#i do enjoy the hierarchy books sometimes though because theyre fun to read

[nicosraf]

May you list out the classes of Angels in your story? I know Lucifer is a Cherubim and it’s implied that Uriel is an Ophanim and Rosier is a Seraph! What are the list of the Angel classes from the other characters? Is there a class system with the hierarchy of heaven?

Short answer: I wrote in cherubim, seraphim, and ophanim, though there isn't any hierarchy/class-system in Heaven.

Michael is a seraph (towards the end, he's described as having six wings), and I imagine Baal to be a cherub, Asmodeus to be an ophanim, Phanuel to be a seraph, Raphael to be a cherub, and Azazel to be a seraph. (I say 'imagine' because one of these might shift but I'm like 80% sure on it.)

Long answer about celestial hierarchy and etc.,:

You made a mistake asking me this because I have really strong feelings about about The Celestial Hierarchy and about Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. I actually recently finished studying the The hierarchie of the blessed angells: their names, order and offices: the fall of Lucifer with his angells, which is some 1635 didactic poem by Thomas Haywood that I need to post pictures of because it was very pretty, so thank you for reminding me. I’m only mentioning this because Pseudo-Dionysius (and Heywood) are in this camp of theology guys who think there’s a type of angel assigned to each sphere around the Earth to correspond to the old Ptolemaic model of the universe. What this means is that most old angelology books are all trying to force this connection that isn’t biblical, and this is why the whole hierarchy is pretty messy.

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite himself was also just someone pretending to be St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Whether he did it out of respect or to try and gain some legitimacy for his angel fanfic – who knows. Either way, I'm not a fan of him (and apparently neither was Milton, who is my lover btw), and I think there's a really long conversation to be had about why early Christian authorities may have liked the idea of a hierarchical heaven with levels of authority, rather than only God's authority reigning over paradise. Hm.

Anyway, I personally don't think a paradise can exist where there's a strict hierarchy in place. And in the Bible, there is no referenced hierarchy beyond the fact that there appears to be a chief of the angels, which is Michael. (Catholic Bibles tend to include Raphael calling himself an archangel, too, if I'm remembering correctly). The only "types" of angels that are explicitly referenced are the seraphim and cheurbim. "Ophanim" as a term isn't found in most Bibles, but they're described, so I've accepted them too. (It's worth noting that the Bible never refers to the seraphim, cherubim, or ophanim as angels, so they might not even be angels at all but some other celestial things.)

The way I interpreted it is that these three are the non-material forms of angels, which they're actually not in often. This is my personal interpretation of the fact that angels are only present and described strangely (you know, that "biblically accurate angel" meme) in proximity to God's throne.

For story reasons, angels are almost always enfleshed, so their different "types" don't come up much, but they do have casual knowledge that differences exist, like when Baal instructed Lucifer to take out "only two" wings. But it's clearly a difference that doesn't have an effect on their society.

Dw, there will be more on the "types" in the books to follow. As a side note, it was kind touchy to write the categorization at all into ABM. I didn't want to make it a big thing because 1. equality among the angels is pretty significant to the story and 2. I was afraid angel categorization could become a sort of quasi-gender or, even worse, quasi-race for them.

But yes sorry for ranting I hope this answered your question ahsjdsajdhlhjsl <3333