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To PuuChuu Saga

ephemerality.permanence

As you may've noticed, Tears of the Holy uses some rather obscure relations to Christianity, so far so many Christians don't know what the hell I'm talking about ^_^ As some of you know, I've taken to avoiding religion entirely, but I decided to put this up anyway. Interesting stuff.

Ahh, the Seraphim. Most powerful of the angels in most records. These are the guys, who, supposedly, surround God's throne and sing praise to him all day. But from what I've heard God to be like, that seems a bit egotistical for the ultimate being. It's been practically agreed on that Seraphim have six wings, although that's the only thing that's been agreed on. Some say there were only four, some say there were many (the latter of which seeming to be the truthful one). They have a variety of tasks, but usually they're ruling princes of other orders and so on. Not much to say about these guys, just that they're the most powerful and do pretty much anything and everything.

Another really broad order. Cherubim, being another important order, has thousands of records regarding them, so to list all of the theories would take forever, even if I knew them. Do they look like naked, little winged babies? No. That has been disproved some time ago, and is one of those things that stuck with the public. They seem for the most part to be guardians, either as spirits protecting palaces and temples, or angels watching over Eden. Some even say they were wheel-shaped, used to carry God's chariot. Umm, that's pretty much the important things for them. Like I said, there's far too many things to list, or even to know.

This is where things start to get more specific. Dionysius claims the Thrones to be the angels that carry out God's justice to people on earth. In the Pseudo-Dionysius scheme of angelic heirarchy (the one used here), Thrones are ranked highly, as the 3rd-highest order. However, other schemes rank them as low as 7th.

Dominations basically have one goal: to reach the Throne rank. They're just below the point at which they can be a ruling prince, and thus are at a sort of level-grounded part of the angelic hierarchy.

Another specific one. Principalities are "protectors of religion". They also supposedly watch over earth's rulers...at least that's what Dionysius says. In Tears of the Holy, this is the order Averah's in.

Simply put, they defend both heaven and earth from demons. You'll notice that I put the main character, Auriel, in this order, since he's an earth detective of sorts.

They bestow grace and valor, I assume on "blessed humans." These are the guys you hear so much about in the bible, the ones that visit baby Jesus and give advice to people. They're another duty-on-earth order.

There is no real description of an Archangel's duty. This is because they have a ridiculously wide range of duties, as well as ranks and ability within the order. Don't think of this order as Michael, Gabriel and the like, because they are merely called archangels, but are in fact of the Seraphim order...the reason this order is called "Archangel" is simply because it's higher than "Angel", which is the 9th class.

At this point you should be sufficiently lost ^_^; "Whaaaaaat? I thought they were all angels!" Well, you have perfect reason to be confused. They are all angels, and to this day I still don't understand why there's a separate order called Angels. I checked several different theories and recordings, but they all have the order of Angels in there somewhere, so I guess that's just how it is. Anyway, Angels are the lowest of the low. The weakest class. Chances are they're really young angels, maybe just created, that haven't risen in rank yet. While some of the angels in this order's names have been recorded...somewhere...they tend to be so unimportant that in angel dictionaries and compilations they are left out. It's my personal belief that angels in this order have only one wing.


My own additions to this system:

So as not to confuse, here are aspects of my own creation that I added to Tears of the Holy. That is to say, THESE ARE MY OWN IDEAS, not necessarily those of any religion. With that clear...

First, I added a class system for each order of angel. I decided this was necessary only because I wanted the main character, Auriel, to be a somewhat weak angel. However, he also needed to be a Power, because he is an earth inspector. That's how this idea was born. It's not very complex at all: there are three classes to each order, 1st being the best, and 3rd being the worst, or lowest-ranking. An angel must be 1st Class before they can attempt to move on to the next order. But an angel can still be powerful in a lower class, usually if they hide their powers. Averah, for example, is only a Principality, but supposedly has the powers of a Seraph. Obviously if an angel doesn't specifically try to raise their class and order, they cannot.

Another important thing is wing number. This is not necessarily a creation of my own, since the rule has always been the same: the more wings, the more powerful the angel. But they don't always say how many wings each order has. My view is that when an angel is created they start with one wing, and then increase the number as they raise in ranking, until they end up with six at the Seraph ranking (six is the actual number of wings for Seraphim).

You've probably noticed that in the intro chapter I say that humans are of such little importance to God that He sends the lower-ranking angels, if any, to earth. Now as I've mentioned, I have no religion, I don't believe in a God, and frankly, I don't want to talk about it, because the more you do the more pissed off people get at you. But it seems to me that if there was a God, earth wouldn't be His top priority. Thus I write God as a being entirely neutral, almost cold to humans. His main worries lie in the metaphysical world.

Magic is used. Not much to be explained here. Since it's a metaphysical force, it can only be used by God, angels, demons, and other creatures in contact with the metaphysical world including dragons, vampires, and pretty much any mythological creature you can think of, provided it's in my story ^_^

Lastly, it should be noted that in Tears of the Holy, angels can only go back and forth between earth and heaven in metaphysical portals that can only be found in churches. Why did I choose churches? I don't really know. Good atmosphere.