Читать книгу An Angel Treasury: A Celestial Collection of Inspirations, Encounters and Heavenly Lore - Jacky Newcomb - Страница 22

Many religious sources do list certain angels as having wings. The Archangel Gabriel is said to have 140 wings! Some people see angels with wings and some do not. Many people believe that angels are beings of light and do not need wings at all, and that it’s the ‘light’ which is mistaken for wings. This idea is thought to go back to the earliest times when humankind assumed that to fly, an angel would need such assistance.

Some people who see angels believe that the ‘wings’ are, in fact, streams of upward-flowing energy.

Winged creatures were known to the Vikings, who called them ‘valkyries’; the Greeks called them the ‘horae’. The Greek god Hermes served as a messenger and was shown with wings on his feet. Do these early references contribute to the angels-have-wings tradition? Angels were not really known as having wings (with any regularity at least) until the time of the Emperor Constantine in the fourth century after Christ, and it is the art of the Renaissance which gives us much of our angel imagery. In the Bible, for example, the angels who gave the news of the resurrection of Jesus are described as ‘two men’, but they appear in the light associated with angels.

Ancient cave drawings and carvings do show beings with wings. Were these angels or something else? We may never know.