Today is Michaelmas, or my preferred name the Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, and Raphael, or the shorter version the Feast of the Archangels.
I think one of the great gifts to Western religions from Zoroastrianism was the idea of angels. Where they got it, I don’t know with any certainty, but on first blush it does sort of look like an adaptation of local deities for monotheistic religions.
Wherever they come from, the idea of spiritual beings that muck about between heaven and earth, whispering warnings, making announcements, and occasionally directly intervening, certainly has its appeals.
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