world-building ❀ the jewish hierarchy of angels.

[ouroborosdance]

the jewish hierarchy of angels.
(Or: something I intended to be short, and... is not.)

1. Chayot/Hayyoth ("living beings") are a class of Merkabah or one of the angels who drive the chariot of God; additionally, they hold up the throne of God and the earth itself, residing in the seventh heaven. They are: Metatron, Sandalphon, Shekhinah, and Gabriel.
2. Ophan/Ophanim are the wheels that move next to the Cherubim. They also happen to be covered in eyes! This is a trend. So they can watch you.
3. The Arel/Ar'el/Er'el, or the Erelim. Their name means "the valiant" or "courageous". They are linked with the angel Ariel, who is an angel of healing and wrath and creation, linked with the gnostic Demiurge, or "Lion of God", who is also linked with the Yezidi demiurge Melek Taus, AKA The Peacock Angel, AKA God's Angel; the Yezidi faith predates Judaism, and has similarities to Zoroastrianism and Mithraism.
4. The Hashmallim (singular Hashmal), coming in the form of a stormy wind from the north, a great cloud with flashing fire and brilliance; they are also associated with or considered to be colored like electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver.
5. The Seraphim (singular Seraph), in Hebrew meaning "burning ones", are often described as serpents. They cry continually to one another as an ear-piercing choir that never ceases, saying "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of His glory."
6. Malakh/Malakhim are messenger angels who appear to many of the Patriarchs in the Bible, such as Hagar; one of their number is Laila/Leila:"...there is an angel, Lailah, who brings the soul and the seed together and then sees to it that the seed is planted in the womb. In doing so, Lailah serves as a midwife of souls. While the infant grows in the womb, Lailah places a lighted candle at the head of the unborn infant, so he or she can see from one end of the world to the other. So too does the angel teach the unborn child the entire Torah, as well as the history of his or her soul. Then, when the time comes for the child to be born, the angel extinguishes the light in the womb and brings forth the child into the world. And the instant the child emerges, the angel lightly strikes its finger to the child’s lip, as if to say “Shh,” and this causes the child to forget everything learned in the womb. Still, the story implies, that knowledge is present, merely forgotten, much like the Jungian concept of the collective unconscious." "This myth also explains the origin of the mysterious indentation every person has on their upper lip. The myth goes on to say that Lailah watches over the child all of his days, serving as a guardian angel. And when the time comes for a person to take leave of this world, Lailah leads him from this world to the next."
   
7. Elohim, "godly beings," also a general term for divinity in the Hebrew Bible. "I must premise that every Hebrew knows that the term Elohim is a homonym, and denotes God, angels, judges, and the rulers of countries." The term Elohim is not used by modern Jews, and is related to El, which is a name for God. The word El was found at the top of a list of gods as the Ancient of Gods or the Father of all Gods, in the ruins of the Royal Library of the Ebla civilization, in the archaeological site of Tell Mardikh in Syria dated to 2300 BC. He may have been a desert god at some point, as the myths say that he had two wives and built a sanctuary with them and his new children in the desert. El had fathered many gods, but most important were Hadad, Yam and Mot, each of whom has similar attributes to the Greek gods Zeus, Poseidon or Ophion and Hades or Thanatos respectively.
8. Bene Elohim, "sons of godly beings," possible descendants of angels. There are several theories as to the origin of the Bene Elohim:
   1. The Bene Elohim are the descendants of Seth, untainted by Cain, and thus of the pure line from Adam.
   2. The second is the most commonly accepted, which is that the Bene Elohim are angels who had children with mortals, producing nephilim (a group of which were the Grigori, or The Watchers, 200 some fallen angels who gave humanity inventions such as sorcery, cosmetics, and weaponry they were not ready for, previously guardians of the doorways of the physical plane and that which is beyond).
   3. The third is that the Bene Elohim are the descendants of the 70 sons of El and Athirat in the Canaanite tradition of Ugarit, from whose marriage with a race of titanesses, the 70 nations of the earth were born. Each nation had its own divinity, with Biblical parallels for the tradition including Melkart and Tyre, Yahweh and Jerusalem, Chemosh and Moab, Tanit and Baal, and Hammon with Carthage. This was celebrated with a heiros gamos every year, in which a designated Qadeshtu (Holy One) took the role of God's consort, representing the city. Qetesh/Qadeshtu was a Sumerian goddess (the Sumerians being the ancestors of the Kurdish people) for love, beauty, sexuality, wisdom, competence, sometimes positioned on a white horse representing Israel, with symbols of mental and physical intensity, sex, drugs, and the brinksmanship of diplomacy. She is associated with Lilith, Asherah (an ancient Semitic mother goddess, "she who treads on the sea"), Hathor, Athena, Inanna, Isis, and many goddesses of the Kassites, a warfaring tribe of mysterious origin, first appearing in the 18th century BC when they attacked Hammurabi's son during his reign as king. They were responsible for making Babylonia into an international power, and spoke an isolate language that has no genetic relationship with any other known tongue.
   4. The fourth theory is that the Bene Elohim were not of any known species on earth, angels included, not human or angelic or demonic.
9. Cherubim/cherub are often confused with putti (innocent souls that resemble winged children) since the Italian renaissance, but are actually covered in eyes, depicted as having the faces of a lion, ox, eagle, and a man, with four wings. The cherubim were the first objects created in the universe (Tanna debe Eliyahu R., i. beginning), and although they have physical appearances, they are beings of spirit and do not have physical form. "When a man sleeps, the body tells to the neshamah (soul) what it has done during the day; the neshamah then reports it to the nefesh (spirit), the nefesh to the angel (Elohim), the angel to the cherub, and the cherub to the seraph, who then brings it before God." "Cherubim" is cognate with "karubu," a warlike, protective spirit, akin to a griffin. They guarded the garden of Eden and other sanctuaries from intruders, and are depicted as being generally devoid of 'human' emotion.
10. Ishim, or "manlike beings". Whereas the Chayot, Ophanim, and Erelim are what Ezekiel saw in his vision of the Divine Chariot, the Ishim are the angels who spoke with the Prophets and appeared to them in visions, traditionally. They are the closest to that of the intellect of man.