Rumi on Angels
My connection to angels has grown quietly in the background of my life. There have been times during prayer when I’ve felt a sense of an angelic presence over my shoulder, or instances when some natural wonder seemed alive with some supernatural force. But this is an ordinary human experience after all. Some people claim to see angels all the time. Some people claim to be them. Some of them may be right, yet today it often feels like our representations of them drag them down to our mundane level. We sentimentalise them as cuddly Cupids, eroticise them as our romantic fantasies, or project our own existential angst upon them as beings crushed by the burden of eternity. Perhaps the angels, with their fluid nature, are even sometimes willing to be these things for us, but surely such conceptions don’t capture the awesome strangeness of what they truly are.
I’ve never seen an angel face-to-face with my physical eyes as far as I am aware. I don’t doubt they can appear to us in unassuming human form, but for me, in their true winged form, they must be elemental, vast, and unsettlingly alien. That Muhammad, peace be upon him, was said to be deeply (and literally) shaken by Gabriel is one of the reasons I find accounts of that encounter convincing. Though hadiths speak of Gabriel appearing to Muhammad and his companions in the form of a handsome young man, in his “true” form they say his wings covered the entire horizon. Muhammad’s camel is said to have sunk to its knees when Gabriel came bearing a message. This rings true for me. This is an angel I can relate to.
Rumi describes how Muhammad was barely able to survive that encounter. Yet underneath the terror was an indescribably tender mercy:
The Angel Gabriel unfurled
just a little of the awesome majesty
by which a mountain could be crumbled to dust.
A single royal wing of his covered both east and west.
Muhammad grew senseless in awe.
When Gabriel saw that senselessness,
how in astonishment his senses flew away,
he came and drew him into his arms.
That awe is the portion of strangers,
but this gentle affection comes to embrace a friend.[Mathnawi IV: 3768–71]¹
Gabriel is a Hebrew name meaning “God is my strength.” In Arabic it becomes Jibrail and shares the same root as one of the names of God, al-Jabbar, “the Compeller.” The name therefore suggests the power of God that is overwhelming — and merciful.
Excepting perhaps Iblis and his followers (whom some consider fallen angels), neither the Quran nor Rumi allow angels much hint of human frailty. There are limits to their knowledge and awareness, even doubts, but their fundamental state is one of deep insight, love, and divine rapture. The Quran describes them surrounding the throne of authority singing glory and praises to their Lord (39:75),² and Rumi elaborates:
Every angel has within itself a tablet, from which, in proportion to its rank, it reads off the conditions of the world and what will come to be. When what it has read and ascertained does come to be, its belief, love, and “intoxication” for the Creator increase and it marvels at God’s majesty and ability to know the unseen. The increase in love and belief, and the unverbalized and unexpressed marvelling, are its glorification.
[Fihi Ma Fihi, Discourse 55]³
Rumi appears to agree with most Muslim theologians in insisting that angels have no free will (Discourse 55), yet as we rise from the human to the angelic, free will dissolves into the Divine Will anyway, with no sense of privation. Despite this (or perhaps partly because of it), the human being is potentially more spiritually exalted than the angel within Islam. Rumi points out that Muhammad said, “I have a ‘moment’ with God during which there is no room for either message-bearing prophet or angel close to God to enter with me” (Discourse 3), and for Rumi this extends to the mystics of God too:
The spirit of angels is greater than ours;
it transcends common sense.
Yet the spirit of mystics is greater still.
Don’t be bewildered by this.[Mathnawi II, 3326–29]⁴
For Rumi and Ibn Arabi, the human being’s potential superiority to the angels is due to our capacity to reflect the full spectrum of Divine Names. Ibn Arabi explains,
The angels do not enjoy the comprehensiveness of Adam and comprehend only those Divine Names peculiar to them, by which they glorify and sanctify the Reality [God], nor are they aware that God has Names of which they know nothing and by which they cannot glorify Him, nor are they able to sanctify Him with the [complete] sanctification of Adam.
[The Bezels of Wisdom, “The Wisdom of Divinity in the Word of Adam”]⁵
Barring the last two quotations, much of what has been said about the angels so far probably wouldn’t disturb literal-minded theologians too greatly, however, Rumi’s position gets more subtle, integrating the perspective of the philosophers who saw angels not so much as external realities but as metaphors for “intelligences” operating within the human being. Rumi tells us,
The mind is of the same species as the angels, although angels have a winged form and the mind does not. Nonetheless in actuality they are the same thing and have the same nature. One must not take form into consideration since they perform the same function in actuality. For example, if you dissolve the angel’s form, they become pure intellect, with nothing of their wings remaining externally. We realize then that they were totally intellect that had been embodied. In fact, they are called “embodied intelligences”.
[Fihi Ma Fihi, Discourse 25]
When Rumi and Ibn Arabi talk about angels, they lead us into a fluid, integrative zone where fixed concepts start to dissolve: the imaginal realm, between our world and the realm of the Divine Qualities. On the one hand, angels are awesome creatures operating on a cosmic level, sometimes taking on perceptible form; on the other, they are intelligences potentially operating in our own hearts. It is as if they cannot be pinned down by the rational mind and put into neat, either/or categories. Are they external, objective realities? Perhaps. Are they subjective projections from our own purified imaginations? Perhaps. In another discourse, Rumi says of angels,
Pure love, far sighted and keen of vision, they dwell in a state between the negative and the positive. Before them man should tremble and say, “Woe is me! What am I? What do I know?”
[Fihi Ma Fihi, Discourse 20]
Much of what Rumi has to tell us about angels is poetically implied rather than made systematically explicit. Sometimes the distinction between our own intellect and the angels seems to be maintained and obliterated at the same time, and Rumi’s poetry then seems quantum-like, visionary, and double-natured in itself, defying our usual logic in an angelic way:
They that know the spirit are free from numbers:
they are sunk in a Sea without quality or quantity.Become spirit and know spirit by means of spirit:
become the friend of vision, not the child of logic.The angel is one in origin with intelligence;
they have become two forms for the sake of Wisdom.The angel has assumed wings and pinions like a bird,
while intelligence has left wings and assumed splendour.Necessarily both became helpers,
each beauteous one being a support to the other.The angel and the intelligence are both finders of God,
and each gives help and homage to Adam.The ego and the Devil have been one from the first,
the envier and enemy of Adam.[Mathnawi III, 3191–97]⁶
Is Satan an individual external to us or an aspect of own selves? Like the angels, Rumi seems to hint, he may be both.
Rumi describes Gabriel as “pure consciousness” (Discourse 3), hinting that in some sense Gabriel was Muhammad’s enlightened consciousness. But not just Muhammad’s, for Rumi chides us for neglecting the Gabriel within our own selves:
You’ve tied your Gabriel up to a post —
hundreds of times you’ve wounded
his feathers and his wings.
You serve him roast meat;
you take him into the hay-barn
and put straw before him,
saying, “Eat! What a choice meal for us,”
but for him the only food
is meeting God face to face.[Mathnawi III: 398–402]
This leads me to ask: Who are these specific angels for whom we have names? And what are their functions? Countless New Age books claim to be able to teach us this, but what does mystical Islam have to say?
Gabriel is one of four archangels within Islam, the other three being Michael, Israfil, and Azrael. Gabriel and Michael are both mentioned by name in the Quran (see 2:97–98 and 66:4) and are also pre-eminent archangels in the Judeo-Christian angelic hierarchy. The names Israfil and Azrael are not mentioned in the Quran, but hadiths equate them with the “blower of the trumpet” on the Day of Reckoning and the “angel of death” respectively (see 32:11 and 39:68). They have no certain Hebrew equivalents, though some equate Israfil with Seraphiel in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
For Rumi, these four archangels are the bearers of the throne of God (until the Day of Reckoning when they will be joined by four others to make the eight specified in verse 69:17 of the Quran). Gabriel represents spirit, Michael sustenance and provision, Israfil resurrection, and Azrael death and suffering. Rumi associates the name “Michael” with the Arabic root that gives us kayl, meaning “measure”; thus while Gabriel is the one who compels us towards Spirit, Michael is the one who measures out our earthly provision.
Rumi tells a story of how God sent all four archangels, one by one, to take some clay from the Earth in order to fashion Adam. But the Earth, being afraid, begins to cry and asks each of them to have mercy and leave her in peace. All of the archangels save Azrael, who is the last to be sent, crumble at her tears and return empty-handed. Only Azrael, the angel of death, returns to God with the clay, paradoxically telling the Earth that he is the most merciful of the four for carrying out God’s command and that within apparent stringency lies God’s mercy (Mathnawi V, 1556–682). It’s a mysterious and affecting story in which we have a sense of the heavenly throne, the awesome archangels, and the terrified earth all meeting in the formation of Adam — of ourselves. That there are four archangels at the four corners of the throne also seems significant in that the number four — and the square — is associated with manifestation in sacred geometry. That the four should double to eight on the Day of Reckoning — that initiates a second level of being — may have an intuitive sense to it.
The concept of four throne bearers is also found in Judaism and Christianity, largely based on the Book of Ezekiel in the Bible. For Jewish mystics steeped in the Kabbalah (and its precursor Merkabah), the four cherubs who bear the throne are usually identified as Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, and Uriel.
The Quran assures us that the throne of God extends over the heavens and the earth and that The Infinitely Compassionate is firmly established on the throne (20:5). Clearly we can take this on the macrocosmic level, imagining the entire universe under the throne of God with the four archangels presiding as cosmic intermediaries in one vibrating network of love. But Rumi unlocks an added interior dimension to these verses for us:
The throne of the heart has become restored to soundness
and purified of sensuality.
Now the Compassionate is seated on His Throne.[Mathnawi 1, 3665]⁷
The throne and the four archangels therefore, are a way of representing our own interiority. Could we even acknowledge these four living presences, externally and internally, at the end of salah as we glance over either shoulder? In the Book of Ezekiel (chapter 1 especially) they are called “the four living beasts” — the wildness of this English translation feels fitting — and they are described using weird animal imagery that the eye of our imagination can’t really build a coherent picture from. Just so… they are the space at the back of our heads, over our shoulders. Rather than looking upon them, perhaps they, with their numberless eyes, look upon, or through, us. But we can acknowledge them as we seek to clear a space for that throne for God within ourselves, asking, How do I balance the concerns of the spirit with provision for the body? How do I balance the inevitability of death with the joy of resurrection?
Maybe we receive no answer, or maybe these are not the right questions. But, still, if we humbly persevere, maybe we’ll hear the joyful approach of the angels in those words, “Woe is me! What am I? What do I know?” and the imaginal world will open before us.
1. Unless otherwise specified, all Rumi poetry is from The Rumi Daybook, trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski.
2. The Light of Dawn, Daily Readings from the Holy Qur’an, trans. Camille Adams Helminski.
3. All quotations from the Fihi Ma Fihi are from either The Rumi Daybook or Signs of the Unseen, trans. Wheeler Thackston.
4. Jewels of Remembrance, trans. Kabir and Camille Helminski.
5. The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. R. W. J. Austin.
6. Authors’s own rendition based on Nicholson’s translation.
7. Authors’s own rendition based on Nicholson’s translation.
