Nine Orders of Angels

Milton's Paradise Lost makes reference to a rigid hierarchy of angels in Heaven. As the footnotes hinted, Catholic theologians have specified that there are nine "Orders" of angels, ranked according proximity to the Supreme Being. St. Gregory the Great (alternately, Gregory I, pope from 590-604 A.D.) was the first to decree that there were nine; St. Thomas and St. Denis later ranked them as follows (listed from highest to lowest):

Seraphim
Cherubim
Thrones
Dominations
Virtues
Powers
Principalities
Archangels
Angels

In Paradise Lost, Milton uses this hierarchy to model the structure of Heaven after an army, and the kingdom of Heaven after an imperial power. Satan, an archangel, leads a band of upstarts and renegades in a revolt against God, loses the fight, and is subsequently banished to Pandemonium, the capitol of Hell. Among the "fallen angels" there with him are Beelzebub, Belial, Mammon, Mulciber, and Moloch. Satan, still discontent, learns about the creation of Adam and Eve in Eden and determines to continue his battle against God indirectly, by making his newly-created humans on Earth the battleground. In doing so, he finds himself in a battle of wits with some of the other angels of various rank, including Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, Abdiel, Ithuriel, Uriel, and Zephron.

Paradise Lost is one of those books that will probably never stop serving as a source of analogies to the contemporary world. (Stanley Fish's last blog entry compares Obama's "passive campaigning" strategy against McCain to Jesus's method of responding to Satan's temptations in the sequel, Paradise Regained.) What I'm noticing on this read-through is how the two imperial powers, Heaven and Hell, wage their wars on smaller territories at the fringes of their respective domains, and how much this resembles the "Cold War" between the United States and the Soviet Union. The US and the USSR never came to blows directly, but the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all of the wars in Israel-Palestine during that period were direct consequences of American and Soviet economic and political engagement. Two Empires playing chess on a map of the world. The question is, of Heaven and Hell (as Milton presents them), which does the United States most resemble, and which the Soviet Union? Perhaps I will take up that question in a future blog entry, after I finish reading the book.