The earliest angels were heavenly nymphs, like Hindu apsaras, who dispensed sensual bliss to the blessed ones. Vikings called them Valkyries, Greeks called them Horae, Persians called them Houris, or Peris(fairies). A guardian angel was a personal Shakti who watched over a man and took him into her ecstatic embrace at the moment of death. Hindu angels were created primarily for lovemaking. They had no menstruation, pregnancy, birth or nursing, though they were mothers. Each child appeared miraculously on its mother's knee at the age of five years. Apsaras could copulate endlessly with the Gods without any emission of fluids or loss of energy. Such a being was "the perfect dispenser of sensual delight and amorous bliss on a divine scale."
Like the queen of the Holy Grail palace in bardic romance, the angel was a "Dispenser of Joy". There were earthy angels too, the dakinis, "Skywalkers," Tantric writings said they lived in the Palace of Lotus Light.
They were sometimes called prostitutes' daughters, or youginis, i.e., yoga priestesses. Although such angels seemed to be every man's wish fulfillment, patriarchal religions denied the sexuality of angels. Moslems rejected the Houris (Heavenly "whores"), and insisted the angels are without carnal desires. Yet this contradicted the teaching of the Koran, that after death every hero would receive beautiful girls as heavenly companions. European Christianity consigned the formerly divine Horae to Fairyland, the earthly paradise distinguished from the celestial one. The place was called locus voluptatis terrestis, the Terrestrial Place of Pleasure, or pratum felicitatus, the Paradise of Joy.
Angels were often confused with seraphs and cherubs. The former were six-winged fiery flying serpents, the lightning-spirits of Chaldean myth. The latter were Semitic kerubh, from Sheban mu-karrib, "priests of the Moon"; sometimes they could take the form of birds. Angels accompanying the Hindu Great Goddess were able to fly on the wings of garuda birds. Biblical angels were "sons of God" who came to Earth to beget children on mortal women (Genesis 6:4). Later these were called demons, or incubi, or "fallen" angels. The Book of Enoch blamed women for the angels' fall. Women had "led astray the angels of Heaven." In the Magic Papryi, the words angel, spirit, god, and demon were interchangeable.
When St.Paul said women's heads much be covered in church "because of the angels"(1 Corinthians 11:10), he meant the daemons (demons) supposed to be attracted to women's hair. The Greeks thought each person had an individual guardian angel or daemon which could appear in animal form and under Christianity evolved into the "familiar spirit." There were no really well-defined distinctions between ghosts or pagan gods. Among supernatural beings one might always find many hazy areas of overlapping identities, even "good" or "evil" qualities being blurred. A Gallup poll in 1978 showed that over half of all Americans still believe in Angels.
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