BOOK REVIEW by Tom Holland in
The Guardian:
From Gabriel to Lucifer: A Cultural History of Angels by Valery Rees. Excerpt:
... "In our increasingly secular age, when the presence of angelic beings seems remote and unreal, angel imagery still holds an immense power of attraction." So Valery Rees opens her new book, which aims to make sense of the dimension between heaven and earth, and to explain why so many people, for so long, have populated it with entire hosts of messengers.
In pursuit of that goal, Rees flits across space and time with an aptly angelic facility. Ranging from ancient Sumeria to the novels of Philip Pullman, and from medieval scholasticism to Jungian theory, the breadth of her learning is formidable. We are given accounts of the cherubim and seraphim that read almost like the reports of a field anthropologist, detailed biographies of the archangels, and a rich seam of angelological trivia. The next time you are at a carol concert and want to impress someone, why not follow up a rendition of "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" by revealing that the 15th-century philosopher Marsilio Ficino thought there were 399,920,004 angels in all, that the Qur'an features angels with three wings, and that Pius XII claimed to have seen St Peter's Square thronged with the guardian angels of the faithful gathered below him?
Yet ultimately, the sheer extent of Rees's researches overwhelm her. ...
Maybe, but I don't this it's fair to criticize her for this:
As a result, the parameters of her investigation are constantly shifting. Sometimes angels are described as though they possess an objective reality; sometimes as though they are expressions of the subconscious; sometimes as though they are theological constructs.
The reviewer writes as though these were mutually exclusive propositions.