angels, deciding what shape to take when interacting with The Humans: well….eye contact is important to humans, right? they find it reassuring when they can see the eyes of the person they’re talking to. so if we have LOTS of eyes, in very visible places, that’ll be even MORE reassuring
can’t stop thinking how much sense it would make if every design choice angels made was just a misguided attempt to Relate To The Humans. imagine how those conversations went
wings: “humans don’t like things they can’t understand, so if we’re going to levitate we should have wings. in fact we should probably have lots of wings, since we’re so big and impressive. humans like wings”
loud, booming voices: “fuck off Azrael the humans needs to be able to hear us.”
glowing: “no no no, it’s about visibility, right? the main human sensory organ works by detecting light, so if we emit light…”
wheels: “why the hell are you shaped like that?” “piss off, the humans are really proud of this invention”
multiple faces/eyes: “it makes me relatable” “i swear to God it doesn’t–” “i need to see in every direction” “ Azrael you are a supernatural messenger of god you do not need–” “THE HUMANS NEED TO KNOW I’M WATCHING”
multiple limbs: “humans have lots of limbs! they like limbs” “look i let you keep the wings but–” “how do you expect me to walk?” “70,000 feet is not a reasonable number of feet, Azrael!” “fuck off i’m ENORMOUS”
general gross misapprehensions of biology: “holy shit are your wings made out of eyes?” “look before you say anything i’m like 100% sure i’ve seen animals who have both wings and eyes. and you can fit so many more in this way!” “….you godforsaken googly-eyed genius”
#and this is why angels got so boring in the new testament after the Updated Guidelines were rolled out. “Four limbs???? i’m only allowed a maximum of FOUR LIMBS????? this is BULLSHIT”
#alternatively all the reported sightings of creepy ass angels was literally just the SAME angel #just the same freak who kept changing its meatsuit for funsies before god caught on
ok i have REFINED my theory!
Old Testament Angels look like that because life in the ocean outnumbered life on land, so naturally when they visited earth they modeled their appearance on the most common lifeforms. Hench you get things like
radial symmetry (i.e. angels shaped like spheres) which is objectively cooler than bilateral symmetry (starfish understand this)
Very Numerous Limbs (2 is not the average number of arms in the ocean)
random glowing (bioluminescence)
just generally being objects of Absolute Terror to land dwellers
a thousand eyeballs being the Norm (have you seen scallops)
in the majority of inhabited Earth areas (i.e. anything deeper than the continental shelf) old school angels would actually pass as Normal And Relatably-Shaped Lifeforms
this checks out
I think you all need to know the actual reason that seraphim have six wings–with two they covered their faces and with two they covered their feet and with two they flew–because it’s awesome.
So, first thing, in most of the Hebrew Bible nobody can look directly at God’s face and live. God is simply too amazing/great/alien. You see God’s face, you die, not because God wants to kill you (God doesn’t!) but just … because it’s the inevitable result of contact with God’s holiness. (This is responsible for such incidents as the time God mooned Moses. Moses wanted reassurance, and asked to see God. God said, “well, you can’t see my face, but how about this. You hide in that crevice in the rock over there, and I’ll cover you up so you’re safe, and then I’ll pass by, and when I’m safely past you can look at my back, k?” And that’s how it happened.)
Anyway, even angels can’t bear to look at God, which is why the seraphim cover their faces in God’s presence. All the weird stuff you all have just been attributing to angels? Can be applied to God with at least as much plausibility.
And then we come to the seraphim covering their feet. Or, perhaps I should say “feet.” Because the Hebrew language, like many languages, has some euphemisms for genitalia. One of them is to call them “feet” or “hands.” This is how, for example, Ruth gets Boaz to marry her. She goes in and lays down at his “feet.” Wink wink, nudge nudge.
So when Isaiah tells us the seraphim are flying around covering their “feet” with a pair of wings, what they’re actually doing is this:













