Only Be Sure Always to Call it Please ‘Research’
Ever read any books about angels? No? No, I hadn’t either, but I’ve read bits of one now, and I must say, if you’re looking for a good laugh, books about angels (if this one is anything to go by, at least) are pretty damn funny. Books about Wicca are quite mirth-inducing, too.
With the angel book, I keep opening it at random, and the first thing I read is so absurd I find myself cackling before I’ve read ten words. I’m beginning to think that every single line of the book is packed full of unintentional humour. Shall I give you a taste? These are just random, mind – I haven’t actually searched out the most risible stuff.
The first one actually isn’t entirely funny, but the basic failure to connect the dots that underlies it, is.
At the time of 9/11, there were many stories of people seeing angels, which of course shows that God sent his legions of blessed angels to escort those dearest of souls to the Other Side and to bring the rest of us a message of hope.
Oh dear kind sweet thoughtful God, sending his blessed angels. Um – why didn’t he just send his blessed angels to stop the God-lovers in the airplanes? Or stop them himself? Because he has a Purpose, which is Inscrutable to us mere mortals. Okay, but in that case, we don’t know anything about it, do we, so why make factual statements of that kind? Because it’s fun, obviously. But the idea behind it – well really. So – little Kevin likes to torture small animals to death, and then when he’s done it he sends blessed angels to escort the souls of his victims to the Other Side. Do we think well of little Kevin? Dear Violet likes to set fire to people’s houses in the middle of the night and watch while the residents are immolated, then in the morning she sends her blessed angels to smooth their way to the Other Side (where, who knows, what greets them may be serried ranks of Kevins and Violets, all grinning fiendishly). In other words, how people can unite the idea of a kind helpful deity sending angels with one who just got through allowing a slow-motion mass murder to happen in the first place, is simply…beyond my humble understanding.
The very next bit:
The Archangels can heal, and they can carry messages, and they can do one more thing as well. They can take us out of our bodies and take us away on an astral trip. To go on an astral trip…we can call on the Archangels to help us, because these messengers can be the ones who come forward and whisk us right up.
Oh! I didn’t know that. Dang, silly me, I just wasted all that money on a plane ticket. I didn’t know one could just call on an Archangel instead. Okay, I see – so if one wants to take a plane one visits Expedia or some such, and if one wants to take an astral trip, one calls an Archangel. Got it. Next time I’ll know.
Another bit, under the heading Angels: Fact and Fiction:
Before we go any further, let’s clear up a few myths about angels. Since we’ve spent so much time talking about what angels are, it’s equally important to go over what they are not.
First of all, contrary to belief, there are no dark angels.
Oh. You know, you’ll hardly believe me, but there’s no footnote for that statement. In fact there are no footnotes in the whole book. Nor is there an index, nor a bibliography. So one’s strong curiosity to know exactly how Sylvia Browne (for it is she) knows this, is doomed to remain unsatisfied. No doubt she has stacks of scholarly references, or perhaps notes of her extensive experimentation and research, but her citation method is a little primitive. Which is to say she left it out entirely. Odd that an angel didn’t remind her. Well, I say ‘entirely’ – but to be fair there is a kind of blanket citation at the beginning, in the ‘Author’s Note.’ She has a guide named Raheim, ‘from India’ (well of course – where would he be from, Trenton N.J.?), and another named Iena, an Aztec-Inca woman (another no-show for the Trentonians), and the two of them have ‘conveyed countless hours of information’ to her. So consider that one big mega-meta-footnote for all factual statements. Astral trips, no dark angels[1]
[1] Iena, Raheim
Kind of pedantic, isn’t it.
According to a recent poll by Ohio University, over seventy percent of adult Americans believe in angels.
Sometimes I really worry about the human race and its extremely limited capacity for rational thought.
OB, excuse me – reviewing “Angels, fact and fiction”!? Now you ARE shooting the proverbial fish in the barrel, or the ducks in the trunk of the car.
*grin* Have fun doing so, though.
Sylvia Browne. Man, James Randi’s been after her for years now. Next to Uri Gellar, she is his number one arch-nemesis, and I can see why.
When I was a Christian, the angel-fascination of some people really confused me. If you read the old testament, you see that angels are God’s enforcers, and meeting one usually meant really bad news. In fact, in the Bible, if an angel shows up, it usually means a whole bunch of people are going to die on the next page. I don’t know where people got the idea that angels are meant to serve and help people.
You know, I live in this barren rural area with few real amenities, but a few miles away, we have an Angel Store. It’s loaded with gossamer and lace knick-knacks and kitschy paintings and all kinds of angel crap.
It’s more than just the stupidity that bothers me, it’s the total absence of taste.
I am reminded of a book my (theologian) father once read – written by a someone apparently challenging St. Paul. My father was a bit peeved at the fact that here you have someone speaking with St. Paul, founder of a world religion, and he has only the most banal, trivial, touchy-feely New Age garbage to say.
70%. I know. It’s so humiliating.
So that’s why I’m shooting stationary ducks. Plus it’s “satire”.
Kitschy paintings. Tell me about it. This Sylvia Browne book has illustrations – some sample angels. Every time I accidentally turn to one of those pages, I squeal with disgust. They’re like…these very earnest, chiseled, intense hippies. I can’t tell you how repellent they are.
You mean, like the elves in Peter Jackson’s movie, only worse?
I haven’t seen the movie, but they must be worse. They are very, very terrible.
Oh ew. I just looked again, to check. I feel quite ill.
James Randi’s second-worst nemesis, eh? Excellent. I grabbed her book because it was there on the shelf at the (local branch) library, but I don’t know who is Topp in the Angel biz. Glad I chose a central figure. Wouldn’t want to be reading a minor angelologist.
..I don’t know who is Topp..
http://www.stcustards.free-online.co.uk/topp/divinity/divinity.htm
There are no dark angels, eh? Sounds pretty racist to me. What, God isn’t an equal-opportunity employer?
Oh, and thanks for the Tom Lehrer reference, OB.
No Dark Angels?
I guess this version of New Age “Christianity” forgets the whole “Lucifer and 1/3 of the host of heaven were cast into the pit” thing. Oh well, minor details.
Also: How could you get an Aztec/Inca hybrid? Was there that much long-distant trade? And, the Aztec religion was about as far from treacly Angelmania as you can get. “Throw thousands of your enemies hearts onto the fire so that the world will not end.”
Sheez. At least during the old days, the priests and established religion kept the kookiness a LITTLE bit under control (not serious)
No dark angels.
Tried to explain this to my son but whilst he needed to grant me Darth Vader, I could not argue against Darth Maul.
Sylvia hasn’t been updating her sources &, I’m happy to report, my son seemingly has a better scientific base to work from (at age 8).
ROFLMAO!
Now you know how I feel when my wife comes home from a 2-day healing and spiritual warfare seminar.
And says I have a hard heart. Soft head, more like.
And I acknowledge the fact that she is miles harder-working, more thoughtful, more effective, more giving to society as a whole than I am. Also more beautiful, stylish and delightful. It is hard to value a person on the kookiness of a few of their ideas.
If you want to know what angels are REALLY like I suggest the Vertigo comic ‘Lucifer’.
Ophelia,
Yes, it’s easy to shoot fish in a barrel, but just how small is the barrel? What I mean is that you are citing her statement about God sending angels, and asserting that it is part of an inscrutable plan (and I’m not going to defend ‘inscrutable plan’ theology; it kind of conflicts with my ‘free will’ theology) without actually citing evidence that she believes in an inscrutable plan. I’m all for beating up on bad arguments (and, in the case of the Aztec/Incan hybrid, awful history), but there’s such a thing as being fair, after all.
p.s. I wonder how long it’ll be before Muslim spirit guides (mostly Sufi, I imagine) start showing up in New Age literature? The Native American and Indian ones can be traced pretty easily back to earlier cultural moments.
“…over seventy percent of adult Americans believe in angels…”
“Sometimes I really worry about the human race and its extremely limited capacity for rational thought.”
Just to be a pedant, the poll claimed that 70% of adult Americans beleive in angels, not that 70% of the human race beleived in same.
“the poll claimed that 70% of adult Americans beleive in angels, not that 70% of the human race beleived in same.”
Well, Connie did set the two statements as separate statements. There’s no ‘therefore’ or equivalent. I think that was probably more or less deliberate (I say ‘more or less’ because I think we make stylistic choices like that without necessarily thinking in detail about why we’re making them – I’m pretty sure I do anyway, so I extrapolate to others). I think the idea is just that that is the kind of thing that makes one think such dark thoughts – not necessarily that the first inevitably entails the second, or that the second logically follows from the first.
And on the other hand I think one could make a case for the logical following – given the US’s enlightenment heritage, its constitutional separation of church and state, its long history of universal public education, the wide availability of books, literacy, learning, the open-endedness of its tertiary education system, its advanced technology, and the like, it is somewhat staggering that all that produces such a credulous, irrationalist populace. Staggering and, arguably, depressing for the prospects for rationalism elsewhere.
Ha! Thanks for the link, Joe! Perfect. Molesworth fans, be sure to look at Joe’s link.
Welcome for Lehrer thing, Connie – thanks for recognizing it.
Aztec-Inca hybrid – I know. Isn’t that hilarious?
Jonathan, no, you’re right, the ‘inscrutable plan’ thing is not in the book, that was my hypothetical for how she would answer my question. I meant to be giving her best shot there, since I have no idea how else she would answer it.
“Well, Connie did set the two statements as separate statements. There’s no ‘therefore’ or equivalent. “
Yes, that had occurred to me, although the “therefore” is implied by the proximity of the second statement to the first. Whilst they are two separate statements, they are presumably not to be read in isolation from one another. (“It is is raining”. “I am wet”. No therefore, but the one implicitly follows t’other and one may assume I am wet because it is raining).
“given the US’s enlightenment heritage, its constitutional separation of church and state, its long history of universal public education, the wide availability of books, literacy, learning, the open-endedness of its tertiary education system, its advanced technology.”
Not to mention its immigrant stock. Immigrants are a self-selecting elite (that nasty word again ;-) and I would imagine that this has played no small part in the sucess of the US.
Yeah. It’s a nice point – the difference (if there is one, and I think there is, but it’s a subtle one, a ‘literary’ one perhaps) between following logically and simply not being read in isolation. Clearly sentence one prompted sentence two, but I take that to be different from claiming that two follows from one.
Hope I’m not boring you! I like this kind of thing. I’m just making it up as I go, which is to say I haven’t thought about it before; but it seems plausible to me.
Yep, immigrant stock, too; good point. (I like to think of Carl Sagan and Steve Gould when I think about that. [Also a lot of friends and relatives, but that’s harder to generalize from.] Two Brooklyn Jews, children of garment workers – and look at them. Then multiply them by tens of thousands. Or just think ‘City College’ – same effect.)
But the public culture has taken this turn to belief=virtue and nonbelief=evil, and it is having its effect. So much for enlightenment heritage.
“Hope I’m not boring you! I like this kind of thing. “
Me too. I don’t for one minute think Connie was confusing the entities “american adults” with “human race” and agree it is enough to make one despair. I was indulging in a bit of word play and having a bit of cheeky fun pointing out that “american adults” and the “human race” are not the same thing to any who may have inferred that from the two statements. As two logically distinct statements this assertion is not being made. If the two statements are logically connected however then the casual slippage between the two terms may lead one to think the writer beleives they are equivalent terms rather than one being a subset of the other.
‘”american adults” and the “human race” are not the same thing’
In a purely factual sense, no. But in a more spiritual, or cosmic, or as it were existential sense, perhaps things are not so simple. Perhaps in a very real sense ‘American adults’ actually are coterminous with ‘the human race’ – because of American adults’ transcendent destiny, or their divine mission, or their unrivaled averageness. Yes that’s it. I’ve got it now. Because Aas are more normal, more median, more other-directed, more like each other, more well-adjusted, more profoundly committed to stamping out all forms of eccentricity or peculiarity or dissent or upsetting weirdness, therefore they really are the best representatives for the Idea ‘the human race.’
Well, I’m glad to have provided you two with so much discussion fodder.
No wonder ChrisM doesn’t like poetry.
Ergo, the King of France is bald.
Sitting here in Trenton, NJ, reading your post, I am appalled that Trenton’s angels are repeatedly overlooked.
Does anyone out there know Mitch Albom? Maybe he can write a book about angels from ordinary American towns that deliver messages for ordinary living people. Those Aztec angels get all the publicity!
Cackle!
Sorry! I should have known that would happen.
I grew up near Tren’uh, so it popped into my head as just the right antithesis for The Mysterious East, and I couldn’t get it out again. Why didn’t I saw Newark? Elizabeth? Blawenburg? I don’t know, I don’t know.
Yeah, Trenton (or East Orange) could be NJ’s representatives in the “Miss Antithesis for the Mysterious East 2004” Ceremony, and may take the crown going away (but don’t count Schenectady, NY or Dundalk, MD out just yet!)
**
Back to the angels, kind of…Back in the 80’s, my mom used to attend group “past lives” parties (in ye olde Schenectady) with her friends. Not only had she and my father traveled together through history as soul mates, but they were not big shots – just average bit players, like farmers or cobblers.
I never understood how the past-lives lady made any money if she didn’t spin a yarn about being royalty, or having invented boats. What’s the point of having a past-life (or a guardian angel) if it’s not torn from the pages of a fantasy novel? (“Noreen told me that I was the widow of a English Privateer who married the man who avenged my husband’s death!)
Hmm – that’s interesting. Maybe it was kind of reassuring, that way. (And then it would mean one hadn’t shrunk or dwindled. If in the past life one had been Mozart or Alfred the Great, one might think ‘Uh oh, I’m letting the side down’ unless one were the contemporary equivalent.)
I hereby revoke all my above posts and wish to reassure all angel-believers that I am not inciting anti-religious hatred against them in any way. Angel-believers are people, too–in fact, they are all fine, upstanding citizens who have made great contributions to our society and enriched our culture beyond measure. I have the deepest respect for their spiritual beliefs. I just want to make that perfectly clear.
Yeah! And, uh, they’re pretty and they smell good, too. Will that do?
Help! I have recently met a lady who believes in Angels. The frightening thing is that she is an intelligent, vibrant and attractive individual with a psychology degree! I’ve also met equally nice, intelligent people who believe in crystals, spiritual healing, etc, etc. Does anyone have any insight into how such apparently intelligent people can believe in such things?
No. It baffles me. I know people like that too. People who will go from talking perfectly rationally and intelligently and informedly to talking in all seriousness about poltergeists.
I think it’s partly groupthink, the Kulcha, that kind of thing, though. It’s become 1) okay and 2) even preferable to believe at least some woo-woo stuff. If you don’t, you’re expected to apologize and be sheepish. You’re considered ‘cold’ and insufficiently ‘spiritual.’ So people kind of give themselves permission, I think.
And yet that’s not much of an explanation. I’m still baffled. Why don’t people just laugh incredulously? I don’t know.
Did Tom Lehrer ever include angels in his songs?
Dunno! ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’ might be the closest…
[…] I searched ur-B&W for her name and found quite a lot. That Jon Ronson article I pointed out yesterday is there, in 2007 when it was first published. Below that there’s an article by James Randi, but the link is a dud. There’s one from Stop Sylvia Browne, but that link too is a dud. The very first one is from December 2004 (jeezis) and is about Sylvia Browne’s angelology. […]