedenborg, Jung and Henry Corbin.
Historically rigorous yet accessible, this book distinguishes scripture from later tradition, theology from magic, and documented history from modern interpretation. Rather than presenting one timeless doctrine, it reveals how successive cultures reshaped angels in response to changing questions about revelation, evil, knowledge, authority, protection and the hidden structure of the cosmos.
A history of angels is also a history of humanity’s attempts to imagine what may exist between the visible world and the unknown.