azrael is my oldest angel OC. when i first started making them (angel OCs, i mean), the inspiration for them came purely from some specific sources. i first read the angelology page on wikipedia to get a cursory understanding of what each type of angel is like (i need to re-iterate that i'm not approaching this in a scholarly way, nor do i particularly care about doing so), and then basically used other inspirations from fiction and my own interests to build from there.
other sources of inspiration for my angels were SCP-469 and the angels from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
old illustrations of angels are fascinating to me the way old mythology paintings are, except with an extra layer of "there are and have been millions of people who think these creatures are real." not to imply that ancient people didn't think of their gods as equally real, but rather, millions of people today think these strange mythological creatures are real. as i've made clear before, i'm an atheist, so to me the interest comes from asking, "well, what if these creatures were real?" while taking for granted that they are not.
angels are described as "agents of god," who don't seem to have much autonomy of their own. by that i mean, they seem to be bound by rigid rules as to what makes an angel "good" or "bad." i think the logic is that, because they are Superior Beings (over humans), they should therefore be able to be perfect at all times. self-centeredness being a grave sin for an angel makes sense if angels are supposed to always be perfectly un-confused about their role and the magnificence and worship of god. the highest sphere of angels apparently has direct access to god.
it is very easy, then, to look at what are considered near-perfect creatures and imagine what their lives would actually be like. they seem to think and talk like humans, but with some innate higher understanding of divinity, god, and what's actually important (worshipping god).
doesn't that sound like absolute shit?
can you imagine an existence where your dad who is always telling you he's perfect and kind, and always knows best, basically forces you to try to convince other people how great he is, or he'll send you to hell? and anyone who disagrees becomes literal demons, personifcations of evil? on top of that, angels are "eternal," so they never get a break from having to be perfect all the time. that, to me, sounds like an absolute nightmare.
near-perfection is, after all, not perfection.
i don't want to get into unpacking my own personal view of christianity because we'd be here all day, but i think understanding my interpretation of the version of christianity i'm familiar with (as a culturally christian atheist american) can provide context for the choices i make when writing these characters, whether or not you agree with me about the material i'm drawing from.
as should be obvious by this point, my interest in angels is, in fact, impacted by my atheism. i have not until this point mentioned something else that was very important and interwoven with my atheism at the time that i started writing these characters.
i used to be angelkin.
[warning for discussion of personal topics related to abuse and trauma.]
oh, okay, well that's uhhh kind of important to note i think. seems, Um, how do i put this... actually probably a lot more important than just being a footnote in this whole saga?
so, yeah, i used to be angelkin. "weird!" you might be saying. "you don't seem like you regard this christianity stuff with any sort of seriousness that would make treating the subject matter with some sanctity appropriate!" and certainly, i don't. it's not as if i thought of myself as some kind of holy messenger, or superior to humans (HA HA); i didn't then and i don't now.
it's difficult to explain, but i was kind of Going Through It at the time. what being angelkin meant to me was a kind of submission to some higher power. i had been dealing with the recent loss of my cat Lily, who i loved so dearly that i imagined one day i would bury her ashes with mine. she felt almost like a human family member to me. when i say i lost her, she didn't die (that i'm aware of), she got lost in an unfamiliar new place and never returned.
i was so devastated and traumatized by this event, on top of dealing with the cPTSD i already had from suffering through an abusive partner and abusive parents, that i had an extended existential crisis and lived through many years of depersonalization and dissociation. these were things i'd already been experiencing, but my will had been thoroughly tested and they worsened significantly.
i reached a point where i was so desperate for a retreat from the suffering that i reached out to a being i had never believed in, and asked for some kind of help. i had never felt very human to begin with, but at that point i felt so alien and alone that anything at all was a comfort. i don't think i necessarily believed i was literally an angel in the strictest sense - meaning one of god's holy messengers - but rather that i had succumbed to god's autonomy. if anything, i felt as if i'd come from outer space and was living on earth mistakenly. it was also a comfort to believe that i was a creature without will guided by a parental figure who loved me without question.
the above is a comic i made on april 29th, 2015.
i'm pretty embarrassed about such earnest expressions these days, as i don't think it's anyone else's business to be perfectly honest, but at the time i was desperate to be understood. i'm a very different person now, and am not nearly so forward with how i think or feel about myself. i'm different enough that i don't feel like who i used to be is similar enough to who i am now to even think of us as one in the same. a version of me from the past exists trapped in a still image, eternally unmoving from that point of emotional sharpness and pain. but the me writing this now is constantly changing. april of 2015 happened almost exactly 7 years ago (from time of writing, april 7th of 2022). i have no idea who i'll be in another 7 years.
so, what does any of that have to do with azrael?
well... if you weren't there 7 years ago, you might not know that azrael used to be me.
azrael was my angelkin self.
even i had forgotten for a while that that had been the case. and i feel like from this point forward, it becomes clear what my relationship is with my angel characters. who they are and why they exist are inextricable, in some way, with the way i process the things in my life.
there was a point at which i had completely forgotten that azrael used to be a representation of myself, and i wondered what their original purpose had been. like, i couldn't figure out why i'd invented them. they seemed detached from me in a way my other angels weren't. then i went back and found my earliest posts of them again and remembered.
there is a lot more i could say about all of this, but to be frank, this is more oversharing than i'm used to these days. i wish my OCs weren't so personal to me, because it would make them a lot easier to talk about. oh well. i guess i'll end this with some drawings of azrael.
oh, also. if you're wondering why i named them azrael, it's because my angel name for myself was arael. i didn't want to directly name myself after a real angel, so i named myself after my favorite angel from evangelion. azrael's name is just the simple addition of a single letter to arael. them being THE angel of death was coincidental.
15th angel, "arael," meaning "light of god."
i guess i should also mention that i'm not angelkin anymore. i'm just autistic.🤪