ARCHANGELS IN LORE V.S. IN MY “ARCHANGEL” BOOK SERIES

Most people, no matter what religion or background they come from, can name at least one Archangel: Michael. That’s kind of the point of the whole “Archangel” Book series.

Since Michael is renowned as a great warrior, when I first came up with the idea for these books I decided “Archangel” meant “Warrior Angel.” In fact, my original name for the series was going to be “Warrior Angel.”

Beyond him, some can manage to name another one, or maybe two archangels, but that’s a stretch. In point of fact, only two are named in the Bible.

But, did you know, there is far more information on angels and demons, including their names and functions, in non-official religious texts? These are known as “apocryphal” texts, but that’s a blog for another day. In my research I discovered so many angelic and demonic characters to populate my world, that their characters emerged almost ready-made, and it became a joy for me to put them in my world to serve the very functions they are known for in lore.

But the warrior angels take the biggest role. Most texts agree that there are seven Archangels, but there is very little consistency between who those seven are.

The “Core Four” in almost every list I’ve seen are: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. So those are the four that I chose for chief roles in the “Archangel” book series. Of those, Michael and Gabriel are the ones mentioned directly by name in the Bible. Raphael, though not named, is associated with an unnamed angel in stories within the Bible, the Quran and the Torah. Yes, all three major Holy Books. I’ll go into these characters, and Uriel, more specifically in the next blog.

There’s one thing that I noticed these four, and really every angel have in common, just on the surface: their names all end in -ael or -iel. Turns out, in Hebrew this translates to “of God,” which I thought was very important. That was the reason I decided each angel’s name would end with one of those, much to the chagrin of my ninety-eight year old grandmother trying to keep the characters straight.

Since the same angels appear in varying lore across different cultures over thousands of years, they have, at times taken on different roles and had different names. This makes sense to me, as far as the “Archangel” Book series goes, because beings existing for millennia would work various jobs over time. So, where possible, I’ve incorporated these job changes within the books as well.

The other thing that got my mind going was that seemingly, as I’ve said, there were only seven archangels, whereas every other choir (tier) of angels had thousands, if not millions of members. Why is this choir so limited? There must be something special about the title.

Eventually I will have a database of major characters on the Glossary page, where I’ll get into choirs and angel titles but, suffice to say, this became a major plot point of the series. In short, I decided “Archangel” was a special title reserved for a select few in specific circumstances. To find out who and why that is, you’ll have to read the books. ; )

If one were to read the “flashback” sections of “Intervention” one can notice these things paying off over the course of the history of the “First War,” which is my version of the war between factions of angels while the earth was young. To me, it’s extremely exciting how well this all fell into place and filled in the details of the characters and story arcs I already had planned.

Next time, we’ll take a closer look at the “Core Four” and what I drew from the lore to mold those characters specifically for my “Archangel” Series.