The guardian angels of countries are known as principalities. There is a good post on this about the guardian angel of England by William Wildblood. The idea is that for a country to be a real thing, rather than an arbitrary creation of laws, there must be a spiritual force which binds the people of the country together. But not just the people; the guardian angel of a country would also be concerned with the land and the physical nature of the nation as well.
But why stop at countries? Is there a guardian angel for the whole earth as well, who organizes the principalities and is concerned with the physical environment of the planet?
The first time this thought occurred to me was reading this passage from the second installment of John Fitzgerald's excellent story "That Hideous Strength Unveiled"
"Because, before they can be handed to the deep King of Britain, they must first be blessed by the greatest king of all - God's vice-regent on Earth - the silent watcher, the still point, the secret overlord of the planet. He has many names. Some call him Melchizedeck, others the Chakravatin, others the King of the World. And you and I will receive his blessing too before we travel back to return the Jewels to Arthur. Then my work will be complete. "
In this story, Melchizedek is the guardian angel of Earth. And then I remembered that this notion also exists in C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy, where each planet has its own guardian spirit, called an Oyarsa. Lewis in turn borrowed this from older notions, such as the idea that the planets were moved by "planetary intelligences."
In addition, William James Tychonievich has written a post entitled: "Each continent and region has its own biological 'style' " that ends with this interesting idea:
"Just as Rembrandt and Titian, and even Picasso and Chagall, are all part of a larger style called 'European art,' which is quite distinct from, say, Chinese art -- so I sometimes feel that I can sense a common "Earth" style underlying all the animals in the world, even though I obviously have no other set of animals to compare them too. The planetary spirit of Earth may be harder to see, for lack of contrast, than the regional spirits of various countries and continents, but it is no less real. "
Which suggests that if we were to see an animal or plant from another planet, we would immediately recognize it. Such an animal or plant would be different in some big, difficult to imagine way from any of those we are familiar with.
After thinking through these considerations, I do believe in a guardian angel of the Earth. And in these times, I think such thoughts are well worth thinking about.
An interesting topic indeed! I do find this difficult to conceptualise, but intellectually I find the idea well supported.
ReplyDeleteGiven the modern need for thinking to be free, conscious, chosen - I suppose that it could only become a positive trend if people explicitly acknowledged the reality these angels (or group-archangels) and engaged in explicit communication with them.
Otherwise we would probably get a situation like Steiner envisages in his Zurich 1918 'Work of the Angels...' lecture, where the un-conscious angelic influences would turn to evil, by working through passive instincts only.
Groupishness is a mystery to modern science IMO (I wrote about this in relation to biology - https://thewinnower.com/papers/3497-reconceptualizing-the-metaphysical-basis-of-biology-a-new-definition-based-on-deistic-teleology-and-an-hierarchy-of-organizing-entities )
Thanks for the link to your paper. It does a great job setting out the limitations of biology as currently conceptualized. I especially liked the part where you set out how many things can go wrong at each stage of increasing organization, so it's amazing anything is organized at all.
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