Azael and the fall of the angels

Azael and the fall of the angels.

Article written by Milos de Azaola.

According to the Book of Enoch, Azael is an attractive and seductive demon, who in ancient times “lived with the daughters of man.”

Originally, he was one of the leaders of the angels who rebelled against God. According to the myth, in the beginning there were ten orders of angels, but most of those of the tenth order became fallen angels, and only nine orders of angels loyal to God remained (see: Angelic Hierarchies). The angels of the tenth order, under the command of Azael and Shemyaza, were called Grigori (the Watchers or those who do not sleep), and were the closest to humans… to such an extent that they mixed with them, teaching them the arts of civilization and falling in love with Adam’s daughters.

Thus the Watchers joined forces with mortal women, bringing sin to the earth and spawning a bastard race of giants known as the Nephilim.

Azael taught men the fundamentals of alchemy and metallurgy, and women the magical arts and how to use cosmetics and perfumes to seduce men. Because of this angelic uprising and perversion of men, God unleashed the famous Flood and threw the rebellious angels into eternal darkness.

It is said that Azael is now chained in the Mountains of Darkness, awaiting the Last Judgment. Although other versions of the myth assure us that he continues free, strong and very active, doing his thing… This is a story that reminds me powerfully of the myth of Prometheus. The parallels are evident: Prometheus is chained by Zeus, and Azael is chained by Yahweh, in both cases for rebelling against the supposed Supreme God and instructing humanity, giving them fire or metallurgy.

When he became a fallen angel, Azael began to be known by the more popular name of Azazel, and he was considered the leader of the Se’irim, goat-shaped demons who lived in the desert and whom the primitive Semitic tribes They offered sacrifices.

The Old Testament notes that King Jeroboam appointed priests for these satyrs, although King Josiah later destroyed all their places of worship and banned their worship practices that included copulation of women with goats. But these practices must have continued underground, because centuries later we encounter them again in witchcraft covens, always presided over by a demon with goat legs, horns and so on… which is how Azazel is usually represented.

In fact, some scholars falsely maintain that Azazel’s name means “scapegoat” due to the zoomorphic traits attributed to him. But in reality the name of this angel means in Hebrew “the one whom God strengthens”, or also “the strength of God.” And you may wonder: what is a fallen angel doing with such a name?

To answer this question well we have to go back to the beginning and ask ourselves another question: why did Aza(z)el and his angels rebel against God?

This is the million-dollar question, but the explanation that Christians usually give is not usually very convincing; in fact, it sounds like dubious second or third hand information. On the other hand, the heretics par excellence, the Gnostics, give us the key to this antediluvian enigma in some of their texts. In my opinion, your version is much more convincing:

According to the Gnostics, at the beginning of time God impregnated himself, dividing and giving birth to his female part, the goddess Sophia. Sofia created the Celestial World and had numerous children: the angels. She became the lover of her children, and had more children with them, who in turn also became her lovers… and so on ad infinitum! (Yes, incest was common in heaven; the whole thing about angels not having sex is a fairly recent invention of the Church.)

The angels, in turn, created the Material World, following Sofia’s instructions. Those most loved by her became seduced to the point of obsession with the secrets of carnal union, but the Goddess soon tired of this sensual search and returned to her original fascination with the Father, forgetting her original function, which was to create more. angels. Rejected, spiteful and jealous of God, many angels rebelled, becoming demons.

These rebellious angels were led by Satanael, once the angel most loved by Sofia, who usurped her power. There was a war in heaven between the angels loyal to Sophia and the rebellious angels who supported Satanael. The rebels won, who made Satanael the new God. Satanael imprisoned Sofia in the nether world and forced her, becoming with this abominable act Satan…

Next, Satan, in his ridiculous claim to be greater than the goddess, tried to create life without her help, but all his efforts were useless, since life can only arise from the union of feminine forces and masculine forces. Satan, thus, only managed to model lifeless bodies, and was forced to enslave the souls of other already existing beings to imprison them in those imperfect bodies. Those beings were the two most beautiful angels in heaven: Adam and Eve, the parents of humanity…

Therefore we, his descendants, are all fallen angels, hence we long for the heavenly world, dreaming of a vague Golden Age. In fact, according to the Gnostics, Satan would be the Yahweh of the Old Testament, an idea that horrifies the Church because turns the origins of Christianity upside down (one would think that this story could perfectly explain the spiritual schizophrenia that modern man suffers from…).

What does Azael have to do with all this?, you may ask. Very easy: Azael was not a passive witness to all these events, but rather he rebelled against the despotism of the false God, unleashing a second phase of the Celestial War as important as the first, by opposing the imprisonment of Adam and Eve in imperfect bodies. (This is also reflected in several Kabbalistic texts, not only the Gnostics). For daring to protest, Azael and his people were banished by Satan to the nether world, where they soon mixed with the children of Cain…

But Azael’s true crime, the one that led him to ruin, occurred once on earth, when he revealed to the first men the secrets of heaven, that is, by instructing them about the immortality of the soul, reminding them of their heavenly origin with the in order to free them from the yoke of Satan. It was because of this status as a teacher of humanity that he illuminates his pupils, which is why Azael earned his popular nickname of Lucifer, which in Latin means “the bearer of light.”

If Lucifer is called that, it is because he fights against darkness, represented by Satan, not because he is the blessed Prince of Darkness. Only Christians, in their ignorance, dare to confuse Lucifer with Satan, when in reality they are antagonistic figures.

Of course, it was these subversive activities that did not sit well with the false God, who wanted humanity to remain mired in ignorance so he could do with it whatever he wanted. If Yahweh/Satan ordered Azael and his angels to be punished, it was because he saw his power on Earth threatened; knowledge has always been considered very dangerous. You see, this was Lucifer’s unforgivable crime… it is known that history is (re)written by the victors.

But to what extent was Azael defeated…? Is he still chained in the Mountains of Darkness or does he roam the world at ease? And did his offspring, the Nephilim, really drown in the Flood? Were there no survivors?

Well yes, apparently there were. According to legend, when Azael taught Cain’s children the secrets of heaven, his dearest companion was the beautiful Noema (or Naamah), with whom he had a son, Aza (the Strong), the chief of the Nephilim. . By the way, Noema was the sister of the famous Noah, and of course, there was no place for her on the Ark… but curiously she survived the Flood, becoming the angel of prostitution (an affectionate nickname given to her by the inquisitors of later times).

Aza, for his part, also had his run-ins with Yahweh, as he also survived the Flood. He met King Solomon and revealed to him the celestial arcana, making him the wisest man on earth and helping him build his famous temple with the help of his demons… Curiously, certain Kabbalist texts also relate Solomon with Noema and Lilith, whom he would have received at his court disguised as harlots.

Of course, Aza was no less than his father and also had offspring. In her novel Angelology, Danielle Trussoni fantasizes about her offspring, cleverly camouflaged among modern humans. It is a pity that what the writer says in her pages is biased by her Catholic upbringing. The picture that she paints for us of the Nephilim reminds us of that of classic vampires, describing the children of Azazel as deeply evil beings who do not understand morality.

Another writer, the Russian Boris Akunin, tells us in his novel Azazel about a secret society that worships the fallen angel and tries to overthrow the world order to establish in its place a kind of anarchy. In her pages, the leader of the society, a venerable old woman who takes in orphaned children to teach them, defends herself against her crimes with this speech:

«Azazel is not Satan, but the symbol of the great savior and civilizer of humanity. God created the world and men, and then abandoned them to his fate. But men were so blind and weak that they turned this divine world into a hell. (…) Azazel taught man the feeling of his own esteem. It is written in the Book of Enoch: And he with love penetrated into the souls of men and revealed to them the secrets that they only knew in Heaven. It was he who gave the mirror to men, that is, the possibility of memory and understanding of the past. Thanks to Azazel, the man learned all the trades and how to defend his home. Thanks to Azazel, the woman, who until then had only been a female, submissive and fertile, became a creature with identical rights and the ability to freely choose to be beautiful or ugly, a mother or an Amazon, to dedicate her life to her family. or to all humanity. God had limited himself to dealing the cards to men. Azazel taught us how to play them to achieve victory.

Demonology. I Angelology.

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