Encrypted Signs

Abstract

No one has ever seen a living dinosaur, but the skeletal remains of the various species are on display in many museums throughout the world, and so no one doubts that these prehistoric animals ever existed. Many people claim to have seen “real” angels, but there is no scientific proof that they ever existed, the way there is empirical evidence for the existence of dinosaurs. However, the comparison between the dinosaur and the Angel is misleading. The proof for the existence of dinosaurs exists on a cognitive plane, that of physical and empirical evidence, which is part of our everyday, quantifiable existence. Moreover, the physical/empirical is the plane on which dinosaurs are said to have existed. As we have seen, the Angel is purported to exist on a cognitive plane that we have lost, the mundus imaginalis, which is the perceptive space lodged somewhere in between the perception of abstract ideas and the perception of the physical/empirical world. The unquantifiable world of the mundus imaginalis, which according to tradition is the home of the Angels, is lost to us, and as a result the only contexts we have for thinking and figuring the Angel are the contexts of abstraction and of the measurable world of the senses.