This is the second article about angels. The first article about angels can be read at:  https://sufi-tavern.com/hikmat/angels/

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I saw Gabriel, like a maiden, or like the moon amongst the stars. His hair was like a woman’s, falling in long tresses…He is the most beautiful of angels.

[Shaykh Ruzbihan Baqli]

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Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite.

[Thomas Carlyle]

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Angelic alphabets are not made up of mere signs, like the letters in which this text is written. They partake directly of angelic ‘substance’; they constitute a system of organic links with the Unseen World – in Sufi terminology, the ‘language of the birds’.

[Hakim Bey]

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Khwaja Abu ‘Ali Farmadi was asked why the Wearers of Blue call certain sounds the ‘sound of Gabriel’s wing.’

He replied: “Most of the things your senses perceive come from the sound of Gabriel’s wing.”
And to the one who had asked the question, he said: “You are one of the sounds of Gabriel’s wing”.

[Shaykh Suhrawardi al-Maqtul]

NB 1: The Wearers of Blue are the Sufis. Blue is the colour of death. They initiate you into the spiritual life by dying to a material life before your actual physical death.

NB 2: The senses are witnesses. They offer direct insight, knowledge by presence. This applies to the external as well as the internal senses.

NB 3: The sound of Gabriel’s wing: The words of the Divine message descending to the world.

NB 4: More will be said later about the 2 wings of Gabriel.

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Gabriel has 2 wings. The right wing is pure Light, the totality of which is an abstraction of the relation between his being and God. The left wing has traces of darkness, like the dark spots on the surface of the moon that resemble peacock’s feet.

From his left wing, which has a bit of darkness on it, a shadow falls. The illusory world of the ego [lit.: power and pride; the illusionary world] is from that, as the Prophet said: “God created creation in darkness and then sprinkled some of His Light on them.”

The illusory world is the song and shadow of Gabriel’s wing, i.e. his left wing, while enlightened souls derive from his right wing. The realities that God deposits in the mind of human beings all derive from the right wing, as, e.g., “He has written faith upon their hearts and He has confirmed them with a spirit from Himself” [Qur’an 58:22], but wrath, the cry [cf. Qur’an 11:67] and mishap derive from the left wing.

[Shaykh Suhrawardi al-Maqtul]

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The description of the world of the angels:

• It surrounds the world
• It consists of 11 mountains
• It is the home of human souls and angels
• The way to get there is difficult

You need:

• To be free of your bondage to the material world
• To receive help and guidance from the angels
• To have a special ability

Your journey becomes easier when warmed by the grace of illumination. When you are specially enabled like this, you can pass instantaneously through the mountains just as balsam-oil passes miraculously through the palm.

[Shaykh Suhrawardi al-Maqtul]

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[Shaykh an-Nasafi]. Hazrat Ibn ‘Abbas has added names of angels to the open cells. See the article about angels: https://sufi-tavern.com/hikmat/angels/

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On the grounds of all my experience, which has lasted for several years now, I can say with full confidence that in their form, angels are completely human. They have faces, eyes, ears, chests, arms, hands, and feet. They see each other, hear each other, and talk to each other. In short, they lack nothing that belongs to humans except that they are not clothed with a material body.

[Swedenborg]

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My daughter Negin stood by the window in the kitchen. I was chopping onions while she watched the snow falling with her round eyes. From her gaze, I could tell she was enjoying the sight of the snowflakes descending gracefully and splendidly toward the ground. The snowfall enchanted her. She tugged at my skirt and asked, “Who sends down the snow from the sky?” I involuntarily replied, “Angels.” She didn’t quite understand. I continued, “An angel from the sky brings down each snowflake”.

[Spozhmai Zaryab]

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Virtually nothing can occur without the intervention of the angels. Muhammad [s.a.w.] said that every raindrop that falls is accompanied by an angel – for even a raindrop is a manifestation of being. The angelic world is a place inhabited by living creatures – but more than that, it constitutes the very relationship between the world and God.

[Hakim Bey]

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Angels are spirits, but it is not because they are spirits that they are angels. They become angels when they are sent, for the name Angel refers to their office, not to their nature.

[St. Augustine]

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Sultan Walad said: Shamsuddin told my father this: “When I was a child, I saw God and the angels, and contemplated the mysteries of this and the world beyond. I thought that everyone could see these things, but later realised that they could not. Shaykh Abu Bakr forbade me to speak about it.”
Sultan Walad continued: “My father. told me: ‘This is our master Shamsuddin’s gift granted to him from Eternity, not from his devotions or his asceticism’”.

[Shaykh Aflaki]

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Enamoured of a lovely musician, the playful Zuhra [Venus], the angels Harut and Marut lightheartedly revealed to her the secret of the Greatest Name of God. As a punishment they were hung by their feet in a deep well in Babylon, and Zuhra was transferred into the fifth sphere of the sky.

For the poets, Harut and Marut became the bewitching dark eyes of the beloved, or perhaps the beloved’s long black tresses – a comparison which cleverly involves the theme of ‘hanging down.’ ‘Babylonian magic’ as the power of a bewitching human being is understandably a rather frequent term. The dimple of the chin as the Babylonian well appeared from at least the days of Sa’di.

[Annemarie Schimmel]

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Functions of angels: [Qur’an]

1. Angels help God by, e.g. guarding Hell, bearing the Ark and the Throne, and taking the soul after death.
2. Angels help human beings, they are guardians to humans and seek forgiveness for them. They can support believers in battle. Gabriel functioned as a messenger to the Prophet.
3. Angels are models for human beings and illustrate our expected behaviour, like obeying God and praising Him.
4. Angels testify for or against the dead based on records.

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Human beings were created at a level between beast and angel, and within them are found a totality of faculties and attributes. In respect of being nourished and growing, they are plants. In respect of sensation and movement, they are animals. Regarding their forms and statures, they are like pictures painted on a wall. But the characteristic for which they were created is only the faculty of the intellect and the perception of the realities of things.

Those who employ all their faculties to reach knowledge and good works through them are similar to the angels and worthy of joining with them and being called lordly angels…

Those who turn their aspiration towards following bodily pleasures and eating as the beasts eat have come down to the level of beasts. Such people become dull like a bull, covetous like a pig, mad like a dog, spiteful like a camel, proud like a leopard or evasive like a scorpion.

[Imam al-Ghazali]

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I saw God many times as majestic and beautiful. The angels were with Him. Then I said: “O my God, in what way will You make me die?”

He replied: “I will come to you from the depths of eternity without beginning. I will seize your spirit with My hand, and I will take it to the spiritual station of refuge. There I will pour you to drink of the wine of immanence, and I will reveal to you My beauty and My majesty, forever, in the very way you desire, without veil.”

Then I saw Gabriel, Michael, Seraphiel and Azrael – greetings to them – wearing a garment of light of such beauty that I cannot describe it. Then I saw Munkir and Nakir, looking like two handsome youths.
They were both playing the rabab by the side of my tomb and said to me: “We are in love with you, which is why we are entering your tomb in this form.”

Then all fear vanished.

[Shaykh Ruzbihan Baqli]