In general – if you ask a member of the public to think about how Angels look – they will tend to talk of wings, halo’s and harps, just imagine then how surprised they might be to discover that originally Angels were depicted as having horns!
Horns have for a long time been considered a sign of holiness – cross culturally – and this was no different in the ancient Christian communities. As a result of this both Saints and Angels were originally depicted as being horned and many woodcuts – used to decorate Bibles and various other forms of iconography – can still be found depicting this. As well as this very old pictures of Angels have been discovered to have been painted over – the original horns replaced with halo’s – lending further evidence to this truth.
Why then – you might ask – the change of depiction? Well sources suggest that when Christianity came to the British Isles a concerted effort was mounted to convert the Pagan population by associating their “horned gods” with the Christian Devil! Suddenly the Devil – who had only ever been described in the Bible as either a fallen Angel or serpent – was described as bering horned, casting a cloud over the nature and origin of the ancient Gods that the simple Pagan people had worshipped! Over night the Saints and Angels – usually depicted as horned – where represented as being haloed – something which in itself may have originated from clairvoyant perception of the concentration of spiritual energy around the higher chakras of the spiritually awoken and evolved.
In fact if you research the original images associated with Angels – mentioned in the Old Testament of the Bible and some of the more ancient Christian texts in other sects and Christian religions you will discover that the Angels are always depicted in rather an elemental way. As twirling tornadoes of fire, as trees and serpent, multi winged whirlpools crowned in light! Far more representative of the elements of the world than the humanised manifestations later depicted in art and described in the Bible.
So what can we conclude from this insight? If nothing else surely the fact that the Angels are universal spirits that belong to no one culture but which are related to all manifestations of the divine, forged from the building blocks of reality – the elements themselves!
