It’s rare that my academic interest in esoteric spirituality coincides with my partner’s devotion to internet meme culture, but when it does – oh, boy, do we have fun. Take the case of the ‘biblically accurate angels’ that exploded in popularity in 2020. The memes often take the format of comparing the ophanim or ‘wheels’ of Ezekiel 1: 15-21 to the chubby little cherubs of Western art; other versions underline the irony of the angels of Luke 2:10 telling shepherds, ‘Fear not,’ when the description of their appearance in Ezekiel is far from reassuring. To quote the prophet: ‘As for the rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four’ (Ezekiel 1:18). These rings are formed of a wheel within a wheel, which can turn in any direction and navigate almost as well as Waze. The wheels are also accompanied by four ‘living creatures,’ with the faces of a man, an ox, a lion and an eagle, though most memes leave this detail out, probably because it stretches credulity. The living creatures and wheels appear to be conflated in Revelation 4:8, where the four beasts worshipping at God’s throne are described as having ‘six wings […] full of eyes within’.
As much as I encourage creators of memes to adopt a back-to-the-text approach to their art, I do take issue with the term, ‘biblically accurate angel’ used in this narrow sense to refer to the many-eyed creatures. For one, angels are depicted in a variety of ways in the Torah and Bible, from the numberless multitudes of Daniel (7:9-10), to the man with a face like lightning and eyes like flames in a later chapter of the same book (10: 6); from the six-winged seraphim of Isaiah (6:2-3), to the anthropomorphic Gabriel (Luke 1:26-38); from the faithful armies of Psalm 103: 20-21, to the fallen angels of 2 Peter 2:4, who languish in chains of darkness. [1] We simply cannot treat the angels of the Bible as homogenous or consistent. Also, the ophanim are only identified as angels outside the biblical canon, in the pseudepigraphic (non-canonical) Book of Enoch (1 Enoch 61:10; 71:7, and in 2 Enoch 20, where they are called ‘many-eyed thrones’). [2]
But, ‘tis the season for charity and jollity, not for biblical exegesis, so I will swallow hard and adopt the objectionable term to describe the creation below.
The idea of making a ‘biblically accurate angel’ to top our Christmas tree was my partner’s, but he credits me as his muse for the project. While I embodied the spirit of Melete and gave myself up to thought and meditation, he did most of the practical work. My feeble mind could not conceive how to construct the divine being, so my partner kindly drew me a diagram:
As you can see, the angel is formed of two wheels. Each wheel is made of two rings, and two strips of cardboard that serve to connect them. The entire construction is then covered with googly eyes.
By following the twenty-seven simple steps below, you too can evoke the terrifying otherness of the divine in your very own home.
You will need:
· Blue cardboard
· A pack of googly eyes
· A pencil
· A pair of compasses
· Scissors
· A ruler
· A Pritt stick
· A Stanley knife
· Earplugs for when the voice of many waters begins calling to you
· A ball of string to distract curious cats
Steps:
Stage 1: making the rings
1) Using a pair of compasses, draw one circle the width of your cardboard.
2) Repeat on a second sheet of blue card.
3) Then, reduce your compasses’ width by 2cm and draw a smaller circle inside the first.
4) Repeat on the second sheet of card.
5) Reduce the width of the compasses by another 2cm and draw a third circle inside the second one.
6) Repeat on the second… you get it by now.
7) Cut out the largest circle on each piece of paper.
8) Use a Stanley knife to cut out the inner circles. You should end up with four rings – two big and two small. In the prototype, I labelled my rings ‘Front ring A’ and ‘Front ring B’ on one piece of card, and ‘Back ring A’ and ‘Back ring B’ on the second. You can discard the inner circles, or make tiny paper plate masks with them.
9) Put the rings to one side.
Stage 2: making the strips
10) Draw around five 2cm strips on an A4 piece of paper. Leave 2cm between each strip, including on the outside edge of the paper. You may find it useful to number the strips to distinguish them from the gaps between them.
11) Draw a thin margin (0.7cm) down both sides of each strip.
12) In each margin, draw Vs that face towards each other. Leave about 1cm between each V.
13) Shade in the areas that are not part of the strips or the margins.
14) Cut out the strips and the margins, discarding the shaded areas.
15) Cut the Vs out of the margins using scissors. You now have tabs.
16) Make 9 strips with tabs.
17) Distract cats with a big ball of string.
Stage 3: assembling the angel
18) Score along the tabs with a pair of scissors to make them easier to fold.
19) Fold the tabs inwards.
20) Stick the tabs onto the inner and outer edge of one big ring and one small ring (back ring A and back ring B). A single strip won’t be enough to go around each edge, so you may want to cut the strips down into sections, and stick them so that they overlap.
21) Stick on the remaining big and small rings (front ring A and front ring B).
22) Apply glue in the places where the strips overlap – or just use friction or pins.
23) Slide the smaller ring inside the larger one.
24) If you are following the simple instructions correctly, you should start to hear the voice of many waters round about now. Use the plugs to block your ears and don’t look up.
Stage 4: bringing the creature to life
25) Stick an entire pack of googly eyes on every possible and impossible surface. Your aim is to trigger all trypophobes within a ten metre radius and instil a deep sense of dread in anyone who looks at the tree.
26) Place the ophanim in its rightful position. Now get on your knees.
27) You may want to block out the voices with Christmas music. We recommend this:
[1] A handful of studies discuss why some angels in the Bible are more anthropomorphic than others. In Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning and Development of the Pauline Phrase hai archai kai hai exousiai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Wesley Carr explains that angels were increasingly given names, personalities and human characteristics in Jewish theology from the second century BCE, as writers of the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and non-canonical books) developed ideas from the Old Testament (p. 42). A similar study that explores the development of angelic names and classes in the late Second Temple period and beyond is by Saul M. Olyan: A Thousand Thousands Served Him: Exegesis and the Naming of Angels in Ancient Judaism (Tübingen: Mohr, 1993).
[2] The wheels also appear in the Songs of Sabbath Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
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