Podcasts about remiel

Overview:In this episode of Ryan and Brian's Bible Bistro, the hosts dive into the intriguing world of First Enoch, a pseudepigraphical text that has captured the curiosity of many within and beyond Christian circles. Ryan and Brian discuss its origins, content, and significance while addressing common questions about its relationship to the biblical canon and its historical context. This episode offers a fresh perspective, including Brian's first-time reading impressions, and aims to clarify what First Enoch is—and what it isn't.What is First Enoch?Defined as a pseudepigraphical book, meaning it's falsely attributed to Enoch, a descendant of Adam and father of Methuselah, who didn't actually write it.Likely composed between the 3rd century BC and post-New Testament times, with parts dated to the intertestamental period.Fits the genre of apocalyptic literature, characterized by divine guides and supernatural narratives (e.g., similar to Revelation and Daniel).Genesis 5:24 highlights Enoch's unique story: “Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away,” sparking fascination as one of two Old Testament figures (alongside Elijah) not said to have died.Structure of First EnochComprises 108 chapters divided into five sections:Book of Watchers (Ch. 1-36): Focuses on fallen angels (sons of God) intermarrying with human women, producing the Nephilim (giants), and introducing evil via figures like Azazel.Similitudes of Enoch (Ch. 37-71): Explores angelology, the “Son of Man,” and divine judgment, with debated dating relative to the New Testament.Astronomical Book (Ch. 72-82): Details a solar calendar (364 days), contrasting with the Jewish lunar calendar, found in the Dead Sea Scrolls.Book of Dream Visions (Ch. 83-90): Recasts Israel's history through animal allegory (e.g., sheep as the righteous, boars as adversaries), ending with the Maccabean period.Epistle of Enoch (Ch. 91-108): Offers exhortations, an “Apocalypse of Weeks,” and additional Noah-related content.Why the Interest in First Enoch?Answers curious questions left open by canonical Scripture, such as the identity of the Nephilim (Genesis 6) and the origins of evil.Referenced in Jude 14-15 (quoting 1 Enoch 1:9), and possibly alluded to in 1 Peter 3:19-20 and 2 Peter 2:4-5, raising questions about its early Christian reception.Included in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church's canon (81 books total), with the only complete manuscript preserved in an Ethiopian language.Parallels in other texts like the Book of Jubilees and the Mormon Book of Moses fuel further intrigue.First Impressions and ObservationsBrian shares his initial reaction: First Enoch feels “wild” and disjointed compared to Scripture, lacking the Bible's narrative continuity and spiritual coherence.Ryan notes its appeal lies in sensationalism (e.g., YouTube videos about hidden knowledge), but it lacks the authoritative character of canonical texts.Key Passages Explored1 Enoch 20: Lists seven archangels (Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel, Remiel), expanding biblical angelology beyond Michael and Gabriel.1 Enoch 13:1-2: Enoch condemns Azazel for teaching humanity unrighteousness, casting him as a source of evil.1 Enoch 89:72+: Animal allegory depicts the rebuilding of Zerubbabel's temple, critiquing its inadequacy.1 Enoch 40: Four archangels praise God, reminiscent of...

Revelation, Session Three Christ the Savior, Anderson SC Fr. Anthony Perkins We also went over: https://www.stmaryorthodoxchurch.org/orthodoxy/articles/tremors_of_doub Sources: The translation of the Apocalypse is from the Orthodox Study Bible. Lawrence R. Farley, The Apocalypse of St. John: A Revelation of Love and Power, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion (Chesterton, IN: Ancient Faith Publishing, 2011), Bishop Averky, The Epistles and the Apocalypse (Commentary on the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, Volume III. (Holy Trinity Seminary Press, 2018). Andrew of Caesarea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, ed. David G. Hunter, trans. Eugenia Scarvelis Constantinou, vol. 123, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011). Jack Norman Sparks, The Orthodox Study Bible: Notes (Thomas Nelson, 2008), 1712. Venerable Bede, The Explanation of the Apocalypse, trans. Edward Marshall (Oxford: James Parker and Co., 1878). William C. Weinrich, ed., Revelation, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005). Correction from Last Week Revelation was removed from active use because it was being used to support the Marcionists, not the Gnostics [or Montanism as I said in the class!].  Lord have mercy, my brain is too small! Review of Last Week 1:1-3. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants – things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John.  Who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw.  Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.   New Stuff 1:4 - 6.  (4) John, to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, (5) and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth.  To Him who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, (6) and has made us kings and priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion forever.  Amen. (OSB) Orthodox Study Bible Notes 1:4 Church tradition maintains St. John dwelt and was bishop in Ephesus, in an area where the seven churches were located along a major roadway. The number seven signifies fullness, suggesting the entire Church is also in view. The doxology is Trinitarian, involving the Father (vv. 4, 6), the Spirit (v. 4), and the Son (vv. 5, 6). This initial greeting (lit., “the Existing, the Was, and the Coming”) may express the Father, the one who is (Ex 3:14); the Son, who was (Jn 1:1); and the Holy Spirit, who is to come (Acts 2) at Pentecost and shall always be present. Or it may denote the character of the Holy One, who is eternally present and exercises lordship throughout history (see Heb 13:8 – Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow). God reveals the meaning of the present in light of the past and the age to come. This title may be a paraphrase of the Tetragrammaton, YHWH (“I Am”), of Ex 3:14. Seven is the number of fullness or completion. The seven Spirits of God most likely refers to the Holy Spirit and His several gifts, as this phrase is included in the blessing with the Father and the Son. Alternately the term could refer to the seven archangels who, according to Jewish tradition, stand before the throne of God (Tb 12:15; see also 1En 20:1–8; 90:21, 22; TLev 8:2; “I am Raphael, one of the seven holy angels, which present the prayers of the saints, and which go in and out before the glory of the Holy One.”). 1:5 Jesus Christ is presented as the Risen Savior, Lord of all (see Zec 12:10), giving hope to the early Christians that the Church will not always be dominated by a cruel state. Instead of washed, many Greek texts read “freed.” The term witness (Gr. martys), used only here and in 3:14 in the entire NT, refers to Christ, the authentic witness of all divine revelation; all that God has revealed is summed up in His life, witness, Passion, Resurrection, and exaltation. He has inaugurated the new age, for He is firstborn from the dead in His humanity and has achieved a universal sovereignty by His death, Resurrection, and revelation of His Kingdom for the world's salvation. 1:6 Those joined to the body of Christ in baptism comprise the messianic royal priesthood promised of old (see Ex 19:5, 6; Is 61:6; 1Pt 2:9; and the Anaphora of the Liturgy of St. Basil). This priestly ministry is to offer the world back to God in a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving—eucharistically—as in the Orthodox Church's Divine Liturgy. The universe itself thus becomes hallowed, transfigured, and sacramental. Amen is Semitic. It signifies ratification: an acknowledgment of something trustworthy. From Fr. Lawrence Farley John sends this message to the seven churches in Asia who were under his pastoral care. By choosing but seven of these churches, John widens the intended audience, for seven is also the number symbolic of perfection. Thus the Revelation is intended not only to the seven churches of Asia, but also for the perfect totality of all God's churches. In calling God Him who is and was and who is coming, John describes God the Father as the One who is sovereign over time and history and therefore over all the historical events that touch us. God sits enthroned as Lord of the present, the past, and the future, and therefore there is nothing in the past, present, or future that can ever hurt us. God is the Lord of time and of all our days. The message not only comes from the hand of God, it also comes from the entire heavenly court. All in heaven offer the Church on earth this word of encouragement and triumph. The seven spirits before His throne are the seven archangels (see 5:6, “the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth,” and 8:2, the “seven angels who stand before God”). (In chapter 20 of the Book of Enoch, these angels are listed as Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqael, Gabriel, and Remiel.) Once again, the number seven is symbolic, an image for all the archangels who stand closest to God's throne and hear His counsel. In saying that this message comes from the seven spirits before His throne, John means that this message comes directly from the Throne itself, with secrets not given to the world at large. Later liturgical usage, in which reference to the Father and the Son was always followed by reference to the Holy Spirit, has misled some interpreters into seeing this reference to the seven spirits as a reference to the Holy Spirit. But when the Holy Spirit is mentioned in the Book of Revelation, He is referred to simply as “the Spirit” (e.g. 2:7; 14:13; 22:17), always in the singular and never as “seven spirits” or as a “sevenfold” Spirit. These seven spirits stand before God's throne; that is, they are portrayed as waiting upon God as a part of His heavenly court. It is inconceivable that the Divine Spirit, co-eternal and consubstantial with the Father and the Son, could be portrayed as such a servant. Indeed, the other references to the Spirit in the Apocalypse carry the suggestion of His sovereignty and authority. The message also comes from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness (Gr. martus; compare our English “martyr”). Christ bore faithful witness before Pilate to the Truth, even at the cost of His Life (1 Tim. 6:13); John stresses this so that we may imitate His faithfulness. The Lord does not call us to walk in any place where He has not gone before. Jesus is further described as the firstborn of the dead. In using this Jewish concept of the firstborn (in which the firstborn son is the main heir), John shows that Jesus Christ is the heir of the whole age to come; the entire coming Kingdom belongs to Him. His faithfulness unto death resulted in His victory and His inheriting all the world. Our faithfulness unto death will result in our sharing that victory. Death has no terrors for Jesus Christ, and so it need have none for us. Thus Christ is also the ruler of the kings of the earth. Caesar may think he has no superior or master, but Jesus, the humble carpenter crucified under the governor Pontius Pilate, is the true Master of the Roman Empire and indeed of the whole cosmos. The Christians of St. John's day, haunted by a sense of their own powerlessness and humility, were thus made to see their true dignity and power. The Church is described as those whom the Lord loves and therefore continues to protect and care for (the present tense is used to denote Christ's ongoing care), and as those who were loosed from their sins by His Blood. This is an important theme in the Apocalypse. The Cross of Christ was seen by secular Rome as His defeat and proof of how pathetic and deluded the Christians were—that they would worship a crucified man. But for John, the Cross is proof of the power of God that defeats all other powers. The Lord Himself said of the Cross, “I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). For St. John, our faith in Christ and His Cross also “overcomes the world” (1 John 5:5). Thus the Apocalypse speaks not only of us “making our robes white” in His Blood (7:14) but also of us overcoming Satan “by the Blood of the Lamb” (12:11). The Christians are not to be ashamed of Christ's Cross, for through His Blood they overcome death, Satan, and the whole world. In describing the Christians as a kingdom, priests to His God and Father, John asserts the privileges of the Christians in the face of the pride of Rome. The Roman powers may think the Christians are but poor, uneducated, and powerless, to be utterly disdained. John knows them to be God's own Kingdom, one destined to outlast all the kingdoms of the earth, and to be priests to God Himself, with access to His awe-inspiring Presence. Priests had status and honor in the Roman secular world, and St. John says this is the true status of the Christians before God. Bishop Averky 1:4.  The number seven is usually taken as an expression of fullness.  St John addresses here only the seven churches with which he, as one who lived in Ephesus, was in especially close and frequent contact.  But in these seven he addresses, at the same time, the Christian Church as a whole. Grace to you and peace from the Tri-Hypostatical Divinity.  The phrase ‘which is' signifies the Father, Who said to Moses: I am He that Is (Exod 3:14).  The expression ‘which was' signifies the Word, Who was in the beginning with God (John 1:2).  The phrase ‘which is to come' indicates the Comforter, Who always descends upon the Church's children in holy baptism and in all fullness is to descend in the future age (Acts 2). (St. Andrew of Caeserea, Commentary on the Apocalypse, chapter 1). By these “seven Spirits,” it is most natural to understand the seven chief angels who are spoken of in Tobit 12:15.  St Andrew of Caesarea, however, understands them to be the angels who govern the seven churches.  Other commentaries, on the other hand, understand by by this expression the Holy Spirit Himself, Who manifests Himself in seven chief gifts: the spirit of the fear of God, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of might, the spirit of light, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of the Lord or the spirit of piety, and inspiration in the highest degree (compare Isa 11: 1-3; “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. 2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear;.”) 1:5. The Lord Jesus Christ is called here “the faithful witness” in the sense that He has witnessed His Divinity and the truth of His teaching before men by His death on the Cross. “As Life and Resurrection, He is the first-born from the dead (Col 1:18, I Cor 15:20), and those over whom He rules will not see death, as did those who died and rose before, but will live eternally.  He is ‘prince of kings,' and Lord of lords (1 Tim 6:15), equal in might to the Father and one in Essence with Him” (St Andrew, chapter 1). 1:5-6.  “Kings and priest” are to be understood here not in the strict meaning, of course, but in the sense in which God has promised this to His chosen people through the prophets (Exod 19:6); that is, He has made us, true believers, to be the best, the holiest people, which is the same thing that a priest and king are with relation to the rest of mankind. Venerable Bede. 4. seven. By these seven churches he writes to every church, for universality is wont to be denoted by the number seven, in that all the time of this age is evolved from seven days. Grace. Grace he desires for us, and peace from God, the eternal Father, and from the sevenfold Spirit, and from Jesus Christ, Who gave testimony to the Father in His Incarnation. He names the Son in the third place, as he was to speak further of Him. He names Him also the last in order, as He is the first and the last; for He had already named Him in the Father by saying, “Who was to come.” 5. the first-begotten. This is the same that the Apostle says, “We have seen Jesus Christ for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour.” And in another place, in setting forth the reproach of the cross, he added, “Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave Him the Name which is above every name.” 6. priests. Because the King of kings and heavenly Priest united us unto His own body by offering Himself for us, there is not one of the saints who has not spiritually the office of priesthood, in that he is a member of the eternal Priest 7. cometh. He Who was concealed, when at the first He came to be judged, will be manifested at the time when He shall come to judge. He mentions this, that the Church which is now oppressed by enemies, but is then to reign with Christ, may be strengthened for the endurance of sufferings. pierced. When they see Him as a Judge with power, in the same form in which they pierced Him as the least of all, they will mourn for themselves with a repentance that is too late. Amen. By interposing an Amen, he confirms that without doubt that will happen, which, by the revelation of God, he knows most surely is to come to pass. Gregory of Caesarea. 1:4. John, to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from the One who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne. Due to the existence of many churches in many places, he sent to only seven, mystically meaning by this number the churches everywhere, also corresponding to the present-day life, in which the seventh period of days is taking place. For this reason also he mentions seven angels and seven churches, to whom he says, Grace to you and peace from the Tri-hypostatic Divinity. For by the who is the Father is signified, who said to Moses, “I am He who is,” and by the who was the Logos, “who was in the beginning with God,” and by the who is to come the Paraclete, who always enlightens the children of the Church through holy Baptism, more completely and more strongly in the future. It is possible to understand the seven spirits as the seven angels who were appointed to govern the churches, not counting them equal to the most divine and royal Trinity, but mentioned along with it as servants, just as the divine Apostle said, “I call upon you in the presence of God and the chosen angels.” By the same token, this may be understood differently: the One who is, and who was, and who is to come, meaning the Father, who contains in himself the beginning, middle, and end of all that exists, and the seven spirits the activities of the Life-giving Spirit, following Christ God, who became man for our sake. For in many places each divine Person is indifferently placed and arranged by the Apostle. For this he says here: 1:5a. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. He is the one who witnessed to Pontius Pilate, faithful to his words in all things, the firstborn of the dead as life and resurrection, for those whom he governs will no more see death, like those who were dead before and rose, but will live eternally. Ruler of the kings, as “King of kings and Lord of lords,” equal in power with the Father and consubstantial. Elsewhere, ruler of the kings of the earth is also said earthly desires. If, according to the Blessed [15] Gregory, this usage of he who is, who was, and who is to come, the ruler of all refers to Christ, then it is not unreasonable that words similar to those which will be said shortly after refer to him, to which also the ruler of all is attached and without the repetition or introduction of another person. For here the addition of and from Jesus Christ appears to confirm the understanding we have presented. For it would be unnecessary if he were talking about the only Logos of God and the person of the Son to add immediately and from Jesus Christ in order to show him as distinct from the other one, the expressions that befit God equally honor and are appropriate to each of the divine Persons, and are common to the three, except for their distinctive properties, that is to say, the relationships , as said by Gregory the Theologian, and except for the Incarnation of the Logos. also clear from the things from which we learn, that in the Gospel the thrice-holy hymn of the Seraphim16 is said about the Son, in the speech of Paul in the Acts about the Holy Spirit, and then about the Father, in the offering of the awesome mysteries, to whom we are accustomed to say this prayer,19 as the blessed Epiphanios says in his homily On the Holy Spirit. these things to show that our own understanding does not contradict the patristic voices, and also, with God's help, we continue. 1:5b–6. To the One who loved us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us kings and priests to God and his Father. Glory and dominion to him to the ages of ages. Amen. The glory belongs to him, it says, who freed us through love from the bondage of death, and washed the stains of sin through the outpouring of his life-giving blood and water. And he has made us “a royal priesthood” so that we may offer, instead of irrational sacrifices, “rational worship”22 as a living sacrifice to the Father.    

Today, I want to introduce you to three very special angels who are included in my book, A Journey with Angels. They are very big advocates of hope, because without hope, life is meaningless. Phanuel, Remiel, and Selaphiel all want to work with anyone who feels hopeless or just need a little encouragement throughout their days. You can order your copy of A Journey with Angels on bUneke.org and check out all the bUneke books there!

Angels in most traditions are heavenly messengers, and modern pop culture has greatly exaggerated almost every feature. While it makes sense to assume that there are female or feminine angels, each one named in Abrahamic scriptural tradition is a man.The word Angel comes from the Greek Aggelos (lit: messenger), and the Hebrew word Malak has the same meaning. In this episode we explore the groups of archangels listed in various sources, most notably Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, but also including Raguel, Sariel, Remiel, and the Metatron.But more than just a handful of favorite messengers, there are also different kinds of angels, from the baby-faced Cherubim (think of the Renaissance Cupid, though Ezekiel gave them interchangeable animal faces), to the brilliantly dazzling Seraphim (aka fire-folk), to the cosmic horrors known as the Ophanim (the famous "biblically accurate angels" that are simply haunting wheels of eyes and wings and twisted metal)--that last one is dubious in angelic status....Angels show up all over the Hebrew and Christian Bibles, and the entire Quran is said to have been delivered by the same angel that brought Mary and Joseph the news of her pregnancy. In more recent times, works like Paradise Lost and The Divine Comedy have contributed a lot to how we see angels in Western tradition.Angel is also a fair label for demi-god-like beings in other traditions, such as the Devas of Dharmic tradition, the Vördr of Norse tradition, the Yazata (lit: holy) of Mazdeism (aka Zoroastrianism), and the Daemons of Greco-Roman tradition. We consider each of these, and how some are better fits than others for this label.Interpreting Colossians 1:16 to contain a list of angels is ridiculous, and nobody should be that bad at reading.All this and more....   Support us on Patreon or you can get our merch at Spreadshop.Join the Community on Discord.Learn more great religion factoids on Facebook and Instagram. [00:00:11] Katie Dooley: There's a fine. You can go to jail if you... And a fine. There's both. [00:00:19] Preston Meyer: Oh, good. [00:00:19] Katie Dooley: Both a fine and jail. If your phone goes off. [00:00:23] Preston Meyer: That's a bad time. [00:00:24] Katie Dooley: Yeah. It is. You could always ask an angel for help if you go to jail. [00:00:34] Preston Meyer: Ah, there's a lot of stories of people meeting angels in jail. Makes you wonder about those angels, doesn't it? [00:00:39] Katie Dooley: Right. Well, we're gonna explain more on today's episode of.  [00:00:43] Both Speakers: The Holy Watermelon Podcast. [00:00:47] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So. I like that. This is. I feel like we haven't done an episode like this in a minute where we talk about a whole bunch of. We talk about a concept in a whole bunch of religions. [00:01:03] Preston Meyer: Yeah, it has been a minute. [00:01:03] Katie Dooley: I'm excited. So we're talking about angels. [00:01:09] Preston Meyer: Say it ainn't so. [00:01:12] Katie Dooley: Or if you were a really bad speller in junior high an angle. [00:01:16] Preston Meyer: I feel like. Yeah, I must have shared it on our discord this Christmas of somebody who shared a collection of angles that they brought to their family. [00:01:25] Katie Dooley: Yeah, there was a girl in junior high with me. I won't call her a friend because she wasn't. But this was when everyone was on MSN, so you had everyone's email. And her email was sweet angle and then some number. I was like, oh boy. [00:01:41] Preston Meyer: Mhm. Yeah. Spelling is important. [00:01:45] Katie Dooley: Yeah. We all have those cringey emails. [00:01:47] Preston Meyer: Well, it's like most people just cannot spell rogue. [00:01:52] Katie Dooley: Almost every time I see somebody try to say rogue they spell rouge. Now, being a Star Wars fan in a French immersion program growing up, I was not going to make that mistake. Instead, I made all kinds of other mistakes of spelling words the French way in an English context. [00:02:07] Katie Dooley: Well, that's good. Um, but speaking of words, tell us where the word angel comes from. [00:02:13] Preston Meyer: So the word angel as it is known in English. Yes, the the word angel, as you know, it comes from the Greek word Angelos, spelt with no Ns but two G's. Huh? You can complain about that, but English does stupid things too. The word means messenger, which is speculated to have been derived from the older word for mounted courier, which I think is just a cool extra layer of meaning to that. The Hebrew word that typically gets translated into angel in the Greek Bibles is malak, which also means messenger. So there's also the last of the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible prophets. In the Christian Bible format because remember they arrange the books differently is Malachi and he's got the perfect name it basically just means my messenger. Was that his name? We'll never know. [00:03:20] Katie Dooley: Interesting. And yeah, messenger, mounted courier. I'm getting a lot of mailman vibes. Even. Malak. Malak. Malak. Yeah. Mailman. [00:03:36] Preston Meyer: Most of the angels that we see in the Judeo-Christian tradition are men rather than women. So yeah, mailman's great. So the frustrating thing is that the ideas that come along with this word over centuries of thought and baggage collection there's there's a lot of variety and meaning. And most traditions have gotten to the point where the word doesn't mean messenger anymore. Uh, usually it it's just thought of as this is a demigod. The word means some sort of class of demigod, usually with multiple classes. We'll get into that later. And in a lot of religions, you'll see them treated basically as demigods that have dominion over various elements because they can't be gods, because usually you're looking at them in a monotheistic lens. [00:04:36] Katie Dooley: Yeah, I can, especially when when you said it, we'll get into the hierarchy of the angels. But like it's like, how does this even work in a monotheistic tradition to have all of these layers of divine beings? [00:04:50] Preston Meyer: Yeah, they're they're residents of heaven, so they're better than you and me, but they've got great powers, is the deal. [00:05:00] Katie Dooley: And I guess we don't worship angels. I guess saints would actually be a worse sort of like knock to the monotheistic than an angel. [00:05:09] Preston Meyer: Oh, but see, I think it's a mistake to separate them In the Catholic tradition specifically, or any of the the Orthodox, the saint traditions. Lutherans whatever. If you if you're into saints, Saint Michael is one of them. Michael the Archangel, he's a demigod, just like Mother Teresa. Yeah and maybe with better reasons. I.  [00:05:43] Katie Dooley: Mean, can't be worse. [00:05:45] Preston Meyer: One has tales of actual divine power, the other is known to be just awful. [00:05:52] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Cleaned and reuse needles. Yeah. [00:05:54] Preston Meyer: I want to believe that there is a way to clean needles safely. But I know that actual health care professionals say, don't do that. And there's good reason for that. [00:06:04] Katie Dooley: I mean, you're probably right. I'm sure there is. But to, like, guarantee its safety is probably near impossible. Just donated blood this week. Right? Like it's such a small little needle. How would you make sure it was maybe the syringe part, but the little needle anyway. Gross. Don't do it, don't. Clean needles for all. [00:06:25] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Adding angels to monotheism. It does look an awful lot like demigods in a system where there is just one greater God. And we've had this conversation about how Hinduism, you've got a lot of lesser gods under Brahma. [00:06:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And I mean even Shinto, all the kami, there's greater kami, there's lesser kami. [00:06:51] Preston Meyer: It's complicated. And it just makes the argument for strict monotheism the way most people define it, a lot harder to argue. [00:07:01] Katie Dooley: Yes. And all the Abrahamic religions have angels, and those are the monotheistic ones. And people are vehement about the fact that they're monotheistic. And it's like, but then they're saints and angels, whether you group them together or not. I mean, even in Christianity, there's the Trinity. [00:07:22] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I saw a meme on Reddit the other day, and it was it was definitely a Mormon kid posting a meme slamming the Trinity in a group that has historically not been friendly to Mormons. And they roasted him hard in the comments, but all of the arguments they offered were absolute nonsense. It's frustrating. Like, it's it's okay to believe in the Trinity if you're going to believe in anything, whatever. But if you're going to slam somebody for not getting it, make sure you get it.  [00:07:22] Katie Dooley: This is such an old movie, but in Bill Maher's Religulous. [00:08:07] Preston Meyer: Oh, that's a lot of fun. [00:08:08] Katie Dooley: It is. He asks one guy about the Trinity, and he, the guy explains it that it's like water. It can be ice, or it can be steam, or it can be water. And that's the Trinity. And I was like, well, that or Bill Maher was like, well, that sounds good on paper, but it really doesn't explain it. They're different, but they're the same. Anyway, we're digressing a bit, but let's jump into talking about angels in the Hebrew Bible. [00:08:32] Preston Meyer: Yeah. So there's. A lot of appearances of angels. It's kind of a recurring theme. [00:08:40] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and not just in the Hebrew Bible, but there are also angels in rabbinic literature and in the Apocrypha as well. [00:08:46] Preston Meyer: Oh for sure. Yeah, the angels are, I would say, a pretty prominent part of this faith. [00:08:51] Katie Dooley: Yeah. And from my research, it feels like there's more angels in the Hebrew Bible than in the Christian Bible. [00:08:59] Preston Meyer: There's definitely more angels named in the Hebrew tradition than there are in the New Testament. The New Testament names Gabriel outright and then just mentions, oh yeah, and other angels showed up for this event. [00:09:15] Katie Dooley: And I guess also like the whole last half of the Christian Bible is just letters.  [00:09:24] Preston Meyer: Yeah, not a whole lot of narrative storytelling. Whereas the Hebrew Bible has a lot of really great storytelling in it. [00:09:32] Katie Dooley: Right. Uh, in the Hebrew Bible, the angels visit many people, including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, and Hagar, and they're typically used as messengers, like the name implies. But sometimes they appear as warriors and they're supposed to look like regular people without wings. [00:09:49] Preston Meyer: Yeah. It's just dudes. They're just here doing stuff. And not a whole lot of religions love that. They gotta have the wings. We talked about this before. We recorded the biblically accurate angels that are so popularly memed right now, specifically one type of type of angel. We'll talk about that later. These angels look like men. [00:10:12] Katie Dooley: Yes, but all the angels with wings don't just have a pair of wings. They have multiple pairs of wings. [00:10:18] Preston Meyer: Well, you got angels with one pair. You got angels with two pairs. You got angels with three pairs. Four pairs. And then you've got the absolute cosmic horrors. Lovecraftian nonsense with gears and wings and eyes without number. Yeah. There are options. [00:10:37] Katie Dooley: There is some frustrating ambiguity on angels in the Hebrew Bible, obscuring the relationship between Yahweh and the angels. [00:10:46] Preston Meyer: In our Patreon exclusive Bible study. We're not yet to the really interesting. Well, I guess we have covered a few scenes where this has happened for you. Um, there's going to be more. So the appearance of the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible does have a pattern to it that I think is really interesting, that it does make it hard to tell who we're talking about in the story because of everything that's going on when it happens. The narrator introduces the Angel of the Lord, and then this angel feels pretty godlike in the way he shows up. He does huge miracles, sometimes annihilating a whole army like in 2 Kings 19. It's pretty epic. Not a thing you'd expect somebody who isn't imbued with God-like power to accomplish. And then the witnesses worship him, which, whether he's the creator or not, you're going to receive a great deal of gratitude for saving a bunch of people from a devastating army. [00:11:54] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah, in that instance for sure. [00:11:56] Preston Meyer: And this is a pattern that goes on several times in the scriptures. And I think it's interesting. Though it's always treated as though he is the Lord himself, not a messenger and there's a couple of different explanations for what's going on there. But I think whaneighbourst's very likely happened is that this text tradition that we have simply originally said that the Lord showed up and did this thing he's called the Lord of armies. That's one of his titles, kind of a big deal. He was a God of war as far as the neighbours were concerned, and fairly so since they often lost to the Israelites. And then later editors, I think, decided that their God wouldn't do this thing himself. He's too far beyond us, so he would send an angel to do it. And so they added this Angel of the Lord. That's my hypothesis. Pretty hard to prove what an ancient editorial process would have been without variance in the text that back me. [00:13:08] Katie Dooley: Right? The Jewish scripture also introduces four angels that will become the Christian archangels that surround God's throne. So Michael shows up in the biblical book of Daniel as the victor in a battle between nations. The name means "Who is like God?" most prefer to read that as a question. Who is like God? [00:13:28] Preston Meyer: As a challenge. God is the greatest, which is a weird name. latter-dayThe Latter-Day Saint tradition says that this name was given to Adam because he was like God, not terribly popular in the broader Christian community. [00:13:47] Katie Dooley: Gabriel also shows up in Daniel more as a messenger than as a conqueror. The name indicates the power of God usually has a bearer. [00:14:00] Preston Meyer: Somebody who conveys.  [00:14:01] Katie Dooley: I do know what the word means, but I'm like that feels like a lot of Rs. The name indicates the power of God usually has a bearer of an empowering message. These are the only two mentioned by name in the Bible.  [00:14:14] Preston Meyer: Gabriel and Michael. But, you know, there's lots more angels. There was an angel that Jacob wrestled with who later came to be known as Israel. And maybe that was the Lord himself? Maybe it was just an angel. Maybe it was Michael. Maybe it was Gabriel. Maybe it was somebody else that we don't know their name because he's not outright named. Except for maybe that Angel of the Lordbusiness. [00:14:46] Katie Dooley: Right. Then there's Raphael, who's features prominently in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, a story with notable similarities to the Bhagavad Gita. The name Raphael highlights the healing power of God. I'm just thinking of the Lucifer TV series. I'm like, I know that character, Uriel. I think he was a bad guy in Lucifer. He rounds out the set of four showing up in the apocryphal additions to the writings of Ezra. His name means God is my light suitable to his role as guide and instructor. [00:15:19] Preston Meyer: But wait. There's more. [00:15:21] Katie Dooley: What? There's so many. [00:15:23] Preston Meyer: So for a long time, it was really nice that we had a set of four, and they matched the four cardinal points of the compass, the four corners of the world. They took care of the world and the dealings of men within it. And then we got our Enoch literature. And we throw away this need for four and say, well, wait, we can do better. There's seven. And one of the ideas that makes this look good is that it matches the lampstand that's in the temple that has seven branches. So that's kind of nice. And then we get Raguel, whose name means "God will pasture" like a shepherding kind of business. He's connected with justice. He's supposed to watch the damned to make sure they stay within their bounds, which is kind of weird. Like, I guess without him, demons would just absolutely ruin this planet. Like humans couldn't do well enough on our own. [00:16:24] Katie Dooley: It also gives me, like, big, like, Hades vibes. [00:16:26] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. He guards the demons that are locked away in Tartarus. Tartarus being a Greek place where the Titans are held. Yeah. You notice how there's going to be problems here of ideas crossing national boundaries. Yeah. Um, then we have Sariel. His name means "God is my Ruler". Uh, basically serves the same purpose as Raguel without being connected to the idea of justice so explicitly. Sidekick, I guess? Then there's Remiel, which means "God has Thundered". We talked about Thunder as a great nickname a couple episodes ago. I think that was. This is an interesting situation. He's connected to hope, and he's supposed to be the one responsible for all true visions, and he is also a bit of a psychopomp. That he would be the guide that takes you to heaven if that is your destination. Yeah, kind of interesting. This name is too similar to Ramiel, who, according to the same book, liked the human ladies too much and became the father of many of the watchers, the great giants in the early part of human history, when the one legendary version of our religious history has angels mating with humans to make giants, and they just ruined everything. [00:17:54] Katie Dooley: So there's Remiel and Ramiel. That is very confusing. [00:17:54] Preston Meyer: Especially when we're talking about a language that was originally written with no real differentiation between vowels. The vowel marks we have today are pretty new. So it's just a tradition. And so the confusion that exists today is certainly an old confusion. And then of course, there's lots of other angels that are named in the apocryphal literature. And some of them get multiple names, including some of the ones we've talked about. They're also known by other names sometimes. And the great thing about having a list of your favourite angels is you can swap them out sometimes and just say, no, this dude wrote this list. I don't like that one. I'm gonna pop in my guy over here. Just cause. Did you ever watch Dogma? [00:18:49] Katie Dooley: No. [00:18:50] Preston Meyer: We need to fix that. [00:18:51] Katie Dooley: Okay. Movie night? [00:18:53] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Okay. Dogma is an absolute treasure. Part of Kevin Smith's Jay and Silent Bob saga but this features Alanis Morissette as God and Alan Rickman as the Metatron, and oh, why can't I think of the names right now? Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are fallen angels. [00:19:18] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow. It's ridiculous, isn't it? [00:19:20] Preston Meyer: It is so much fun. But the Metatron is just this really weird figure in religious angeology. I guess it never made any sense to me ever. And my first exposure to it was Alan Rickman. [00:19:36] Katie Dooley: But it is in actual religion, the Metatron?  [00:19:36] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Everything you see in dogma is taken from real religious ideas  and then twisted for humor, which is great, except for I don't I haven't found yet any validation for the Golgotha poop demon but, the ideas behind it are validated in many religious ideas so there's that. But so this Metatron, according to Kabbalistic sources, is the name of Enoch after his transformation into an angel when he was promoted to the great office of Heavenly Scribe. So he would be the one who writes down the book of life for God. Which is completely different than the job that he has in dogma, where he speaks for God. Because if you were to hear the voice of God, your head would explode and you would die. A lot of religions actually really buy into this idea, even though it absolutely contradicts what we have in the biblical text. [00:20:44] Katie Dooley: Yeah, because God talks to a lot of people. [00:20:47] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Well, so the idea that a lot of people have bought into as well. Yeah, it says God talked to them, but he talked to them through the Metatron. It's a stretch that I don't love. The name I think is really interesting for the Metatron, and people are going to argue about it forever, probably because we still haven't come to a solid conclusion on it. Some say that it's the Hebrew word for some sort of keeper. Others say that it comes from the Greek construction of Meta Throne, so that we have the guy in the chair beside the chair. Remember, we've talked about the very obvious and well-documented polytheistic origins of the Israeli religion. Yahweh is the son of El. There was never only one throne. So the guy on the chair, beside the chair, beside the chair, beside the chair, who knows how many chairs there are? Whatever. [00:21:50] Katie Dooley: I mean a lot. There's a lot. [00:21:53] Preston Meyer: Right. Well, in the theology that is evident a little bit in the book of Job, there is a council of God. [00:22:03] Katie Dooley: I mean, because even they talk about Michael being the right hand of God, but Jesus is also the right hand of God. So they're going to wrestle over that. [00:22:09] Preston Meyer: Well, so that's something that the Jehovah's Witnesses think they've fixed. They say Jesus is Michael. [00:22:20] Katie Dooley: Perfect. Wrap it up. [00:22:21] Preston Meyer: Rather than admitting that the Bible is very clear that Jesus is Jehovah. Every time you try to come up with a really good, tight little bow to simplify things there's a really good chance you're screwing it up. [00:22:38] Katie Dooley: Yeah, because it's religion. [00:22:41] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Nothing's ever as simple as you want it to be. [00:22:44] Katie Dooley: So I just threw this wrench in our notes because I started explaining the angelology of the Hebrew Bible. And then I realized everyone has angelology and it just be easier to explain what that is right now. So angelology is the ranking system of angels. That's how many angels there are. [00:23:09] Preston Meyer: And it's never as simple as you want it to be. [00:23:11] Katie Dooley: No, it's like I saw a ranking and then I saw different rankings and then I saw different ranking. So I don't think we've included any rankings in here. [00:23:21] Preston Meyer: Just to keep it simple. Stick with the basics. [00:23:24] Katie Dooley: If you're curious on how angels are ranked, pick your favorite scholar and go for it. So in the Abrahamic religions, Islam has no standardized hierarchy, but scholars divide up the angels into different groups depending on the scholar. This can be anywhere from 8 to 14 different groups. So while they're all on par, there's different species of angels? Categories?  [00:23:47] Preston Meyer: I think species is a fair classification, I guess we'll talk about some angels that definitely feel like they would be different species from others. [00:23:58] Katie Dooley: Then there are different types of angels that appear in Judaism and then therefore Christianity. And they have been ranked a variety of different ways depending on which rabbi or kabbalist you're reading. [00:24:14] Preston Meyer: Yay! Complicated. [00:24:16] Katie Dooley: Very complicated. [00:24:18] Preston Meyer: Um, the Hebrew Bible differentiates between different kinds of heavenly beings as well. And they're all called angels, generally speaking. But sometimes you'll get other great titles like Seraphs or Seraphim. [00:24:32] Katie Dooley: I think the best way to compare this is that there's dogs and then there's dog breeds, there's angels, and there's types of angels. [00:24:41] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. [00:24:43] Katie Dooley: They're all dogs. They're all angels. They're just... They got special features. [00:24:48] Preston Meyer: Sure. I don't know if it's a perfect analogy, but it definitely helps with explaining what's going on here, [00:24:53] Katie Dooley: That they're all angels, but there's cherubs and seraphs. [00:25:00] Preston Meyer: So my whole life I've, I've never heard people say cherubs. But that's definitely the way the word is spelled. Yeah. [00:25:13] Katie Dooley: In Hebrew? [00:25:15] Preston Meyer: Yeah and even when we spelled it c h, it was meant to be like the ch in Loch Loch Ness. We just we've gotten used to doing all the CHs as cha- so we went with cherubs. [00:25:31] Katie Dooley: I'm going to start calling them cherubs at Christmas. [00:25:33] Preston Meyer: Absolutely. Even though a cherub is a thing you eat, that's fine. [00:25:39] Katie Dooley: Sorry. Go through your types of angels. [00:25:41] Preston Meyer: So cherubs are best known for being painted in Rome as children. That's just the deal. But it was one of these who protected the tree of life with a flaming sword in Genesis. We see cherubs on the the Ark of the Covenant with their wings and all that. Ezekiel gives them more wings than everybody else but Ezekiel was getting, maybe a little too much of that temple oil that we now know for sure had hallucinogens in it. [00:26:15] Katie Dooley: Nice. How many wings? Was this the three and four pairs? [00:26:20] Preston Meyer: I think Ezekiel's cherubs only had two pairs of wings.  [00:26:24] Katie Dooley: That's still four full wings. [00:26:26] Preston Meyer: Right. He also gave them interchangeable faces of lions, oxes, men and eagles. It's a little bit weird. Um, the same faces that we have described in Ezekiel. They get used again in the Revelation of John. So the name cherub, hard to know for sure, it may have been derived from an Old Assyrian word caribou meaning mighty.  [00:26:52] Katie Dooley: Interesting. So where we get caribou...? [00:26:54] Preston Meyer: No. Entirely different. [00:26:56] Katie Dooley: Okay. Well, because those are pretty mighty creatures. Yeah. Majestic even. [00:27:01] Preston Meyer: Haul Santa's fat ass across the sky at Christmas. [00:27:05] Katie Dooley: Um, tell me more about seraphs. [00:27:07] Preston Meyer: Seraphs, the name means burning, and they're always illustrated verbally or in art, in visual arts, as being surrounded by light. So these guys get described by Isaiah as having six wings. Other than that, they're people-shaped, but lots of wings. And so those are the two reasonable ones, because cherubs are always described as children for a long time as a kid or not as a kid, as a teenager trying to figure out angels from the Latter-Day Saint perspective, where we really don't talk about angels very much at all relative to the things we're talking about today. It's mostly you've got either spirits who haven't got bodies yet or people who have got bodies, died. And thus are still unembodied, or those great spirits who have come back resurrected with their bodies in full glory. And so you got cherubs would be the young ones who haven't got bodies yet. Seraphs are the glorified ones who have got their bodies and all the glory of God, whatever. Ophans have never been part of this discussion. The ophanim, the name means wheels, and this is a class of angels described only by Ezekiel and depending on your version of the Bible, you might not even recognize that he's talking about angels. So there's some argument on whether or not these even belong here. But when people talk about biblically accurate angels, the ones that are absolutely terrifying and monstrous, it's the ophanim. Sometimes they're called thrones because these gear monsters support the throne where God sits. And that's their deal. They don't visit Earth. They're not messengers. [00:29:07] Katie Dooley: Good, good. [00:29:09] Preston Meyer: So the whole be not afraid meme of no, this is the most terrifying moment of my life. The ophans.  [00:29:16] Katie Dooley: Were not those messengers. That's good. They remind me of the Bhagavad Gita. The guy with infinite eyes and infinite mouths, like. I don't want to be visited by that. [00:29:28] Preston Meyer: No, I don't think anybody would. [00:29:30] Katie Dooley: I think... That's is that Krishna or Vishnu in their, like, real form? I think that's what it is. I forget now, but, um, someone will listen to our...  [00:29:39] Preston Meyer: The Messenger was Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita.  So these these guys are just wild. It's really hard to know what Ezekiel was experiencing, but I feel like he was definitely getting the best of the temple oils and the way that eyes are described here with all these wing imagery. My instinct is to say that he was also seeing and failing to interpret correctly because of it, wonderful intoxication, a peacock. [00:30:18] Katie Dooley: That's interesting. Yeah. That's a not a terrible theory. [00:30:21] Preston Meyer: Well, so the the tail feathers, they all got eyes. Yeah. And wings might be hard to see where one wing ends and the next thing might be a wing if you're high, especially the peacock just feels right. [00:30:38] Katie Dooley: Okay. All right.  [00:30:43] Preston Meyer: But yeah, so they are not visitors to Earth. They're not messengers. They're their own special thing built out of wheels and gears and eyeballs and feathers that support, apparently, according to Ezekiel's vision and some creative license and interpretation, the throne of God. And taking that into consideration and the description of the cherubs with the weird heads of all these various animals, it makes sense that there's some interesting sorts of ideas, like the they're chimeras of one sort or another, that we see all over the old world. And it makes sense that a lot of scholars would agree that some of these ideas are coming in they're very odd forms from neighboring nations. [00:31:35] Katie Dooley: Fair, you gotta make it popular to the public. [00:31:37] Preston Meyer: Right? Plus, people love stories about that. Weird monsters thing. So yeah, popular to the public helps. [00:31:46] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So in the Christian Bible, angels appear only as messengers and teachers, though there is a scene in the Revelation of John illustrating Heaven, where the four faces of Ezekiel described as cherubs, are represented. [00:32:02] Preston Meyer: We also get Gabriel. He's the one who showed up to Joseph and Mary, both of them separately, to let them know, "Hey, there's a baby in there. Don't freak out. It's Jesus." [00:32:16] Katie Dooley: Though I do love the memes about Joseph. [00:32:19] Preston Meyer: Yes, they are certainly entertaining. [00:32:22] Katie Dooley: Have you seen the one where Joseph is like, "I made you a cherry pie", and Mary's like, "we don't have cherries." And he was like, "God gave them to me. Do you see how stupid that sounds?" Uh, and then the stepdad, ones "I'm the dad that stepped up". [00:32:43] Preston Meyer: Oh, yeah, yeah. I feel weird about Joseph being left out of the story after the nativity. Like there's the sons of the carpenter or whatever, because Jesus had brothers. There's no arguing against that. But we never know about him dying. But also, he wasn't there when Jesus died. People just lost track of where his stepdad was. [00:33:09] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Angels who go undescribed appear at a few crucial points of the end of the Jesus story, presumably in regular human form. No wings. [00:33:20] Preston Meyer: Yeah. We got angels who were there when Jesus came out of the empty tomb. Well, when he made the tomb empty. We got angels standing around in Jerusalem when Jesus ascends up into the clouds. Reminding people. This what I'm doing, that they said he'll come back the same way he left. So if you find somebody claiming to be Jesus reborn, biblical contradiction. And then we have more angels in medieval writings. [00:33:55] Katie Dooley: Which is pretty cool. [00:33:56] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Have you ever read Paradise Lost? [00:34:00] Katie Dooley: I haven't, but I want to. [00:34:02] Preston Meyer: I also have not read Paradise Lost. I've only read about it. It's one of those great popular things that just hasn't hit my table yet. John Milton's Paradise Lost, written so, so long ago, 1667, was when it was published. Great couple of great poems. Angels are super important. We got the story of Satan / Lucifer. Because for so long, everybody just assumed Lucifer means Satan. [00:34:32] Katie Dooley: Yeah. So the two we're going to talk about, I, tell me if I'm wrong and maybe, maybe we don't know because we haven't read it, I think this is where the connection of Lucifer and the Bible is to the devil, because Lucifer in the Bible is not the devil, [00:34:45] Preston Meyer: Right? Lucifer in the Bible is not ever the devil. [00:34:48] Katie Dooley: So this must be where... [00:34:50] Preston Meyer: I feel like that's.  [00:34:51] Katie Dooley: And even in, uh, Dante as well.  [00:34:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, I've talked with a couple of doctors of theology in my time at university, and there's not any solid consensus on whether Dante Alighieri, who wrote The Divine Comedy, was super influential on Christian theology, or if he was writing about things that he'd been learning at church. Um, there's not a strong consensus there, by the sounds of it, but very fascinating stuff. Not that Dante agrees with all of the thoughts on angels, but his thoughts are very well preserved. [00:35:34] Katie Dooley: Sorry, we are jumping ahead a little bit, but Paradise Lost is an epic poem. And yes, it talks about Satan, Lucifer. It also talks about Adam and Eve in a separate part. It outlines the hierarchy of angels. It talks about Lucifer, Satan's rebellion, the war in heaven, and what fallen angels are, which I read that there's parts of this all pulled from, like the Dead Sea Scrolls. So there is a... [00:36:00] Preston Meyer: Well, the Dead Sea Scrolls weren't available when Paradise Lost. It's been like 70 years. [00:36:08] Katie Dooley: But anyway it had biblical or Apocryphal references. [00:36:13] Preston Meyer: Yeah, yeah, there's definitely a lot of rabbinical literature that would have been some good source material for, [00:36:18] Katie Dooley: Because there is no fallen angels in the Bible. [00:36:22] Preston Meyer: There is a couple of passages that allude to huge swathes of angels being cast out of heaven before the foundation of the world. What that looks like is the matter of many hypotheses. [00:36:38] Katie Dooley: So we started talking about the Divine Comedy. [00:36:40] Preston Meyer: It's even older. [00:36:42] Katie Dooley: Yeah, and most people are familiar with Dante's Inferno, which is a part one of the three parts of... [00:36:47] Preston Meyer: Dante's Inferno, is great drama because it's the first part of a trilogy. And so if you're going to get tired and quit, at least you'll have read some of Inferno. But it's also the great part where Dante gets to slam on all the thinkers and popes that he didn't like and say, "Ha! You guys are in hell. I know, because I'm the dude who wrote the book". [00:37:12] Katie Dooley: So this is also written in a poem format, and he wrote it between 1308 and 1321, and it describes the afterlife. Obviously, the inferno is the hell part and Paradiso is the part that describes heaven. [00:37:29] Preston Meyer: And then there's the part in between. Purgatorial. For purgatory.  [00:37:29] Katie Dooley: So Paradiso describes the nine spheres of heaven. There's what? Seven circles of hell. Nine circles of hell anyway. Inferno describes the circles of hell. I don't remember how many. And Paradiso describes the nine spheres of heaven in the ninth sphere. I'm reading the notes wrong. The ninth sphere of heaven is where the angels reside. It's called Prima Mobile. There's one more sphere where God resides. So according to Dante, angels are beings that are most familiar to God, and they are made of an immaterial. [00:38:07] Preston Meyer: Now, what sort of substance is immaterial, Katie? But light is matter as well. Light is a particle and a wave. It's like when people say that God exists outside of time and space. [00:38:21] Katie Dooley: I'm, uh. I'm rereading His Dark Materials. They're probably made of dust. Have you read?  [00:38:21] Preston Meyer: No [00:38:29] Katie Dooley: Oh. They're great. They were very controversial when they came out of the 90s. [00:38:33] Preston Meyer: Sure. That's the, um, the Amber Spyglass. [00:38:37] Katie Dooley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so probably dust is what I'm going to call it. [00:38:40] Preston Meyer: Sure, but dust is matter too.  [00:38:43] Katie Dooley: No, in the book it's a divine matter, but they call it dust. Capital D dust. [00:38:47] Preston Meyer: Okay. When I think of immaterial substance, it sounds like they're just holograms. But I'm always reminded of, I think it was Neil deGrasse Tyson who said, you know, if you if your God exists outside of time and space, that's how you describe a thing that does not exist. [00:39:06] Katie Dooley: So like tug on the collar... [00:39:08] Preston Meyer: It's a really popular description for a lot of Christians and people of other traditions as well. And I don't see the need to describe God as outside of time and space, especially when it causes you the problem of now you've described something that doesn't exist. [00:39:26] Katie Dooley: Maybe out of time, but definitely not out of space. [00:39:30] Preston Meyer: Even outside of time doesn't make any sense to me. [00:39:34] Katie Dooley: I guess time would be irrelevant for God, I guess is my point. [00:39:37] Preston Meyer: Right and yeah, if you live long enough, time might not matter but you still exist in a state where there's an event and things before and after that. [00:39:46] Katie Dooley: Now we're getting into the multiverse and.... It's all great in theory, but very confusing in practice. So we touched briefly on angels in Islam because of their non-hierarchy but groupings. In Islam, they believe they are heavenly beings originating directly from God. Like little God offspring. [00:40:08] Preston Meyer: Yeah, but usually in the creation sense, like molded because in the Islamic tradition, the Quran is very clear that God does not have children. The Quran is also very clear he had three daughters. [00:40:24] Katie Dooley: What a holy book that contradicts itself? Say it ain't so. Colour me shocked. [00:40:30] Preston Meyer: It's tricky. But they would have been angels, not gods, even though they were definitely figures that were recognized as goddesses among the heathens. [00:40:43] Katie Dooley: It's fine. So the Quran is the number one Islamic source referring to angels, but there's also angels in the hadiths and elsewhere in Islamic literature. [00:40:53] Preston Meyer: I mean, the whole thing wouldn't have happened if not for an angel at least allegedly appearing to Muhammad. Um, good old [00:41:02] Jibril. The same figure that we called Gabriel earlier in this [00:41:06] episode. They're messengers, servants for God. And Jibril is the greatest messenger. I don't remember hearing anything about Michael and looking up things in Islam. [00:41:18] Katie Dooley: Um, they have sort of a 1 to 1 comparison I put in the notes. Um. But I don't know where they appear in the Quran. [00:41:27] Preston Meyer: So, like in Judaism, angels are super great for protecting against terrible things. Angels are attracted to sacred places. The whole guardian thing makes sense. And every now and then, you'll find them protecting people. With it an angel will not enter an unclean place. This is pretty typical of most religions. That an angel that is supposed to be so good and pure, not going to go to places that could be called haram or go near a dog even because that's dirty. [00:42:04] Katie Dooley: My dog was an angel, so.  [00:42:04] Preston Meyer: Many are. [00:42:10] Katie Dooley: I disagree with that. Maybe they're more powerful angels. And so other angels are scared to come by. [00:42:19] Preston Meyer: Uh, there are many classes of angels. Or maybe Paige was just a jinn. [00:42:24] Katie Dooley: Oh, wow. But it's probably more accurate anyway. Angels in Islam, are believed to be older than humans and the jinn that Preston mentioned. And they have no human desires. They don't tire, they don't get hungry. They're never angry. [00:42:38] Preston Meyer: So they're often described this way in Jewish literature and the trouble that I have with this idea is that they saw in most versions of early Judeo-Christian Abrahamic origins of the world. They saw the daughters of man and said, that's a really good place to play hide the sausage, and that's not an angel that doesn't have passions. Oh, well. [00:43:18] Katie Dooley: Um, Muslims do not believe in the concept of the fallen angel like in Christianity. Rather, they believe that angels are infallible. [00:43:25] Preston Meyer: Right? And the Iblis isn't a fallen angel, but a terrible jinn. I'm pretty sure, if I remember correctly. [00:43:34] Katie Dooley: So they, as Preston, sort of asked, Islam shares three out of the four archangels with Christianity. So we have Jibril, who's Gabriel; Mikhail, who's Michael; Israfil, who's Raphael. And then the fourth one is Azrail, or Azrael is the English name, but that's not Uriel. Those are their archangels. [00:43:57] Preston Meyer: And, um, Azrael would be a little bit more familiar with the Angel of death called sometimes Malak Hamad. There's another name that I can't remember, Samael, I think. I might be confusing with another angel. I have to look that up later. [00:44:16] Katie Dooley: I mean, that sounds correct to someone who watched the entire series of Lucifer, but that's my only frame of reference right now. That's terrible.  [00:44:27] Preston Meyer: Popular culture is a great tool for education as long as it's well-written. [00:44:32] Katie Dooley: So the Quran describes angels as well-formed human beings. Nice build. Sure. Uh, made of pure light. And they have multiple pairs of wings. So I read two, three, four pairs of wings. [00:44:47] Preston Meyer: Right. So we get very similar descriptions for the jinn. But the jinn are newer and a lot more selfish and a lot more likely to do sexy things so than the angels in this tradition. And then we can change gears a little bit to Zoroastrianism. And I think a lot of the ideas of angels that we get in Judaism probably find a much more comfortable home in Zoroastrianism. Um, the writings of Ezekiel. Are generally thought to have come post-exile. And so this influence would have been definitely a part of this deal. If that is how that worked out. So then in Persian Zoroastrian tradition, there are several forms of yazata. I like that word. Any word that has a bunch of syllables and the same vowel every time. I don't know why it gets me just right.  Like Canada. [00:45:52] Katie Dooley: How patriotic you are. Rococo. Rococo. [00:45:58] Preston Meyer: Rococo. That first I was a little soft, but I can appreciate it. [00:46:04] Katie Dooley: It's a great art movement. [00:46:05] Preston Meyer: So anyway, the Yazata are a class of beings defined nominally as worthy of worship. Gods, in the simplest sense. This is complicated by the fact that we still don't have a good definition of what is a God that everybody can agree on. If it is worshiped, it is a god. That's the deal. That's for today's discussion. I feel like that's pretty fair. So this same word, yazata is applied to all the really good things, including some plants and even prayer formats. So because of that, I feel like a really fair way to translate that into English instead of worthy of worship would be anything that is holy. [00:46:54] Katie Dooley: Holy, sacred, yeah. [00:46:55] Preston Meyer: Yeah, and like the Most Holy One, would be your Most High God, which in this case would be Ahura Mazda, the greatest of the Yazata. So in the earliest writings, Yazata is anything good, and in slightly later early writings the Yazatas are completely and absolutely divine, and so it quickly went from holy things as opposed to profane things, to holy things, as in the gods and God adjacent things in a religion that's mostly monotheistic but isn't quite either. Tricky business. We've talked about this in our Zoroastrian episode. The Persian, the Legend of Persian Zoro. Yeah. Tricky business. So the most popular yazatas received a formal ranking. Relatively late in the Zoroastrian time frame. In about the fourth or fifth century BCE, a calendar was instituted that used the names of the angelic Yazatas to name the months, the days, and even the portions of the days. There's five parts of the day, and each of them are named for various yazata angel figures and so based on that, we got what became of well known because everybody needs to know how you're measuring time, angelology. That was kind of nifty. And so for the Mazdaists, the seven Amesha Spenta, we've talked about them before, they're roughly equivalent to archangels. And so it feels like maybe the shift from 4 to 7 might have been influenced from this time of exile with the Babylonian. [00:48:56] Katie Dooley: Yeah. I mean, this is all happening in the same place at the same time in the world, so. [00:49:00] Preston Meyer: Yeah. And so Ahura Mazda is often described as the father of the Amesha Spenta, but it's generally not taken literally. Just like the Muslims say that Allah is the creator of these angels, not the father, father. [00:49:16] Katie Dooley: Though there was one Amesha Spenta that is described as his daughter. Do you remember that? [00:49:20] Preston Meyer: Well, they're all described as his children. [00:49:22] Preston Meyer: No, there was one specifically that was like, it's his daughter. [00:49:25] Preston Meyer: This one is definitely a daughter. Oh, and he's got other sons, too, right? But they're more godly and less angelic. But they are all yazata. Not that it's not confusing. [00:49:38] Katie Dooley: I haven't said this in a long time. A square is a rectangle, but a rectangle isn't a square. [00:49:44] Preston Meyer: The trouble with that is that for a long time, a square was also called a rectangle. [00:49:52] Katie Dooley: Oh, I thought you were gonna, like, correct me on the yazata. Like, not all yazata are gods, but all gods are yazata. [00:49:59] Preston Meyer: No, that's... Yeah, you got that right. But there's even more. Because why stop with just the Judeo-Christian and immediately Judeo-Christian adjacent? There is other great ideas. [00:50:13] Katie Dooley: There's so many. So the Dharmic religions, this is Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism all have Devas, which means heavenly, shining or divine being. The word is generally applied to the gods of the Hindu peoples, as well as to cosmic principles that might manifest during meditation. It is a worthy goal to ascend from this human level and to be reincarnated as a deva. Devas are said to be mortal, expected to die after thousands of years, and be reborn if they don't escape samsara. [00:50:47] Preston Meyer: Imagine being demoted from Deva back to human. [00:50:50] Katie Dooley: I mean, it happens. [00:50:51] Preston Meyer: I mean, the story is that it must. [00:50:58] Katie Dooley: Each has their own... Each of the devas has their own identity, different than an avatar, right? So there's different avatars of Vishnu and different avatars of Krishna, which is a temporary embodiment of a god.  [00:51:10] Preston Meyer: When they just come down for what for them is a weekend. And I think it's really interesting that for Zoroastrianism, the Devas are, well, not the Devas. Deva was an evil god. He's the bad guy. [00:51:30] Katie Dooley: Oh yeah. [00:51:32] Preston Meyer: So I'm curious if that label comes from conflict between the two nations. [00:51:40] Katie Dooley: I don't know. [00:51:41] Preston Meyer: And I haven't been able to find anything that says, oh yeah, sure, "this idea is good, Preston", but I still like it in my head. Next on our list, we have the border. In ancient Norse tradition, we have the Vördr as basically essentially guardian angels. Some of them will follow people around, some of them are trees that you might have in a yard that have been around for a while. And so they'll house minor guardian angels in their root. [00:52:13] Katie Dooley: That's cool. [00:52:14] Preston Meyer: It is kind of cool. The name Vördr basically evolved into what we have in English as warden means watcher, but the word wraith also comes from this root and wraiths, as far as I've been able to find meaning in it is like the scary. [00:52:35] Katie Dooley: Yeah, never positive. I always just think of the ringwraiths but... [00:52:38] Preston Meyer: Sure. Yeah. Bad times. Yeah, they're they're not good friends, but the Vördr are our guardian angels, basically. It's hard to tell how much the idea changed when Christians showed up into their neighborhood, but it probably did change a little bit. Or maybe they're partly responsible for the way we see guardian angels in our Anglo tradition. [00:53:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah. Well. And then it's interesting. There's also demons in ancient Greek mythology spelled d-a-e-m-o-n-s so pronounced the same but not to be confused with demons. [00:53:19] Preston Meyer: In so many words we just drop that A it's interesting that we allow it to persist in this word, but I think there's a good reason for it. [00:53:30] Katie Dooley: Well, and then topical in His Dark Materials, in one of the worlds, everyone has a daemon, which is an animal spirit attached to you. [00:53:40] Preston Meyer: That's spelled with an A.  [00:53:40] Katie Dooley: And it's spelt with an A. And when I was a kid in reading, I had no idea how to say it. [00:53:46] Preston Meyer: Did you say a damon the whole time? Yeah. That's fair.  [00:53:52] Katie Dooley: So demons with an A are positive. And just like the Vördr, they are minor deities that would act as guides, guardian angels or whatever. And it's the same thing. We kind of have this, cuple of traditions that are very influential on Judeo-Christian and Western, therefore Western culture of this idea of guardian angel. [00:54:14] Preston Meyer: Yeah. Looking up angels across all these religious traditions has been pretty cool. There's something like the idea of an angel in almost every religious tradition, though naturally, they're not all going to be called angels. But the idea that there's somebody watching out for you is pretty universal. In the more primal religious traditions, it makes a lot of sense that usually we're talking about ancestors. [00:54:44] Katie Dooley: Right? Their ancestor worship. And we haven't actually talked about... I guess Shintoism, has some ancestor worship, but we haven't talked about Daoism at all, right. Which is a big ancestor worship religion. Maybe that's one we should add to our list right away. I think you're right. But that's basically Mulan. Where she... [00:55:05] Preston Meyer: The good animated one. [00:55:06] Katie Dooley: Yeah, absolutely. Where's she? lights some incense and prays to her ancestors for guidance. [00:55:13] Preston Meyer: And then has to try to keep a straight face while traveling with Eddie Murphy. Oh, now I want to watch Mulan. Thanks. Yeah, so that is a big. topical guardian angels. [00:55:29] Preston Meyer: Right. [00:55:29] Katie Dooley: Mushu is a guardian angel. [00:55:30] Preston Meyer: Here we are in a year of the Dragon. [00:55:32] Katie Dooley: What? It's all coming together. [00:55:35] Preston Meyer: But it's not the year of the Fire Dragon. In the 60 year cycle, it's the year of the Wood dragon. [00:55:40] Katie Dooley: Wow, interesting I didn't know that. You, dear listener, congregant, could be our guardian angels. [00:55:48] Preston Meyer: We would love it so much if you would support this podcast financially. [00:55:55] Katie Dooley: I was going to say you can do that a few ways. So, um, spreadshirt is great. If you want to buy someone a gift, buy yourself some merch, one time fee. You have our Patreon with bonus episodes, extra content from our interviews, if you like a subscription model, there's more coming down the pipe there as well. We also would love your support your warden watcher wraith on our social media. What social media are we on, Preston? [00:56:22] Preston Meyer: We are on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and of course Discord, where we have some pretty great memes and discussions organized into great little channels. I love discord! You can also share this podcast with a friend and give us five stars on Apple Podcast. It's a great way to help us out. [00:56:39] Preston Meyer: Thank you so much for joining us. [00:56:41] Both Speakers: Peace be with you.

In this Sunday Sermon, we bring you a message by the Archangel Remiel.  Please tell your friends about our Sunday messages of the holy spirits and archangels.

It's time to return to The Dreaming! This week, we're discussing the third and fourth volumes of Neil Gaiman's celebrated series. Come for the one-off stories of Dream Country, and give the devil his due when we cheer Lucifer's epic trolling of Dream in Season of the Mists.  ----more---- Episode 17 Transcript Jessika: [00:00:00] I just, I like have had five sets of teeth in my life. They just keep growing bigger and bigger each set I got,   Hello, and welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcasts where we morph from delight to delirium one issue at a time. My name is Jessica Frazier and I'm joined by my cohost, the blasphemous baker, Mike Thompson.  Mike: I am full of carbs and caffeine. How are you doing? Jessika: Oh, I am somewhat of both as well. Could use a little more sleep, but I have a day off tomorrow, so I will be doing that,  Mike: I'm jealous.  Jessika: Dude. I work nine hours a day. Don't be too jealous. It's those nine hours that get me that day off.  Mike: Oh man. I've been pulling [00:01:00] like 10 to 12 hour days for a couple of months and I'm just,  Jessika: Oh shit. Nevermind. Goodness. Well, the purpose of this podcast is to study comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. If you'd like to support us, be sure to download rate and review on Apple podcasts or wherever you live.  Mike: Yeah, that really helps with discoverability. We know that we are not a large podcast, but the support that we've gotten from everybody has meant a lot to us. And we're hoping that we can continue to reach more people. If you like, what you're hearing, do us a favor and invite your friends to like our pages, every little bit helps.  Jessika: Yeah, well, today we're continuing on. with the second episode of our book. As we discuss volumes three and four of the Sandman series. But before we jump into [00:02:00] that, Mike, what is one cool thing that you've read or watched lately?  Mike: Something actually that you mentioned on the last book club episode that we did was that there is a Sandman Audible book right now. As much as I don't like giving Amazon my money, if I don't have to, I've had an Audible membership for like a decade. And that means I have access to their Audible originals, which is what this audio book is. And then one of my friends, hi, Darren, also recommended that I listen to the audio book after I told them that we were doing a Sandman book. So I finally downloaded the audio book and started listening while I walked the dogs. And it's legit incredible, like all-star cast. It feels like an audio play complete with like all these incredible production values. Neil Gaiman is serving as the narrator and then they have all of these incredible actors voicing characters and it actually, you know, Neil [00:03:00] Gaiman rewrote it. And so it feels like what he wanted the Sandman, the first volume Preludes and Nocturnes to be, with the hindsight of 30 plus years. Jessika: Nice.  Mike: Yeah, it's great.  Jessika: And he's such a good orator.  Mike: he is he's done a couple of his other audio books that I've listened to over the years. He did The Graveyard Book, which was The only way I can describe it as a Victorian Gothic version of the Jungle Book. And then he also did Coraline. I think he did Coraline. I'm pretty sure he did, but every time that I've listened to him, narrate stuff, it's always been just fantastic,  But, yeah. Jessika: Great.  Mike: How about you? Jessika: Well, I grabbed another $1 image teaser comic. , this time it was Kill or Be Killed by Ed Brubaker. Sean Phillips and Elizabeth Breittwiser. It was okay.  It didn't grow. It followed the first person account of how a man was driven to be an assassin. He basically attempted to die by suicide by jumping off a roof, ended up not dying, but [00:04:00] being visited by what appears to be a demon who tells him , that he now owes him for the life. He tried to waste or something, a life for a life, kind of a such and the rubric for killing being , someone basically like bad and it's not very well defined. So he goes from this guy who can't fathom killing someone to being ready to kill. So he doesn't die. The whole reason he wanted to die was over a woman that chose his roommate over him, by the way, like his best friend. And it was this whole pining love thing. It was just a little just had, really bad incel vibes. You know what I mean?  Mike: Yeah, Jessika: I don't know. It just felt very strange. Like his whole motive was very, contrived it felt,  Mike: Yeah. Brubaker does a lot of good stuff, but he writes a lot of, kind of the modern equivalent of pulp noire.  Jessika: Mm.  Mike: Everything that you've described sounds very much like a Brewbaker story. You got to find the right thing. He writes some really good stuff. Like he's the guy who actually created the winter soldier for the Captain America Comics. Jessika: [00:05:00] Okay.  Mike: Yeah. He did a couple of other kind of like noire-ish stories for image that they were hit or miss for me, but when he's good, he's really good. And then other times it's just, it's not my vibe. Jessika: Okay. That's fair.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So, honestly though, again, it was one of those $1 Image teaser situations.  Mike: I love how they do that.  Jessika: I didn't feel like I really lost anything.  Mike: No, I think that's a really great strategy of theirs where it's just kind of the entry-level pilot. Jessika: Yeah, well, let's mosey on to our main topic.  Mike: Yes. Jessika: So last episode, just to recap, we covered an overview of the history and places you can read, watch and listen to the Sandman series. And if you haven't already listened to episode 15, we highly recommend you check out that episode for that. And our discussion on the first two volumes of the Sandman series, because from here, we are going to be discussing [00:06:00] volumes three and four. I don't really have many tidbits per se for us this episode. Really? We're just going to look at the plot and then talk about what we thought.  Mike: I actually have a couple of tidbits. Believe it or not, not many, but a couple. Jessika: Mike has tidbits everyone. I love it. I didn't even know. Well, awesome.  Mike: All right. So should we kick things off?  Jessika: Let's do it. Volume three is titled Dream Country and it was published in 1990 and only included issues 17 through 20. And what made up a four-story anthology. It was, of course, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by Kelly Jones, Malcolm Jones III, Charles Vess, and Colleen Duran. We start with the story of Calliope, the youngest Greek muse, who has been imprisoned by Erasmus Fry to be his own personal muse. Super gross. [00:07:00] She'd been captive for closest 60 years. So Erasmus gives Calliope to Richard Maddick, who is a writer who has one successful novel but now has hit a patch of writer's block. And unfortunately for Calliope, he's a greedy motherfucker who only cares about his own success. So he takes Calliope who has been left without clothes in a room alone. And of course, immediately rapes her. This one was really hard for me. You can already tell, as I'm trying to get through this description.  Mike: Yeah, it's an uncomfortable issue to read now. Even now it's, mean, it was really uncomfortable when I first read it when I was, I don't know, 18 or so. And it's just gotten increasingly gross as time goes on, especially now, post me too in the entertainment industry. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, definite correlations there.  Mike: Oh yeah. Oddly prescient. Jessika: Yes. So Richard of course gets gains from this whole [00:08:00] situation and enjoys a few years of very good success. He writes more hit novels, some award-winning poetry, and even gets into Hollywood with writing and directing. So here we are again with the correlation situation and of course winning awards in that area. And this is all happening while Morpheus is still in prison, by the way, until he isn't any longer. And one thing we need to know about Calliope is that she and Morpheus have history. In fact, they have a child together. So Calliope calls out to him in desperation. After being told by her visiting muse sisters, that they were unable to help her and help Morpheus did. The author wanted ideas, then he was inundated with them. So many that they were causing him to have an actual breakdown seemingly with psychological effects. In the end, Richard sends someone to release her where he only finds Erasmus Fry's book in the room where she should have been.  Mike: And doesn't it [00:09:00] originally start out with Morpheus trying to free Calliope, but Richard doesn't want to, because he needs the ideas she gives him when he rapes her? Jessika: Yeah Mike: Yeah. And that's when Morpheus sits there and basically punishes him with an overflowing chalice of ideas. Jessika: Yeah. It's, definitely a fitting punishment. In my opinion  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: story, number two was super fun. I think you and I can probably agree. And this story was about a cat speaking to a crowd of cats in a graveyard. And this cat told the story of having kittens and having them taken away by the people that owned her. And of course, the guy was super level-headed about the whole thing and took the kittens to a shelter and they were adopted by loving families and, oh wait, never mind. He put them all in a bag, tied the bag to a large rock, and threw it in a body of water. I just can't with people. Like, honestly, I can't,  Mike: It's a safe assumption that people are going to be terrible throughout this series. Jessika: I mean, it's true, [00:10:00] but I would love to have them all adopted. So the cat naturally is super upset but also looking for some sort of vengeance or something. And that night she has a dream where she goes on a long and difficult dream quest to see what is ultimately Meowpheus the cat.  Mike: Meowpheus I like that.  Jessika: So basically a Meowpheus tells her that cats used to rule. They were larger and humans were basically the pets. Instead, cats choosing to hunt humans for food and sport and keeping them to feed and groom them. One day, humans banded together and with participation from only 1000 humans, they were able to dream the same dream together and basically manifest humans being the alpha in the world, instead of the cats. And this went back into time where the power of the collective dream actually rewrote history in favor of humans, making the cat subservient. Instead. [00:11:00] The cat in the graveyard was basically preaching a gospel, asking all the cats in the graveyard to dream the same dream. That she was trying to get 1000 cats to help her so that, they could all pull a Cher and turn back time to be in power once again. I enjoyed the partying quippy remark from one of the listener cats, which was effectively good luck getting multiple cats to do anything at the same time. Mike: Uh, yeah. Accurate. Jessika: And while it was really sad and cruel I like the idea that cats have an attitude for a reason.  Mike: Yeah, I thought it was cute. It was just, it was a very, I mean, we'll get into this later on, but it was, I thought it was very. Jessika: Yeah. The third step. Told us, the creation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream wherein Morpheus has actually requisitioned the play in specific terms and asks Billy Shakes and his troop to perform in the middle of an empty field. Well, kind of. That field is not empty for a long as [00:12:00] Titania, Oberon, Puck, and all the other characters from the fairy realm have arrived through the portal, which Morpheus opens for them. It's mentioned during the dialogue between Titania and Morpheus, that this is probably the last time the mortal realm would allow them to enter, that they were feeling the hostility from Gaia upon their entry. During the play puck steps in for the actor playing himself and kills of course, and Titania is very strangely fascinated with Billy's 11 year old son Hamnett and is like trying to entice him. And then in the end, everybody, but Puck leaves the realm. And it's mentioned at the end of the issue that Hamnet died later that same year. So like, did Titania finally get Hamlet to go with her?  Mike: You know, it's left a little bit open, but it's playing into that whole idea of the changeling child and, you know, the mortals who go over into the very realm, as children, which I really liked that I thought it was a nice ending that was very bittersweet. Jessika: Yeah. I thought so too. And the fourth and final story [00:13:00] of this volume is called Facade and it is about a woman named Rainey who we learn has been given a gift by the sun, God Ra, which makes her a metamorph. Meaning that she can change her physical appearance, physically change faces, skin, everything. But this also means that she no longer has a normal human appearance. Her skin is scaly and multicolored. Her hair has turned of violent shade of green and her face is withered and her nose is almost completely gone. We find Rainie living a very solitary life, getting a monthly disability check and only interacting with the worker assigned to her, but disability case she's depressed and has suicidal ideations. Probably the scariest part of the story is when an old friend who works for the same company that Rainey was working for, when Ra messed her up, who invites her to lunch, Rainie sucks it up, puts on a face literally and meets [00:14:00] at the restaurant. Where her entire face falls off into a plate of spaghetti. I don't, I don't know about you like that. I thought it was super terrifying. Mike: Yeah. I mean, it goes back to that very human emotion of seeing someone that you haven't seen forever. And you're trying to do as much as you can to make sure that they don't see that you've changed too much.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: You and I are at that age now where it's like, people from high school want to get in touch and we're all older. You know, some of us are. And so you see these people and you still want to seem like the person that they knew, because you don't want to, you don't want them to comment on how you've changed. You don't want to acknowledge it. And I read it as she'd been working for like the CIA or an intelligence agency because they call it “The Company.” They don't ever refer to it as anything else. Jessika: I think it was something of that nature kind of checking out sites, et cetera.  Mike: Yeah.[00:15:00] But yeah, and then the whole thing is that because she can change her body into elements. She's, she's a sidekick from the old Moetamorpho series in the sixties. I didn't really know much about her, but I did a little digging cause I couldn't remember a lot. And so Metamorpho is a DC hero who is part of the justice league and his whole thing is that he can't. Basically change his body into any element that he wants. And so that was the whole thing where she's talking about, oh, like it's not hard for me to change the color of my hair. I I just turned it into copper and, and then she basically grows a kind of silica over her face, but she was saying that after roughly a day it gets stiff and, it falls off. And unfortunately, that's what happened with her, at her lunch with her friend. Jessika: Yeah. it was definitely a bummer. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So of course, Rainey goes home crying where she has to break into her own house by melting the handle because she forgot her purse with her keys and breaks down crying. Death appears having been visiting one of Rainey's neighbors who fell off a stepladder and talks with Rainie, advising that she should [00:16:00] ask rah nicely to take away her gift, or at least giving us an option. She looks into the setting sun and becomes what I'm assuming is a pile of Ash. It looks like death didn't actually take her. So I'm not sure if Rainie is supposed to be just with the world. You know, just one with the world as it kind of seemed like she fear being  Mike: You know, I read it as like she was, she had her immortality taken away from her because she seemed so happy when she turned into, I don't know if it was ash or glass or something. It was kind of hard to tell what the art, and then it cracked and fell apart. And then Death answers the phone and says something along the lines of like, no, she, she can't come she's gone away or something to that effect. And, death isn't this cruel being or anything like that. I think death helped her move on. I'd like to think that she did. Jessika: Okay. Okay. Yeah. it was Fe usually. she like wanders away with the person [00:17:00] she's like low key reaping. Mike: Usually. Yeah. I don't know. I think maybe it was just a little bit, it, it was for the sake of narrative in this case,  Jessika: That's fair. That's fair.  Mike: But yeah. Urania was this, so her full name is Urania She was a side character for a few issues in Metamorpho's sixties series. And then she wound up basically giving herself the same powers that he had, and it was delivered via device called the Orb of RA. So it's really interesting because, Metamorpho is always a science character, because it's all about the elements of what he can turn himself into. But at the same time, there is in his background. is this like, you know, mystical quality to it. And so I liked that they kind of tapped into that mythology a little bit, and really they did a nice job with a character that I think most people had forgotten existed. Jessika: So, Mike, did You have a favorite [00:18:00] character part of the story? What did you dig from this?  Mike: This volume in particular, I really like, because it feels. Like a breather from the main narrative. And honestly, I think that's something that we needed because I mentioned last time, how I always am a little bit surprised at how dark the early stories are. They're very much horror stories with a little bit of fantasy kind of softening the blows a little bit, but there's a couple of moments in those first couple of volumes where I feel like I need to pack a flashlight. it's dark. but yeah, this collection is just, a much-needed change of pace just for a little bit. My least favorite story is the one with the cats. And it's not because I think it's bad. I just don't connect with it that much. Part of it is because we've got a rescue cat, we treat her better than the kids. Let's be honest. I can't fathom throwing kittens into a pond. It was just, it feels a little bit too mustache-twirly. You know, especially in this day and age where like, if people find out [00:19:00] about that you get tracked down on social media and just annihilate it. But it was cute. The whole bit where at the end, it's like, oh, it must be, it's dreaming, you know, it's chasing something and, you're like, oh, okay. Yeah. So it's, it's dreaming of hunting humans. Cool. Jessika: [laughs],  Mike: And it's funny, cause I was actually in a production of Midsummer Night's Dream when I first read this collection. So I loved everything about that specific issue. I loved how it tapped into fairy lore it showed this kind of weird, strange relationship with Titania and Oberon. And how absolutely sinister pock seemed not to mention how there's that dangling plot thread, where he basically gets loosed on earth afterwards  Jessika: mm.  Mike: I don't know. It's just, it's very different than any other portrayal I'd seen up until then. And, , it's interesting because they brought those characters specifically back in a number of different ways across the vertigo comics later on, like to Tanya actually had her origin explained in the Books of Faerie, which was in itself a series that [00:20:00] spun off of another comic that Neil Gaiman wrote called the Books of Magick, where eventually it's revealed that the main character from the Books of Magick, Tim Hunter, who was like the next great magician of the age, he's like our version of Merlin. It is very. They always leave it a little bit up in the air, but Titania''s his mother, because she was a human who was brought into the world of Fairie. And then eventually he got married to Oberon and then she had an affair with a human that was in service to Oberon.  Jessika: Okay.  Mike: She becomes a major part of the lore in her own right. Which I thought was really cool. And Puck shows up again later in the series. I, like I still squirm when I read that story of Calliope, especially where we are like sitting on the other side of me too, and the ongoing flood of stories about successful men in the arts, just being abusive, assholes to those who aren't as powerful as they are. Like when we're recording this, there's a whole flood of stories coming out of Activision [00:21:00] blizzard, if you're not in video games, they make Warcraft and a bunch of other stuff. it turns out that that was a really toxic place for women. And I spent almost a decade working in video games with various companies and yeah, it's not surprising, but it's just, these stories need to be told that at the same time, they're always super uncomfortable to read. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Um, yeah. And then, the facade story, I really liked, I really appreciate how gaming does this amazing job spinning out a story that's focused on loneliness and how harmful it is. and then I thought it was kind of neat that it arguably has a happy ending, though the main character dies. Jessika: Yeah. I can see that.  Mike: Same question back at you. What about you? Jessika: So, you know, I really enjoyed the cat story.  Mike: You don't say. Jessika: I did. I mean, I get it though. Like cats are, are super intense and honestly they make [00:22:00] me a little nervous. I heard some horror stories about cats, just going bananas on people and them just like getting super fucked up, like missing part of an ear and shit. Like I've heard some stories. That's just like a regular house cat. Oh, I don't think so  Mike: Well, and then you've met our cat. Jessika: Yeah. Well, yeah. You know that's but I don't, I didn't fear your cat right away. There are some cats I go into someone's house and I'm just like, oh, I got to watch my back.  Mike: We have a dog and a cat's body. Jessika: Yeah. Your cat's sweet.  Mike: No, she... she's fat and lazy and she knows who feeds her. So she's like, I'm good. I don't need to get out. I don't need to be now. Jessika: I'm strictly a dog household, so I just don't really truly get them to be honest with you. And I honestly, I'm kind of glad I have allergies as an excuse, not to have to get one. So did you have a favorite art moment in this volume? Like was there a panel or cover that really stood [00:23:00] out to you or hit you in some kinda way?  Mike: Yeah. That final sequence in the Midsummer issue, so that one was illustrated by Charles Vess and he's this really he's this artist that has this really beautiful illustration style that feels very old school storybook. Sarah loves this British artist named Arthur Rakim and Vess always kind of reminds me of his work, but the closing monologue by Puck is I gotta be at that closing monologue is kind of terrifying, especially with the way that it's illustrated. I also liked how this felt almost like, well, I mean, it was in certain ways, it was a sequel to men of good fortune, that issue that we talked about last time with Hob Gadling and the mortal that keeps on meeting up with Morpheus.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Yeah, you remember during, the last book club episode, how I mentioned that Sandman won the World Fantasy Award. Yeah. So it was for this issue specifically, you know, and then they got all grumpy about it and they [00:24:00] changed it so that you could no longer win a world fantasy award with a comic book. So. The only comic book to ever win a world fantasy award, Jessika: extra salty,  Mike: extra salty. Jessika: Hate to see it.  Mike: what about you? Like, I'm actually curious. What did you think about Vess's illustration style? Because we haven't seen, I don't think we've really seen much of his artwork in the series up until now. Jessika: We haven't, and that's actually this, this was my favorite art volume as well, or art issue as well. I mean, it just, it was beautiful. It used color in a really interesting way that went from playful to dark and serious. I mean, it just with the same type of illustration and the color would just change the whole.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Which was super cool just by adding shadows, moving the colors. Plus you got to love a good donkey head and you know, okay. I was musing and you have to go with me on this journey. They had to have used a taxidermied donkey's head. Right.  Mike: [00:25:00] No, they, I  Jessika: Please. Come on, come on, go with me on this journey.  Mike: Ugh no. Hmm.  Jessika: Ah,  Mike: Like, like that's a whole element in that American Horror Story series, like where  they make a mandatory by putting a bull's head on a dude. Like, no, no, Jessika: I am going horror with this one. Mike: Well, have fun going down that road. I'm not there with you. Jessika: Okay. Well, that's good. I suppose we are on volume four  Mike: I suppose  Jessika: Volume Four!. Alright.  Mike: What accent is that? Jessika: I don't know, I do a lot, don't I? Mike: A little bit?  Jessika: I think it's my 1920s.  Mike: Okay.  Jessika: I don't know. It's like my newscaster, I used to have an old-timey newscaster kind of an accent that I did.  And I think I'm combining, I'm combining my Virginia [00:26:00] Montgomery Prescott, the third Esquire.  Mike: It's, that so proper American that it's almost English kinda like that very Northeastern accent.  Yeah.  Jessika: Yes. Yeah.  Mike: Yeah. All right.  Jessika: All right. Volume four is titled season of the mists and came out between 1990 and 1991 and included issues 21 through 28. Story as always was written by Neil Gaiman and illustration was done by Kelly Jones, Malcolm Jones, the third Mike Drigenberg, Matt Wagner, Dick Giordano, George Pratt, and P Craig Russell. Volume four begins with our introduction to destiny. Ooh. While wandering his realm is visited by the fates, the three sisters that we have seen previously, the sisters inform him that he needs to call a [00:27:00] reunion of all his siblings of the eternal realm. So off, he goes to the family gallery where he goes up to each portrait of his sibling and they appear out of the portrait. When summoned the siblings are a mix of characters we have seen. And one that is new to this issue. Death who is told to change her outfit, even though no one else was, I thought that was kind of rude.  Mike: Yeah, Destiny's a stickler for formality. Jessika: Yeah. Well, the other one's got to wear nimble to CWA. They got to wear whatever  Mike: Hmm. Jessika: I, whatever. I don't know. It makes me angry. So don't tell women they have to change. They are not a distraction. Death has followed by Dream and then the twins, Desire and Despair, and lastly Delirium who we come to find out, used to be Delight. So during their reunion, desire calls out Dream's treatment of lovers who have spurned [00:28:00] him, leading him to ask for validation of his actions from Death. And Death instead agrees with. Prompting dream to plan, to travel to hell in order to remove queen nada from her torturous captivity, who was, that was the subject of their whole conversation.  Mike: Yeah. And we actually saw that whole story in the previous volume to  Jessika: Yes,  Mike: saw what happened to. Jessika: exactly. so destiny closes out the reunion basically stating that the actions that needed to be put into motion had been accomplished by dream deciding to go back to. hell.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: The next issue gives us a taste of what hell looks and feels like. So back in the dream realm, Dream is saying his goodbyes and makes a big announcement to those living in his realm. He tells them about Nada, how he had been unjust and how he had to rectify his actions and that he may not return as he is not on good terms with Lucifer. So [00:29:00] he sends Cain to Hell as a messenger to let loose for know that dream will be visiting whether he approves or not basically. So that was fun.  Mike: Well, he knows that he can't kill Cain because Cain is protected by the mark of Cain from, the Cain and Abel story. He knows about that.  Jessika: oh yeah. Yeah, for sure.  Mike: That's why dream sent Cain it's because he knows that Cain can't be killed. Jessika: Exactly. Exactly. Lucifer clearly is still really salty about being embarrassed. The last time dream was there and he makes an announcement to his, his demonic minions reminding them that he is the oldest and strongest bad-ass lets them know that dream will be returning and implies very strongly. That the day that Dream returns will be very memorable. Kane delivers the response to Dream. And on the last stop of his farewell tour, Dream also visits Hippolyta whose husband [00:30:00] was the pho dream king superhero thingy from one of the other stories while he was enslaved or, you know, captive.  Mike: Yeah. she and Hector the previous Doctor Fate were being used by Brute and Glob to basically create kind of like an island for them to operate outside of the dreaming the dreams of a kid who was being abused.  Jessika: Exactly.  Mike: And then, Dream is on her shit list because he sent her ghost of a husband on to wherever he got sent onto, but she was pregnant at the time. And so there's a connection between Dream and the baby because she carried the baby to term mostly in dreams, Jessika: Well, the baby was in gestation for like that, like 30, 30, 40 years or something more than that. I mean, it was like 60 years? I don't  remember how many it was like however long or  Mike: I,  Jessika: or was it just the kid timeframe? Mike: I think it was just the kid timeframe. So I think it was only for a couple of years, but still it was in gestation injuries for a long time compared to. Jessika: Oh, I can't even imagine [00:31:00] being pregnant once, let alone for like two years straight. Holy crap. And she was like really pregnant. That's not comfortable.  So Morpheus advises Hippolyta to take good care of the kid that had been gestating in the dream realm, because he will take it someday. So. Cool. Thanks, Dream. That's awesome.  Mike: Really endearing us to you, buddy. Jessika: Yeah. serious. Oh, he also gives her the name Daniels because she had kind of been struggling with a name for him.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: So that's the kid's name now? I guess. So Dream makes his way to hell anticipating a fight with Lucifer, but what He finds is an eerily empty hell with Lucifer in the process of locking all the gates. And when asked about this loose advises that he's, he's done, he's quitting and he is no longer the ruler of hell. He's freed everyone and everything that was locked up. And he's not really sure what happened to them or where they all went, whether it was to earth or other realms or what, but he just [00:32:00] knows they're no longer in hell Mike: Yeah. He likes straight up. Does not care.  Jessika: Oh, zero fucks. None.  Mike: They're his favorite kind of problem. Not his. Jessika: Then he goes, Yeah. think I'm bluffing. Hey, here's a knife. Why don't you cut off my wings? Just see, just, just go ahead and see. And, and Dream does. And then as a parting gift, he hands the key to hell Dream stating basically Like Hey, this is your problem now. Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: that's some high-level trolling.  Mike: Dream was prepared for just about every outcome except that one. It is. Jessika: Exactly. We are then introduced to Oden who travels to the cavern where Loki is being held captive and has been enduring an eternity of torture until Ragnarok, the end times in which the Asgardian realms would be destroyed. Odin [00:33:00] frees low-key from his situation and asks him to help him as he wants to take over the Hell situation since Lucifer abdicated and Loki agrees to help, then we cut back to dream because he's not really sure what to do. So he calls on his sister death for advice. And she has like, no time. First of all, she has no time for him in that issue. She's like, what do you need? I'm super busy. She pretty much says, this is your problem. Also, he knows things are going to go down and he hides, frustrated his castle basically. And then he just starts getting visited by all these different parties, all wanting the keys to hell. So you have the Asgardians, Azazzle and a demon Envoy who're like “That's my house. I just want to live in my house again.” Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Yeah. Anubis and Bastet who are like, yo, [00:34:00] you know, who does a good job with death with underworlds let me show you.  Mike: it's a really eclectic mix of mythological figures because you also have. The Lords of chaos and order send their envoys, Shivering Jemmy from the Lords of chaos who... I really like her. I think she's a great,  Jessika: did too.  Mike: and then the Lords of order send their representative and it's a cardboard box that basically spits out ticker tape  and  Jessika: Which  Mike: And, then you get the elves, a ferry at one point. And they have, a really unique proposition, which is that the lands of Faerie had a tie to hell where every seven years they had to send over a certain number of , their best and brightest as a sacrifice. And they wanted, basically begging dream, not to let hell reopen. Jessika: And we did. We establish that That was still a thing when all the other shit went down.  Mike: That specific deal? Jessika: yeah.  Mike: Oh yeah. It's still a deal. And actually, that was a whole thing in the books of [00:35:00] magic. They have a whole thing with ferry and hell going into conflict with each other, because I think it has been almost 20 years since I read this last. But if I remember right, it was, I think Faerie refused to pay the tithe anymore anymore. And as a result, they basically straight up, went to war with hell. and it was, oh man, it was cool. I remember liking that storyline. I don't remember it enough to really talk about it a lot though, because it's  been so long.  But it's, it's good. It's in one of the collected volumes of the Books of Magick that they did, they only collected the first 50 issues, 50 through 75 aren't collected anywhere. Jessika: Hmm.  Hmm. So we also had Suzan O No Mikto  Mike: Yes.  Jessika: Oh, and a couple of angels who were there just to be voyeurs to the situation  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: and Dream finally lets them into the castle. [00:36:00] After he stopped sulking and he advises that he'll be hosting a banquet and having accommodation set up and they could discuss the key to the realm the next day, basically. And we start seeing the consequences of hell's release through a boys boarding school where one solitary boy is staying over during the holidays while his father, as a prisoner of war in Kuwait  and all hell returns. When boys and staff who used to attend the school, start to show back up  Mike: yeah. Jessika: Along with the headmasters previously deceased mother.  Mike: Yes. It's... that issue. It's really interesting because I really didn't like it originally. And I've come to appreciate it more because it feels like a very Gothic or story kind of like the Hunting of Hill House from Netflix.  Jessika: I can see that. Yeah.  Mike: yeah.  Jessika:  It was wild.  Like all of them had reasons that they were in hell.  Mike: Yeah. That [00:37:00] issue is really interesting and it's really weird because it's drawn by Matt Wagner, who has a very interesting style. All of his own Wagner himself is famous for creating a couple of different characters on his own. Like he created a character called the Grendel, who is this assassin and wound up becoming a cult property, had a long run with Dark Horse, if I remember right. But this story in season at the mist is really creepy because the whole thing is that the dead are coming back to earth and all sorts of unexpected ways. And then there were a bunch of boys who were really awful, Who come back and they start tormenting Charles, because he's the only living soul there. And he's also, you know, he's a sweet, sensitive little kid, like who is just an easy target for people like that. And the thing is, is like, that was me when I was at that age was I was that sensitive kid who was just an easy target for bullies. And so it was really hard to read it when I was younger. And, I've got a little different perspective now, [00:38:00] but it's, still tough. Anyway, go on. Jessika: Oh, that's okay. So yeah, Charles, unfortunately, he got tortured by that trio of boys. And apparently those boys had murdered another school boy as an offering to Lucifer. So joke's on them, the offering didn't save them from the torture of damnation,  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: so Charles ends up being physically tortured and then starves to death. And his only companion was that other boy who had been killed on the premises that boy, that, those,  that trio allegedly sacrificed. Edwin. Yeah. So death rolls up to pick them up and Charles says “Yeah, no thanks. I'm gonna hang out with, uh, Edwin and deaths. Like you don't, I don't, I don't have time for this. Like literally every one is coming back. Like I literally don't have time. I will come back for you.  Mike: I loved that she was in early nineties, jogging paraphernalia, like  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: I thought it was fantastic. Jessika: was ready for it.  Mike: [00:39:00] I may be misremembering this, but I thought it was really funny how it was like, I think it was like pink and purple too. Like it was very colored. Jessika: I think it did have some color to it.  Yeah. Oh, funny. So back in the dream realm, two more guests from the theory realm, those two that we had talked about, they arrive and the banquet in. And each of the guests eats and drinks, their desire delicacies, cause , poof we're in dreamland and shenanigans ensued due to the differences of the attendees. And one by one, they basically corner Morpheus requesting a private conversation and he provides each of them with a signal stadium that he'll meet with them after the banquet and entertainment have concluded Cain and Abel show up as the entertainment we're able dies,by being cut in half and then being made into sausage in a magic act  Mike: which. That is a, that is a recurring theme with Cain and Abel in, in the Sandman comics.  Jessika: Yeah, I've noticed.  Mike: But, [00:40:00] Cain was the host of another horror series called the house of misery. And he always had this kind of macabre sort of sense of humor. I know Abel eventually showed up in the house mystery series. I don't know if Cain murdered him every time. I wouldn't be surprised. Jessika: Fair enough. So this is this tracks apparently, each of the guests go off to their respective quarters to wait to be summoned. And they each go to Morpheus, either offering something they think he would want or threatening him in order to turn over control the key to hell. And he advises each one of them that he will announce his decision in the morning. And once in the privacy of his own quarters, he ruminates on the pressure of the weight of his responsibility that was dropped on him.  Mike: Yeah. What was your favorite bargaining tactic? I've got mine. I'm curious about yours. Jessika: I didn't like the whole trading people thing. I don't know. Cause they were all so good in different ways. Like order and chaos were both really interesting to me. I think chaos just being like, [00:41:00] we will find you  Mike: Chaos was my favorite Jessika:  I was going to say like, but Shivering Jemmy was just so funny to begin with.  Mike: Well,  Jessika: was just such an interesting.  Mike: you know, they play, they play with this a lot because, Dr. Fait is one of the Lords of order, DC comic books. And so there's always been this presentation that, order is, the right way to go. And what I kind of enjoyed is that this very much embodies, no order is a dull little box in chaos is chaos. It's not what you expect. And so they send this, hobo girl with a red balloon and  Jessika: like, uh, like a clown face.  Mike: yeah, and she's like, speeding. Almost like toddler English, like it's much younger phrasing than you would expect from a kid who looks like they're 10 or 11. And then, turns into this monstrous thing, delivering ungodly threats to the Lord of dreams. And then, you know, it turns back into the little kid again, after when it was like,[00:42:00] byeeeee. Yeah, I can get behind this. Jessika: So good. She just ate ice cream for dinner too, which I loved.  Mike: Oh yeah. It was so good. I, again, I think she shows up in the books of magic later on, but I can't remember for that one. Jessika: That's amazing. So I really did like her as a character.  Mike: it was good. Jessika: So the next morning. As Morpheus, still struggles to decide to whom he will grant the key. He is visited by the voyeur angels who tell him they have a message for him from the creator who dictates that the two angels will now run hell and guess what guys, you're not allowed back to the silver city Remiel. Oh, Remiel was not happy about this situation. He did not take this well.  Mike: No, he did not it was very much implied that he was about to rebel, like Lucifer. Jessika: Yup. He's like fuck the shit. [00:43:00] Why do I have to go down there? And he had that. He was like, this is your fault. I was like, whoa, damn, you need to go calm down. Your silent homie is not the enemy. there was some salt. This issue.  So Morpheus hands over the key after Remiel takes a chill pill and Morpheus still has the task of telling the other as the outcome of his decision and lets them know the decision was really made for him that if the creator of hell wanted angels to run it, who was he to decide differently from what the creator of that thing wanted to do with it. And most of his guests took this. Okay. I liked orders response of this? This is logical.  Mike: Yeah. And then chaos is like, man, it's fine. We just didn't want order to get it. It's fine. Whatever. Jessika: Exactly.  Mike: And then  Jessika: was even better.  Mike: doesn't she give Morpheus her balloon afterwards?  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: Yeah, I thought that was great Jessika: She's like, oh, well,  I didn't really want this anyway. [00:44:00] but Azazel was especially upset about this whole situation  Mike: Embodiment of bitter party of one. Jessika: Yes. yes. Table for one. Absolutely. And he pretty much said that he was going to consume the souls of Nada as well as his companions from hell, because he had actually kidnapped her.  Mike: Yeah, and we should note that one of his companions from hell was actually, the demon who had Morpheus's helm before. it was a honied offer of him sitting there and saying, well, I will give you the woman that you're searching for, but then I'll also let you enact punishment of this guy who challenged you and to make you look bad in front of all of hell. Jessika: That makes sense. I was kind of wondering why he was like, why would he care about this one, dude? But that makes way more sense. I forgot about that, dude.  Mike: Yep.  Jessika: There's a lot. There's a lot to remember in this.  Mike: You know, I can't remember everything and I've read this series multiple times. It's a dense story. And I always feel like. I probably caught things before, but, I always [00:45:00] find things that I feel like I'm discovering for the first time with each reread. Jessika: Oh, that's so cool. I'm so glad I picked up the trade paperbacks.  Mike: Yeah. I'm glad that you, I'm glad you're spearheading this. This is a really fun series to talk about. Jessika: Thank you. So Azazel tells Morpheus, basically, I'm going to consume the souls of Nada and my other companion, unless Morpheus could jump into the abyss of space of teeth,  the abyss of his Azazel's teeth, which he's just like space with teeth. Like that's what he is.  Mike: And eyes.. Jessika: And eyes. Yeah, that's right. He does have eyes too, but he's just like a bunch of Maltz mostly. Yeah. So Morpheus does it. He does the thing and jumps in, finds them, captures his Azazel  after he tries to go back on his word of letting them go. If he'd have found his company. And then asks his Raven friend, Matthew, to tell Nada that he needs to talk with her because he has some apologizing to do,  Mike: Mm Jessika: The inhabitants of hell [00:46:00] begun to return as the new angel leaders look on and dream meets with nada and makes a pitiful attempt at half-apology and Nada slaps him and in doing so extracts an actual apology, which it shouldn't take that much. But Dream seems to realize how he's in the wrong.  Although he almost immediately negates that understanding by once again, asking her to be the queen of the dream realm.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Bro. She was, and she was like, bro, we've done this already. I don't want to do this. I already said no to you once. And  I meant it.  Mike: I really appreciate that gaming does not make dream this infallible being, he very much shows like, no, he is. A flawed dude  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: and he doesn't always get things immediately. Jessika: Yeah, That was really interesting. [00:47:00] That piece of it, I mean, dream has to concede, but he he basically says, let's go discuss your future.  Mike: yeah,  Jessika: Which is really neat, cause he's taken her whole life away and, and then some, and he's in a, he's a negative said this blank she's for thousands of years been tortured in hell. Like how do you even make that up?  Mike: Exactly. And that was actually something that I was curious about the first time I read it, I'm like, how do you make this right? cause that's, that is so much red in the ledger. Jessika: That's What I was thinking too. It's like, oh, okay, well, what are you going to do now, dude, aspire flowers and be like, well, babe,  Mike: What about you chocolates? I only ate half of them. Jessika: right? It's Valentine's day it's. This is what we do. Right. So, so Loki who was supposed to have been taken back to his cave of acid dripping wonder  Mike: His torture cave, Jessika: his torture cave with a snake and a woman. And torture.  Mike: where he is [00:48:00] bound in the entrails of his own son and his wife catches venom dripped from a snake's fang. And then occasionally when she empties the cup, that's catching the phenom. It causes him to shake the earth and agony. And that's why we get earthquakes. Norse mythology is a thing.  Jessika: Yes. And so Loki though has switched places, the little trickster he is with Suzano No-Ol-Mikoto who was sent back to the cavern to be forever tortured, which is rough. He didn't do anything. And then he tries to cut a deal with dream, to not get them sent back.  Mike: he, he does like, he actually cuts a deal with him. Jessika: I mean, he does cut a deal He does, which. Guy, are you at least get a, go get the other homie from the blade? He doesn't, he doesn't even go other homes. Mike: yeah, he does  Jessika: like he does.  Mike: Yeah, he does. He says what I'll do is, as I will, I will basically create , an illusion of you in that tormented space.  Jessika: Okay. I must have missed that part because I  was just like guy. [00:49:00]  Mike: it's a throwaway line. It's he basically sits there and he says like, but if I do that, you owe me a favor.  Jessika: Okay. I mean, I got that part of it. I was like, you're getting out of this, but like, whoa,  Mike: I have a lot of favorite moments in this, in this volume, but that was one of my favorites where dream asks him and he's like, why did you choose Susano No O Mikoto, but Loki basically just says, yeah, I just really don't like thunder gods. And I was like,  Jessika: Which all  Mike: also I love how much of just a turd Thor is throughout the entire time that he appears he's such a gross dude.  Like there's  Jessika: gross.  Mike: the bit where he's trying to hit on bass and he's like, do you want to touch my hammer? It gets bigger when you play with it. I'm like, blech Jessika: it was so bad. And that he's just trashed. He's just like,Ugh.  Mike: Well, I think bast actually scratches up his face too, which I thought was great.  Jessika: Yup. Yup. Mike: but it's funny because I read this in the nineties, give or take my only exposure to Thor in comic [00:50:00] books before that had been Thor, the superhero, and this was such a wildly different take on him. I was like, this is amazing cause Thor was awful and mythology. Jessika: Yeah. Oh Yeah. there were definitely some, questionable stories that I have read. Yes.  Mike: Anyway, I really enjoyed that.  Jessika: yeah. So we also find out that Nuala that was one of the two ferries is being left in the dream realm, even though the ferry deal was not the one that panned out her bros, just like, see ya. I, I wasn't ever supposed to bring you back. You're staying regardless.  Mike: Yeah. You're, a gift from the court to dream.  Jessika: Which, and he's just like, okay. And he's like, oh, by the way, I don't dig glamour here. So you can just drop the glitz. You're glimmering right now. And then she's just this little petite, mousy hair, smaller elf looking, which, you know what I did not, I didn't like the whole idea that, she had to be, [00:51:00] that,  That she felt like she had to glamour to begin with. And that, that was a whole thing.  Mike: I don't know what part of mythology it is, but, but one of the European pieces of mythology is that the elves have an ability to wrap themselves in illusion. in that they're actually these kinds of weird, gross little things. So that, that was tying into kind of the European folklore. But yeah, it's a thing. I don't remember if she shows up in later issues. I think she does, but I don't remember. Jessika: I mean, that would suck to just be like, by the way you live in the dream realm now oh and we're never featuring you again. Double rough.  Mike: yeah,  Jessika: Yeah. So after dream is like, nah, you gotta be you, boo. He goes and puts not a soul into a newborn child basically. So it's assumed that she will get to live the life that dream took from her so many centuries ago.  Mike: Yeah. He basically, he, he gives her the opportunity to live life again, kind of wiping the slate clean, which is, mean, let's be honest. That's probably the best offer that [00:52:00] he can give her. Jessika: He also puts her in a male body, which like, talk about like leveling up,  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Come on. You're already doing better. Mike: Yeah. And then he has that really nice moment where he says something along the lines of I will remember you and love you matter what body wear. And you will always be welcome in the dream realm. I have my quibbles with, with Dream, especially with this whole storyline. But I feel like that was arguably the best solution he could have come up with. Jessika: Oh I agree. Yeah, when I did see that, that was the solution. I mean, you can't provide somebody with multiple lifetimes, but you can take away the pain of knowing that that happened and provide them with a new life that you don't interfere with. I thought it was a good, a good deal. I guess. All things considered.  Mike: Yeah. Jessika: We then cut to Lucifer, wingless, chilling on a beach, looking at the sunset where he is approached by an older man who walks [00:53:00] over and make small, talk about the sunset with him and stay till, see him tomorrow. If he's still there and Lucifer admitting that the sunset is actually really beautiful, goddammit and giving some credit to the creator. And we end the volume with the two new leaders of hell going around and making quote unquote changes  Mike: yeah. Jessika: the way things are. Basically, they're still going to be torture, but it's supposed to be phrased differently as a rehabilitation, but the angels don't quite understand the meaning of the tortures of hell, which makes it even worse.  Mike: Yeah. It's so uncomfortably abusive where they're like, no, we're doing this because we love you. And one day you'll thank us for it. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: you're just like, woo.  Jessika: It's it was a gross abuser situation.  Mike: Yeah. And then there's that bit where one of the souls is like, no, you don't understand that makes it worse. Jessika: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Oh Yeah. And unfortunately the angels start to embrace their [00:54:00] roles in the endless pain and suffering.  Mike: Yeah. And that's actually, that's something that is, brought back to the forefront in Lucifer, the series that Mike Carey wrote in the late nineties to early odds, which I've talked about this before, but like that series is also, I think just as good as Sandman. It's really great, we also see a lot of pantheons of different gods getting pulled into Lucifer's machinations and there's a whole thing where he makes things difficult for the angels running hell. Jessika: Oh, I'm excited to see it  Mike: It's very good. Jessika: Well what were your overall impressions of the story and who were your favorite or least favorite characters or events of this?  Mike: It's actually hard to sit there and talk about just a couple of favorite moments because I really love this collection. I loved it when I first read it. I still love it. I love the strange sadness of the overall story and the original takes on the gods. And also, I really love the twist that heaven takes over [00:55:00] the running of hell. We talked about how I really enjoyed Dream kind of, spoiling the plot twist about Loki, having switched places with Susano. And, I really soured on Dream as a character in these early issues over time. I dunno it, like, when I read this as a kid, I was like, oh, okay. He feels bad about his actions. And is going to rescue this woman that he loves from hell and now I'm like, motherfucker, you put her in hell. And she details how awful her time there was like, come on, dude, you condemned her there for millennia just because she wouldn't marry you?Like, get fucked. Jessika: And then you said, I guess I did something bad if that's how you feel.  Mike: it wasn't even, you didn't even come to this realization  on your own. You had to be told by multiple people that you fucked up. Like a mediocre white guy in his thirties, you sat there and dug your heels and went no, no. Well,  maybe Jessika: “I don't think that's right.”  Mike: maybe. All right, fine. [00:56:00] It's like, whatever, Jessika: Oh, no.  Mike: like that. I'm coming down harsher on dream than you are. Jessika: No, but that's how I felt about it too. I mean, you're just doing all the work. I'm just going to sit back and ride this ride because I'm like, I'm there with you, but I'm like passenger seat. I'm chilling. Like I don't need to be the navigator. We have maps now we have Google maps. It's fine.  Mike: I'm sitting there swinging my arms and getting all mad and getting the cardio. Jessika: Oh yeah. And I'm doing the pumping our movement of the trucks next to me. You know, I'm just along for this ride. No, I agree. He's a shit heel and a lot of these, and I'm like, I have had more than a few moments where I think to myself, how am I supposed to feel about this character? But then I think to myself, no, that's a good character. But then I think to myself, no: That's a good character. That's a good character, because that means it's complex. It's more realistic because that's what people.  Mike: Yeah. To be honest, he is that privileged male character who has never had to really stop and think about his [00:57:00] actions really not have things go his way.  And we are now at the part of tonight's program where we are finding out after having fucked around for a while. Jessika: Fucked around so hard. So Well, I really enjoyed the banquet and I really liked the different interactions between the different mythologies and how they behaved and what they ate. And it was really funny, but I also thought it was very thoughtful. In the way that it was done. And similarly with the way that each party had a different way and signal to meet with dream, it just really showed his understanding and empathy by adapting to each of his guests needs.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: Or perhaps he's just used to doing this for each individual's dreams.  Mike: Well, it's a little bit open to interpretation because in other episodes you see his appearance changed. Like there was, you know, he was Meowpheus. Jessika: Yep.  Mike: So my take on him is that his appearance. Doesn't change. It's just, we [00:58:00] perceive them in different ways. And because we are, you know, people reading the story, we are seeing him in his siblings manifest as people.  Jessika: That's very astute, sir.  Mike: But yeah, I mean, like you looked at like the different art styles that came into play when he was meeting with the different gods. And I mean, I, I still think about how doesn' het have like a tea ceremony with Suzano when they're, when they're talking. And then I feel like it's much darker and moodier when he meets with Odin. And then again, the art style changes again when he meets with Bast.  Jessika: Yeah. Well, speaking of art, did you, did you have a favorite art moment in this volume?  Mike: Yeah. okay. So you remember how last time we talked about how I have this, one defining moment where in Men of Good Fortune hob has these three panels where his face changes?  Yeah. There's a couple of different images throughout the series that I always just kind of have pop up in my head when I think about it. And one of them is from this volume and it's the bit where he's inside a Zazzle and [00:59:00] he's like prying open the mouse and the empty space and he's floating around it feels kind of more traditionally action comic booky, and the way that it's drawn, that's not a bad thing. It's just, for some reason it feels that way. And I, I think it's really good. and I also really liked how at the end of it, he reveals that he is trapped. Azazel in a jar. It's very in keeping with how Gaiman would resolve conflict in ways that could be a giant battle, but instead they're very clever. , it was like when they had the battle between him and Dr.Destiny, and then afterwards you get the field of white and then it turns out he's just sitting in the Palm of dream's hand. Jessika: Yes. Yeah.  Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: So good.  Mike: I'm curious, you're approaching this with fresh eyes because this is the first time you've read through this. So I'm wondering, do you have the same moments or are they different? Jessika: I actually thought Morpheus had a lot of really good billowing robe moments.  Mike: Yes. Jessika: Like, I mean, they didn't have, I think they may have had like one semi-full page of like a billowy robes situation. But there were quite a few shots of him, like floating into [01:00:00] hell and he was just making an entrance  Mike: yeah. I was just thinking that Jessika: here for it. Yeah.  Mike: he's got his helm  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: the bit where  Jessika: dressed up. This is the met gala. He is here.  Mike: Yes. And then what I really liked about that was there's that moment where Lucifer is like, are you afraid of me? And more visas? Like, yes. And I'm like, all right. Not, your difficult comic book. All right. Cool. Jessika: Just being real between you and I. Absolutely.  Mike: That was great. Jessika: Yeah. So I really like, again, to your point about what you really enjoyed was the kind of feeling of movement of probably him floating through space and having that action feeling. That's what I really liked about the billowy ropes. Was it just, I could almost see them moving,  and I could feel the movement of him floating down, which was so neat. Yeah. Well, let's move along to our brain wrinkles. [01:01:00]  Mike: All right. Jessika: So this is the one thing comics or comic-related. That has just been sticking in our noggin since the last time we spoke. So, what is it for you?  Mike: Well, Sarah and I had our anniversary this week, and she got me this really cool book called American Comic Book Chronicles, the 1990s by Jason Sachs and Keith Dallas. Do you remember those American century books from time life? They were those prestige format  photo history books, and they would document major moments in America and world history from across the 20th. Jessika: I do. Yup.  Mike: I feel like every school library had a complete volume.  Jessika: Exactly.  Mike: So this is like that except for Comics. And so it's really cool. And nobody should be surprised at this point to hear that I particularly love comics from the eighties and nineties. And as I'm reading through this book, it's reminding me about how absolutely insane the early nineties were when it came to the comic book industry and [01:02:00] also just comic collecting in general. So I think we're going to have to do an episode where we talk about something related to that topic sooner or later, probably sooner. it has been rattling around my head for the past couple of days where I just reread I've read the stuff that some of it, I knew some of it I didn't and all of it's insane. Jessika: well, let's definitely talk sooner rather than later, because let's go back to childhood.  Mike: All right. You talked me into it. We're going to do a nineties episode at some point. It's fine. FINE! Jessika: Twisted his arm. There's no violence on this podcast. I'm a pacifist. God dammit.  Mike: Uh, but yeah, that's me. What about you? Jessika: Well, Mike, you told me about the podcast Bitches on Comics, which, okay. I'm not going to lie to you. I've binged the first 45 episodes since you told me about it less than a week ago, you haven't, it hasn't been a week.  Mike: I can't remember. I know it's been about a week. [01:03:00] I really like that show. Jessika: It's been about a week. Okay. It's so good. And they have their, I mean, they're very queer, which are, you know, a hundred percent I'm here for, and I got to tell you, they,  Mike: Like more queer fans of comic books. Oh, no. Jessika: Oh, no. Well, and they have this thing in there where they're. There aren't a lot of queer podcasts about comic books and I'm like, wait, we're here now, here we are. Pick us.  Mike: Yeah, exactly. I'm like, oh, can we come talk to, you want to have us on, or do you want to come on our show? Like, whatever you want to talk about, it's fine.  Jessika: I, will awkwardly approach them with my bag lunch and ask if I can sit with them.  Mike: Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. They're great. their Mojo episode, I thought was really interesting and I wound up tweeting with them for a little while because they pointed out that there really aren't many characters like mojo. And I think I made a good point with him. I mentioned how Superman's bill and Mr. Mxyzptlk might be another equivalent character[01:04:00] where he's all about throwing shit up in the air and, disrupting everything but no, they, they were great. Jessika: So good. Well, they, in episode three, they introduced me to the novel, the refrigerator monologues, which delves into the, the idea of women in comics being fridged or killed just for entertainment sake, or to drive a plot narrative, or to make the, the main hero sad, or, basically as a plot tool and the refrigerator monologues delves into it as first-person accounts of female superheroes and how they had been used. And I went and listened to it because you can find it. I kept it on hooplah actually. So I listened to it for free and it was an audiobook.  It was very, very good. And he talked about them not having autonomy or storylines of their own. it got me thinking about the way that we write characters and who we are allowed to succeed in [01:05:00] any given situation. I don't know, I just, I highly recommend this book and I highly recommend listening to Bitches on Comics because they have got me just like thinking about shit.  Mike: Yeah, you and I should talk about a Hawk and Dove from DC in the 1980s and how they just did the most egregious fringing of Dove in a 1991 crossover in a way that was really bad. it's one of those things where I still talk about it. I've been talking about it for 20 years because it's so wild. Jessika: Man. Well.I guess we'll have a really uplifting conversation about that later. I'm sure I'm going to have no zero opinions about that.  Mike: No. Jessika: I tell you, I commit now. No opinions. I can't commit to that. Everyone knows I'm

Please join Bennet Pomerantz on Thursday June 25 at 4EST 3CST 2MT 1PST when he welcomes author Deena Remiel to the show. For more information about being a guest on the show go to https://www.marshacaspercook.com/    

After taking a couple weeks vacation, we're back! Susie and her guest Jenn discuss this whirlwind episode that includes meeting Lucifer's and Amenidiel's sister Remiel, Maze and Linda at Lamaze, Lucifer and Ella visiting a nudist colony, and of course, the infamous Orgy Pants. Intro Music "King of the Broken Hearts"by XTaKeRX on the Free Music Archive

Looks like Julian’s father wasn’t happy, because an innocent man is blamed for Lucifer crippling his Son. Can Lucifer keep is emotions in check as he’s faced with somebody so deserved of punishment?! He does, but unfortunately his wings tell a different tale. Chloe visits the prison Father, and Ella and Dan seem to not want to do much ‘talking’. Lastly, we get Remiel vs Amenadiel! The fight of the episode! Will Maze find somebody to connect to? Let’s keep watching! Hosting tonight is Tehran Von Ghasri, Roxy Striar, and Stephen Lemieux! Lucifer is BACK! Cancelled but not for long! Thank god for netflix, and thank god for AfterBuzz TV, because WE'RE BACK TOO! Covering the latest episodes of Lucifer! Join us every episode for in depth discussion and breakdowns! There may even be some special guests so be sure to subscribe rate and comment! ABOUT LUCIFER: Lucifer is an American television series created by Tom Kapinos that is scheduled to premiere on Fox on January 25, 2016. It is a very loose adaptation of the comic book character created by Neil Gaiman for the comic book series The Sandman and its spin-off comic book series Lucifer written by Mike Carey, both published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Looks like Julian’s father wasn’t happy, because an innocent man is blamed for Lucifer crippling his Son. Can Lucifer keep is emotions in check as he’s faced with somebody so deserved of punishment?! He does, but unfortunately his wings tell a different tale. Chloe visits the prison Father, and Ella and Dan seem to not want to do much ‘talking’. Lastly, we get Remiel vs Amenadiel! The fight of the episode! Will Maze find somebody to connect to? Let’s keep watching! Hosting tonight is Tehran Von Ghasri, Roxy Striar, and Stephen Lemieux! Lucifer is BACK! Cancelled but not for long! Thank god for netflix, and thank god for AfterBuzz TV, because WE'RE BACK TOO! Covering the latest episodes of Lucifer! Join us every episode for in depth discussion and breakdowns! There may even be some special guests so be sure to subscribe rate and comment! ABOUT LUCIFER: Lucifer is an American television series created by Tom Kapinos that is scheduled to premiere on Fox on January 25, 2016. It is a very loose adaptation of the comic book character created by Neil Gaiman for the comic book series The Sandman and its spin-off comic book series Lucifer written by Mike Carey, both published by DC Comics' Vertigo imprint. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app · The Colin and Samir Podcast: The Colin and Samir Podcast hosted by LA - based friends and filmmakers Colin and Samir takes a look into what it’s like to make creativity your career. https://open.spotify.com/show/5QaSbbv2eD4SFrlFR6IyY7?si=Dj3roVoJTZmOime94xhjng

The team reconvenes to meet Remiel and figure out how to fix them. To do that, they still have to confront Sage once and for all and recover the Mind's Eye scrolls. Sage might be convinced to go quietly, but what's going to become of her once she does? CAST Sally Chan - Azure Storm Charlotte Elena - Pushpin Ray Goldberg - GM Noa Heinrich - Roxie Rapid Matthew Marquez - Dreamdancer Megan Scharlau - Project Ares Delta SOUNDTRACK Theme music by Riley Allen, rileyallen59.wixsite.com/music "8bit Dungeon Level", "Sapphire Isle", "Industrial Cinematic", and "Unlight" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Learn more about Masks: A New Generation at http://www.magpiegames.com/masks/! Follow Tabletop Potluck on Facebook and Twitter Support the show at patreon.com/tabletoppotluck

Remiel visits Lucifer, Hippolyta's loss of her son sends her into a world of madness and myth, Carla visits Rose Walker, and Dream completes a project.

Verschiedene Gedanken und Überlegungen zum Engel Remiel. Viele Infos dazu auf https://wiki.yoga-vidya.de/Remiel. Aus welchem Kontext stammt Remiel ? Was könnte die heutige Bedeutung sein von Engel Remiel ? In welcher Religionsgemeinschaft spielt Remiel eine wichtige Rolle? Engel findet man gerade in den monotheistischen Religionen. Das Göttliche hat viele Aspekte. Was in polytheistischen Religionen die Götter … „Remiel – Name eines Engels“ weiterlesen

About the Author: Deena Remiel is an Arizona author of paranormal romance, urban and dark fantasy, and romantic suspense. She also teaches language arts to middle schoolers. She belongs to RWA national and the Desert Rose Chapter of RWA, where there are outstanding people writing fabulous stories. She grew up in Philadelphia, home of the most amazing cheese steaks, soft pretzels, and the Liberty Bell. Arizona called to her spirit and tempted her husband with much better weather! They moved the family, and the rest is history, or the present, as the case may be. ABOUT THE BOOK:  Angel Rising  Hannah Livingston has the most infamous stalker that ever existed- Satan. She spent her sixth birthday with the Brethren, fighting an apocalyptic war that sent the Dark Prince back to Hell, and the rest of her life wondering if he’d be back for her soul someday. She needn’t wonder any longer. Gabriel Seeker, Brethren Protector, spends his days and nights rescuing kids from sex traffickers and protecting their lives from further damage. He knows all too well the nightmarish world they’ve been stolen into, and it’s gotten harder to keep secret his own past horrors. Hannah and Gabriel have always gotten along, first as friends, then as co-workers. She manages his life and he protects hers. A perfect, symbiotic relationship, so it would seem, until suppressed feelings for each other surface and forever change the landscape of their lives. Stricken with PTSD, the determined angel seeks to protect the woman he loves from Satan’s greedy and insidious clutches. Deceit and seduction, desire and repression, collide in this epic, immortal story of love, duty, and sacrifice.

This will be the first official coffee shop show series: Escape the Grind. We will be talking to Deena Remiel at the newer Coffee Rush - Located in Gilbert, Arizona on the North-East corner of Val Vista & Elliot - 53 N. Val Vista Dr., Ste 100 Gilbert, AZ 85234 It was the mystique of Arizona’s history and landscape that called to Deena and catapulted her career as an author. When she’s not writing romance and urban fantasy in the wee small hours of the morning or in the deep, dark of night, Deena teaches language arts to middle school students. She currently lives in Gilbert, Arizona with her husband and two children, but New Jersey will always tug at her heartstrings. She believes in angels and loves connecting with her fans, so find her at deenaremiel.com. Deena Remiel Serving up evil and oh, so good... INTERNATIONAL BEST-SELLING KINDLE AUTHOR of GOTHIC ROMANCE Co-chair, Arizona Dreamin' ~ 30 May-1 June, 2014 arizonadreaminevent.com Website: deenaremiel.com Blogger at: paranormalromantics.blogspot.com

"Oh my God: you GUYS!"; Scott sports vomit; Merlin raises a Predator; Scott has a hair theory about ladies who sing; Merlin calls for a National Day of Goatee Reconsideration; Adam moves into the nascent pubic wig vertical; The Boys crave new custom uniforms; Rocket Scientists come up with stuff; Carnation goes to @Remiel.