History and the Doctrine of Guardian Angels

[sdi]

I stumbled across the following (modern) folk prayer the other day:

May the angels walk beside you always, offering wisdom in times of uncertainty, courage in the face of fear, luck in moments of opportunity, and protection in times of vulnerability.

The prayer is fine as far as it goes, even though I have a tendency to be dismissive of modern folk spirituality: my default response is to look down on such things. The reason for this, I think, is that spirituality is and must be descended from mystical experience, and it is difficult to authenticate the mystical experiences of others; lacking better tools, I favor time as a filter to separate the wheat from the chaff, and so the more archaic the belief, the more likely it is to have had merits worth preserving. However, I realized today that I am being rather unfair to this prayer in particular.

As you all surely know by now, I am very fond of my guardian angel, and so, in an effort to understand them (or as an offering to them, which I suppose is the same thing), I have been tracing the doctrines about these kinds of beings for a while. The earliest source I have found so far is Hesiod, Works and Days ll. 121–6 (tr. Hugh G. Evelyn-White):

αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ δὴ τοῦτο γένος κατὰ γαῖ᾽ ἐκάλυψε,—
τοὶ μὲν δαίμονες ἁγνοὶ ἐπιχθόνιοι καλέονται
ἐσθλοί, ἀλεξίκακοι, φύλακες θνητῶν ἀνθρώπων,
οἵ ῥα φυλάσσουσίν τε δίκας καὶ σχέτλια ἔργα
ἠέρα ἑσσάμενοι πάντη φοιτῶντες ἐπ᾽ αἶαν,
πλουτοδόται: καὶ τοῦτο γέρας βασιλήιον ἔσχον—,
[...]

But after the earth had covered [the golden] generation—they are called pure spirits dwelling on the earth, and are kindly, delivering from harm, and guardians of mortal men; for they roam everywhere over the earth, clothed in mist and keep watch on judgements and cruel deeds, givers of wealth; for this royal right also they received;— [...]

Translation is treason, and Evelyn-White's is no exception, but as best as I can discern with the help of several dictionaries, Hesiod outlines here the following five tenets:

• Guardian angels live on the earth with us (as contrasted with the gods in heaven, the silver generation in the underworld, etc.).

• Guardian angels are morally good and guide us in right behavior.

• Guardian angels protect us from spiritual harm.

• Guardian angels encourage us through difficult situations.

• Guardian angels dispense good fortune.

Astute readers will note that these five points are the exact same ones from the folk prayer I mentioned above, merely rearranged. One might be inclined to see Providence ensuring continuity of doctrine over the last three thousand years, and if that is so, then it makes for a good antidote to my conservative tendencies.

I suspect Hesiod's teachings go back further still, either to Egypt or Mesopotamia (though I despair of tracing it back any further than that). If anyone knows of textual references from either, I would be grateful.

Comments

[jprussell]

Wow, that's pretty remarkable. I also have a lot of sympathy for being leery of too-new spirituality, but find myself being forced to rely on a lot of newly-made-up stuff to suit my own spiritual needs anyway, so I have been working on being more sympathetic.

As for textual sources, I wish I had something more specific, but two things come to mind, may or may not be helpful. First, not a specific passage or work, but The Treasures of Darkness is a work on Mesopotamian religion that is rich in excerpts from religious texts, so there's a chance there's something in there that might help.

The other thing that comes to mind is a bit weirder, and less likely to be directly relevant, but on posts like these, I tend to err on the side of "maybe it's synchronicity," so here goes. It had been a long time since I read Hesiod, and seeing this excerpt, I was struck by your pointing out that the Golden Race lives on Earth, while the Silver live in the underworld. In my memory, the descending grades of people had merely been historical, and not current spiritual entities. Anyway, what this brought to mind was the various probably-less-than-Gods spiritual beings of the Germanic traditions (like elves, dwarves, valkyries and so forth). In the limited materials we have, which of these beings do what exactly is kind of vague, but they 1) are at times associated with the dead, and 2) sometimes are associated with determining/looking over the fate/well-being of individuals, and 3) are associated with mythic times of greatness, wonderful craftsmanship, and are often described as "shining" and "bright."

Anyhow, I know this is far afield from where you're looking, but I wonder if some kind of tradition about people who came before becoming protective spiritual beings might have some Indo-European roots (if not also coming from elsewhere, as you suggested). Seems like a stretch, but I'd be interested to see if anyone else has some more specific references.

Cheers,
Jeff

[sdi]

In my memory, the descending grades of people had merely been historical, and not current spiritual entities.

I think that's how it's usually interpreted, though Hesiod does give each past-tense generation a present-tense fate. (The gold and silver men are transformed into governing spirits, the bronze men became shades in Hades, and the heroes live forever in the Blessed Isles.)

Despite that, though, I forgotten that my interpretation is idiosyncratic!—while I was reading Works and Days once, my angel suggested I read it as a metaphor for successive ontological generations of beings beneath the gods—the golden men being the highest dæmons, silver the next highest, etc.—and I suppose that's stuck with me. For whatever it's worth, Proclus tells us something concordant, where the highest dæmons are god-like (and may as well be called "gods"), but the next-highest are guardian angels.


As for the two suggestions, thank you, I appreciate it! It should be easy to dig up a copy of The Treasures of Darkness to see if I can find anything. As for the Germanic tradition, I hadn't even considered it since our sources are so much later, but you're right: if it's plausible that modern folk prayers can preserve an accurate echo of three-thousand-year-old teachings, surely it must be plausible for the eddas and sagas to do similarly? It's worth checking to see if there's an angle there...

[sdi]

Hm. Actually, now that you mention it, Valkyries smell a little like Zoroastrian fravashi, who, if I remember right, are, on the one hand, militaristic, female psychopomps; and on the other, assigned to individuals at birth...

I hadn't meant to read up on the Avesta, but...

[jprussell]

Huh, I didn't know about that! Most of my exposure to the Indo-Iranic (or, to use a more loaded, but probably historically accurate, term, "Aryan") branch of Indo-European myth comes from comparisons made by Indo-Europeanists like Dumezil.

As for some possible sources, The One-Eyed God by Kris Kershaw is focused on Odin, and specifically on His aspect as chief of the berserkers, but it is phenomenally wide-ranging in terms of sources cited. I can't remember if the valkyries come up or not, but I wish someone would write a similarly thorough work on them.

Lady with a Mead Cup by Michael Enright focuses more on the material world ritual reflections of the valkyries/norns/other female spirits by tracing the role of the seeress in Celtic and Germanic warbands from late antiquity into the dark ages. There is definitely blurriness between whether valkyries are spiritual beings, human women, "uplifted" human women, or some combination.

Maria Kvilhaug also touches a lot on female spiritual entities providing a holy drink to initiates, with her masters thesis The Maiden with the Mead focusing on it specifically, and coming up a lot in The Seed of Yggdrasill, though if you caught my reviews of the latter, you'll know that I have fairly mixed feelings about Kvilhaug. One of her strengths, though, is pulling together wide-ranging and obscure sources. She has a whole section in Seed of Yggdrasill on "magical teachers/mates" of heroes that cites a lot of sagas and medieval folklore that I want to follow up on in more detail.

Anyhow, I'll let you know if anything else comes to mind or jumps out at me.

Cheers,
Jeff

[sdi]

So many references—thanks again!

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the thought inspiring post! Hesiod talks about spirits, and specifically those who roam around. It seems to me that a personal guardian angel stays with you, while a nature spirit guides those who wander close by. What makes you translate spirit as guardian angel?

[sdi]

Simply that the Greeks themselves did! The word δαίμων ("dæmon") literally means "divinity;" it can refer to any divine being, but usually to those inferior in power to the gods, and especially the tutelary deities of a person, family, city, or location. The Platonists and Neoplatonists especially talk about it because of Socrates and Plotinus were well-known for stories about their dæmons. Plutarch even tells a silly story where Socrates' angel protects him from being trampled by pigs, which reads like it could come from any modern book of angel stories, like Sophy Burnham's Book of Angels.

While I take my own interpretation of things a lot, this isn't one of them! Thomas Taylor translates the word as "angel" in a variety of places, dictionaries and encyclopedias often gloss "dæmon" or "genius" as "guardian angel," etc. Personally, I think Evelyn-White's "pure spirits" is suspect: "spirits" can refer to ghosts or the like in English, but dæmon cannot (Greeks would use the word σκιά, "shade," for that); similarly, "nature spirits" would be Greek νύμφη ("nymph").

Per the dictionary, "holy guardian angels" would be a fine translation of "δαίμονες ἁγνοὶ." It seems to me that Christian translators routinely shrink from using religious terms when translating, though: Sir Charles Abraham Elton footnotes this section in his translation with a lengthy polemic against paganism, and Frederick William Henry Myers apologizes for applying the term "saint" to Plotinus!

[thinking_turtle]

Thanks for the additional information! So the word demon changed from the Greek "divinity" to the current "source or agent of evil". According to etymonline.com this happened when Christian writers used the word demon to refer a "heathen idol".

[sdi]

Yup, you have it exactly. And to be fair to the Christians, the philosophers also talk about evil dæmons—dæmons can be good or bad, just like humans can—but Hesiod, here, is obviously referring to beneficent beings.

The term δαίμων ("dæmon") was gradually displaced by ἄγγελος ("angel," meaning "messenger"), which was used both by the Christians for their literal divine messengers (e.g. Gabriel to Mary) and by the late philosophers for one of the higher degrees of dæmons. Iamblichus, for example, gives the divine hierarchy as gods, then archangels (ἀρχάγγελος, "commander-angel"), then angels, then dæmons, then heroes, then men. (On the Mysteries II vi.) I hadn't thought about it before, but it seems to me that these degrees relate to Hesiod's five ages of men...

[sdi]

Some notes from digging around:

• The roughly equivalent Egyptian concept is Taweret, a protective household goddess, documented in the Predynastic period (c. 3000–2700 BC). This may have come to Greece directly or else by way of the Minoan Genius, an intercessory deity documented c. 1800–1700 BC.
• The roughly equivalent Sumerian concept is Lama, an intercessory goddess that carried peoples prayers to the gods, documented c. 1300 BC. This may have come to Greece directly.
• The roughly equivalent Zoroastrian concept is the Fravashi, a personal tutelary goddess. Nobody knows when Zoroaster lived, so it's anybody's guess whether he influenced, or was influenced by, other traditions. In any case he certainly predates Plato.
• The Jews have a parallel angelic tradition to the Greek: most likely this derives from the same sources as the Greeks, as the Jews had contact with them, too. The Jewish and Greek traditions had certainly mixed by the Hellenistic era, but I don't know to what degree of contact they had prior.
• The Christian doctrines obviously derive from both the Greek and Jewish.
• Given that the Roman Catholic church kept trying to ignore the doctrine of guardian angels for centuries, but it kept bubbling back up from folk belief, it seems likely that there is fresh mystical experience of guardian angels coming up all the time, and so assuming that sources necessarily derive from prior sources seems foolish. It seems plausible to me that a literary or scholastic tradition may maintain continuity, but in terms of folk belief it seems more likely that the doctrines remain consistent because they have some amount of objective truth about them.