on Angels, Archangels, and the heads of lions, oxen, and eagles
To describe the from of an angel, we must first dispense with the imagery conjured by the word 'angel'.
These are not winged humans, not in any way, shape, or form: non-human seems obvious, but the winged less so, they are only winged insofar as they fly.
Allow these images, imprinted from storybooks and stained glass, to depart the mind.
Now picture a nebula, a cloud of Dust, every second the specks of gas and particles and matter that make it up swirling, otherworldly, impossibly vast and in more dimensions than the human mind can fathom, unfathomable power confined to the small space that the dimensions touch and this approximate form can bleed through.
There may be things contained in this nebula: shapes, colours, faces.
To say that some angels have the head of a lion would be less accurate than saying that a cloud has the face of an ox, it is a construction of the human ability to take chaos and draw a pattern, to draw something familiar, nothing more.They will whirr and disappear as quickly as they emerged, the bright stars contained within them as eyes, shining.
(Even in a place like the Cage, where physics are optional, and the walls are floors and ceilings all at once, MC Escher abandon dæmon and feast your eyes, neither Sam nor Tio are able to give even the most vaguely factual descriptions when trying to quantify the forms of the archangels they are trapped with - swirling particles in some sort of shape, but what kind, what kind? - words like 'horrifying' and 'awesome' begin to creep in alongside 'constantly-shifting' and 'translucent' (which seemed to be the best word they could decide on when faced with something transparent and clear as anything solid). 'Terrifying' manages to make its way onto the list three separate times before they notice the error.
They mention once, in passing, after some sort of Enochlish/Englochian has been established, that the forms of both Archangels seem impossible to pin down, and the response was a very casual approximation of "the only reasons your minds haven't imploded and your eyes burn through your skull is because you lack the physical forms for these things to be possible. Anyway, the Cage wouldn't let you go insane, that's part of its design. Wouldn't want something with only a vague mockery of reason to be what eventually escapes.")