The Untold Truth Of Fallen Angels



Pop culture is filled with depictions of fallen angels, once holy beings that have succumbed to sin. But how and why did the idea of fallen angels even come about in the first place? Here’s the untold truth of fallen angels.

Fallen angels are basically angels that have given up on the good and righteous path and turned to evil, right? Well, not necessarily. It’s true that Jewish and Christian traditions believe that fallen angels were originally just as holy as any of the other angels, but fell when the most beautiful of them – Lucifer

– decided to rebel and enticed others to go with him. But in Hindu traditions, it’s a little different. They believe that the creator god, Brahma, actually made some angelic beings good and some evil from the very beginning. Why? Because it’s meant to illustrate the natural order of things, and balance in the universe.

And fallen angels don’t even exist in Islam, where traditions says that all angels are good, including the ones tasked with overseeing those whose evil souls have landed them in hell. These angels are lording over hell, yes, but they aren’t fallen, as they are still doing divine work.

There’s another explanation for Satan there, too, and it basically says he’s not an angel, he’s a jinn: a creature made from fire and free will. Put a pin in that, because there will be more about this pesky “free will” stuff later.

Historically, those who believe in fallen angels typically have believed them to be responsible for things like tempting mortals into sin. And fallen angels are tricky about it, too, sometimes masquerading as good angels as they torment and tempt. How do believers know all this?

Well, these days, most of it comes from the non-canonical Book of Enoch, which was written about 350 B.C. The text claims to be the revelations of Enoch, who was taken up to heaven and told the universe’s deepest secrets, then shown just what would happen during mankind’s ultimate judgment.

Enoch shows up in other texts as well, which claim he lived to be 365 years old, and eventually told his tales to his son, Methuselah, who lived to be an impressive 969 years old. Strangely, even though the stories of Enoch were influenced by the mythology of places

Like Babylon and, in turn, influenced Judaism and Christianity, the only place that all 100 chapters of the book survived was Ethiopia. And among those chapters was a fascinating explanation on fallen angels. One of the most widely told tales of fallen angels says it was Lucifer who rebelled against

God and brought a bunch of angels down with him, but the story told in the Book of Enoch is very, very different. It tells a story of lust. According to the Book of Enoch, long before the Great Flood, angels and humans met and mingled pretty commonly, and the inevitable happened: children.

Those sons and daughters of angels were a race of 450-foot-tall giants. The angels started teaching their giant offspring evil ways, and God not only imprisoned them, but subjected them to judgment and sent the flood to hit the reset button on his creations.

Enoch, the story says, tried to speak on behalf of the angels and their giant children, but sadly, a lot of the texts are missing. We do know that Enoch was the one God selected to act as an intermediary to the fallen angels,

Instructing him to tell them what their punishment would be for their transgressions. They were to be condemned to the ends of the earth, with an eternity of punishment to follow. Early Jewish writers considered Enoch to be a prophet, but when Christianity started to

Adopt his teachings, he largely fell out of favor with Judaism. Christian writers then took the Book of Enoch with them when they converted isolated areas of Ethiopia in the fourth and fifth centuries. Though the Book of Enoch was lost to the rest of the world, it was preserved in Ethiopia,

And was finally brought back to Europe in 1773. In the meantime, though, with the Book of Enoch to guide them, Christian scholars and writers had centuries to let their imaginations go wild, leading them to the really convoluted origin of Satan as a fallen angel. See, that’s not actually in the Bible.

But theologians turned themselves into pretzels trying to explain how Satan exists in the first place. The reasoning went like this: God created everything in the universe, and therefore, God created Satan. But the only things God creates are good things, so therefore, Satan must have been good at one point.

He also needed to have the free will to turn bad. But since he clearly wasn’t human, he must therefore have been a fallen angel. Clearly, these scholars went to the Princess Bride school of logic and reasoning. “You must have studied, and in studying you must have learned that man is mortal, so you

Would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me!” Oh, and once more, there’s that free will thing. Don’t worry, it’ll come up again! According to the Book of Enoch, the first batch of fallen angels was each responsible

For teaching humanity about a specific sin. Asbeel, for example, was repsonsible for teaching humanity about sex, so thanks very much for that. Tamiel, on the other hand, taught humanity about demons and spirits. And then there’s Shernihaza, who is apparently responsible for that race of giant half-angels.

Those giants, if you remember, led to the imprisonment and punishment of the fallen, as well as the Great Flood, which was brought to cleanse Earth of their gigantic sins. Perhaps the strangest fallen angel of all, though, was Penemue, who was credited with

Giving mankind something that led to all kinds of evil: the written language. With writing came knowledge, and that, of course, is really really bad, because it might lead to…free will. The big lesson you’re apparently supposed to learn from fallen angels?

That knowledge and free will are bad and will get you killed, so the only way to remain safe is to choose ignorance and obedience. Funny how that works. Maybe the biggest diversion The Book of Enoch takes from the regular Bible is its depiction of the Garden of Eden and the fall of mankind.

Everyone knows the traditional story from the Bible: a serpent, usually associated with Satan, tempts Eve into eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (there’s that whole knowledge is bad thing again) and then, boom, goodbye, paradise!

In the Book of Enoch, though, it’s not Satan who tempts Eve, it’s a fallen angel named Gadreel. And then this jerk also went on to give humanity weapons and armor and teach us all how to kill each other. Sounds like Gadreel has a lot to answer for! Quick, describe a fallen angel!

There are probably some scowly faces, bat-like wings, maybe even some horns or cloven hooves, right? Maybe a double chin…who knows. But it wasn’t always like that. In early Christian art, fallen angels looked pretty much the same as their holier counterparts.

One of the earliest representations of the idea that there were angels and fallen angels opposing each other in an otherworldly battle is featured in an ancient mosaic in Italy. Jesus is in the middle, and on one side is an angel in red with some sheep, representing the home team.

On the other side are the bad guys, a figure thought to be Lucifer or Satan, standing with some goats. He’s wearing blue, which is the color of the damned, plus he has goats, so we know he’s the bad guy, but otherwise he doesn’t seem all that bad.

The mosaic even suggests fallen angels kept their iconic halos, which at the time were a symbol of power, not holiness. It wasn’t until the middle ages that images of fallen angels started turning more grotesque. During that time, something weird happened: Creatures from ancient Babylonian texts, called

Lilitu, began to be associated with Adam’s non-canonical first wife, Lilith. At the same time, parallels were drawn between Satan and the ancient Canaanite deity Beelzebub, and the ancient Roman half-goat, half-man god of nature, Pan. In the 14th Century, these pop culture influences led Dante to describe Satan as lording over

The depths of hell while sporting bat wings. And that in turn influenced the 17th century author John Milton to describe fallen angels in his work Paradise Lost as the sort of grody monsters we think of today. Remember those theologians who turned themselves inside out trying to explain how Satan existed?

Well, they faced the same issue with the rest of the fallen angels, and came up with some typically convoluted explanations. Until the 12th century, “pride” was the typical answer as to why fallen angels fell. But that meant God would have had to create something with a crippling, all-powerful amount

Of pride, and that didn’t fly. So scholars came up with the idea that angels had been created with a natural love that allowed them to love God, themselves, and each other. It’s the last part that scholars in the Middle Ages believe caused the fall of the angels.

After Lucifer fell because his love was a selfish love of power, the other angels who fell did so because they loved Lucifer. God was largely an absent, distant figure, after all, and Lucifer was their friend. Rather than condemning themselves to struggle for the acceptance of an unreachable father,

Perhaps they followed their brother into exile. It’s kind of heartbreaking, when you think about it, especially once you add love to free will and knowledge as things too dangerous for mortals to contemplate. According to the Mirabilia Journal, one of the most convoluted bits of theology that

Grew up around the legend of fallen angels is the way Christian writers used it to excuse and promote the persecution of the LGBTQ community. Scholars have long debated about whether fallen angels and demons are capable of love, with many believing that instead, fallen angels are consumed with lust, a desire to use others

For their own ends. Indeed, Christian writers as far back as the apostle Paul himself warned women about the danger of attracting the attention of a lusty fallen angel. But since they didn’t write anything about fallen angels having lust for members of their

Own gender, early scholars decided that meant that there was something so fundamentally wrong about the idea that even fallen angels wouldn’t do it. This kind of self-satisfied circular logic was used as an excuse for centuries of persecution, which still continues today.

Our contemporary view of fallen angels might suggest that they kind of got off easy. After all, though they might be in hell, they aren’t exactly at the mercy of the demons there, because they…kind of are those demons, right? Well, not exactly.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, the seven archangels (those are the leaders of the good angels who stayed loyal to God) count the punishing of the fallen angels among their heavenly duties. Each one of the archangels was in charge of particular facets of the otherworldly life:

Jeremiel, for example, keeps watch over the souls in the underworld, while Michael protects Israel, Gabriel is the overseer of Paradise, and Uriel leads the host. They’re the ones with direct access to God, and they’re also in charge of punishing the fallen. Punish how?

Take Azazel, who according to some sources was the one who taught mankind how to make weapons rather than Gadreel. According to the Watkins Dictionary of Angels, Azazel was punished by Raphael, who put him in chains, threw him in a pit full of sharp rocks in the middle of the desert, and brought

The darkness down on him while he waited for his condemnation after the final judgment. That doesn’t sound so great after all. And it’s a pretty steep price to pay for expressing love and free will! Better luck next time, fallen angels. Check out one of our newest videos right here!

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#Untold #Truth #Fallen #Angels

What The Devil ACTUALLY Looks Like



Lucifer, Satan, Father of Lies, Prince of Darkness…the Devil goes by many names, and almost all of them sound like Scandinavian heavy metal bands. In Christian religious writings, the Devil is a fallen angel that rules over hell. So what does the Devil actually look like?

And is it even possible to make a video about Satan and Christianity without offending a whole bunch of people? Well, we sent our world-class team of researchers through a portal to hell to find out. [Said as an aside:] We expect them back any day now.

Most Christians today have an image of the Devil as a red, horned creature. But what does the Bible actually say about the fallen angel that became Satan? Well, surprisingly, not a whole lot. In fact, the Bible alludes to the fact that the Devil doesn’t have a specific physical form at all.

In essence, the Bible describes the Devil as a spirit being with no physical form. When the book refers to angels – of which the Devil is a fallen one – it refers to them as spirits. Furthermore, since Satan is depicted as a master of deception and manipulation, he,

She, or them – we will use the traditional historical “he” for the purposes of this video – can apparently take many forms. And what better disguise is there for manipulation purposes than appearing as a beautiful angelic being? In 2 Corinthians 11:14, the passage reads “and no marvel; for even Satan fashions

Himself into an angel of light.” Many Christians believe that the first time the Devil appears in the Bible is early on, in Genesis 3. According to your one aunt who disapproves of you living with your girlfriend, the serpent

That tricks Adam and Eve into falling from grace is the Devil, or at least possessed by the Devil. This is taken from a line in Revelation 20:2 that says, “he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.”

This unfortunate reference would go on to give a bad reputation to snakes everywhere. Well…the poison doesn’t help either. Nor does the movie “Anaconda”. However, some modern scholars dispute that the Devil took the shape of a snake. Or, again, even that the Devil was that important in the Bible at all.

Henry Ansgar Kelly, a UCLA professor who published “Satan: A Biography”, believes our current interpretation and image of Satan is all wrong. According to Kelly, not only is Satan not nearly as important or ubiquitous in the Bible as most Christians currently believe, but he’s also not such a uniformly evil character,

And certainly not the antithesis of God. In the 45 books that make up the pre-Christian scriptures, Kelly only counts three direct references to Satan. That’s about as often as you’d mention the weird barista at your local coffee shop in a biography of your life.

Furthermore, in these books, Satan’s job “is to test people’s virtue and to report their failures”, according to Kelly. Even when the word Lucifer appears in the bible, Kelly explains that Lucifer was latin for “light-bearer”, and is unlikely to be a reference to Satan.

Rather, it’s the name the book gives to various other entities, such as Venus and the morning star. So any description of Lucifer can’t be used as an accurate assessment of the Devil’s appearance. Going back to Adam and Eve, Kelly believes the Revelations passage that casts Satan as a serpent is mistranslated and misunderstood.

“Nobody in the Old Testament – or, for that matter, in the New Testament either – ever identifies the serpent of Eden with Satan.” Christian philosophers of the second and third centuries were the ones who originally attributed all these references to Satan, as they considered him a figure of great importance.

If all that is true, then where did our ugly, horned, horrifying vision of the Devil come from? Turns out, a lot of it was due to one pissed off Italian literary genius named Dante Alighieri. Dante, as those who were at least partially awake in World Literature classes know, wrote

“The Divine Comedy” between 1308 and 1320. The narrative poem, now considered one of the best works of literature in history, was divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso. Because a lot of Italian really is just about adding O’s to English words, these mean, as you may have guessed: hell, purgatory, and paradise.

Therefore, the book included a lot of descriptions of the Devil. In Dante’s “Inferno”, the Devil is grotesque. He is a giant, winged demon, frozen in ice up to his chest, trapped in the center of hell. In Dante’s disturbing vision, Satan has three heads, each with a pair of bat wings under each chin.

To top it all off, his three mouths are always chewing on the following historical figures: Judas Iscariot, Marcus Junius Brutus, and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Judas was, of course, the disciple that betrayed Jesus, Marcus Junius Brutus was of “et tu, Brutus?” Caesar-killing fame, and Cassius was the guy that started the Caesar-killing plot along

With him. As gross as this vision of the Devil sounds, Dante’s version of the Father of Lies was a little more pathetic than in other descriptions. Dante envisions Satan as a slobbering, wordless demon subject to the same terrifying punishments of hell he is doling out.

Furthermore, Dante emphasizes that Satan once used to be beautiful until he rebelled against God. A line from the poem states, “Were he as fair once, as he now is foul”. Another medieval book, the Codex Gigas, also has very detailed images of the Devil.

Codex Gigas, which means “Giant Book”, is also nicknamed “The Devil’s Bible”. Given that the tome weighs a staggering 165 pounds, we actually think that “Giant Book” is the more accurate of the two names. We have also never been so grateful for Kindles.

Throughout the several, several, hundred pages of the book, the devil is depicted with a greenish face bearing red horns, eyes, and claws. This comes closer to our modern image of the Devil. But according to some scholars, it turns out Christianity also borrowed bits and pieces

From other religions and belief systems to fill in the Bible’s blanks. Bernard Barryte has curated an exhibit titled “Sympathy for the Devil” at Stanford’s Cantor Arts Center, which somehow escaped the notice of Mick Jagger’s legal team. Barryte says, “bits and pieces from lots of now-defunct religions got synthesized:

The cloven feet from Pan, the horns from the gods of various cults in the near east.” This image was highly popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, which depicted the Devil as the sworn enemy of Christianity and of all mankind. A horned, furry beast, barely human in appearance.

As we dive further in, the research shows that the image of the Devil, besides being influenced by important literary and artistic works of each era, changed along with the interpretation of what the Devil symbolized. For example, John Milton’s work “Paradise Lost” drew Satan as a sad figure deserving of pity.

This depiction, combined with the effects of the French and American Revolution, led to images of the Devil as a more human character. As Barryte says, “people interpreted the figure less as a demonic creature and more as a heroic rebel against the oppression of the paternal god.”

At this point in time, many Christians wanted to remove the superstitious elements of their religion altogether, considering them a bit backwards. Therefore, this new more human look for the Devil suited them just fine. By the 19th century, Goethe’s “Faust” leaned into the image of the Devil as a sly, cunning manipulator.

At this point, the image of Satan switches to a more weasley-looking trickster. Many bronze statues of this era depict him as a thin, drawn, frequently hunched over man with pointed features One thing many depictions share in common is the color red.

That’s usually a theme for images of Satan, which makes sense as he rules over a place where fire is eternally burning and people are bleeding from being tortured. Some Christians believe that the Devil still occasionally walks the Earth, presenting himself in the form of demonic possessions.

Popular shows and cartoons show him carrying a trident and wearing a red cape. A few last-minute, ahem, “sexy” Halloween costumes depict him in a red bodysuit and horns, wearing nothing much else at all, and prone to being fined for public intoxication.

Nowadays, many works of art depict the Devil as embodied by a person, or institution, right here on Earth. The Devil has been depicted as a tailor sewing Nazi uniforms in Jerome Witkin’s “The Devil as Tailor”, or even as a red-clad papal figure next to a bloody woman in “Heaven and Hell”.

We will not be showing that second image in this video, and trust us, your brain cells will thank us for that. In fact, as corruption and sex scandals came to light regarding the Catholic Church, it became common to depict the Devil as existing within the church itself, or at least its important figureheads.

Whether drawn by religious Christians or non-religious artists, as society moves more towards addressing issues and injustices right here on Earth, the concept of the Devil appears more and more in human form. Brutal dictators, genocidal psychopaths, and serial predators are all seen as evil to the point of non-comprehension.

Aka…”they have the Devil inside them.” However, the concept of an evil spirit, religious or otherwise, is hardly unique to Christianity. Most cultures and religions around the globe have a being similar to “the Devil”, and each has its unique take on what this spirit may look like.

Islamic mythology speaks of a demonic creature below the level of angels and devils called the Jinn, a spirit that can take human or animal form. They live in inanimate objects and are responsible for mental illnesses, destruction, accidents, and other maladies. In English we know them as…genies.

Clearly, Disney sanitized this creature a bit for its movies. In many Caribbean countries, their folklore speaks of evil spirits known as Jumbees. These Jumbees come in all different shapes and sizes, and carry different intentions as well. In Guyana, native people speak of the Massacooramanis, a large, excessively hairy man-like creature

That boasts a sharp set of teeth protruding from its mouth. He always lives in rivers, where he drags boats into the water and feasts on the men inside. The Moongazer, on the other hand, comes out only during the full moon.

He looks like an extremely tall, slim, muscular man who straddles a road and stares at the moon. Anyone who tries to pass the road underneath him instantly gets crushed to death. And really, if you see a naked 8-foot tall creature straddling a road and try to pass

It anyway, your death might be a little bit on you. The most terrifying spirit of all is the Dutchman Jumbee. It unfortunately makes sense that indigenous and Black Caribbeans would name the most horrifying demon after the colonizers that enslaved and slaughtered them.

These Jumbees are said to be the spirits of Dutchmen who killed and buried slaves. They reside in Dutchman trees, and if anyone climbs these trees, the Dutchman will make them horribly ill, break their bones, or even kill them. Some of the strangest looking devils in the world might be the Baku of Japan.

According to Japanese legends, the gods created the Baku with all the leftover parts they had after completing the rest of the animal kingdom. In one manuscript, the Baku is said to have an elephant’s trunk, rhinoceros’ eyes, an ox’s tail, and a tiger’s paws.

Other illustrations show it with an elephant’s head and tusks, claws, a hairy body, and horns. The Baku isn’t necessarily all bad. Children in Japan would call on the Baku to come eat their nightmares. However, the legends warned that people who called on the Baku too often would make the

Creature too hungry, and it would end up eating their dreams, hopes, and desires, leaving their life empty and miserable. So the next time you dream that you are naked in class and forgot to study for the past four years of school while your crush points and laughs at you…maybe just deal with it

On your own. The Devil has taken many shapes throughout both Christian history, and in whatever analogous demonic form he takes in cultures around the world. Frequently, the Devil changes appearance depending on beliefs of the time, holding a mirror to

What role religion is playing in society during each era rather than having one fixed appearance. Now that you hopefully have a good grasp on how to identify the Devil and various other demons, as well as several images to fill your nightmares tonight – remember, don’t

Call on the Baku unless you really need it – check out some of our other stories and legends on The Infographics Show!

#Devil