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Sixth chapter of «The Fallen Choirs». The question that runs through the whole series: if an angel falls, why does he keep the powers of the choir from which he fell?
We leave aside for a moment the specific daemons, to answer the question that runs through the whole series. If an angel falls... if he loses heaven... why does he keep the powers of the choir from which he fell?
How can Agares still be, in some sense, a Virtue? How can Raum keep something of the Throne of judgment? It is a paradox, and Christian theology pondered it for centuries.
The answer is in three names: Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory the Great... and above all, Thomas Aquinas.
Before the grimoires, there are the Scriptures. Saint Paul, in the letter to the Colossians, names thrones, dominions, principalities and powers as things created by Christ and for Christ. In the letter to the Ephesians he repeats: principality, power, virtue and domination.
And in the same letter to the Ephesians he warns that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers... the spiritual forces of wickedness.
That is: the same names of the angelic choirs appear, in Scripture, applied also to the powers of evil. The seed of this whole tradition is there.
In the fifth or sixth century, an author who signed as Dionysius the Areopagite ordered the angels into nine choirs, divided into three triads: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; Dominations, Virtues and Powers; Principalities, Archangels and Angels. It is the Celestial Hierarchy.
Gregory the Great, in his Homily thirty-four, lists the same nine and gives them a function: through the Virtues miracles are worked; the Powers repress the adverse powers; the Thrones are the seat of judgment; the Angels announce.
This is the map of heaven that the grimoires, centuries later, would use to place their fallen daemons.
And then Thomas Aquinas arrives, in the thirteenth century, with the distinction that resolves everything. In his Summa Theologica he asks whether daemons still belong to the angelic orders.
His answer: according to glory, no. Daemons are no longer in any order, because they lost grace. But according to nature, yes, they remain in them... because they did not lose their natural gifts. And he adds: it is probable that some fell from each one of the orders.
There is the key. In falling they lost charity, grace, glory... but not intelligence, nor power, nor the natural hierarchy with which they were created. That is why they keep the strength of their choir... without its light.
With that key, the whole series is illuminated. The angelic function does not disappear in the daemon: it remains, but inverted. It is his shadow.
The miracle of the Virtues becomes ambiguous prodigy, in Agares and Barbatos. The government of the Dominations becomes coercion, in Paimon. The power that chained daemons becomes power without an owner, in Beleth. The judgment of the Thrones becomes theft and destruction, in Raum. The message of the Angels becomes divination, in Caim.
The same nature. The same power. But turned downward. Power without glory. That is the theological definition of a daemon fallen from a choir.
The paradox had an answer: daemons keep the nature and power of their choir, but not grace or glory. Scripture, Dionysius, Gregory and, with precision, Thomas Aquinas said it.
Documentary reconstruction from real sources — theological and historical — for study purposes. It is not an affirmation of faith, but the explanation of how those who wrote them thought about these things.
In the next chapter, we will go even further back: to the oldest and darkest sources of this whole tradition.
A documentary reconstruction from real sources (the Ars Goetia, Weyer, Pseudo-Dionysius, Gregory the Great, Thomas Aquinas), for study. The italic passages are the video's recited lines. We do not claim the 72 come from the nine choirs: we only follow what the texts declare.
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