Kawkabel - the angel of astrology

ANGELS

&

STARS

 

There are several references in biblical and non-biblical writings to angels and stars. The instance that is most well known is Chapter 12: 3-4 of Revelations:

3 And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. 4 And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth....

In "The Old Enemy" Neil Forsyth says this:

"Here is the only explicit reference in the New Testament to a war in heaven, and so the key text for the war in later tradition. Althought there is some influence from Greek myths, the main source of the narrative in Revelation 12 is the apocalyptic combat of Judaism. The adversary appears here as a dragon, drakon, the word used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew tannin. He has seven heads, like the Greek hydra or the Ugaritic monster Shilyat, and the detail suggests how archaic are the traditions preserved here; although Psalm 74, for example, mentions the many heads of the dragon and Leviathan, no Old Testament text records the number as seven. The dragon's tail sweeps one-third of the stars down to earth, a passage that recalls the Labbu dragon and has been frequently understood as a reference to the fall of the angels. It should be read in the light of the Enoch tradition, which in turn is linked to the myth of the rebellious son of the dawn, reflected in Isaiah 14 and in the Phaeton story. By now the connection of angels and stars was commonplace." (pg. 252)

The authors (Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe) of "Secrets of Rennes le Chateau" describe a curious watermark used in the time of Sir Frances Bacon. The watermark is a star inside a circle:

"In some old formulas, the star with five points stood for the soul of the world. In others, a star was thought to be a heavenly messenger, a guide, a teacher, even an angel. The circle which surrounds the star is usually the symbol of the world or the earth." (pg. 95)

There is yet another reference to angels and stars in Enoch, Chapter 18: 13-16:

I saw there seven stars like great burning mountains, 14 and to me, when I inquired regarding them, The angel said: 'This place is the end of heaven and earth: this has become a prison for the stars and the host of heaven. And the stars which roll over the fire are they which have transgressed the commandment of the Lord in the beginning of 16 their rising, because they did not come forth at their appointed times. And He was wroth with them, and bound them till the time when their guilt should be consummated (even) for ten thousand years.'

Neil Forsyth says:

In this elaboration of the punishment episode in the rebel myth, the astral aspects of the rebel we noted in Isaiah and Ezekiel (the 'stones of fire') have reasserted themselves in quite explicit form. Once again, Babylonian conceptions may be detected here, perhaps also in the Ezekiel and Isaiah variants, for in the cuneiform writing system the sign for "god," ilu, may also be read as "Star," kakkabu. But the principle concern of the author here was probably to bring within the same narrative reinterpretation of Genesis the "stars of God" and "stones of fire" allusions in the texts of Isaiah and Ezekiel." (pg. 180)

He makes further reference after this to the "barnyard orgy" that appears in Chapter 86 of Enoch:

And again I saw with mine eyes as I slept, and I saw the heaven above, and behold a star fell 2 from heaven, and it arose and ate and pastured amongst those oxen. And after that I saw the large and the black oxen, and behold they all changed their stalls and pastures and their cattle, and began 3 to live with each other. And again I saw in the vision, and looked towards the heaven, and behold I saw many stars descend and cast themselves down from heaven to that first star, and they became 4 bulls amongst those cattle and pastured with them [amongst them]. And I looked at them and saw, and behold they all let out their privy members, like horses, and began to cover the cows of the oxen, 5 and they all became pregnant and bare elephants, camels, and asses. And all the oxen feared them and were affrighted at them, and began to bite with their teeth and to devour, and to gore with their 6 horns. And they began, moreover, to devour those oxen; and behold all the children of the earth began to tremble and quake before them and to flee from them.

This Animal Apocalypse, he goes on to say, was likely a reference to the animal form of Egyptian and Canaanite gods, citing the common designation of El as a bull. It stands as a re-telling (writen at a later date) of the original story of the Watchers descending to earth from heaven and taking the daughters of Adam for their wives in the earlier chapters of Enoch.

All of this could refer back to the Sumero-Babylonian concept of the Anunnaki/Igigi. In "The Dictionary of Ancient Deities" by Patricia Turner and Charles Russel Coulter, this is said of the Igigi:

The Igigi, assistants to the chief of the gods, Anu, and other high gods, are the spirits of heaven who appear as stars.

 

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© R. Navarro, 2005. All rights reserved