THE LOVES OF THE ANGELS.
PREFACE.
The Eastern story of the angels Harut and Marut and the Rabbinical fictions of the loves of Uzziel and Shámchazai are the only sources to which I need refer for the origin of the notion on which this Romance is founded. In addition to the fitness of the subject for poetry, it struck me also as capable of affording an allegorical medium through which might be shadowed out (as I have endeavored to do in the following stories) the fall of the Soul from its original purity[1]—the loss of light and happiness which it suffers, in the pursuit of this world's perishable pleasures—and the punishments both from conscience and Divine justice with which impurity, pride, and presumptuous inquiry into the awful secrets of Heaven are sure to be visited—The beautiful story of Cupid and Psyche owes its chief charm to this sort of "veiled meaning," and it has been my wish (however I may have failed in the attempt) to communicate to the following pages the same moral interest.
Among the doctrines or notions derived by Plato from the East, one of the most natural and sublime is that which inculcates the pre-existence of the soul and its gradual descent into this dark material world from that region of spirit and light which it is supposed to have once inhabited and to which after a long lapse of purification and trial it will return. This belief under various symbolical forms may be traced through almost all the Oriental theologies. The Chaldeans represent the Soul as originally endowed with wings which fall away when it sinks from its native element and must be re-produced before it can hope to return. Some disciples of Zoroaster once inquired of him, "How the wings of the Soul might be made to grow again?"
"By sprinkling them," he replied, "with the Waters of Life."
"But where are those Waters to be found?" they asked.
"In the Garden of God," replied Zoroaster.
The mythology of the Persians has allegorized the same doctrine, in the history of those genii of light who strayed from their dwellings in the stars and obscured their original nature by mixture with this material sphere; while the Egyptians connecting it with the descent and ascent of the sun in the zodiac considered Autumn as emblematic of the Soul's decline toward darkness and the re-appearance of Spring as its return to life and light.
Besides the chief spirits of the Mahometan heaven, such as Gabriel the angel of Revelation, Israfil by whom the last trumpet is to be sounded, and Azrael the angel of death, there were also a number of subaltern intelligences of which tradition has preserved the names, appointed to preside over the different stages of ascents into which the celestial world was supposed to be divided.[2] Thus Kelail governs the fifth heaven; while Sadiel, the presiding spirit of the third, is also employed in steadying the motions of the earth which would be in a constant state of agitation if this angel did not keep his foot planted upon its orb.
Among other miraculous interpositions in favor of Mahomet we find commemorated in the pages of the Koran the appearance of five thousand angels on his side at the battle of Bedr.