Shield

And as if in a mighty dream of the past, I saw a shield shining in the light, and it had no supporters, nor needed any; for it was a guard upon the arm of Michael, the archangel, who is prince over the people of God. This is the blazon I saw upon it:

Party per pale Or and Azure; the letters ACS overlapped Gules; in chief Azure a four-clawed two-legged Eastern dragon coiling Or, with the head of a Lion and winged as an Eagle displayed.

Then I remembered the virtues that the Dauntless had brought to us of old: courage and valour, wisdom and chivalry, excellence and humility; the defence of innocence and the pursuit of justice; service as of a knight, mastery as of a craftsman. For while the colour of gold and earthly success made half the shield, the other half was of the heavens and the undying excellence of the Spirit; and over all was the blood that joined one to the other in faith and hope and love.

I cried out to the archangel who defends the people, "Will nobody teach the young what meaning is carried upon this shield?"

He replied to me, and his voice was as the rumble of stone upon the mountains, "Who has the gift, and who has the voice? Who was told these things in ages past?"

And I knew of whom he spoke, and it was as a burning fire within me that would not be put out.

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.