Speaking with Angels E-Book

Iris Paxino

• Herausgeber: Temple Lodge Publishing
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 353

Beschreibung

'If you wish to learn, you may learn. I go now and will come again. And yet I am always with you.' This was the conclusion to a surprising message that psychologist Iris Paxino received from a bright angelic entity who appeared to her unannounced, radiating a comforting, warmth-filled light. The angel's words left her awestruck and deeply moved. Paxino had long had the gift of knowing angels, but it was immediately apparent to her that this special encounter marked a new beginning. She was in no doubt that she did indeed want to learn, and thus began a lively, intense dialogue that offered an abundance of insights into the work of angels. She discovered that, in addition to our guardian angel, each of us has a circle of twelve angels who accompany us throughout life and beyond death; that we have 'double' and 'shadow' angels, and that families, communities and social groups have their own angels, as do specific landscapes. In a series of intimate and enlightening conversations, Paxino relates knowledge about these and other types of spiritual beings. 'Angels suffer in sympathy with the earth and stand by us in the dark times of human existence. Despite everything they do not condemn, but love us with such devotion that we can scarcely comprehend it.'

Leseprobe

SPEAKINGWITH ANGELS

Life Lessons from the Angelic World

Iris Paxino

Translated by Matthew Barton

Temple Lodge Publishing Ltd.

Hillside House, The Square

Forest Row, RH18 5ES

www.templelodge.com

Published by Temple Lodge in 2023

Originally published in German under the title Engelstunden, Gespräche mit der Engelwelt by Verlag Freies Geistesleben, Stuttgart, Germany, 2021

© Verlag Freies Geistesleben 2021

This translation © Temple Lodge Publishing 2023

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

The right of Iris Paxino to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 915776 08 2

Cover by Morgan Creative

Typeset by Symbiosys Technologies, Visakhapatnam, India

Printed and bound by 4Edge Ltd., Essex

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

ANGELS, WHO ARE YOU?

The Appearance of Angels

The Nature of Angels

The Aspect of Freedom

The Feelings of Angels

The Language of the Angels

THE PERSONAL ANGELS OF EACH HUMAN BEING

The Guardian Angel

Weakened Guardian Angels

The Leading Angel

Other Personal Angels

The Circle of Angels

The Shaping of Destiny and the Higher I

THE SHADOW ANGELS

The Luciferic Double

The Ahrimanic Double

Working with Personal Doubles

Shadows Between Us and the Light

ANGELIC WORKINGS IN THE FABRIC OF SOCIETY

Family Angels and Community Angels

Angels in Our Life

On the Social Organism

The Workings of Archangels in the Social Realm

ANGELS BETWEEN DEATH AND REBIRTH

Life After Death

The Cosmic Midnight

The Zodiac Constellations

The Planetary Spheres

The Sun Sphere as Sphere of Transformation

From the Sun Sphere to the Moon Sphere

Birth on Earth

THE TASK OF HUMANITY AND THE HIERARCHY OF ANGELS

METHODOLOGY

Creating the Right Foundations

Inner Stillness

The Heart as Organ of Perception

Meeting Beings

The After-Echoes of Meditation

CLOSING WORDS

References

Bibliography

To all this world’s wonderful angels

An angel is

the one who fights for you

softly as the moon ascends.

He stands there mute,

he endures you,

he stays there, bears

your earthly weight.

None of us are alone anywhere,

we’re never without light.

Markus Schrauth

INTRODUCTION

I am going now and will come again.

And yet I am always with you.

Angel teacher

It all began with a small, white feather on a cold, wet February day. Hurriedly I got out of my car, taking my bag with me, and slammed the car-door shut. I was in a rush to pick up a few things at the shop, and turned to head off. The wind whistled and whirled the last dry leaves of the winter through the damp air. There was a strange, restless feeling in the atmosphere as if the air itself wished to speak. For a moment I stopped and watched this wonderful spectacle. And suddenly, unexpectedly, a small, white feather came flying and clung to my coat at heart level. I was amazed, and at the same time had the sense that someone had softly touched my heart. I remained standing there a moment longer, but the cold and the wind prevented me dwelling further on these impressions. I took the feather, put it in my coat pocket and hurried on my way.

Two days later, in a quiet moment, I took the feather out again and looked at it. It was a radiant white, beautifully soft and downy. I held it carefully in my hand, closed my eyes and let my heart go out to it. After a moment or two a white angel appeared in the room. He appeared very bright and vigorous, fully shaped and configured in a warmth-filled white, and a wonderful clarity shone from him. With surprise I turned to my guardian angel to see how he responded to this presence. He stepped trustfully to one side, thus opening up the space, pointed to the new angel and said, ‘Listen to him.’ The white angel began to speak:

You have so many questions about our angelic world. Those who seek to know may also receive answers. We do not hide from human beings. You are welcome to learn and grow with us, you can widen your souls and let them fly. Side by side with us you can widen to encompass this wonderful world of yours, and, in love, understanding and sympathy, learn to see it. We murmur heavenly words to you, you can hearken to them and begin to understand them. The time has come when human beings must awaken from their egoity. You are one with the world, it is your sustaining foundation, and at the same time your evolutionary task. Through you it exists and develops.

We stand beside you so that together, angels and human beings, we pervade this earthly world with light and redeem it. It is your world. The Father in heaven gave it to you—become worthy of it! And if you wish to work together with us, you can do so. In your time each and every person can begin to work with the angels. You need only decide to do so and then the path will reveal itself to you.

The angel paused briefly and then said by way of farewell:

If you wish to learn, you may learn. I go now and will come again. And yet I am always with you.

He gave a small bow and disappeared from my vision. Astonished, awestruck and deeply moved, I was left sunk in thought.

I already knew angels, this was not my first encounter with such a being. And yet this occurrence seemed to have a new signature and meaning for me. I had long known my guardian angel. Over many years I had gradually developed a more conscious connection with him. To begin with, repeatedly turning to him, inviting and questioning him, thanking him, I had only ‘felt’ his presence. With the years I became able to perceive him more clearly, could hear his counsel and his reply to questions, and involve him more tangibly in my work.

With time, also, the guardian angels of my patients and clients became ever more familiar to me, giving me valuable suggestions for our work together. From my involvement with the dead I was already conversant with angels who accompany people over the threshold and through the spirit realms of the life after death. Gradually, too, I had been fortunate enough to experience how families, communities and social groups are held, sustained and guided by angels. I had also sometimes had encounters with angels who protect and care for particular landscapes. Yet through my surprising encounter with this white angel I had the sense that something new was now beginning. His words resounded deeply in me: ‘If you wish to learn, you may learn,’ he had said. Yes, of course I did wish to learn; for years I had harboured countless questions about the angelic world.

From then on began a lively, intense dialogue with this and many other angels, who gave me insights into their work. I came to understand that our world is far more immediately and intensively accompanied by angels than we are aware of. We are used to speaking and thinking of a guardian angel. Above and beyond this we have an inkling that there must be other angels, probably many. We learn of them in biblical stories, in legends and fairy-tales. We find them depicted in Christian churches and in numerous artworks. But our understanding of them remains very nebulous. We neither ask any more about them inwardly nor do we seek to encounter them and have specific knowledge about them. Usually we picture the higher hierarchies directly above the realm of guardian angels without truly dwelling upon the angelic world or developing any deeper insight into its reality.

But there are myriads of angels connected with our earthly and human world. Not one but several angels accompany each person, and they do so in very different ways and with different respective tasks. Besides this, all areas of our life and existence are permeated by angelic effects. In the life of all human beings on earth, births and transitions, crises and processes of healing, situations of danger and death processes are accompanied by a multiplicity of angels. Angels accompany and guide every occurrence in a community or social group, all social interplay. In all natural processes, in the forms of landscapes and in weather phenomena angelic powers come to expression. The angels open the gates of our destiny and shape the fortunes of our lives so that destined occurrences become possible. They inspire us in our thinking, move us in our feeling and strengthen us in our actions. They wrap us in their gentle light and guard us lovingly. They support the human being’s growth and developing awareness, and facilitate spiritual fraternity on earth.

Anthroposophy offers us precious insights here for, with a sovereign, wide-ranging gaze, Rudolf Steiner drew us a world-encompassing and incomparably tangible map of spiritual realms. He described all categories of spirit beings through his own, living vision. We can pursue and develop these insights in meditative practice. Even if we do not get very ‘far’ with our capacities of perception, nevertheless the small regions of the map that we master begin to come to life and reality for us. Personal encounters with diverse beings of these worlds become possible, and our initial glimpses open into broader fields of experience.

We human beings, it also has to be said, are ‘formed’ from a multiplicity of beings that we ourselves cannot begin to survey. All these beings work or act upon us, with us, through us, on the astral and etheric plane, right down into the physical body. The angels themselves are only one such being. When we learn to turn to them in the stillness of our own heart, we notice that they are always with us. If we are willing to listen to them, they speak directly to us. In ways that accord with our destined path, they continually give us guidance and help. They are the friends of our growth and development, our intimate companions on humanity’s destined journey. We have so many—countless— bright helpers whose existence we have no inkling of. And they have stood by us since time immemorial, tirelessly and unwaveringly, in every moment of our lives. They are at work at all levels of heavenly and earthly life, day and night, in our existence on earth and in our life after death.

Many heartfelt questions which I myself had, developed over time into ever more intimate conversations with the angels. I was able to discover that angels themselves pray, and that they sing; that they have a sense of humour and take pleasure in our joys; that they sometimes send us greetings in the form of feathers that we find in the street; that they themselves suffer in sympathy with the earth’s great suffering and that they stand by us in all the dark times of our human existence. Despite everything they do not condemn us, but love us with such devotion that we can scarcely comprehend it.

Naturally the glimpses that a single person can have in this realm are only small mosaic stones in an immeasurably vast and diverse cosmic pattern. Through my personal work and my psychotherapeutic focus I am familiar with the world of the soul or psyche and my questions to the angelic world had this orientation. Thus my exchanges with them primarily reveal how they work into the human soul. No doubt a doctor would have asked very different questions. A view of the actions of the spirit upon the human body would have elicited quite different facets of angelic work. And a farmer or a teacher would have asked yet other questions. The paths sought by the human I to investigate the workings of the spirit thus vary from individual to individual. And so this book can do no more than encompass certain aspects of the wonderful, bright world of the angels.

The white angel came again to me after this first day in February, from then on always accompanied by another, great, green-golden angel. Together with my guardian angel these two showed me unexpected connections and relationships, and led me through many instructive and deeply moving experiences. My encounters with them were for me the most decisive of all those I was fortunate to have with the angelic world. I was able to have the most intimate conversations with them and learn the most from them. And so I call them my ‘angel teachers’, and thank them for these inexpressibly precious gifts with all the love of my human heart.

ANGELS, WHO ARE YOU?

But the moment consciousness awakens and becomes imaginative, this whole world of the senses is filled with, or more accurately transforms itself into, a world of weaving pictures. This world of weaving pictures at the same time reveals the world of the angeloi, of the angels, woven into its fabric.1Rudolf Steiner

In the ranks of heavenly beings unfolding from the lap of the Trinity, the angels form the ninth hierarchy. Nine choirs of angels, in three groups each, form the spiritual developmental stages between the divine Three-in-One and the human world of earth. All heavenly choirs, born from the divine principle of Creation, and at the same time ‘crystallizing out’ from the working of the next higher level, allow different principles of development to hold sway. They embody different levels of spiritual awareness and thus of spiritual existence.

The hierarchy of angels already existed before the creation of the human being. It had accomplished and continues to accomplish its own steps in evolution. Humanity follows it in a cycle of maturation characteristic of itself during which it is at the same time pervaded and sustained by all higher hierarchies.

In this extraordinarily wise architectural fabric of the cosmos, the angels are the beings who stand closest to us. They on the one hand, and the elemental beings on the other, are our closest companions and helpers. The dead and the unborn are also intimately connected with our world, though these do not form a separate hierarchy in themselves. They are human beings, just not in an incarnated state. They are ‘ourselves’, except that they are on the ‘other side’. If we therefore picture humanity in all its evolutionary stages as a whole, the hierarchies immediately adjoining it are the angels at the spiritual-heavenly level, and the elemental beings at the spiritual-earthly level.

Even if the nine heavenly choirs have a ‘hierarchically’ structured order, this does not mean that the ninth hierarchy, the angels, only serve the next higher level of the archangels. They are devoted to all hierarchies, and in some ways have a direct relationship with far higher spheres. There are for instance ‘angels of Christ’, in other words angels who directly serve Christ, ‘angels of the heavenly Mother’, ‘angels of the Father God’, thus angels immediately serving a particular aspect of the Trinity. Through their own being they represent a particular spiritual connection or context, work entirely in accord with it and mediate between it and other levels of being. If for instance we turn to the being of Christ in inward prayer, then angels who serve Christ appear directly around us. If we ask existential questions about life and death, doing so with profound honesty and humility, then an angel of the Father God can, at a moment of grace, rise luminous before us. The hierarchies of the heavenly beings therefore do not embody a rigid structure but form worlds of reciprocal interplay like the harmonious movements in a current of living water. One being always works through another, one reality is reflected in another, each serving the other, mutually revealing and embodying each other. And the same is true of the angels: they are given up to the higher hierarchies that govern them and at the same time they also serve us, for we too are part of these worlds of spirit that relate to one another in wisely ordained interplay.

The life and work of the angels is thus always embedded in their harmony with the higher world of spirit. They act out of an inner light that is cosmic in nature and at the same time forms the substance of their own being. They themselves constitute whole worlds of direct, selfless devotion pervaded by spiritual light and heavenly love. Their connectedness with the earthly world is part of this whole cosmic composition but at the same time it represents their own self-imposed devotion to us. The angels’ concern for us and their love-sustained work on our behalf is unconditional. Wisdom, love and light are their acting principles and at the same time also the real creative substances for all existence. Thus the angels correspond entirely to the stream of pure, eternal reality, and encompass us as humanity in this manifold, wonderful pattern of Creation.

If we ourselves ask the angels who they are, we can hear the following partial answer:

Our hierarchy is the hierarchy of the light of wisdom, our beings are pervaded by love. Our worlds shine in all colours of heavenly harmonies. Love, light and wisdom, bound together in the unity of the Father God, form the creative principle of this cosmos. This creative principle of unity unfolds as Holy Triad, which then pours itself into manifold aspects and evolutionary stages. We serve all these stages of celestial existence fully out of our intrinsic nature, mediating to you in turn the lofty impulses of higher existence. We are also the ones who pass on your impulses to higher life, to the cosmos. And so we are mediators—but not only that: we have sacrificed substance from our substance so that you, humanity, can achieve what you call ‘human dignity’. Yes, one day it will be yours. Until then we nurture it for you, drop by drop, lovingly. With it and through it you attain to the Christ powers that will allow your I to become worthy of him. Your whole existence is given you from the cosmos, and we trust, with Christ leading us, that you too will one day become a gift yourselves, giving the earth, redeemed through you, back to the heavens. Thus a ring of life will be completed that you, with us and all heavenly existence, will have newly fashioned out of your self-attained freedom.

We accompany you on this long path of development. We sustain you and bless you and never cease to love you with truth and light. Let it be so until the end of ages.

The connection of the angels to us human beings is a special one, for through themselves they allow heaven to be present within us. They mediate to us the actions of all hierarchies, and do so in a specific way for every single human being. They weave through our sheaths, support us in the spiritual integrity by means of which our human nature can eventually attain its true dignity. By doing so they ‘raise’ us a little and enable us not only to be earthly human beings but also heavenly beings as well.

The gaze of the angels is always focused on the good, on the future potential of each one of us and on the developmental opportunities of every occurrence. They accompany us in everlasting faithfulness, kindling our impulses and brightening us. At the same time they leave us entirely free. In accordance with the nature of all bright spirit beings, they never intervene in our free will. Full of trust they serve our developing capacity for human freedom—but always only in the context of occurrences that we ourselves bring about.

There are of course also dark or glitteringly bright angel figures who do not respect our freedom, and are the messengers of very different powers. Such categories of being are called ‘adversaries’. They resist the flowing life-stream of cosmic harmonies and form a counterpole to the bright worlds of the hierarchies evolving in accordance with the spiritual order. These powers tempt human beings by suggesting to us goals of our self-development that would lead us away from a middle path unfolding between heaven and earth. They do not offer themselves to us selflessly nor leave us free, but gladly embroil us in deception and power. Through temptation and enticement, drawing us into arrogance or humiliation, they seek to pull us into the extremes of life. Their game is cleverly stage-managed and employs excellent tactics. But if we observe carefully we discover that even these beings do not act against our evolution but for our developing humanity, albeit in a very different way. It is their destiny to set us clever tasks that school and test us. They above all are the ones who make apparent the degree of maturity we have reached, and give us the possibility of further enlarging our awareness.

Of these beings the most closely bound up with us are the ‘doubles’ as they are known, the ‘shadow angels’. Like our guardian angels they watch and act continually at our side. Just as the guardian angel bears our light, these figures bear our darknesses. But they too are part of our own growth, they too are faithful companions of our development—through the hindrances they place in our way, through dark forces that they ‘incorporate’ into themselves on our behalf. They guard what is unredeemed within us and hold it before us as reflections and correspondences. In this way both light and shadows prompt us to take responsibility for shaping our own being and thus also the whole earth.

Turning our gaze once more to the luminous hierarchies, we see that they form structures which reveal themselves in manifold streams of spiritual existence. Through respective impulses intrinsic to each they advance the maturation processes of earth evolution. These streams are accompanied by archangels who direct whole ‘schools’ of beings. Thus every archangel has its ‘school’ that is active in building our world. There are archangels who represent the divine nature of the heavens, and ones also who represent the divine nature of the earth. The many archangels of the earth have the task of forming the body of the earth and shaping it as a place for human incarnation. Performing this task as organs of these archangels are the nature and landscape angels who in turn direct the realms of the elemental beings. The common work of these beings—who reveal the divine through the body of the earth—gives rise to this earth’s incomparable beauty.

The archangels who represent celestial existence are also numerous. Of these we primarily know the great chief archangels, known as the planetary archangels. These have diverse forms and emphases of their work, so that they complement one another and devote themselves in their entirety to the Christ being as sun centre, as the heart of our planetary system. They too form ‘schools’ of beings, consisting of angels and human beings who work upon earth evolution in accordance with each school. Some of these archangel schools have the task of bringing the light of spirit down to the earth. Others in turn work to enable the earth to raise itself again into spiritual light. Some have the task of opposing the darkness and battling with it. In others the concern is to spread and multiply the light of spirit among human beings. Thus there are differing, characteristic and mutually enhancing ‘gestures’ in the work of these archangel schools. The overarching leadership of the archangels alternates in great rhythms of time and informs earth evolution in each period with the gesture inherent in the orientation of the presiding spirit. At the same time the other archangels continue to exert their influence and in this way make possible a common whole.

All angels that stand under the leadership of this presiding archangel serve the Trinity. In a very special way they are full of devotion and love toward the being of Christ. They all work, in accordance with their respective tasks and fields of endeavour, on his behalf to permeate the world with Christ:

We serve Christ in immanent, active, all-living love for the world. He is the sun as spiritual source. All of us, beings in whom white and gold interweave, act out of him, through him, for him, and in his service. All of us!

In their own evolution, the angels passed through their ‘humanity stage’ long before us. The experiences that formed them were intrinsic to them and their development followed quite other goals than ours. And yet, as the hierarchy closest above us, they understand us, and also the pain of our efforts at self-realization, and stand by us in this:

Human being and angel are connected with one another in a special way in this cycle of earth existence. Never before was human existence, thus this stage of human evolution, so close to the abyss of darkness as it is now for you. That is the price of the freedom that you must attain. Heaven looks upon this evolution with great attentiveness; all hierarchies know the importance of what is happening. All wish for humanity to succeed, to surmount this great hurdle. And all of us, great down to small, work with you to achieve this.

We angels are the ones who stand immediately above you: with you we take each of these steps at the edge of the abyss. We hold you and extend our rescuing hand, like a friend who holds fast to the other if he slips in the mountains and is in danger of falling. The landscapes of your soul paths are steep, like high, sharp crags. You run almost blindly, like mountain climbers in the darkness of night and often only escape by the skin of your teeth from the lurking dangers. We protect you, guard your every step, direct your gaze to the next ray of light, the next safe place.

Always you pursue your wanderings hand-in-hand with us. We are your constant companions and sometimes the bearers of your burdens. We shine before you, prepare your way, assuage the powers of nature and destiny so that you can continue on your way, so that the wild beasts of darkness cannot seize upon you and destroy you. We believe unshakeably in your inner being, know how arduous, painful and difficult these paths are.

When we had ‘human consciousness’ in our own evolutionary cycle, our hindrances were quite different ones. We never knew the darkness as you do, we could never have destroyed ourselves. And yet we feel your pain deeply, and are still familiar enough with the sense of being ‘tested’. We so greatly wish you to find the light, to overcome everything that separates you from the bright heavens. And we fill ourselves continually anew with love, hope and confidence, and pass this on to you so that the star of the future can shine in front of you.

We love you, human children, as one can only love in this cosmos! From God the Father, from the heavenly Mother, from the Son we have been sent down to you and bear their love further, through all times, spaces, breadths, to you—human children who are to build the bridge between the past and the future of Creation. You are the key to this world and the future begins with you! All higher existence weeps with you, and with you shines the bright sun of tomorrow! Let it be so! Blessings upon you, children of this world!

The Appearance of Angels

Preserve within your soul the pure strength of wonder: all things, after all, whisper of miraculous worlds of spirit. Herbert Hahn

We know angels from many accounts and depictions of Christian culture as beautiful, noble, winged forms. In earlier religious art angels were also depicted as ‘children’. Many painters in those days still possessed a living feeling for the reality of angels, and the figure of the child was a means to express the purity of their being, to convey the quality of unsophisticated authenticity, of heavenly purity. But how does their appearance strike us when we behold them in spirit?

First of all, angels are holy, something we hear in their immediate presence. If we ask them what ‘holy’ means and why they act through ‘holiness’, they reply: Holy means: ‘Through the power of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ This is holy: ‘Through the power of the Trinity.’

Then also angels are brighter, more beautiful, noble, diverse in form and more powerfully moving than all paintings and pictorial representations known to us. If we attune to them inwardly, we perceive them as inwardly graceful beings of light in manifold differentiations, in differing sizes and stances, features and characteristics. Angels are certainly not ‘uniform’. Just as we human beings can be discerned as human by nature of our overall form, the angels in their ‘angelic form’ are recognizable to us. But in the same way as every person on earth has their own, individual appearance, so angels also reveal themselves as very diverse, manifold figures of differentiated expression.

They appear to us as if they were clothed in wondrous ‘veils of light’ shining in very subtle, transparent colours. These ‘veils’ are not, though, something ‘extraneous’ to each angel but are the soul body intrinsic to them, and belong completely to their being. The colours of the mantles of the angels are at the same time an expression of their individual task and their field of endeavour. For instance, an angel of peace always appears in white, or in a white very lightly permeated with golden yellow. Such an angel could not appear in a reddish hue for this would not correspond to its characteristic nature. The colours of the angels thus reflect their task and their intent.

Some angels are ‘dressed’ in a single colour. But in most one can perceive several colours that pass into each other in soft transitions. Some angels have a special luminosity surrounding their heads, like a golden aura-crown, while others do not. Of all earthly impressions we are accustomed to, the fine, shimmering luminosity of rainbow colours is the only phenomenon that comes close to the colours of the angels’ garments. But in the world of spirit there are far more hues and nuances within one shade of colour than we see in the earthly, sensory world. There are for example white tones whose ‘mood’ strikes one as different although they all ‘appear’ white. The garments of angels serving Christ are radiant white, the angels of the celestial Mother are likewise radiant white; but nevertheless the colour of each bears within it a very different kind of effect, which enables us to distinguish them.

Angels serving the same tasks and working in groups radiate the same corresponding colour. To our unpractised eye it may seem that they are so similar to each other as to be indistinguishable. But if we turn our inner attention to them for longer, we notice that even these group-forming angels are very different from each other. Their countenance and their stance always have an individual quality, and though their garments show exactly the same shades of colour, there are nevertheless subtle differences of detail.

Angels are not male and female as in the human race. But there are angels who are strong, large, upright, and who can strike us as very decisive or even strict, and we might be inclined to call them ‘masculine’. And there are angels with a demeanour that primarily conveys a moving gentleness and understanding, a soft, encompassing warmth, and we would tend to call these ‘feminine’. In other words, angels embody through their form different aspects of spirit to which they correspond. These characteristics at the same time compose the fundamental qualities of their own influence and work.

Another discernible quality of angels is that their inner life and outward aspect is always in harmony, unlike with us human beings—for we of course can manifest outwardly something that is very different within. Someone can seem very friendly yet think disparaging thoughts at the same time, or feel negative feelings, or even act with evil intentions. This is not so with angels. There are no contradictions or discrepancies in their nature, no ‘fractures’. Rudolf Steiner describes this as follows: ‘Human beings are able to perceive something but at the same time awaken other thoughts within them, also express these in a way that diverges from what they perceive. The capacity for lying does not exist in the beings of the third hierarchy if they preserve their intrinsic nature. […] These beings must live in the realm of absolute truth if they are to experience themselves at all. […] And every deviation from truthfulness would numb these beings, would dull and dim their consciousness.’2

The nature and appearance of angels are therefore congruent and at the same time form a unity with their mission. Their lowest sheath is their etheric body, though this is of a finer kind than the human etheric body. Their astral body is their actual ‘life body’, that is, what in us is the living nature of our etheric body.

When asked about their appearance and characteristics, the angels say the following:

We are woven of light.

What does that mean?

Your substantiality is woven from the four elements that are intrinsic to the earth, from differing ether qualities and very differentiated astral substance qualities. In our case we are not simply made of ‘ether’ but primarily of light ether, mingled with additional ether qualities that correspond to our respective natures and qualities. The soul nature that animates us and is apparent in our ‘colours’ is a far more spiritualized, purer astral than you possess, it is a ‘higher’, ‘cleansed’ soul nature. And this does not at all constitute our ‘feeling’ but is our life body. Our ‘feeling’ and ‘thinking’, our inner being, is already spiritual.

For you, soul life is your inner life; for us it is—in its cleansed and refined quality—our life body like your etheric body. In the appearance of an angel you immediately behold its ‘soul nature’ since this is already its ‘living body’. And its spiritual nature also already comes to expression in this, since an angel is one with itself.

You are not yet like this but will become so in the course of your evolution through incarnations. There are some spirit beings who can, certainly, disguise themselves but when you see them in their true form you immediately perceive their spiritual nature since this is one with their form of soul manifestation. In you human beings only certain aspects of your being are reflected in the way you manifest in each incarnation. What a person has schooled in themselves, has suffered, has developed, can be perceived. But they can also still greatly conceal themselves and dissemble, as can luciferic beings too. In a few millennia this will no longer be possible. Your face will become the visible outer aspect of your inner being.

Thus luciferic angels can appear differently than they actually are, can dissemble and disguise themselves—assuming the form of a different being—can pretend to us and trick us. Ahrimanic beings likewise can have these characteristics though to a very limited extent since they are not masters of the play of light.

It is very different in the case of the angels of authentic light. Their outer aspect corresponds to their inner being in harmonious accord, they form a complete unity and thus, in their whole form, they represent an ‘embodied truthfulness’. At the same time their appearance is not as unchanging as our physical form. It can alter and in this way brings to expression different levels of their embeddedness in their particular fields of influence.

At festive moments of spiritual reality, for instance in the Holy Nights, the angels appear in more magnificent, festive forms as if their garments were ‘more feathery’, more vivid and spacious. This observation repeatedly astonished and moved me. One day I examined a white and bright-grey bird feather that I had found in the garden. From its shaft to halfway along it was very fluffy and white; from there to the tip it was broader and smooth in form. Its colour darkened toward the outside edges. Once again the question of the changing appearance of angels arose in me:

How wonderful these feathers are as part of a bird’s ‘garment’.Tell me about your own angel garments.

It is the same with our ‘garments’ too. There is an inner side that is very ‘feathery’ or ‘downy’ as you would say. We unfold this in particular, special moments and situations. And there is the outer aspect, which is ‘smoother’, ‘more flowing’, ‘more full of colours’ in which we usually become visible to you. Our ‘garments’ are part of our being—we do not put them on and take them off as you do with your clothes. They give expressive reflection of our fields of work, our deeds, our ‘character’, though in us ‘character’ is not as it is in your case. In you it can change from life to life, like the earthly garment that you change from incarnation to incarnation, although the core of your being remains the same. In us, ‘character’ embodies and characterizes the core of our being, and is something constant and continuous—not rigidly so, for we too are developing; it is not changeable but forms in a flowing, streaming way.

How are your colours ‘given you’, and what is their meaning?In terms of how you see things from your world: white is the upper, heavenly world, the pure light of the higher celestial spheres. Gold is from the centre, the spiritual sun of your cosmos. All explicitly solar beings have the heavenly gold in them; it appears in their garments to reveal their sun-devoted origin and their mission. Or it appears in their aura, which shows their solar connectedness and points to the fact that they act on behalf of and in service to the sun.

What are the colours of the beings who stand directly below God the Father?

You can scarcely comprehend this, but his angels appear in the white-green spectrum, or at least usually do. In some there is also a somewhat ‘iron’ quality, not in the sense of the metal but as reflection of the originating substance of the Creation that arose out of light.

What about the other colours?

They work together as mutually complementing and supporting aspects of the Creation. They serve different fields of work in the totality of the Creation. When they all ‘resound’ harmoniously together, they shine out in the holy white, the light of the Creation’s beginning. But this is a white that contains all colours within it. It has given itself away to all aspects of the world so that these in turn can work in their own way and become healing and wholesome in their mutuality with the others. Out of unity multiplicity, out of multiplicity a new, self-attained unity. This encompasses the whole evolution of your world and your cosmos!

Through the colours of angelic manifestations, therefore, we can experience a reflection of the realities within whose influences each of these beings stand. Our perceptions here, however, are only an initial and tentative ‘sensing’ a soul ‘probing’ of these manifold realities of spirit worlds.

Just as the angels appear to us in varying forms, colours and sizes so too they approach us in different ways. Here the question always arises as to ‘where’ I am experiencing each angel. For instance, do I experience it approaching me from in front, or does it stand behind me or perhaps to one side of me? Naturally angels are not bound to earthly spatial conditions of ‘here’ or ‘there’ as we are in our physical state. But we human beings are bound to such conditions and our perceptions always arise through ourselves. Rudolf Steiner gives a wonderful account of this: ‘And so one should always say, not that “I perceive an angel”—for this does not fully tally with the experience—but that I feel or I sense that I am perceived by an angel.’3 Here therefore it is a question of the way in which I experience an angel as my conversant. How do I perceive that the angel is perceiving me?

What for us is the ‘placing’ of an angel in space, thus our ‘localized’ perception of an angelic figure, points already to a spiritual reality. My experience here is really only the ‘translation’ of a particular aspect of the relationship between the angel and me. For instance, if I experience myself as protectively encompassed by an angel, this indicates a different relationship between the two of us than when an angel appears immediately before me and directly addresses me. These differences are familiar to us already from the physical conditions we inhabit: if a mother holds her child in a loving embrace this expresses a different soul-spiritual gesture than when someone strides decisively towards me. Something different in turn is expressed by someone standing patiently beside me and waiting until I turn to them compared with someone looking at me penetratingly from in front. These gestures of encounter within spatial conditions are never purely physical even in our ordinary waking experience but are already an expression of a soul-spiritual language. And the same is true when an angel appears: of course the angel does not ‘stand behind’ me since it neither stands nor is bound to a location behind me. But I experience it there; this image points to a particular aspect of our mutual relationship.