Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Angels: Including the Fallen Angels

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you ever stopped and wondered about the most minute of details about the angelic hierarchy, or maybe the name of a figure in the bible, or what exactly those angels that are in the 7th heaven are referred to, or who the angel of 11 am on Saturday is....

Look NO further.

This book has more information than any other book in the field. It simply blows them all away. I wasn't crazy about the cover art, or the title (I had my doubts) but when I got my grubby hands on my copy, I sat and read this compilation for days on end.

The author spent 15 years researching, and that much is painfully obvious from the get go. Every inkling of angelic reference is carefully detailed here -- even things I've never HEARD of in my (rather large) collection of books. Davidson has somehow managed to catalog it all into a neat little package.

And just when you think the sheer amount of entries in this dictionary is amazing, flip to the back. That's right, the Appendix. That's what makes this book amazing, after all. Not only do you have no less than 3 angelic alphabets, you have detailed listings of all known angels, their positions in Heaven, who was their leader, what hour they guarded over, who fell with Lucifer, and so on and so forth.

Shocking amounts of information! If you are going to get ANY book about angels, I implore you to pick up this one before you go any further! You'll thank me later.

Every theologian, occultist, and pious scholar should get this. Virtually every angel, spirit, devil, and lowly demon is named and defined. It also includes a vast list of alternate spellings and comparisons between the mysterious spirits. Angelic hierarchies are also given, as well as A FEW of their seals. It is absolutely perfect for all who have ever wondered just what an angel is.

Mythology and Folklore are the center of my studies, and for years, I've collected books on angels and other supernatural creatures. Gustav Davidson, who spent most of his life pursuing angels, has put together a definitive dictionary. For beginners to the world of angels and even collectors, this book is a must. Davidson's introduction itself is worth the money and so is the fabulous Bibliography. I bought this book for his sources so that I could read and collect them first-hand. If you are interested in angels, don't miss the chance to buy this book while it is available. It's a great read by a wonderful scholar.

I don't read very many religious books, but this one caught my eye because of its unusual subject, so I spent a while reading it in a Border's bookstore looking up names I remembered from long ago, and it was interesting to see what the book said about them. Although I didn't know much about the subject, I did remember there were seraphim, arch angels, lesser angels, fallen angels, dark angels, black angels, angels of the winds, angels of the hours, and so on, and this book had every one I looked up. Basically every major, minor, fallen angel, demon, or whatever that you can think of seems to be included, from both eastern and western religions.

After a few minutes of that it was obvious to me this was a very well researched, scholarly tome intended for serious students of religion who are looking for something much more technical and thorough than usual.

I noticed many of the angels discussed aren't actually in the Bible but come from "non-canonical" works, as they say. It turns out there are a large number of these, not just the ones I knew of from sources such as the Cabala. Also, there are often conflicting descriptions about a particular angel. For example, certain angels, such as Metatron, Michael, Raphael and Uriel have had the same action or qualities attributed to them at one time or another. But at least the entries appear thorough since the author cites these different sources even when they appear conflicting and contradictory.

Some of the information is pretty amazing by itself. For example, in the cases of the fallen angels, it's said how many infernal legions they have underneath them in Hell to command. I don't recall their names, since they weren't familiar to me before, but one that I saw had 29 legions, and another had 30. I'd be curious to find out where those facts came from.

So as I said, although I'm no expert on the theology or natural theology of angels, this is a very thorough, well-researched, and exactingly detailed job on a specialized subject that will probably be of more interest to the serious amateur or professional student of religion.

Among the plethora of books on angels and angelology, this one stands head and shoulders above the rest. While most of its peers are based on a modicum of research and include familiar angels with a few unfamiliar names thrown in, this book is an exhaustively researched reference work for anyone and everyone interested in the topic. If you're looking to build your library on angelology, this should be the first book you buy.

Having spent the last 25 years studying angels, and spirits, I happily recommend this reprinted book, A Dictionary Of Angels. The author, Gustav Davidson, provides information from biblical, kabbalistic, and magical sources, as well as the poetic.

You will find thousands of angels listed in this dictionary of angels, and plenty of little known information.

I recommend it for the curious, and for the serious student of angels. Many hours of enjoyment will be had.

As a theological Christian, this work was so overwhelming! There's so much stuff in here that's from other sources outside of the Bible.

I loved the introduction, especially, as it describes Gustav Davidson's surprise when he learned how massive the project would become for him. I was particularly intrigued when he describes coming across some sort of a dark entity when he's crossing a field one night, and I wish he wrote more if he's had similar mystical experiences. In fact, I wish he'd would've written a book that discusses these issues.

The catalog of angels in itself is rich. There will be no dissapointment for anyone, whether you're a true worshipper of Satan or whether you're a follower of Christ. This book is a necessity for Western Civilization's religious/mystically-minded people. And I only wish more people knew of this book's contents so that we could have a clearer, less emotional, and more informative discussion of theology.

This book is the tip of an iceberg that the majority of people will never understand.

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. Having studied the more esoteric aspect of the Christian religion for several years, I have a pretty good idea of when I'm looking at a load of bull-honkey and when I'm looking at accuracy based on good sources. The one thing to be careful of is READ THE CITED SOURCES in the individual descriptions. Works by people like Milton are fiction, and should not be taken into consideration if you're seriously looking to find out who the angels "are." They're listed more as "this is what pop culture thinks" versus "this is what a Christian scholar said," which is still useful if you're using the book to write a fiction piece yourself. The tables and symbols in the back are also a nice change from your normal books of angels, who only give one side's perspective on which are 'right.' Davidson supplies several different beliefs and a nice little collection of symbols.
If you want a dictionary of angels and demons, look no further. This is the best I've ever found.

This scholarly and fully referenced, yet not dull or boring, informative book is a treasuretrove of angelic lore information. It doesn't commit itself to any particular religious tradition. You find entries for Judeo-Christian, Islamic, Eastern, Mesopotamian, Gnostic, Kabbalistic, and many more origins and types of entitities. The author does not stay away from non-canonical areas, such as magickal lore angels, celestial hierarchies, the demonic realm, etc. He both welcomes or is skeptical of various characters, mostly depending on the degree of consistency or lack of such in the available literature on each particular subject. Something one learns even in the Introduction is that the field of angelology is full of opposing, sometimes openly contradictory understanding, definitions, specifications, correspondences, and purposes attributed to the angels. An angel who is a benign helper in a certain context might be an evil demon in another tradition or system of beliefs. Eventually, this has something to teach about what dualistic, good-vs-evil mentalities can result in. Please note that humans are the ones who both devise and have such mentalities; the angels are the way they are. It's the phenomenologic principle of "if something is really true, it will be so regardless of whether I believe in it or how I believe in it." However, with angels sometimes one wonders, on the basis of the fascinating information in this book, if one might not be assisting in their creation, or at least the creation of their "public image," their myths (as in Jungian archetypes). There are various highly useful appendices going further into some areas that benefit from further detail (example: the differences in angelic hierarchies based on different systems and authors). This work is for those who truly relish as much information as they can find when their topic of interest is angels. It's not likely to be cherished by clerics or the pious. Those with less committed interests, or with decidedly esoteric or occult interests, will find it a treasure to keep and refer to time and again. It contains numerous highly relevant illustrations. Where history is of help, or other types of documentation, it's included in the text of each topic's definition and information.

I really, *really* enjoyed this work. _A Dictionary of Angels_ outlines many, if not most, of the angels in popular and obscure religious thought. It covers the "also known as" aspect, history of the angel, origins of the myths where possible....it's the most complete and useful book I've picked up on the subject. Not bad for choosing names for household pets, either <G> I highly recommend this book to anyone with even the slightest interest in angels.