Guardian Angel accompanies a person throughout life. He is given through the sacrament of baptism. And after baptism begins a bitter struggle for the human soul.
Who fights with whom? An unclean spirit, or demon. He is not sleeping, trying to capture the human soul. The angel protects the soul. So a battle breaks out.
On which shoulder sits the angel, and on which shoulder - the demon? And how do they fight each other? Let's find out.
The angel is our helper.
What is the task of the guardian angel, we have listed above. If a person leads a right and God-pleasing life, after death his soul is taken by angels.
We often upset our invisible guardian. In what ways? By our own sins. Let's explain with an example.
Imagine that you have a mentee. Let's say it is a child. And he is constantly defecating. You have to be near him, but you cannot wash the baby. So you have to breathe the "aromas" coming from the baby. He does not feel the smell that exudes. Problems with his sense of smell. He plays happily, makes a noise, and time after time goes to the toilet.
Ew, what a disgusting thing! It's not pleasant to be around such a creature, is it?
Now do you understand how our angel feels? When we sin, we are like the child in the example. Our sins give off a stinky ambiance. And it makes the angel walk away from us. He cries, but he can do nothing. And it is impossible to leave us altogether, and it is impossible to be near us.
By the way, on which shoulder does the guardian angel sit? It is believed that on the right shoulder. And when he flies away from us, a demon enters the scene.
The Antichrist
It is a mistake to confuse the Devil with the Antichrist. The key to unraveling this person lies in his name: the Antichrist is the enemy of Christ, his antipode. The latter, in turn, is known to be the son of God, not his prototype. The name Antichrist sometimes refers to anyone who does not confess Jesus Christ, but this is not really true. "Anti" means "against." The Antichrist must be exactly the enemy of Jesus, going against him, being his equal in power.
The demon is destruction for us.
Why destruction? Because his main goal - to pull the human soul into hell. And he works very much, trying to realize it.
How does he act unclean? By tempting the person, offering him to commit a sin. Of course, the word "offering" here should not be seen in the sense that he says. No, it is simply skillfully suggesting.
For example, a person knows that fornication is a terrible sin. This is where the unclean spirit comes into play. He begins to put all sorts of fantasies into his thoughts. The body reacts to these fantasies. As a result, the person commits a sin. This is all the demon wants. He exults and rejoices, while the angel stands aside and weeps bitterly.
On which side of the shoulder sits the angel, and which side does the demon occupy? According to the legends we were told in our childhood, the angel occupies the whole right shoulder. The unclean one, respectively, occupies the left shoulder.
Samael - the mystery of demonology
In addition to the previous question, Samael is also worth mentioning. When the demons, list and description were presented, he was not included. This is because it has not yet been decided exactly whether Samael is an angel or a demon.
By the usual definition, Samael is described as an angel of death. Actually, these beings are neither good nor evil, just as death itself does not belong to these concepts. It is a natural process, and therefore the shinigami, as the Japanese call them, merely make sure that everything goes on as it should. But Samael is not such an unambiguous person, otherwise he would not raise questions.
The name Samael is often confused with the chief Archangel of God. Or referred to as among the seven Archangels. Samael is also said to be the Demiurge, that is, the creator of all living things, hence God.
Interestingly, along with this, he is also often counted among the demons of Hell - moreover, according to some claims, Samael is the Devil's true name, angelic, before he fell from heaven. Admittedly, in this arrangement, it is not clear what Lucifer is.
The legend of the serpent-torturer of Eve also got to the mystery of demonology - there are sources that it was Samael.
The most popular description has already been given: Samael is the angel of death, with only one correction: the same angel of death that came for Moses.
Why the shoulders?
The angel and the demon on the shoulders symbolize the struggle between good and evil. But why were the shoulders chosen as their dwelling place? Which shoulder is the angel on?
For that matter, not on the shoulder, but behind the shoulder. It is believed that a man walks and is followed by a guardian angel and an unclean spirit. The angel on the right and the demon on the left.
What does this have to do with? It's because the right side is sacred. We baptize with the right hand, we hang icons at home in the right corner (to the East). Even the word "right" came from the word "right". And we call a person who believes and lives according to God's commandments a righteous person. Since everything begins with the right hand, they put the angel here as well. Good is on the right side supposedly.
Now let's talk about the left side. The heart seems to be located on the left. Why shouldn't an angel walk on it? To be closer to the heart?
The questions are rhetorical, for all bad things are connected with the left side. If a person has a bad day, they say they got up with their left foot. People who are left-handed are treated with suspicion, at least it used to be that way. Hackwork and dishonest income is called "left-handed" money.
It is clear that the left shoulder is bad. The demon belongs behind the left shoulder, he's bad.
The Seven Deadly Sins
A little earlier the main demons were introduced: a list of names and descriptions. For some of them were indicated associations with the deadly sins. However, there is a more detailed classification of the phenomenon:
- Lucifer - Pride (Latin Superbia). In his pride, Lucifer tried to take the place of God, for which he was expelled from Heaven.
- Beelzebub - Gluttony (lat. Gula).
- Leviathan - Envy (lat. Invidia). An interesting parallel with the serpent appearance of Leviathan and the green color of Envy.
- Asmodeus - Lust (lat. Luxuria). The Latin name for this sin is similar to the English word luxury.
- Mammon is Greed (lat. Avaritia).
- Belphegor - Laziness (lat. Acedia).
- Satan - Anger (Lat. Ira).
The division arouses great interest: it turns out that Lucifer and Satan are not one and the same. Why so?
What conclusions can be drawn?
In answering children's questions about which shoulder an angel sits on, parents mislead children. This is, of course, mild sarcasm. Clearly, a child needs to be explained some things on a primitive level. But growing up, one should think about the fact that not everything is that simple. Including the issue of angels and demons being around us.
An angel doesn't sit on our shoulder. He is invisibly near us. Neither does a demon occupy our left shoulder. He's just waiting for us to follow him once again. And drive the angel away from us with this.
The reason for the shoot
The idea for the shoot came up spontaneously, but very quickly found its fulfillment! We imagined this photo shoot only in film, with its magical color and volume. We chose a somewhat eternal and in many ways provocative theme - the confrontation of the two elements - light and shadow, angelic and demonic.
A triangle is formed without a clear end to the picture, allowing the viewer to think of the outcome himself. Whose side will be outnumbered - will it be the innocent, tender, reverent and chaste light image, or the fatal, seductive, vivid and demonic?
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How to be properly baptized?
Since we've figured out which shoulder our angel sits on, now let's talk about the sign of the cross.
Catholics baptize from left to right. We do it the other way around. Detailed instructions are below:
- Put the three fingers of your right hand together. Thumb, index finger, and middle finger. We make a pinch.
- We touch this pinch to the forehead, then move on to the belly. We touch the navel.
- Then we touch the right shoulder.
- Then the left shoulder.
- Lowering the hand, do a lap bow.
It's very simple, isn't it? Since we are talking about the correctness of the sign of the cross, I would like to recall an interesting superstition. It is so absurd that it is impossible not to mention it.
Did you know that Catholics put a demon on their right shoulder? They cast the angel out, don't they? They do that when they baptize from left to right. Now you know.
Incubi and Succubi.
Speaking of demons, it's worth mentioning the smaller servants who have become quite famous in the human ranks nonetheless. These, of course, are the demons tempters of carnal pleasures, lust and passion.
Female demonic hypostasis of debauchery - succubus (otherwise known as succubus), contrary to the notion of a beautiful devil, ugly monster. An inferior demon, who appears in dreams of known content with a much more attractive appearance, devours the vitality of man, devastating him. Succubi, of course, specialize in men.
An equally unpleasant entity and male hypostasis is the incubus, whose target is women. He uses the same method as his "colleague". Succubi and incubi prey on sinners, their area of attack is the mind and subconscious.
How do you pray to an angel?
On what shoulder does our angel sit? He doesn't sit, he works. He protects us, the foolish, and tries to keep us from sin. And we, instead of turning to him prayerfully, drive our intercessor away.
When do people turn to an angel? In all situations: in the moment of danger, when it is hard and bad, in the moment of illness. Call your guardian, given at baptism.
What words of prayer are needed for this? Is praying to an angel supposed to be very complicated? Not at all. Remember these words:
Holy Guardian Angel, Benefactor of God, pray to God for me a sinner/sinner.
Nine words in all. It's not that hard to remember, right?
Turn to your angel more often and don't forget to thank him. For being there for us. Not forsaking us, but waiting patiently for the wards to pay attention to his calls. Let us not listen to the tempter of impurity, but turn with all our hearts to our angel.
Where to score and pick up the meaning of the tattoo of an angel and a demon?
Today, tattoos of this type can be "stuffed" in any tattoo parlor. At the same time not every master can do the job qualitatively. In order to remain satisfied with the tattoo applied to the body, as well as to pick up a sketch, it is best to apply to a reputable tattoo salon. Specialists with extensive experience, as a rule, are well acquainted with how to pick up the sketch of tattoo, which will look great on the body, both women and men. If you "score" a tattoo from a master who has low qualifications, chances are that you will soon be thinking about how to "remove" this tattoo.
Goat-footed and dog-headed: the beastly devil
In the early eleventh century, the image of Satan in European culture changes dramatically and begins to vary quite widely. For example, in the Barberini Psalter, created around 1050, in the same scene of Christ's healing of a possessed man, there are not only demons flying out of the man's mouth, but also Satan himself, defeated and restrained by the Savior.
It is a half-naked zooanthropomorphic creature with a red body, gray hair, bald hair, and a muzzle resembling a dog's.
In a 11th century English manuscript the Devil appears in a completely different guise: he is shown as a giant with a hairy back (texts of the time compared his hair to tongues of flame) and a disheveled hairdo, without a single animal trait. On the other hand, it is not so easy to see anything human in the figure of Satan from a Spanish commentary on the Apocalypse (11th century) - the character's legs and arms have sharpened claws and look more like animal paws, a short tail protrudes from his rear, and his nose resembles a beak. The last detail is not accidental - at that time, Jews were depicted as ugly and nosy, and the author probably intended to draw this visual parallel. Black, gray, brown, blue or purple, Satan with his colors of night and disease was opposed by the red or white angels who embodied the heavenly fire and light of God.
In the same century, some devils develop horns. Tiny at first, they later become the dominant image. Together with claws, animal ears and paws, a tail and, since the 12th century, bat wings instead of angelic ones, these details shape the image of the devil throughout the Middle Ages. "Animalization" of Satan looks perfectly logical: how else were artists to portray the lowly essence of the enemy of the human race, who fell from heaven?
Horned, tailed, goat-footed and hairy, the devil sometimes resembled the ancient god Pan to such an extent that some scholars speak of a continuity of images (while others believe that Satan "descended" from satyrs, jester-athletes and the winged Eros in Greek vase-painted images). And they explain it this way: in Antiquity, when the new faith was just beginning to spread through the Roman Empire, evil became associated with the old, pagan pantheon. Christian theologians never tired of repeating that by worshipping statues of traditional Roman celestials, people were honoring Satan himself. They especially denounced those of them whose cults were associated with profligate rituals, such as Pan, who stood out for his indecent behavior and bestial appearance, and thus became a symbol of the evil that Roman polytheism supposedly contained in itself.
In reality, however, we do not find a single image of Satan resembling Pan created before the 11th century, when the ancient pagan iconography had already been forgotten. The horns and hooves were probably drawn by medieval miniaturists not because they tried to copy the image of the goat-footed god, but because of the texts circulated at that time, where the most selective epithets and animal comparisons were used to describe the devil.
These prose and verse apocrypha recounted in detail all the stages of Satan's life, from his founding of his own throne "in the north of heaven" and his subsequent descent into hell to his confrontation with Christ in the wilderness.
The pan-shaped devil in the miniature from the famous Psalter of Queen Ingeborga invites the sixth-century saint Theophilus of Cilicia to make a bargain with him. He agrees, and they make a special pact (today historians actually find contracts with Satan written in blood in archives). Later, after repenting, Theophilus begs forgiveness from Our Lady, who breaks the contract.
The episode of the fall of the angels was of particular interest to theologians and artists. The scholar Abbot Elfricus Grammaticus, who lived in the 10th century, suggested that God created not nine but ten ranks of these beings - and one of them was precisely the army of Satan who, because of his pride, betrayed the Creator. After this, artists began to paint one more "shelf" in heaven, representing the Lord's throne: the topmost one was left empty in memory of the rebellious apostates cast into the abysses of darkness.
Miniaturists often tried to show the transformation of the bodies of fallen angels. Therefore, in images where the army of Satan is cast down into hell, demons, just beginning their mournful path, absolutely identical to their former companions, throwing them down. Those who have already fallen from heaven grow horns, animal ears or clawed paws right in the air. And those who find themselves in the abyss have a more familiar appearance: black, unsightly, beast-like creatures.
In the twelfth century, Satan begins to mutate for the first time. One of the writings of the medieval intellectual Hildegard of Bingen describes her "vision of the Church as the Bride of the Son of God.
The devil emerges from the vulva of a woman (personification of the Church) standing in a prayerful pose.
From above she exudes a heavenly glow, with a crown on her head and a rich robe on her body. But on her feet are bruises denoting the suffering of the faithful. A devil with red eyes and sharp teeth emerges from her vulva. The fallen angel Lucifer utters, "My dominion shall come forth from the bosom of the Woman," referring to the Church. Thus the devil blasphemously imitates the Son of God. Having gained strength, he attacks the authority of the Lord Himself and is defeated. This image foreshadows the numerous countenances that grow on the body of Satan and his helpers, which will appear three centuries later.
Sagging breasts and defecating sinners: the mutant devil
During the late Middle Ages, closer to the fifteenth century, the devil mutates at a terrifying rate. It is no longer a small black silhouette or merely half-beast-half-man. Satan increasingly loses his wings, as if to signify that he will never return to heaven. In their place he has chests with woolly nipples, bird feathers or tails, bushy eyebrows and ear hair, like in the illustration from the Bavarian Bible of Otto Heinrich (around 1430).
Satan is increasingly depicted as suffering - even as he torments sinners in hell, he himself is in torment. In the 1430s-50s Catalan manuscript The Mirror of Human Salvation the bound devil has two mouths: the second is in the crotch and, with a frozen grimace of horror, chews the resident of the underworld with his sharp fangs. Two more muzzles grow right out of his knees, and below are either bird's or toad's paws with long claws.
Such a composition was repeated in many paintings of the Last Judgment in European churches, such as the fresco in the Cathedral of Bologna, for which the artist Giovanni da Modena depicted the Muslim prophet Muhammad next to the devil among the sinners. Around his naked body is wrapped a snake, a symbol of vice.
Not so long ago, terrorist attacks aimed at destroying the controversial work were prevented, and Islamic radicals are relentless in their legal action to demand that the image be banned.
The bound Satan also appears on a miniature for the popular literary work The Vision of the Knight Tundal, created in 1475 in Ghent. The tree-like devil with hundreds of paws and branches is lying on a red-hot grate inside the mouth of the personified hell, suffering no less than the others, while a horny toad, a snake-tailed dog and a little devil are silently looking on from the threshold.
Such attention to images of Satan in the late Middle Ages is given because during this period famine and plague were raging across Europe, numerous Christian heresies were gaining more and more audiences, and Muslims were winning victory after victory. Apparently for the same reasons, theologians then often addressed the problem of active evil: the devil was not only waiting for sinful people, but also aggressively interfering in their lives, seeking to gain as many souls as possible.
Grotesque hybrids: the devil of the old masters
Inspired by frescoes, altarpieces, and miniatures, the famous artists Hans Memling, Jan van Eyck, Hieronymus Bosch, Peter Bruegel, and others began to portray Satan in the same, grotesque and baroque manner. Assembled from many heterogeneous body parts, this character becomes more ridiculous than scary or majestic.
Memling's Devil, painted around 1485, is on the polyptych at the left hand of the Lord. It is as if he is dancing with his bird's paws on sinners baked in the jaws of a personified hell, his hands strewn with numerous spikes and claws, and a second face looking directly at the viewer from his belly.
Van Eyck's Crucifixion and the Last Judgment (1430) shows Death as a winged skeleton, which literally defecates sinners in Gehenna fire, where demons of all stripes await them. It is difficult to see a central figure among them, but the one on the left is noticeably larger than the others - most likely this is Satan. His body resembles the carcass of a dragon, with antlers growing out of his head and flames bursting from his mouth.
Hieronymus Bosch's devil from his triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510) is even more exotic: rendered in late medieval fashion, he resembles a hybrid of a bird, a goat and a chubby man.
The soul-eating Satan sits on a "toilet bowl" throne and defecates sinners.
Three-Faced and Upside-Down: The Devil-King
In many medieval depictions, such as a mid-15th-century French manuscript, we see a three-faced devil. In this way artists tried to show that the lord of evil parodies the Trinity itself. The iconography points to the fact that the monster is not a triune God, but rather the Antichrist or Devil, as indicated by numerous demonic attributes: hair styled in a fanfare or similar to flames, snakes in his hands, plants protruding from his mouth, etc.
In the 13th century French Moralized Bibles and in later manuscripts the three- or seven-faced Satan or the Antichrist often sat on his throne, his sword drawn and his crown bristling with thorns, exposing the true nature of the unrighteous king. Because of their desire for rationalization, structure, and hierarchy, miniaturists paint a devil who reigns in the underworld as God does in heaven.
After the enormous success of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, completed around 1321, the chaotic universe of hell is being ordered. The underworld in iconography also begins to divide into clear levels, ditches and crevices, and this hierarchy is completed by the figure of Satan standing upside down in the last circle of hell:
And I became speechless with amazement, When I saw three faces on him; One above his breast; Its color was red; And above one and above the other shoulder Two adjacent to this to the side threatened, Conjoining at the back of his head beneath the crest. The face on the right was white and yellow; But the color of the left was, Like those that came from the falls of the Nile.
