The Fallen Choirs · Episode 5

FALLEN THRONES AND ANGELS: from the judgment of God to divination

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Fifth chapter of «The Fallen Choirs». The two extremes of the angelic hierarchy: the Thrones, seat of the judgment of God, and the Angels, the messengers. From each one fell a daemon that declares it: Raum and Caim.

The two extremes

Today, the two extremes of the angelic hierarchy: the Thrones, near the summit, seat of the divine judgment... and the Angels, the lowest choir, the closest to men.

From each one fell a spirit that declares it openly in the Goetia: Raum, of the Thrones; and Caim, of the Angels. And there are several more whose legions belong in part to these choirs.

Those who sustained the judgment of God, and those who carried his messages.

The Thrones: judgment

The Thrones. Pseudo-Dionysius describes them as those who are free from all that is low, established in the heights, receptive to the presence of God. Gregory the Great is more direct: the Thrones are those upon which God sits to exercise his judgment. The seat of divine judgment.

The spirit that fell from them is Raum, the fortieth spirit: a great count who appears as a raven. And look at what judgment became. Raum steals treasures from houses of kings, destroys cities and dignities, and answers concerning the past and the future.

The seat of God's judgment... turned into robbery and destruction.

The Thrones by legions

Along with Raum, three spirits have a partial relation to the Thrones, through their legions. Purson, whose twenty-two legions are partly of the Virtues and partly of the Thrones. Forneus, whose legions are partly of the Thrones and partly of the Angels. And Murmur, the same: partly Thrones, partly Angels.

And there is a detail that is often misinterpreted. Marchosias, Phoenix and Focalor speak of hoping to return to the seventh throne. But that does not mean that they were of the choir of the Thrones: it is a hope of return to a celestial place, not a declaration of their origin. It is advisable not to confuse it.

The Angels: the message

Now the other extreme: the Angels. Dionysius says that this order, the lowest, is the one most directly in contact with human and manifest things. Gregory specifies something beautiful: angel is not a nature but an office; they are angels, that is, messengers, when they announce.

The spirit that fell from them is Caim, the fifty-third spirit: he appears as a blackbird, then as a man, and answers among burning embers. He understands the voice of birds, of cattle, of waters.

The gift of understanding and transmitting messages... turned into divination and animal voices. The messenger of God... turned into an oracle.

The Angels by legions

As with the Thrones, several spirits touch the choir of the Angels through their legions. Forneus and Murmur, already mentioned, partly Angels. Paimon's legions include some of the order of the Angels.

And in Weyer's version, Amy has legions partly of the Angels and partly of the Powers, although the Goetia Sloane does not preserve it clearly. Another of those discrepancies that must be named.

The choir of the messengers, scattered in fragments among several daemons.

The summit and the base

Raum fell from the Thrones, the seat of judgment; Caim, from the Angels, the messengers. And several more touch them through their legions, with the caveats we saw. The two extremes of the hierarchy, united in the fall.

Documentary reconstruction from real sources, for study purposes. And a reminder: most of the seventy-two do not declare any choir.

In the next chapter we leave the daemons for a moment, to answer the question that runs through the whole series: why does a daemon retain the power of the choir from which it fell?

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.

← All episodes of The Fallen Choirs See the 72 spirits

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