Angel soul?

@salima,

I have no problem with musing, its this certainty, this referral to scriptures as if they were points of reference. Honest men make themselves medieval sorceress with no regard to reality. If there is a spirit world, is it inhabited by our imagination or designed by our ancestors and recorded in scripture. We have no idea what lies beyond our comprehension but lets not invent or be encouraged by our ancestors fears.

@xris,

xris;115514 wrote:

I have no problem with musing, its this certainty, this referral to scriptures as if they were points of reference. Honest men make themselves medieval sorceress with no regard to reality. If there is a spirit world, is it inhabited by our imagination or designed by our ancestors and recorded in scripture. We have no idea what lies beyond our comprehension but lets not invent or be encouraged by our ancestors fears.

but xris, angels are mentioned within spiritual texts and scriptures, so unless we refer to them what are we going to be talking or even musing about? scriptures ARE the points of reference for angels!

and i think you left out some other possibilities in your statement which i underlined. those are two possibilities, yes. but it is your statement after that which is best applied to the subject of the spirit world. i certainly do not subscribe to inventing myths-there are enough already. and if they are founded on fears, it would be profitable to investigate what exactly those fears are and then defuse the myths. dont you think so too?

if what we are talking about are the inventions of someone ages ago, then that is what we are talking about. i see their stories though as expressing more than only fears. they are possibly a way to try and express something which they do not know, which cannot be perceived by the everyday senses, but which they have had contact with or been told of such contact by others. and i am also at times mentioning which portions of the reference i believe are which, and what they might mean outside of a literal sense or translation.

specifically and for instance; surely your life has been at sometime or other 'touched by an angel' has it not? in my next post i will mention the angels who are said to protect a person from death before it is his time. i would guess you have had those experiences, as i have had more than one in my lifetime. there are times in my life when i most clearly should have died, and yet i did not. and if that does not mean there are spirit beings preventing my death, what does it mean? what it does is express a common experience that so many people have had. it may be nothing more than a way of expressing a wondrous thing that happens in everyday life which we can share with other people who have had the same kind of experience. it helps to show us that in all the world, across al cultures, all ages, we are very much alike and dealing with the same life conditions and issues as all human beings have. myths also do that...it isnt only about fear.

@salima,

Whatever your experiences have been , you have invented or have held the belief through scriptures that angels had a hand in them..I have just read of a little girl, killed by her father because her mother had finished with him. Where was her angel ? Its so easy to see an angel when you have a fortunate occurrence but not so when tragedy strikes.

@xris,

xris;115548 wrote:

Whatever your experiences have been , you have invented or have held the belief through scriptures that angels had a hand in them..I have just read of a little girl, killed by her father because her mother had finished with him. Where was her angel ? Its so easy to see an angel when you have a fortunate occurrence but not so when tragedy strikes.

her personal angel was there-it was the angel of death. they in another sense may be thought of as the forces of nature, therefore earthquakes and tidal waves. the word 'angels' is used in a variety of ways.

when i was a child and afraid of thunder, my father told me it was only the angels clapping their hands. sometimes myths are created to alleviate fears.

---------- Post added 12-30-2009 at 08:25 PM ----------

hello sometime-
replying to your post #19:
most of the names you listed are not common among the muslims with whom I live, nor have I seen them in the quran or in the hadiths. some of the names have become popular in certain societies over time but not in accordance with any reliable sources.

most mention of angels in the quran are not by name. there are some accounts of people who are visited by angels-this goes against what I am able to piece together about their nature, so again I would attribute this to some other phenomena that have been given the name 'angels'. for instance, they seem to be apparitions that bring information as in accounts of messengers visiting various prophets and mary the mother of jesus. they do not eat or drink and they may appear out of nowhere and disappear, also change in their appearance. they bring prophetic news. I would suggest this may even be a representation of the person's inner being-perhaps these angels are actually the angelic nature of each person which has contact with the divine source and has been able to reach sense perception by the part of the being which is engulfed in the physical world.

there is an interesting story of harut and marut-two angels who lived in babylon and taught people magic as a trial-
They follow what the satans recited in the reign of Sulayman. Sulayman did not become disbeliever, but the satans did, teaching people sorcery and what had been sent down to Harut and Marut, the two angels in Babylon, who taught no one without first saying to him, 'We are merely a trial and temptation, so do not become disbelievers.' People learned from them how to separate a man and his wife but they cannot harm anyone by it, except with Allah's permission. They have learned what will harm them and will not benefit them. They know that any who deal in it will have no share in the hereafter. What an evil thing they have sold themselves for if they only knew! (Surat al-Baqara, 102)

also mentioned in the quran are these:
malik, which means master, refers to the chief angel who is the keeper of hell and his 19 associates (zabaniyah is a name given to the angel or angels in charge of hell but also not verifiable as to source)

gatekeeper to paradise (again I did not see the name ridwan in the quran, but might be found in hadith)

the recording angels, one on the right and one on the left, who keep track of everything a person does throughout his life (Raqib is one of the names given to the recording angels but it is not verifiable as to source as far as I know)

malak-al-maut is the angel of death, (the words mean 'angel of death') not clear if there is only one or many or one per person

jibreel-messenger of god who speaks to the prophets, is the only one whose actual name is mentioned in the quran as I recall, though I could be wrong.

those who carry the throne (might be referred to somewhere as Hamalat al-Arsh?)

Mu'aqqibat -these are the protectors who keep a person from death before his appointed time. (I met these guys a couple of times myself. my experience tells me that when your time is up you go and not before, no matter how hard you try.)

specific angels are mentioned in many ahadith where they are given names, such as israfil, who will sound the beginning of the end of creation of the physical world, and mika'el. I would take these to be referring to angels of the elements, those laws that were created originally as the foundation for the physical world. however most often they would make more sense interpretted as parables for the purpose of teaching ethics more than anything else. among them would be munkar and nakeer, who interrogate the freshly buried corpse.

@salima,

Salima you jump from the logical to the prescribed with such ease, who decides if the angel of death calls or your own personal body guard, angel ? does the angel of death wait for your angel to fall a sleep before he strikes?

@xris,

xris;115929 wrote:

Salima you jump from the logical to the prescribed with such ease, who decides if the angel of death calls or your own personal body guard, angel ? does the angel of death wait for your angel to fall a sleep before he strikes?

if the angel of death calls, that is the point at which the duty of the angels who prevent death before his call stops. it illustrates a very simple idea. when your time is up, you go. this is about myths...stories, allegories, parables, etc.

i guess if you want to consider it philosophically, it could express the idea that both conditions are important, both life and death. each has its place in the total picture.

@salima,

salima;116019 wrote:

if the angel of death calls, that is the point at which the duty of the angels who prevent death before his call stops. it illustrates a very simple idea. when your time is up, you go. this is about myths...stories, allegories, parables, etc.

i guess if you want to consider it philosophically, it could express the idea that both conditions are important, both life and death. each has its place in the total picture.

So who decides in the grand picture of things that a child of four dies by its fathers hand. Why should her time be up at the age of four? Your logic on this subject, if you dont mind me saying, is far less acute than on other subjects. You appear like two different persons. Is this what obedience to scriptures does for one?

@xris,

xris;116045 wrote:

So who decides in the grand picture of things that a child of four dies by its fathers hand. Why should her time be up at the age of four? Your logic on this subject, if you dont mind me saying, is far less acute than on other subjects. You appear like two different persons. Is this what obedience to scriptures does for one?

the myth that angels are in charge of life and death is only a way of giving personification to those forces of nature which we sometimes want to be angry at and try to fight. perhaps they are created so we can blame someone, which seems to make some people feel better.

i am the same illogical person i always was, actually. i try to determine what it is about these ideas that would make people feel better, or why would they have been told at all if they only make people mad or afraid.

i also try to imagine if there is any basis behind the myths which people may have intuited but that was so far beyond their understanding that it could only be turned into a story.

for example, my father telling me the angels were clapping their hands was only meant to make me smile and be happy and go to sleep, being able to trust my father's sense of security thinking there was no danger in the sound of thunder. it could just as easily have made me hate angels and rage at them all my life whenever it rained for having been so mean as to scare little girls. but i guess i dont think that way.

but your statement that it is easy to see an angel when something good happens but not when tragedy strikes is not the fault of the scriptures. there are angels who bring about earthquakes and volcanoes and tidal waves (the kind who are representing natural laws rather than winged beings, in my personal opinion) and the birth of a child is as major an event as the death of a child. angels represent both good and bad, beneficial and devastating.

@salima,

salima;116048 wrote:

the myth that angels are in charge of life and death is only a way of giving personification to those forces of nature which we sometimes want to be angry at and try to fight. perhaps they are created so we can blame someone, which seems to make some people feel better.

i am the same illogical person i always was, actually. i try to determine what it is about these ideas that would make people feel better, or why would they have been told at all if they only make people mad or afraid.

i also try to imagine if there is any basis behind the myths which people may have intuited but that was so far beyond their understanding that it could only be turned into a story.

for example, my father telling me the angels were clapping their hands was only meant to make me smile and be happy and go to sleep, being able to trust my father's sense of security thinking there was no danger in the sound of thunder. it could just as easily have made me hate angels and rage at them all my life whenever it rained for having been so mean as to scare little girls. but i guess i dont think that way.

but your statement that it is easy to see an angel when something good happens but not when tragedy strikes is not the fault of the scriptures. there are angels who bring about earthquakes and volcanoes and tidal waves (the kind who are representing natural laws rather than winged beings, in my personal opinion) and the birth of a child is as major an event as the death of a child. angels represent both good and bad, beneficial and devastating.

I can understand the stories of the tooth fairy etc. but these jinns and angels have more identity than childish stories my mother used to ease my pain. For many they are as certain as the rain or a summer breeze. You dont actually give me the impression they are myths to ease mans fears and to give understanding of natural events, more facts to inform us of the workings of gods servants.

@xris,

xris;116256 wrote:

I can understand the stories of the tooth fairy etc. but these jinns and angels have more identity than childish stories my mother used to ease my pain. For many they are as certain as the rain or a summer breeze. You dont actually give me the impression they are myths to ease mans fears and to give understanding of natural events, more facts to inform us of the workings of gods servants.

how is it you feel they have more identity, because some of them have names? (many of them dont).

if you feel that some people actually believe in angels literally, perhaps they do-they would be the ones who are unable to conceive of a god unless he is an old man on a throne. if you feel that no adults actually believe in the tooth fairy...well maybe that's because there isnt any tooth fairy.

if you dont feel they are either myths or stories like parables to explain the workings of the cosmos which science does not yet understand, what do you think they are? so you believe they are stories made up by someone who wants to strike fear into everyone? who would that someone be and what would be their purpose?

certainly i believe some scriptures have been tampered with and used to these ends, but i was offering some other possibilities to give a better opportunity of reaching towards the truth. i consider all the possibilities.

---------- Post added 01-02-2010 at 07:09 PM ----------

actually, your statement that for many they are as certain as the rain or a summer breeze was one of the possibilities i was trying to explain...that some of the angels seem to represent those forces or effects of nature.

@salima,

salima;116267 wrote:

how is it you feel they have more identity, because some of them have names? (many of them dont).

if you feel that some people actually believe in angels literally, perhaps they do-they would be the ones who are unable to conceive of a god unless he is an old man on a throne. if you feel that no adults actually believe in the tooth fairy...well maybe that's because there isnt any tooth fairy.

if you dont feel they are either myths or stories like parables to explain the workings of the cosmos which science does not yet understand, what do you think they are? so you believe they are stories made up by someone who wants to strike fear into everyone? who would that someone be and what would be their purpose?

certainly i believe some scriptures have been tampered with and used to these ends, but i was offering some other possibilities to give a better opportunity of reaching towards the truth. i consider all the possibilities.

---------- Post added 01-02-2010 at 07:09 PM ----------

actually, your statement that for many they are as certain as the rain or a summer breeze was one of the possibilities i was trying to explain...that some of the angels seem to represent those forces or effects of nature.

The pagan view of nature is a similar concept , that the sprits we imagine to inhabit the forests etc can be described in physical form. The danger I see in scripture fed myths is that we need a certain degree of education to interpret their meaning. For many that is sadly missing so they can become real fears, real influence over their every day life. Scripture rather than stories of fairies has more compulsion, thats my worry.

@xris,

xris;116278 wrote:

The pagan view of nature is a similar concept , that the sprits we imagine to inhabit the forests etc can be described in physical form. The danger I see in scripture fed myths is that we need a certain degree of education to interpret their meaning. For many that is sadly missing so they can become real fears, real influence over their every day life. Scripture rather than stories of fairies has more compulsion, thats my worry.

dont worry-i dont have any education at all!

actually all we have to have is some common sense, and people who are unable to comprehend the metaphysical meaning will accept the literal truth and be satisfied. as their understanding grows they will begin to question and reinterpret.

i think scriptures have more truth behind them than fairies and goblins, and there is no danger in using them as a reference point in daily life if it is done sensibly. on the other hand, if someone were to never leave their house because they were afraid leprechauns would come and kidnap them, that would be a problem. or if they traveled all over the world trying to find the end of the rainbow to snatch the pot of gold...

@salima,

salima;116286 wrote:

dont worry-i dont have any education at all!

Well, you're a teacher all the same.

salima;116286 wrote:

actually all we have to have is some common sense, and people who are unable to comprehend the metaphysical meaning will accept the literal truth and be satisfied. as their understanding grows they will begin to question and reinterpret.

i think scriptures have more truth behind them than fairies and goblins, and there is no danger in using them as a reference point in daily life if it is done sensibly. on the other hand, if someone were to never leave their house because they were afraid leprechauns would come and kidnap them, that would be a problem. or if they traveled all over the world trying to find the end of the rainbow to snatch the pot of gold...

It seems like fear will find its representation. Food is a weird topic 'round my way... people afraid of carbohydrates, or whatever the thing of the day is. I think sometimes its all the same fear. I haven't looked lately at what my version of it is...fear of having a messy house?

@salima,

salima;116286 wrote:

dont worry-i dont have any education at all!

actually all we have to have is some common sense, and people who are unable to comprehend the metaphysical meaning will accept the literal truth and be satisfied. as their understanding grows they will begin to question and reinterpret.

i think scriptures have more truth behind them than fairies and goblins, and there is no danger in using them as a reference point in daily life if it is done sensibly. on the other hand, if someone were to never leave their house because they were afraid leprechauns would come and kidnap them, that would be a problem. or if they traveled all over the world trying to find the end of the rainbow to snatch the pot of gold...

You are honestly telling me that scripture fed myths never cause the believer nightmares or fears. In Tudor times we might not have entered the woods at night and we might just have burnt the old lady who lived alone, because of our fears. No one now has any real belief that the fairies inhabit the vegetable patch but many do fear scripture held beliefs that jinns lurk in the darkness. The credibility of angels is held by many without derision, but fairies, who will take me serious if I tell you Pans pipes can be heard on a summer evening drifting across my valley?

@xris,

xris;116294 wrote:

You are honestly telling me that scripture fed myths never cause the believer nightmares or fears. In Tudor times we might not have entered the woods at night and we might just have burnt the old lady who lived alone, because of our fears. No one now has any real belief that the fairies inhabit the vegetable patch but many do fear scripture held beliefs that jinns lurk in the darkness. The credibility of angels is held by many without derision, but fairies, who will take me serious if I tell you Pans pipes can be heard on a summer evening drifting across my valley?

now i have seen many discussions about fairies...by people who do believe in them, but they werent afraid. i have known some strange people in my lifetime.

but i was a witness to one of the things you are worrying over, my second husband's wife was a follower of a particular televangelist, and took their two small children to see him. those children stayed with us part of the week, and i saw the boy, who was about 9 or 10 years old at the time, having what psychologists call 'night terrors'. he was seeing visions, dreaming while his eyes were open and could not be awakened. when his father tried to speak to him, he became a character in the dream. he was going on about the stuff in revelations, something about everyone being taken to the edge of a cliff and they were going to leap off or be thrown off into hellfire. he thought he was seeing satan... it was quite disturbing for all of us.

but children may have night terrors and their dreams be totally unrelated to scriptures. fears occur for many reasons, scriptures are not the only one or even the main one. i have phobias about explosions or anything getting near my eyes, and they arent related to scriptures at all.

@salima,

salima;116306 wrote:

now i have seen many discussions about fairies...by people who do believe in them, but they werent afraid. i have known some strange people in my lifetime.

but i was a witness to one of the things you are worrying over, my second husband's wife was a follower of a particular televangelist, and took their two small children to see him. those children stayed with us part of the week, and i saw the boy, who was about 9 or 10 years old at the time, having what psychologists call 'night terrors'. he was seeing visions, dreaming while his eyes were open and could not be awakened. when his father tried to speak to him, he became a character in the dream. he was going on about the stuff in revelations, something about everyone being taken to the edge of a cliff and they were going to leap off or be thrown off into hellfire. he thought he was seeing satan... it was quite disturbing for all of us.

but children may have night terrors and their dreams be totally unrelated to scriptures. fears occur for many reasons, scriptures are not the only one or even the main one. i have phobias about explosions or anything getting near my eyes, and they arent related to scriptures at all.

But fairies or angels , gods or ghosts they all hold equal credibility to me. They are all manifestations of mans imagination. I have so many friends who claim gods existance but can not give me one example of his presence but laugh if I tell them I believe UFOs exist and can give them examples of my experiences. Ive seen my beliefs . Fairies they turn my garden into spring every year, I feel their presence.You have now met another..

@xris,

xris;116313 wrote:

But fairies or angels , gods or ghosts they all hold equal credibility to me. They are all manifestations of mans imagination. I have so many friends who claim gods existance but can not give me one example of his presence but laugh if I tell them I believe UFOs exist and can give them examples of my experiences. Ive seen my beliefs . Fairies they turn my garden into spring every year, I feel their presence.You have now met another..

xris, you gotta get some new mo' better friends!

---------- Post added 01-02-2010 at 08:57 PM ----------

and i believe you saw ufo's and fairies!

@salima,

Just a quick reply for now, but fairies are magic and magic was reportedly taught to man by the angels, one of Noahs sons (Ham i think) wrote the first spell book.
What do you think the relation of angels are to magic?
Do you believe in magic?
if you believe in fairies and even U.F.Os to another degree, you believe in magic.
Do you think angels are magical creatures?
(trying to put aside the condemnation the pedestals/altars of faith denounce magic and its users to be as devils)

@sometime sun,

got to define magic. the only story i know is harut and marut of babylon.

is magic making people do what they dont want to do? advertising and politics does that. guess it could be called black magic.

is magic controlling the elements, like the weather? or even predicting what the elements will do next if not controlling?

is it magic to heal the sick?

is magic simply mastery? there are masters who are not spiritually evolved and use those powers or that knowledge which they have stumbled on to exploit others.

@sometime sun,

sometime sun;116729 wrote:

Just a quick reply for now, but fairies are magic and magic was reportedly taught to man by the angels, one of Noahs sons (Ham i think) wrote the first spell book.
What do you think the relation of angels are to magic?
Do you believe in magic?
if you believe in fairies and even U.F.Os to another degree, you believe in magic.
Do you think angels are magical creatures?
(trying to put aside the condemnation the pedestals/altars of faith denounce magic and its users to be as devils)

The idea that UFOs are anything other than unidentified, fills me with horror. Fairies and the spirits of nature, for me are the undeniable forces of nature and its desire to create. Just watch a seed germinate and become a plant, this the wonder I see, it has the magic I speak of. Fairies represent the unseen forces of nature.

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