Continuing last week’s #MysteryPlayMonday theme of heavenly beings, this week our play’s director looks at the angels in “The War in Heaven”.

What is an angel?

I suspect most people have some quick answer on this one. A basic concept of something like an angel, even if it doesn’t go by that name, exists fairly cross-culturally, and you’d be especially hard-pressed in the Western world for “angels” as an idea to have escaped your notice. Yet when I thought about it, I realised that I had a couple conflicting answers within my own sphere of reference. Angels are, in general, God’s messengers, the intermediaries who communicate with humans on his behalf. Some may serve a guardian function, and some are reputed to escort the recently deceased into heaven. These angels, therefore, are a part of heaven that is and always has been supernatural. Contradictorily, however, the idea that people become angels upon their death is also in circulation, something children are told as a way of helping them make sense of their early experiences of personal loss. And then, to compound matters, some angels seem to get mixed up with saints.

Though the modern world is not immune to the lure of angels as a phenomenon, they rarely come in for the sort of in-depth study that was in vogue among theological circles in the Middle Ages, hitting a high point in the thirteenth century. “Angelology” was considered a genuine branch of science, a rigorous, academic study of the beings who are God’s attendants and helpers, and those who studied them went incredibly in depth in trying to make sense of what angels were and were not. 

Although there was much debate about it, for our purposes, angels are embodied beings, complete with wings (the evolution of angels, their wings, and ideas about what they look like could be an entire separate essay!). At the time-out-of-time of our play, they are only future emissaries to humanity, because humanity does not yet exist; for the same reason, they cannot be the heavenly incarnations of the earthly deceased. Our angels have two clear functions: they are to be companions for God, and to worship him.

This is, presumably, in addition to any specialised duties they might possess, for the same theologians who argued for or against angels possessing corporeal bodies also devised a system for organising varying species, if you will, of angelic beings. The Bible mentions ‘angels’ and ‘archangels’, ‘cherubim’ and ‘seraphim’ in both testaments; these are clearly angels that are different from one another in some way. Colossians 1:16 may add to their ranks: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers…” I confess that I struggle to see this as a listing of further supernatural beings and fail to see why this can’t reference earthly things (read in place of those words: ‘whether they be governments, or kingdoms, or states, or rulers’ to understand what I’m getting at), but medieval angelologists read that passage as listing more angelic types. And thus was born the Nine Order of Angels, a hierarchy of heavenly beings who served distinct functions for God. That seraphim and cherubim were in the “top tier” of this, while archangels and angels were at the bottom, is the one thing theologians more or less agreed on; the rest- thrones, powers, dominions, principalities, and virtues (the last of which seems to have been added outside of Biblical precedent, perhaps simply to make up the number nine)- are ranked differently by different theologians, in the middle. Most of them are depicted as feathered and winged human forms, but Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones (usually the highest trio) look least like humans, possessing multiple wings, faces, and hands. 

There are two implications for all of this with regard to our play. The first is that our angels do not need to- in fact, probably shouldn’t- be identical. We can represent different types of angels, including angels that don’t appear as humans. The second is that our angels can be not only distinct physically, we can look at the script and see how it might suggest different characters. This latter is especially important for actors, but also uniquely challenging: how can you be an individual when, by definition, you exist with the purpose of “praising God”? I would argue that it’s in how you choose to read the script, and what subtleties you can create out of it. One angel seems to praise God for the beauties and blessings of heaven, while another finds their own angelic existence awe-inspiring. A third simply feels grateful to be proximate to the deity. These are different focuses and can suggest different personalities. And let us not forget the fourth angel, at the start of the play: Lucifer begins as an angel (some angelic hierarchies consider him a tenth type; others suggest that he was either a cherub or a seraph), so there must be something different about him which makes him vulnerable to his own ego, while the angels who follow him must also possess, or be lacking, some essential quality that leads to their downfall.

In addition to their relationship with God, we may consider how the angels relate to one another, in trying to make sense of them as personalities. The good angels must be bewildered by the abandonment of their brethren, an abandonment which takes place both in presence and in ideology. If you are an angel whose greatest character note is “grateful to be near God”, how would you feel about a sibling angel who deliberately chose to turn away from God and worship someone else? Does heaven feel strangely empty without the angels who have fallen? What does the fact of their fall mean for you own angelic capacity to fail? Sorrow, anger, confusion… these are emotional options for the post-fall angels that actors can pick up and run with. I don’t buy these angels as mindless drones who can only praise God and nothing else; if that were the case, either the fall itself would be impossible (which it clearly isn’t) or it would be meaningless, for if the angels have no choice there is no virtue in their decision to follow God rather than Lucifer. The question of angelic free will is another favourite among those who study them and their biblical precedents, but in our play I think it has to be read as present.

For our angels, the answer to “what’s my motivation” may start with “to paise God”, but it doesn’t end there. And that’s what makes “The War in Heaven” a little bit different, and hopefully for those actors a whole lot more fun.