POEM + ANGELOLOGY
AUTHOR NARRATION
Read by the author in the original English.
A PHRASE BORN IN POETRY
The earliest known appearance in print of the English phrase “kindred spirit” occurs in the plural in Isaac Watts’s “The Reverse,” published in 1706. Today, it describes someone whose character, ideas, or sensibility feels deeply akin to one’s own.
II.
Were kindred Spirits born for Cares?
Must every Grief be mine?
Is there a Sympathy in Tears,
And Joys refuse to Joyn?III.
Forbid it Heav’n, and raise my Love,
And make our Joys the same:
So Bliss and Friendship joyn’d above
Mix an Immortal Flame.
Read the complete poem at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
AN IMAGINARY COURSE SYLLABUS
Five imaginary textbooks give the poem’s subjects a physical form. Hover over or choose a book to reveal its line and the real history tucked inside.
Choose one of the five books to reveal its line from the poem and the real story behind this imaginary course.
“Gabriel figures prominently”
In Luke’s Gospel, Gabriel announces Jesus’s birth to Mary. The Qur’an also names him as a bearer of revelation. Across two distinct traditions, he is a messenger of unusual importance.
In the tradition of Clock Counting, Gabriel figures a little less prominently—but he does appear in “On Meeting Gabriel”.
“glory and fury are basic terminology”
Angels are not always gentle messengers. In Luke, divine glory shines around the shepherds when an angel appears; in 2 Kings, an angel brings death to an Assyrian camp.
“Behold, an angel of the Lord stood by them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.”
“That night, Yahweh’s angel went out and struck one hundred eighty-five thousand in the camp of the Assyrians.”
“scansion of Enochian is given high priority”
In the 1580s, John Dee and Edward Kelley recorded sessions they presented as conversations with angels. Those sessions left an alphabet, vocabulary, and ritual texts in a language Dee called “Angelical,” later named Enochian. Scansion analyzes a verse’s rhythm: giving it high priority makes this attributed angelic language a delightfully improbable exam subject.
/media/angel-studies/enochian-letters-john-dee.pngThe 21 characters copied into Dee’s diary on May 6, 1583.
/media/angel-studies/sigillum-dei-aemeth.pngA diagram recorded by Dee in 1582 and used in his sessions.
“matters of garden mythology”
Across several traditions, an extraordinary garden marks a threshold between ordinary life and the divine. A precious or life-giving plant draws visitors; distance, a gate, or a guardian sometimes controls access. These are not one story, and not every motif appears in every version.
FIVE GARDENS, SEVERAL TRADITIONS
Hover over or choose a garden to see what grows there—and what sets its story apart.
After Adam and Eve’s expulsion, cherubim and a flaming sword guard the way to the tree of life. Here the boundary, its guardians, and the prospect of enduring life meet explicitly.
Genesis 3:22–24 ↗
During his quest to escape death, Gilgamesh passes through a mountain and sees the gods’ garden, where trees bear precious stones. The threshold is extraordinary, but those jewels are not themselves described as fruit that grants immortality.
The Gilgamesh Epic, Tablet IX ↗
At a far edge of the world, the Hesperides and the dragon Ladon watch over golden apples. Heracles must obtain them for one of his labors. Accounts vary, but extraordinary fruit and guarded access are central.
Tufts — Heracles’ eleventh labor ↗
The Queen Mother of the West’s orchard bears peaches associated with immortality. She may grant them to visitors; other stories tell of peaches being stolen. Here the question is less a guard at a gate than who is entitled to the fruit.
Metropolitan Museum of Art — longevity ↗
In the Sumerian story of Enki and Ninhursanga, Dilmun begins as a pristine place without disease or old age; fresh water makes it fertile. Later, eight plants grow there and Enki eats them, angering Ninhursanga. It is neither a golden-apple story nor simply Eden by another name.
Oxford — Enki and Ninhursanga ↗These images are contemporary artistic interpretations, not historical depictions of the myths.
“dancing on pinheads is sufficiently covered”
“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” is mainly a later caricature of medieval thought, not a scholastic debate found in that form. The exact wording has not been found in medieval texts. In 1638, William Chillingworth was already mocking imagined questions about whether a million angels could fit on a needle’s point. The phrase came to suggest fruitless hair-splitting—here turned into an exam subject.
The joke targets theology’s reputation for fine distinctions. The poem takes it literally: in this imaginary syllabus, even that absurd dance would be “sufficiently covered.”
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