Angel Curry

I’ve always been a little bit snappish about angel work. It’s not that I don’t believe in angels; it’s more that I’ve always preferred to go to the Head Honcho rather than the staff. After all, if you want the Boss to help you out and you know you’ve got direct access to his office, why ask the Receptionist, the people from Human Resources or even the Head of Security?
And to be honest I’ve come across a lot of people who talk about angels in a very fluffy manner but whose lives don’t appear to be working very well and that never endeared the practice to me.

The Jewish and Alchemical mystical traditions which I’ve studied for the last 15 years teach that the energy forms that we generally call angels are pure forces of Divine aspects which have no free will. They have never been human and even if they can appear on Earth as humans, they have no experience of human physicality unless we invite them to experience it through us.

That’s different from our guides and spiritual beings whom we often regard as angelic and who combine the best of all worlds. But an actual angel — or messenger of God — is a power-house of energy focused on one particular aspect of existence.
It’s as though we are God’s children and the angels are God’s joyous servants who delight in assisting us. They know exactly what their purpose is and do not deviate from it. The only problem is that they believe that we, as divine beings ourselves know what we’re doing and if we give one Cosmic Order for prosperity and then spend twelve hours focusing on lack they give us the latter because that’s what we asked for most.

Realising that feeling snappish about angels is hardly going to attract a positive angelic experience, I decided that it was time to try to extend the hand of friendship to the Heavenly Office Workers instead of just sweeping past dismissively on my way to the Board Room.

The first few times where I did a meditation where I invoked the presence of one of the higher levels of angels than the ones who take care of the plants in my garden I didn’t get very far. The visualisation called down the essence of Archangel Michael (not the whole of him obviously – an archangel being energetically the size and power of a medium-sized sun). I couldn’t feel him to start with and then got the distinct impression that I wasn’t ready. That gave me a challenge or two!

But I kept trying and one day, the meld occurred. The Archangelic essence stepped (by invitation only) into my electro-magnetic field and it felt as though I was absorbed in living
gold and salmon pink. There was a gentle, powerful questing presence and, as I so often do when asked a question by someone we admire, I babbled.

I said (in my head), “I’m making a vegetable curry tonight.”

I felt like an idiot who was trying to impress with my culinary skills. But the delight that flowed through me at the thought of cooking a curry was palpable. It felt like a rainbow of colour of awe that such a thing was possible. Because, basically, an angel can’t cook…

“You can do it with me, if you like,” I said.

He did like and I loved the feeling of his joyous assent. In fact I thought cooking curry with an angel would be just the bee’s knees. That led to a fairly intense conversation about the leg-working processes of the genus of bee and it’s bending abilities and the fact that bees don’t have kneecaps so, technically, don’t have knees. It wasn’t that he meant to correct me; just desired clarification from a Daughter of the Creator about whether she was commanding/desiring/calling into being a form of bee which did have knees and explaining (politely) that such a creation, being until now unplanned in the evolutionary process would take a long time and a great deal of definitive thought . And apart from that, bees were Sachiel’s business, not his. Not for nothing does the Alchemical Tradition call angels ‘The Heavenly Civil Service.”

So a brief explanation about the vernacular was required. This was listened to with polite interest but it didn’t really hit the spot. Angels tend to stick to the point. Bees may have legs that bend but they don’t have kneecaps therefore they don’t have knees. Either I want them to or I don’t. The choice is mine. If I’m not choosing to begin co-creating bees with knees, then fine.

Shall we move on?

We moved on into the kitchen which was examined with great interest from top to bottom. One of Michael’s call signs is the cat (especially a golden one) and it was very much like experiencing a curious cat checking out the home.
At this point I’d better point out that although I love cooking, I had never cooked a vegetable curry before. I’d just got a surfeit of vegetables and had a recipe off the Internet and fancied giving it a go. I started gathering the root vegetables together, washing and scraping them.

The angel loved the experience of hot water on my hands and, when it cooled down wondered why I didn’t add more.

“I’m trying to save water and electricity,” I said.

The equivalent of a roar of joyous disbelief washed through me. How could I possibly believe that there could ever be a limit of water or electricity! To think that I chose a less than fabulous experience voluntarily because of fear of lack on this incredible abundant planet where it’s God’s joy to give us everything we desire!

That’s a little challenging to write in the light of political correctness and stewardship of the Earth but at the time it felt magnificent! And as creators of our own reality we really do have watch those automatic sentiments of lack.

The next question was even more incredible.

Why, the angel asked, as I was dicing carrots, did any human being voluntarily think any thought that wasn’t a happy one?
Come to think of it, it added in fascinated enquiry, why had I just cut my thumb? And wasn’t the colour of the blood so utterly, amazingly, gloriously, vibrantly beautiful?

We lost contact for a minute or two there as we were on temporarily incompatible vibrationary patterns but he was back in time to be interested in iodine and sticking plaster and very amused at my belief that any bacteria could possibly harm me if I didn’t want it to.

There arose a distinct desire to teach the angelic realms how to swear but somehow it didn’t get through…

As I par-boiled the root vegetables in salted water with turmeric and fried the onions and leeks with grated garlic, chilli and ginger I could almost feel him playing in the colours, textures and shapes. He explained that he was using (as I had given permission) my senses and literally wallowing in the experience of physicality. I ate a small piece of raw garlic to teach him a lesson but it went down a riot. He was in love with garlic and absolutely fascinated by the reaction of my nose and throat when I raised him a piece of raw chilli.

In fact the Angel thought that the whole experience of making curry was pretty darn profound. It wasn’t that he’d never had so much fun but this was happening now and could happen now to him eternally because he had experienced it in manifest existence (I think that’s right but I didn’t have a notebook).

“It’s individual creation,” he said. “You will never make a curry like any other human being. It has your energy in it; you make it in your own way with your own movements and sounds. You are taking individual blocks of life and mixing them to transform them into something unique; a chemical process that changes them forever. It is inconceivable for us to imagine mixing and heating a group of vegetables together because we can only see them in their individual beauty. And yet you humans create all the time. You build things, you change things, you destroy and improve things. It’s divinity in action!”

I noticed the use of the word ‘we’ rather than I. It would appear that the concept of ‘I’ didn’t resonate with a being which was an essence of a greater essence that was essence of an even greater essence for a long and ever-ascending way up to the full glory of Archangelic Beingness. That is one of the amazing thing about human beings, he explained. Our ability to individuate and to make thousands of individual choices.

I liked the idea that my curry might be a unique, divine creation. I liked the feeling of being observed with incredible love. And I had to wonder, why was it that we thought anything other than happy thoughts? Training and habit were the only answers. After all, I don’t know the truth of anybody else’s life and, once you’ve existed inside an angel you realise that there’s nothing external to you anyway so the suffering you see has to be yours and yours alone. And the enemies you make are only the enemies in you projected outwards.

“That’s Samael’s job,” said Michael, testing for seasoning and thinking simultaneously that nothing so good had ever been cooked and that a little more salt might be a good idea.

“What’s Samael’s job?”

“Protection and clearing the illusion of having enemies and suffering.”

“But everybody says that protection is your job. Don’t you have a sword?” A feeling — or was it a scent? — of scarlet flame with specks of green came through for a moment together with an image of a scene from the movie Crocodile Dundee — the one where Mick Dundee is threatened with attack and says, “that’s not a knife, this is a knife.”

“But isn’t Samael a name for Satan?”

Great roars of laugher made the entire room light up. I understood that Samael was the angel of destruction so it was an easy mistake to make. But he broke down the things that needed to be broken down; he didn’t attack the good. Without Samael there’d be no compost heaps…

Apparently if you ask Samael to help you with an enemy he’ll help you move apart on to your better good. Which means the enemy may be the one getting the promotion or the lovely relationship. He won’t get that good a press then…
But back to the curry. It was time just to let it simmer and to get the rice on to boil. I opened the back door to let the cool air in — and a large ginger tom cat was sitting on the doorstep. I had never seen him before in my life. He gazed up at me as a cat to a queen and sauntered into the kitchen. My husband loves cats so raised no objection to the new arrival and, as we ate, the cat sat watching, sitting elegantly on the third chair at the table.

I’m lucky; I can tell my husband about my spiritual life and it was obvious that something was going on with the extra presence in the kitchen.

We enjoyed that curry; all four of us (the cat had a nibble) were pretty impressed with how it turned out. And it was easier than usual to eat thoughtfully, savouring every taste. The red wine also seemed to be a particularly fine vintage.

But as we drank our cup of after-supper tea, the cat got up, asked to leave and I bid the angelic presence goodbye too. That was only right and proper; the rest of the evening was for Peter and I to talk, read and enjoy being together… but I sent Michael a thought of thanks as I left out a bowl of milk before we locked up went upstairs to bed.

It’s six weeks since Peter, the angel and I shared supper but the cat turns up two or three times a week and requests a mouthful of whatever I may be cooking. Sometimes it makes him sneeze but he eats it with his golden eyes shining. And then he leaves for wherever he lives and I watch him go with a smile in my heart.