The Mystery of the Angels of the Second Day

The Rabbis have long held certain theories about angels that seem incongruous to the modern student. They reasoned from the Text that there are two species of angels: the named, immortal ones that we know, and another kind that is nameless and ephemeral, continually created and annihilated. They also allowed for some level of actual materiality for angels.

In Talmud - Mas. Chagigah 14a, we find the Rabbis in a sort of Socratic dialogue as they refine their understanding of these ministering angels. They speak of their continual birth and death:

Samuel said to R. Hiyya b. Rab: O son of a great man (lion), come, I will tell thee something from those excellent things which thy father has said. Every day ministering angels are created from the fiery stream, and utter song, and cease to be, for it is said: “They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:23)” Now he differs from R. Samuel b. Nahmani, for R. Samuel b. Nahmani said that R. Jonathan said: From every utterance that goes forth from the mouth of the Holy One, blessed be He, an angel is created (not from the fiery stream), for it is said: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth (Psalms 33:6).”

Sefer Bahir (The Book of Brightness, the Midrash of Rabbi Nehunya Ben Ha-Kanah) is one of the earliest works of Jewish mysticism. It formed the foundation of early Kabbalistic thought. Its (12th-century?) author relates another dialogue in which the Rabbis determine that these nameless angels were created on the second epochal day, whereas the rest were created on the fifth:

21. Rabbi Yochanan said: The angels were created on the second day. It is therefore written (Psalm 104:3), “He rafters His upper chambers with water [He makes the clouds His chariot, He walks on the wings of the wind].” It is then written (Psalm 104:4), “He makes the winds His angels, His ministers from flaming fire.”

[Rabbi Haninah said: The angels were created on the fifth day, as it is written (Genesis 1:20), “And flying things shall fly upon the firmament of heaven.” Regarding the angels it is written (Isaiah 6:2), “With two wings did they fly.”]

Rabbi Levatas ben Tavrus said: All agree, even Rabbi Yochanan, that the water already existed [on the first day]. But it was on the second day that “He raftered His upper chambers with water.” [At that time He also created] the one who “Makes the clouds his chariot,” and the one who “Walks on the wings of the wind.” But His messengers were not created until the fifth day.

22. All agree that none were created on the first day. It should therefore not be said that Michael drew out the heaven at the south, and Gabriel drew it out at the north, while God arranged things in the middle.

It is thus written (Isaiah 44:24), “I am God, I make all, I stretch out the heavens alone, the earth is spread out before Me.” [Even though we read the verse “From Me” (May- iti), it can also be read] Mi iti - “Who was with Me?”

We also find these mortal angels of the second day in the Zohar (Bereshit 76):

76. This is the secret of the verse: “Who causes the grass to grow for the cattle” (Tehilim [Psalms] 104:14). This is the beast that crouches on a thousand mountains and for whom grass is grown every day. This grass refers to those angels who govern only for a specific time, but then must vanish immediately; because they were created on the second day, their dominion draws upon the left column that was created on the second day. In their
Dominion they wish to annul the right. They are destined to be food for this beast, which means that nothing of their illumination is drawn down to the lower beings. Only the feminine principle enjoys it, and then she burns and annuls them with it - as there is fire that consumes fire, which is the dominion of the left, called ‘Fire.’

In Jewish Mysticism, J. Abelson relates that at least some of the first-century contemporaries of Philo, a Stoic Alexandrian Jew, considered angels as physical:

But there are aspects of Philo’s angelology which are strange to Rabbinic modes of thought. One of the most interesting of these is his designation of angels as ‘Incorporeal intelligences’ and as ‘Immortal souls’ (On Dreams [That They Are God-sent], I. 20). The Rabbis obviously thought of angels as material beings. They even at times materialised the Shechinah, as will be mentioned in the following chapter. The sight of an angel was a physical phenomenon. Philo’s exegesis took quite a different turn.

The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav

Now we come to the most psychedelic aspect of particle physics. Below is a Feynman diagram of a three-particle interaction. In this diagram no world line leads up to the interaction and no world line leads away from it. It just happens. It happens literally out of nowhere for no apparent reason, and without any apparent cause. Where there was no-thing, suddenly in a flash of spontaneous existence, there are three particles which vanish without a trace.

[Diagram]

This type of Feynman diagram is called a “vacuum diagram.” That is because the interactions happen in a vacuum. A “vacuum,” as we normally construe it, is a space that is entirely empty. Vacuum diagrams, however, graphically demonstrate that there is no such thing. From “empty space” comes something, and then that something disappears again into “empty space.”

In the subatomic realm, a vacuum obviously is not empty. So where did the notion of a completely empty, barren, and sterile “space” come from? We made it up. There is no such
thing in the real world as empty space. It is a mental construction, an idealization, which we have taken to be true.

“Empty” and “full” are false distinctions that we have created, like the distinction between “something” and “nothing.” They are abstractions from experience which we have mistaken for experience. Perhaps we have lived so long in our abstractions that instead of realizing that they are drawn from the real world, we believe that they are the real world.

Vacuum diagrams are the serious product of a well-intentioned physical science. However, they also are wonderful reminders that we can intellectually create our “reality.” It is not possible, according to our usual conceptions, for “something” to come out of empty space, but, at the subatomic level, it does, which is what vacuum diagrams illustrate. In other words, there is no such thing as “empty space” (or “nothing”) except
as a concept in our categorizing minds.

Photons are force-carrying bosons that mediate interactions of electromagnetic particles, as gluons do for the strong nuclear force and W and Z bosons do for the weak. In Heim theory (Droescher), these force carriers are called “messenger particles.” Likewise, the theorized graviton might be the messenger particle associated with the force of gravity.

[To be completed later. I have been putting this off for a couple months. If I post it, I think I'll be more inclined to finish it. It'll go on to mention Stuart Hameroff, Evan Harris Walker (tangentially), and John Conway's Strong Free Will Theorem that I dropped in the Lucite.org PDF archive a while back. John Conway has just today (4/19/2009) received some traction from Boing Boing and Kevin Kelly. His paper has been remarked on at Slashdot, too.]

Lydia Agnes Price

I am looking for information on my American Indian ancestors Mary "Polly" Cook and Lydia Agnes Price, through whom I am descended. I've found a little, but it's kind of a sad story. It seems she was made to be ashamed of her Lenni Lenape heritage.

Lydia Agnes Price, our great-grandmother, married Michael Heland Langley on 18 December 1850.

Lydia's parents were: William Price and Mary "Polly" Cook. She was 100% Native American (Delaware tribe).

Mary "Polly" Cook was a full-blooded Delaware Indian. Her parents were Obediah Cook and Sarah Cottingham. Many members of the Delaware tribe lived and adopted the white people's ways. They took English names, they farmed, or even went into business right along with white people. Some did not even consider themselves as anything but white people, and some even grew ashamed of their Indian blood. This is the category that Mary Cook belonged to. She married William price, a white man, on the 22 February 1827, and raised all of her children to live and think as "white." William and Mary had six children together: Isaac, born 6 January 1828 in North Carolina; Magdalene Sarah, born 13 november 1829 in North carolina; Lydia Agnes, born 7 February 1832, born in Madison Co. (Buncombe Co.) North Carolina; James Connor, born 16 february 1834 in North Carolina; Berry price, bor 15 December 1836 in South Carolina; William Harrison, born 8 October 1837 in North Carolina. William Price is listed in the 1830 census of Buncombe Co., North Carolina,with one male child under 5 (son, Isaac) and a female aged 15-20 (Mary Cook, William's wife). He does not appear in the census again with Mary. The William Price family is listed on the same page with Obediah Cook in the 1830 census of Buncombe County, North Carolina, and in 1840, Mary Price, as head of household, is situated between the households of Obediah Cook and Riley Cook. William Price died at age 33, in 1838, cause of death is still unknown.

(Excerpt from the Price Family Genealogy.)

In the Langley Family Tree, Lydia is also mentioned.

Michael Heland Langley, our great-grandfather, born 22 July 1818, in Ashe Co., North Carolina during the presidency of James Monroe. Michael lived there until he was 7 years old. The family moved to Campbell Co., Tennessee. His family and friends called him "Heland," pronounced "Hee-land." He left Tennessee at age 21, in 1839, to live with his sister, Nancy Jane gray and her husband Martin, and his wife Susannah in Nodaway Co., Missouri for awhile. He lived in Page Co., Iowa/Nodaway Co., Missouri area (which were abutting counties) for 8 years, moving back to Page Co., Iowa, where he lived for 12 years. At 32 years, Michael married Lydia Agnes price on 18 December 1850, in Nodaway Co., Missouri. She was a pretty, dark-haired, half-Native American girl of 18 years. They were pioneer citizens of Easton Township, Kansas, moving to Kansas in 1856. They came to Kansas six years before Kansas was admitted into the Union. They came in a covered wagon with their three children....

(Excerpt from the Langley Family Tree.)

I am now trying to find out more about Lydia and her mother. This all came up when a child of my brother's showed a genetic marker that is only found in children with Indian blood from both father and mother (his wife also has American Indian ancestors). We confirmed it with the above information. I wish I would have known about this when I was a kid.

I would have killed a lot more cowboys with my cap repeating rifle.