archangel

[prismaticbleed]

awanqi:

Archangel

The Archangel Michael in holy victory over the falling Lucifer.

This unique depiction of their cosmically consequential conflict is not only beautiful, but rich with subtle symbols.

Michael’s pose is striking: his torso is turned away from his rebellious brother and towards the light of God, his arms open in a half-circle, embracing wholeness within that light. His wings compliment this, curved in a perfect mirroring crescent, again reaching up towards something greater outside of the frame. His hands continue this inwards/upwards theme, fingers hidden in self-contained service, one pulling heavenwards with its native power, the other similarly blessed with a sword– hovering for a moment before a final unseen arc-swing down. The golden radial lines of the background all portent this motion, whirling like a divine engine in silent unfathomable force. His halo is at the center of these contours, framing a paradoxical expression of serenity and gravity, a sort of peaceful solemnity. It tells of an untouchable inner anchor coexisting still with a notable outward sorrow– a divine sorrow, true but not tumultuous, pure without the agitation of human nature. Rather, in his star-blue eyes, another holy strangeness of incandescent sobriety, a new angle is shown: the staid lines of his mouth and brows pointing to a new, sudden and shocking line: five fingers splayed in protest, a violent starburst break above a terrifically taut chain. But even before this new element can be fully followed, one last swoop completes the downward and upwards motions both in the pink banner encircling his shoulders and chest, a final embrace from an an outward side, pulling him up to the source of his loyalty. But this ribbon crosses his hips, marked with the green of hope and freedom, and suddenly turns to frame a completely new turn of his body: a twist towards the other half of the image, and a shift from curve into line. The folds of his robes follow the direction of his wing, true, but his feet are firmly planted down, one pointing back to the bottom return of the sphere yet hinting at a push out– and the other catching our eyes in its sole forward extension, existing in the present particular, calling us to attention. And here it touches the root of the chain’s new world, a new shape reaching to frame but not touch the angel behind, a palm open yet unreceptive, a gesture of protest, not plea, the only thing in this foreign form existing beyond the captifying cable.

This chain, this division of the sacred sphere, rends it almost completely through, stopping only where the echoing breach of a soldier foot pushes down into a semicircle of concave character, something that used to be whole now buckling beneath unbearable weight. Lucifer’s torso bends forwards with it, his proud chest still held high, but his neck choked like a strangled bird. Nevertheless his mouth is not open in sputter but in shout, his eyes not bulging but blue and brushed, arched brows seeming to imply an indignant surprise rather than a betrayed horror. This unexpected response mirrors Michael– neither angel is astounded by this event. Both of them are almost impossibly calm in contrast to the fierce scene, despite all the movement of limb and light. But Lucifer chose to rebel, and Michael chose to obey, and their faces betray this absolute finality of opposition. Six-pointed stars frame the fallen one like dizzying sparks, as if he had suffered a blow to the head, when indeed he had just been spiritually severed from the Head of all things. As a result he now carries the weightless light upon his bowed frame like the myth of Atlas, wanting to shrug but fatally powerless to ever escape that self-derermined curse. Despite this corruption of nature he now creates, one knee still bends in original obeisance, unintentionally yet desperate to instinctively cling to the ring of home, one he is now being evicted from for eternity yet which still offers the last shred of stability before the space beyond swallows him up. Those nebulous clouds, glowing faintly with colors of heaven– royal purple, immortal green, faithful blue– are all dulled and dirtied with a sickly grayish cast, their created purposes now just as deviated as his. Lucifer’s right leg reaches pointedly downwards into this endless space, the first motion of a new circular curve embracing not heaven but its opposite of the same stolen name: not Heaven, but the heat-death-doomed wilderness claiming to be as such. Its prince hangs half-naked above it, his glorious robes traded for a garment akin to a loincloth, reminiscent of Adam’s fig-leaves upon his own future fall by this same being’s influence. The flaming sword that would bar lost humanity from Paradise now waits like a guillotine to do the same to that event’s instigator, a poetic justice that even now catches his feathers in a fire that can never be quenched, the awful red glow of hell already visible through his darkening feathers… a few of which now drift towards us like ashes, dangerously and warningly close, a last departing reminder of just how easily we, too, can slip out of grace.