#this directly contradicts my aziraphale theory but if youre new here please know this happens a lot

[tonydaddingham]

okay let's fucking crack into finally discussing the book of life, ive been putting it off for ages but the time is now upon me to chat shit about it, bc apparently i might have a meta/analysis rep to maintain?

so first thing's first, im going to look at the narrative itself and the references we have to the BOL. we start off with michael discussing it on the phone with an unknown person:

given this dialogue further on in s1, i think we're all in agreement that the conversation is with beelzebub; the precedent of intelligence sharing was definitely set in s1 with michael and ligur.

but beelzebub sounds surprised on the phone, and when speaking to crowley seems to slightly hesitate on whether extreme sanctions actually did exist... but the archangel michael has just threatened it, so of course it must be real. it's a threat to anyone without discrimination, by this account - any angel, demon, or human (i imagine) can be written into it - so it stands to reason that beelzebub chooses to take michael at their word.

now michael obviously seems similarly convinced that the BOL indeed exists and that it erases from existence any name that is erased from it. ive mentioned before that its interesting that the moment that the metatron appears in the bookshop is when michael is intending to make good on that threat with aziraphale:

but authorised by who? just in the general scheme of things, as supreme archangel duty officer? in which case, why wasn't this a chekhov's gun suggested in s1, even if in the very abstract? i guess it could have been information overload but, given aziraphale literally helped to divert armageddon and disrupt the great plan, you'd think that would be a situation that would warrant such a threat too, from gabriel as supreme archangel?

so by that reckoning, it must be knowledge that michael didn't know about much before the telephone call, because they weren't of sufficient rank (albeit the rank seems to be one they've assumed rather than been entrusted with in the interim). alternatively, the use of the word 'authorised' suggests they've received a direct green-light from someone above them... and who is above the supreme archangel? 👀

but the metatron interrupts the threat before it can be actualised, which obviously feeds into the whole 'came down here to get aziraphale back on side, here have this coffee 🙂' thing... wouldn't do for you to go out on a recruitment drive and have the angel you want to be blinked out of existence before you can make the job offer. so off the archangels go - after a very pointed interaction of michael and uriel not recognising the metatron at all.

but where does metatron fit in the narrative as concerns the BOL? well, nowhere yet. the conference scene in the beginning of ep6 that Crowley witnesses doesn't have any reference to the BOL at all, so it was never on the table as concerns gabriel's demotion (just a good ole memory wipe). so this is where i come to parsing out what i think the BOL actually is.

now im reluctant to go by other texts to riddle this out, mainly because GO is largely inspired by other works and religious texts so i don't tend to double down solely on what they themselves say, but in the absence of any other information from GO itself, this is what ive got to help it make sense.

BOL indeed, by both hebrew and christian text, records all those that are considered worthy before god. that those people are written into it before birth, and to be removed from it signifies death. now that this seems to be to be very human-centric, so how would this apply to angels? well, the re-wording of 'death' to 'never have existed' is an indicator here.

in Revelations, st john the divine of patmos recorded that those who were written and kept in the book would be saved from the Last Judgement; which i think can be agreed in this case would refer to the resurrection of christ aka. the second coming. and to be removed from the BOL would result in being "cast into the lake of fire" (20:15, KJV). which sounds somewhat familiar, right?

so can we be certain that the BOL just simply means oblivion for any angel written in it? i don't think so. there's the school of thought floating round that crowley had his memory wiped which - yes - there are clues that that may be the case (i still sit on the fence, because in some of the examples that support the theory i still also hold the thought that the angel that crowley was may have just been a bit of a work-obsessed knob). but i do wonder if there's some small grain of truth to it, because if we consider this hypothesis that being'wiped from existence' isn't actually that at all, or not as it sounds anyway, wouldn't an angel consider that not being an angel is essentially the same thing?

in falling, you lose who you were, and you're no longer that person. that person, that angel, ceases to exist?

it would certainly make sense to therefore not erase gabriel from the BOL, because it would make him fall, and they would lose another powerful angel to hell... after all:

"For one Prince of Heaven to be cast into the outer darkness makes a good story. For it to happen twice makes it look like there is some kind of institutional problem."