Someone pointed out that Crowleyâs listed in the bookâs personae as âan angelâ (who didnât fall, so much as sauntered vaguely downwards...). But thereâs another, similar reference to his nature in the song at the endââThere were angels dining at the Ritz.â What I mean to say is that if Heavenâs angels were bad angels, maybe Crowley wasnât. Maybe he was exactly as good as he was meant to beâa match for Aziraphale, anyway. Crowley asks Aziraphale at the bus stop if everything might have happened as God had ineffably planned it after all. And Aziraphale said he wouldnât put it past Her. Maybe they were both Godâs honest angels in the most ineffable sense, by being honestly themselves.
Also this bit! Theyâre the same kind of thing. Crowley knows it, when heâs not thinking too hard about it. And Aziraphale knows it:
He expected Crowley to be able to sense love, too, just like he can. Thatâs his real, instinctive opinion of Crowley. Itâs only when heâs theorizing instead of feeling that he says Crowley wouldnât understand love.
Which means the central conflict of their relationship is summed up beautifully in Crowleyâs âYouâre an angelâI donât think you can do the wrong thingâ and Aziraphaleâs eager acceptance being followed immediately by âitâd be funny if you did the wrong thing and I did the right one,â and Aziraphaleâs horror.
Crowley can believe in his angelâs goodness long before he can begin to trust in his own again; but he still knows in his core that his misalignment with Heaven isnât a moral failure. And Aziraphale wants to be comforted and reassured in his rightness; but he wonât ever be able to believe in his heart that Crowley is wholly wrong.
Yes absolutely, this is exactly the point. I once saw a shitpost that described Crowley's relationship to angelhood as "right species, wrong political party" and that's a perfect summary of the situation tbh. Ultimately demons are not all that much different from their Heavenly counterparts.
The difference with Crowley, though, is that he hasn't embraced bitterness like the other demons we're introduced to. He's still hurt, he's still angry with God and a dedicated up-fucker of shit, but he ultimately refuses to be soured by hatred. The other demons we see hate Heaven, hate humans, hate each other, hate themselves, and are subsumed by that. They are not evil by any inherent nature, but because they're in pain and making that everyone else's problem.
Crowley, though, has made a radical choice to love, instead. Love the world, love Aziraphale... still working on loving himself, but he's getting there.
And I use the word "choice" deliberately, because the whole point of both Aziraphale and Crowley is to prove that however much Heaven and Hell preach to the contrary, angels (fallen or otherwise) absolutely have free will. Heaven and Hell are both terrible. If Hell is loveless out of pain, Heaven is loveless out of fear (and the reason for that can be laid squarely at God's feet for failing to handle Their rebellious little shit of a firstborn with grace... but the trauma all the angels on both sides are suffering from is a whole meta in and of itself). Point is, neither of the sides have any real, substantive love for anything, but Aziraphale and Crowley choose to love anyway, and choose to act in defense of what they love. It's not so much that Crowley is closer to being a "good person" or that Aziraphale is closer to being a "bad person" than others of their kind, and more that they're both closer to being real people.
They are, ultimately, the same kind of being. Despite the propaganda of Heaven and Hell preaching that they're diametrically opposed and different from each other in every way, it's clear that neither of them has been able to look at each other and truly believe that in their heart of hearts since almost the beginning. It's the old "we're all only human" concept, but in this case the refrain is "we're all only angels." Their differences are superficial at best, and deep down, when they're not thinking too hard about it, both of them recognize that. They look at each other, and when they're not trying to cling to the lies they've been fed about "the opposition," they instinctively feel it.
"Oh," their hearts say, "he's just like me."
BUT WAIT I'M NOT DONE!!!!
It's also worth examining that, while Crowley has nothing in common, politically speaking, with Heaven, he is much closer to a human concept of what an angel should be than he is to the modern concept of a demon.
He owes something, certainly, to pre-Reformation and/or non-Christian depictions of demons as scholars and bringers of wisdom, and even perhaps a little something to trickster gods in non-Abrahamic religious traditions. But the more modern concept of a demon as a malignant entity gleefully bent on possession, death, and destruction? We wrestle with Crowley's role as a demon because that's not recognizable in him at all (and for that matter, so does Crowley, I think. "I'm just doing my job," he says, so that he doesn't have to emotionally deal with what Hell asks him to do).
But when the chips are down, we can recognize in Crowley and Aziraphale a pair of guardian angels for the whole world. Their role in Nopemageddon begins with Crowley's intercession on behalf of humanity, his pleading with God's representative on Earth to take action, to do something, anything, to save this beautiful planet that he loves so dearly. And it ends with Aziraphale convincing Crowley to put his own skin on the line, to back those words up with action and defend humanity not just intellectually but physically as well.
And that full-circle balance is worthy of a whole essay in and of itself but the point is that both Crowley and Aziraphale are more like what modern humans expect angels to be than they are like the reality of what the other angels and demons in their universe actually are.
This is such an interesting meta, especially when you consider Crowley's reaction to... What was it, the Spanish Inquisition?
But, and I'm just gonna put this out there...
Hell's Angel.
The above touches on ânon-christian aspectsâ of demons but I think fails to recognize that Neil Gaiman is Jewish so a throwaway line doesnât do justice to *how much* the non-christian concept of demons may have influenced this story. Jews pick up story concepts from the common/normalized culture (aka christian culture) just like everyone else, but we have our own stories and myths that impact how we see angels and demons that canât be lumped in with Christianity. Our stories are more closely related to what is mentioned above as ânon-abrahamicâ religious traditions - because Christianity and Judaism view things VERY DIFFERENTLY from one another.
In Judaism, demons that simply âdo evilâ are incredibly, extremely rare, and actually pretty modern. Collections of historic Jewish folktales (Elijahâs Violin and Other Jewish Fairytales is a great starting place) mostly show demons exactly like trickster gods. Theyâre more powerful than humans but sometimes they act just like humans - but with the ability to get their comeuppance if someone wrongs them (see The Demon Princess) - and sometimes they act like trickster gods who teach you lessons about yourself (see King Solomon and Asmodeus).
Judaism doesnât have a Satan. The angel (yes, angel) who is called âthe satanâ in Jewish literature is often labeled The Prosecuter, as in, the lawyer during a trial.
And these roles are ones that we see Crowley filling perfectly.
Neil has actually stated explicitly that Good Omens is how it is because he is Jewish and has read the Mishnah.
I would suggest the following of the show, actually:
GOmens!G-d, âthe almightyâ: Catholic perception of G-d
GOmens!Satan: Catholic perception of Satan
Aziraphale and Crowley: Jewish perception of G-d and Satan.
Think about it. Aziraphale is deeply loving and welcomes questions, even when they make him uncomfortable. He doesnât recognize Jesus as divine; when Crowley asks why Jesus has been crucified youâd expect something about the biblical prophesies being fulfilled, but instead itâs âhe said to be kind to each other,â which is the whole sum of Torah, as expressed by Hillel. He delights in Earth and its people; he is a constant seeker of knowledge, and while all that can be known is known by G-d, his attitude toward books is reminiscent of the good Jewish scholar. Indeed, in his complete shunning of modern technology, we can also draw a parallel to the Jewish concept of tradition and ritual among the Orthodox, which is a pretty rare thing to see in media. We even see him acknowledge his own fallibility in debate, which is something shown time and time again in the midrash.
Crowley, meanwhile, fits this on two fronts. First, two actions the Christian canon attributes to Satan are attributed to Crowley: the temptation in Eden, and showing Jesus all the nations of the world. (Jewish tradition does not hold that the snake was Satan.) To a Christian unfamiliar with Judaism, this is a way to, for lack of a better word, Satan-code him; heâs now a stand-in for Satan in the Christian eye. Thing is, Judaism doesnât conceive of Satan the same way; heâs a judge and trickster, basically âtemptingâ humans because, as Aziraphale points out, you canât truly choose good if thereâs no choice to be made. Itâs a dirty job, but somebodyâs got to do it. And Crowley doesâyou could even argue that it shows subtextually in his Hamlet miracle, given that Hamlet is about the struggle between impulses. None of the truly evil stuff can be laid at his doorâheâs disgusted by Nazis, depressed by Caligula and baffled by the aftermath of the French Revolution. Perhaps most central to this concept is his prayer as he seeks to leave Earth to escape Armageddon: pleading with G-d always in the form of a question, such that this is even his own description of his crimes: âall I ever did was ask questions.â Is there ANYTHING more Jewish? Indeed, the prayer itself is reminiscent of Abrahamâs, pleading for the lives of Sodom and Gomorrah: âI know youâre testing them, but must you test them to destruction?â He tempts, he tricks, but heâs not by any means âevil.â
Played out on a grand scale, one could then argue the show is no less than a struggle of ideologies, as written by a Jewish man.
I have SO MANY BIG THOUGHTS about this, but I need time to process it all. Iâm Jewish and have made many, many of these and other similiar observations about GOmens myself and I feel like these lovely people finally collected all the jumbles up and put them into a coherent order.
Being Jewish but navigating in a world that is entirely based in Christian mythology is really taxing and you spend a lot of time double-guessing your media input. âIs this a Jewish spin? Nah, why would it be; itâs probably something Christian I just donât get. But man, it sure seems Jewish, amirite? Ha ha.â
Like, I could pull on so many lines of commentary here and just flap my hands around it all with âthis! yes! this this this!â But Iâm going to give it thought and maybe come back in a few days with something coherent. But Iâm so glad Iâm not seeing things, nor alone in seeing what I do see.
