Wednesday 10 February 2016

Satan is the white guy

Phwoar warning! The Archangel Michael has just walked into my WIP, The Valleys of the Earth. And he looks a lot like this:


Actor Martin Sensmeier
Angelology is notoriously vague - all the different angel systems invented over the centuries contradict each other wildly - but for these books I'm going with the line that there are four archangels: Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel and Michael, because those are the ones told to hunt down the fallen Watchers in the Book of Enoch.



I introduced Uriel in Cover Him with Darkness and he looks like this in human form:


Raphael was also briefly glimpsed, because he was the one who took Azazel down, and I decided there was no reason whatsoever for him to look Caucasian - so I modeled him on the long-haired historical heroes of the Chinese cinema industry I grew up with. Because hair.

Actor Leslie Cheung
After that, I thought "Well ... let's go with the notion that the four archangels are assigned to the four compass directions / Quarters of the Earth. Uriel's clearly the North, so Raphael is the East." (I'm assuming that the "centre point" of the world is Jerusalem/ the Garden of Eden / the Middle East here, for the sake of argument.)

Michael, the warrior-angel, obviously watches over the West. Gabriel hasn't shown up yet, but he'll look African when he does.

And if you've read CHWD, you'll know that Uriel is also Satan.
Heh.

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