Guardian Angels

A Realm of Spiritual Forces

Over 600 words

There is not a little to indicate that there is a realm of spiritual forces, both good and evil, quite apart from the observable physical world which dominates our lives. Leaving aside any personal intimations, evidence comes from witnesses, i.e. people who claim to have experienced suchlike and who can recount remarkable encounters. It remains possible to dismiss these reports on the grounds that they are inconsistent with our vast standard knowledge of the material and biological worlds. No-one is pressured to believe. This said, the Lurianic Kabbalah states: “There is a crack in all things. That is where the light get in.”

Usually, in our culture, these reports are framed uniquely in terms of God, or maybe Satan.

This is unfortunate because it comes to imply all the baggage associated with “Faith.” The “Faith” concerned is mostly Christianity, which is a confused and confusing amalgam I have criticised elsewhere: https://www.character-and-ethics.com/Christian.html and https://www.thinking-for-clarity.com/Christianity.html

The essential difference between a theist (someone who believes in God) and an atheist is Prayer. People who claim to believe in God but reject prayer are atheists in all but name.

My purpose here is to change how spiritual forces are understood.

Only a few people claim to have direct acquaintance with spiritual forces. Many more may speculate that they have had glimpses, for example, in the form of telepathy or striking coincidences. Much has to do with time, with the future and not only the past impinging sporadically.

The problem is that we cannot form a consensus on the nature of the spiritual forces. Different people may perceive different forces, with no-one able to perceive all. There is no criterion to distinguish cases of mistaken identity or of malevolent imposters. Consensus requires that Truth and Falsehood can be told apart by one and all.

As a baseline I have posited Good and Evil. At the extremes, these are easy to recognise. But in the Fog of Moral War, the boundaries can become blurred.

Instead of talk of a unique God, one might imagine that there are various deities, with no-one able to perceive them all; similarly for the demons.

Another take on these numinous experiences is that some of them are messages from a guardian angel. My guardian angel, or angels, will not be the same as yours.

One might then conceive prayer as beseeching one’s guardian angel; or, if praying for others, their guardian angel. Many attest to the effectiveness of prayer even while others are less hopeful.

Prayer may, arguably, lead to insights and resolve, and therefore guide action, while abstinence from prayer is self-reliance; or vanity. Note that a prayer may also be for others, or another, to be harmed, irrespective of whether this is their desert.

Once guardian angels are acknowledged as conceivable, so too one can surmise that demons are real. It does not follow from disbelief in an Almighty God that one must deny the existence of evil.

The power of guardian angels must be seen as limited. Contrast this with the notion that God is almighty: this is a dogma which, in the face of evil and of free will, defies reason.

Faith in God might be replaced by Hope.

These constructive reflections are aimed at moving away from the fixation on a unique deity, which is surely too simplistic.

Monotheism is allied with monogamy, and this in turn with monopoly.

The philosophical discipline of epistemology recognises that there are limits to what we can humanly know. Those who insist on — and preach — esoteric knowledge (always their own esoteric knowledge) are guilty surely of arrogance.

Although generalisations serves us well at a down-to-earth level, generalisations about generalisations run into problems of recursion.

What we cannot speak of we must pass over in silence.

Late 2025