Good and evil angels: their differences, ranks, occupations, and power in created nature

When the tyrant Nicocreon asked which was the greatest of the gods, the oracle Serapis replied that he should regard as god the one whose head was in heaven, belly upon the seas, ears in the air, and shining eyes in the sunlight. This led Orpheus to say, in accordance with our orthodox faith: he is one, alone, perfect, who created everything, sees everything, knows himself and all things, and whom the spirit alone can see and comprehend. Elsewhere he is all, Pan, Tepher, all, almighty, older than time, alone fiery, alone ethereal, alone terrestrial, alone aquatic. We should never finish if we wished to report everything said by sacred and secular teachers, who agree

all in the sixth sense. It is enough for us to tell those who wish to know and seek God that nothing in all created nature fails to indicate him to us in some way, although beneath coarse veils. Thus, if we are permitted to probe every part of nature with all the penetration of our spirit, we shall find within it some traces or characters of Divinity—even in the evil angels who dared to defile them through a rash undertaking. The ancients valued these traces so highly, although they represent only a rough image of their creator, that they regarded them as God himself.

Democritus, Orpheus and Pythagoras, in their inquiries into heavenly things, declared that there were as many divinities as parts of this world—or, to put it better, that in every part of the world there is a spirit divine through its power. They called the effects of this spirit gods, but gravely erred in taking these effects for their first cause.

Porphyry and some others also said, with considerable

reason, that everything was full of Jupiter. But they took the figure for the thing itself and did not know the creator of this false divinity. One can therefore know and perceive the first created image of divinity: this lower world, which is very pure and simple and suited to receiving every kind of form, according to the poet's expression: ‘A spirit within nourishes and animates it.’

Zoroaster, more enlightened, calls this spark of divinity the sweet births of the soul and life of all things created and yet to be created. Following him, the ancients unanimously said that an intermediary and bond were needed to marry created souls to bodies, and celestial things to terrestrial ones, which are the two extremes within a compound. They therefore believed that the world's universal spirit, or a certain quintessence—which, as the soul's vehicle, serves to attract celestial and immortal fire, the bond of life and the magnet drawing celestial powers into compounds—arose from the incorruptible kind of the Elements.

The second and most express created image of divinity is the angels, called immortal, impassible, incorruptible, immaterial and simple intelligences, who were to serve the

creator, govern the world under his commands, and form an intermediary and bond between creator and creatures, the immortal and mortals, the infinite and finite bounds, and so forth. There are, however, different genera of spirits and various species issuing from these immaterial intelligences, as we shall explain at greater length.

Our ancestors' school establishes three kinds of angels. The first stand above the celestial ones, exempt from all matter and having no commerce with inferiors. They enjoy only the sight of God and are satisfied by the abundant source of his nectar, which has caused some to name them the living creatures of holiness, or angels of the face.

The second are celestial intelligences, so called because they rule the heavenly bodies over which they preside in the sphere in which they are named. They believe these derive their origin from the purest and most fixed part of our mercury. But they have taken the bodies of the heavenly bodies, planets or stars for the intelligences that cause them to act and govern them. After these come, in third place, the intelligences that are like masters and dispensers of

things below, whom they called ‘origin’, and others certain occult powers and invisible spirits destined to direct and arrange sensible, material things. They claimed these to be corporeal and as though bodiless, and consequently mortal and material. But they erred in their opinion by confusing this intellectual kind with the universal spirit of which we have spoken. This cannot be done, because they sensed the dregs of elemental, corruptible and mortal qualities.

Now God created all these ministers from the source of nothingness, like every created thing that falls within sight. Our teachers and theologians follow these three divisions of angels and further divide each order into three, which they call hierarchies or choirs. They attribute different offices to all of them, about which it is fitting to remain silent here. To explain what Hebrew theologians say of them: they call the first of these angels angels of all holiness. God uses them to give all things their first existence; the second to bring forth all the ideas of forms scattered throughout chaos or limbo; the third to impress forms upon everything to be created; and the fourth to give them

an accidental and individual power; the fifth to draw the elements from the first abysses of matter; the sixth to generate metals; the seventh to generate plants; and the eighth to produce animals. Care of the ninth and last is entrusted to human beings, which is why they are called their masters, teachers, and defending and tutelary spirits.

Although this arrangement of angels may seem of little use to our subject, since it does not concern us and is not our own opinion, we nevertheless wished to add it here. It enables us to recognize, not only in the intellectual and celestial world but also in the lower, natural and elemental world, an arrangement not greatly different and corresponding to the end for which they were created. Through it, by following the royal road that runs straight, we may touch the secrets of nature and mysteries of divinity.

Although there is no order in the underworld, and demons are assigned neither first nor second

places, it is nevertheless certain that there is some order and certain offices to which they are appointed. They are divided into nine degrees or orders, like the good angels. The first are the pseudothei, or false gods, and the antithei, or those against God. They claim God's name, worship and sacrifices for themselves. Those following them are the spirits of lies, who preside over predictions and oracles. The third are the vessels of iniquity, inventors of all evils and evil sciences; they are followed by the authors of crimes. Immediately afterward, the fifth are the inventors of sorceries, illusions and false miracles. The sixth are the aerial powers, who mingle with thunder, lightning and winds, corrupt the air, and cause plagues and diseases. The seventh are the furies who sow discord, wars and other evils. The eighth are the accusers and those who examine our crimes. The ninth and last are the tempters, who keep watch around every human being and spread throughout this lower world to cause crimes to be committed.

Some claim to divide them into seven orders according to the seven mortal sins, attaching each of their orders to one of these. Far from seeming erroneous to me, this seems consonant with the Catholic faith. The Arabs, Egyptians and, after them, the Greeks also assigned them places in which to expiate their crimes. See Agrippa, who treats this at great length in his Secret Philosophy.

In the celestial kingdom, or family of planets whose powers closely follow those of the intelligences, we attribute to the primum mobile—from which the first movement for life and the first existence of things depend—everything accorded to the first intelligences of the first hierarchy in the celestial world. We next place in the starry heaven the confused ideas containing the seeds of things, which can be compared to the second intellectual kinds. Third, we place everything concerning the third order of angels in the heaven or sphere of Saturn: that is, there we see the separation and concretion of forms

confused in the first Heaven, without which they would remain confused within chaos or limbo. We next attribute to Jupiter's fourth sphere, as its proper functions, the operations and organs of the vital and animal spirits, the sensory and nutritive spirits, and respiration. This constitutes accidental form and is attributed to the fourth order of angels. Fifth, we grant Mars and the intelligences of his family the same elemental powers in what concerns and is destined for nutrition, vegetation and increase. The sixth hierarchy of intelligences, presiding over metals and metallic things, likewise has almost the same dominion as the sun possesses in the sublunary world, whose office is to distribute vital spirits and the balsamic breath of life to all creatures.

As the care of vegetation concerns the seventh intellectual kinds, so Venus's power is to trace and express the forms and figures of parts, proportionately various, through the vegetative force. Mercury occupies the eighth sphere in heaven; he presides over all elemental moistures and the nutritive and vegetative humors