Angels-METAPHYSICS AND ANGELS

There are two distinct branches of the contemporary revival of interest
in angels, one associated with traditional religious denominations
and the other with the occult/metaphysical subculture frequently
referred to as the New Age movement. Partly because of the vagueness
of the term New Age, and partly because the term has acquired
negative connotations, members of this alternative spiritual subculture
prefer to refer to themselves and their subculture by other names.
One of these terms is metaphysical, although it has been applied so
loosely that it has become as vague as New Age.
The term metaphysical originates from the arrangement of Aristotle’s
works, in which Aristotle’s speculations about the ultimate nature
of reality were placed after (Greek, meta) his writings on physics—
hence, metaphysics. Throughout the history of Western philosophy,
metaphysics has been concerned with the aspect of a thinker’s philosophical
system that deals with ultimate reality. For medieval religious
philosophers, these reflections often included speculations about
angels. As a distant echo of these speculations, contemporary metaphysical
discussions sometimes refer to the medieval question, How
many angels can dance on the head of a pin? (The correct answer is an
infinite number, because angels do not occupy space.)
In contrast to reductionistic philosophers who declared that
everything was material, as well as in contrast to dualistic philosophers
who argued for the existence of mind and matter, a number of
important thinkers—most notably George Berkeley (1685–1753) and
Georg Hegel (1770–1831)—declared that the ultimate nature of reality
was mind or spirit. The physical world appears real but, like the
landscape of dreams, is actually a manifestation of our collective
thoughts. This school of metaphysics is traditionally referred to as idealism
(a confusing term because of other connotations with the word
idealism). Other, more popular thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenbörg
and Andrew Jackson Davis were (correctly or incorrectly) identified
as idealists, which caused the notion of angels to become associated
with idealism.
One should also note that certain schools of South Asian philosophy,
such as Advaita Vedanta, advocate a position that, while not the
same as Western idealism, similarly denies the reality of physical world
as we experience it in our normal, everyday state of consciousness.
Through the translation of Asian philosophical texts, these schools of
thought were becoming known to the West, and were sometimes
referred to in discussions of philosophical idealism. South Asian
thought systems also contributed the notion of karma to this admixture
of ideas—a notion of cause and effect that could be interpreted to
imply that the person in question was ultimately responsible for everything
that she or he experienced. South Asian religion would also be
the source for the term deva, which became the standard Theosophical
term for angel.
The basic thrust of these strands of philosophical theorizing was
picked up by the popular nineteenth-century healing movement
referred to as mind cure. The mind cure movement eventually generated
a number of different denominational bodies, most notably
Christian Science, but also Unity, Science of Mind, and related New
Thought churches. While few thinkers in the mind cure movement
delved into the intricacies of Western philosophy, they knew enough
to be able to refer intelligently to philosophical idealism in their
explanation of why the mind cure worked: If everything is simply
thoughts in manifestation, then obviously illness is no more than a
wrong-headed idea. Hence, replacing a sick idea with a healthy idea
should effect a cure. It is this connection with philosophical idealism
that led the various religious bodies arising out of the mind cure
movement to be referred to as metaphysical churches.
Members of these New Thought denominations often participate
in the same general subculture as non-mind cure organizations, such
as Spiritualism and Theosophy. The association of these diverse religious
bodies with less formal expressions of the same kinds of spirituality
constitute what has been referred to as the “occult-metaphysical”
subculture, or the occult-metaphysical tradition. It was this subculture
that gave birth to the New Age movement. However, because of the
negative connotations that have accrued both to “new age” and
“occult,” metaphysical came to be adopted as a general term to refer to
the entire subculture. Thus, for instance, bookstores that cater to
members of this tradition of alternative spirituality are often called
“metaphysical bookstores.”
In summary, to clarify a murky term, one should distinguish at
least three meanings of the term metaphysical as it applies to angels:
(1) philosophizing about ultimate reality, (2) the mind cure movement,
especially as represented by New Thought denominations, and
(3) the metaphysical-occult/New Age subculture. While angels are
associated with all three meanings of the term, the contemporary
revival of interest in angelic beings is particularly “metaphysical” in
the third sense.