The Archangel Of The Perverse

I have known for a very long time what the 'imp of the perverse' is. The term crops up in a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, and is a figure of speech that describes a self-destructive impulse in which one does what one should specifically not do.

But just this other day, a wingman raises the term 'The Archangel of the Perverse'. Neither he nor I could imagine whence it came, and so I did some digging. It isn't to be googled (although I imagine it soon will be). But I do find the two words in distant and uneasy relationship in the very short epistle to St Jude (patron saint of lost causes), in the New Testament, and the Old Testament book of Numbers.

In the former book, the canonical Bible's sole archangel, Michael, is inspired to rebuke Satan in a paragraph that seems to imply that there is only one Archangel, and if Satan ever was one, he is one no longer. In the latter book, the Angel of the Lord stops Balaam the false prophet and arraigns him for animal abuse ('Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times?' says the King James Version), making it clear that whatever Balaam's intended course of action, it is perverse.

It would seem that the commonality between the two passages is one of self-destructive behaviour, in both cases rebuked by the highest of divinely-aligned powers. Michael, the power who is said to oversee Israel's historical course, must surely have his hands full in these dark days.