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Seraphim
Seraphim surround the divine throne in this illustration from the Petites Heures
de Jean de Berry, a 14th-century illuminated manuscript.
Six winged Seraph (after Pushkin's poem Prophet), 1905. By Mikhail Vrubel.In
medieval Christian neo-Platonic theology, the Seraphim belong to the highest
order, or angelic choir, of the hierarchy of angels. They are said to be the
caretakers of God's throne, continuously singing Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, i. e.
"holy, holy, holy" — cf "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth
is full of His Glory" (Isaiah 6:3). This chanting is referred to as the
Trisagion.
The early medieval writer called Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite included
seraphim in his Celestial Hierarchy (vii), which helped fix the fiery nature of
seraphim in the medieval imagination. It is here that the Seraphim are described
as being concerned with keeping Divinity in perfect order, and not limited to
chanting the trisagion'. Taking his cue from writings in the Rabbinic tradition,
he gave an etymology for the Seraphim as "those who kindle or make hot":
"The name Seraphim clearly indicates their ceaseless and eternal revolution
about Divine Principles, their heat and keenness, the exuberance of their
intense, perpetual, tireless activity, and their elevative and energetic
assimilation of those below, kindling them and firing them to their own heat,
and wholly purifying them by a burning and all- consuming flame; and by the
unhidden, unquenchable, changeless, radiant and enlightening power, dispelling
and destroying the shadows of darkness" (Celestial Hierarchy, vii)
Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologiae offers a description of the nature of the
Seraphim:
The name "Seraphim" does not come from charity only, but from the excess of
charity, expressed by the word ardor or fire. Hence Dionysius (Coel. Hier. vii)
expounds the name "Seraphim" according to the properties of fire, containing an
excess of heat. Now in fire we may consider three things.
"First, the movement which is upwards and continuous. This signifies that they
are borne inflexibly towards God.
"Secondly, the active force which is "heat," which is not found in fire simply,
but exists with a certain sharpness, as being of most penetrating action, and
reaching even to the smallest things, and as it were, with superabundant fervor;
whereby is signified the action of these angels, exercised powerfully upon those
who are subject to them, rousing them to a like fervor, and cleansing them
wholly by their heat.
"Thirdly we consider in fire the quality of clarity, or brightness; which
signifies that these angels have in themselves an inextinguishable light, and
that they also perfectly enlighten others."
With the revival of neo-Platonism in the academy formed around Lorenzo de'
Medici, the seraphim took on a mystic role in Pico della Mirandola's Oration on
the Dignity of Man (1487), the epitome of Renaissance humanism. Pico took the
fiery Seraphim— "they burn with the fire of charity"— as the highest models of
human aspiration: "impatient of any second place, let us emulate dignity and
glory. And, if we will it, we shall be inferior to them in nothing," the young
Pico announced, in the first flush of optimistic confidence in the human
capacity that is the coinage of the Renaissance. "In the light of intelligence,
meditating upon the Creator in His work, and the work in its Creator, we shall
be resplendent with the light of the Cherubim. If we burn with love for the
Creator only, his consuming fire will quickly transform us into the flaming
likeness of the Seraphim."
Bonaventure, a Franciscan theologian who was a contemporary of Thomas Aquinas,
uses the six wings of the seraph as an important analogical construct in his
mystical work The Journey of the Mind to God.
As they were developed in Christian theology, seraphim are beings of pure light
and have direct communication with God. They resonate with the fire symbolically
attached to both purification and love. The etymology of "seraphim" itself comes
from the word saraph. Saraph in all its forms is used to connote a burning,
fiery state. Seraphim, as classically depicted, can be identified by their
having six wings radiating from the angel's face at the center.
Seraphiel
Metatron
Michael
Vehuel Uriel
Nathanael Jehoel
Chamuel
Lucifer Abaddon
Asmodeus Astaroth
Leviathan Samael
Semyazza
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Angels
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