Satanism Today - An Encyclopedia of Religion, Folklore and Popular ...

F
Fallen Angels
In theology, the Fall refers to humanity’s fall from
grace into sin. It is the Fall that is responsible for
what is called original sin, meaning that everyone
is born in sin—and thus in need of salvation—
because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience of God’s
command to not eat of the Tree of Good and Evil
in the Garden of Eden. Simply by being born into
this world, every human being inherits the sin of
our distant ancestors. Although many contemporary
theologians have reinterpreted the story of
the Fall less literally, this is the essence of the biblical
narrative.
Less well known is the story of the fall of the
angels. For whatever reason—some accounts say
that Lucifer was jealous of God’s love of Adam, but
in any event it was some form of pride—Lucifer
declared himself as great as God, and led a rebellion
of angels against the celestial order. Defeated,
the Devil and his followers were tossed out of
heaven, and subsequently have continued to war
against God by attempting to ruin the earth, God’s
creation. Traditional theology even portrays the
serpent who conversed with Eve in the Garden as
Satan in disguise, thus attributing the fallen prince
of angels with responsibility for causing
humankind to fall.
A less well known alternative narrative, which
is best preserved in the apocryphal Book of
Enoch, is that a group of angels lusted after mortal
87
females. They then fell after leaving their heavenly
abode and copulating with them. This alternative
story, which at one time was widely known, eventually
disappeared from popular folklore because
it clashed with the official church position (or
what became the official position by the late
Middle Ages), which was that angels were beings
of pure spirit and thus could not engage in sexual
intercourse. A brief allusion to the Enoch tale can
be found in Genesis 6:2–4, where it says that the
“sons of God” (which, when seen through the lens
of the Book of Enoch, are angels) took mortal
women as wives.
One contemporary religious leader, Elizabeth
Clare Prophet, has reexamined these ancient
stories of fallen angels—particularly the Book of
Enoch and other early works—and concluded
that there were actually two distinct celestial falls.
In the first one, some of the celestial host were
ejected out of heaven as a result of rebellion. In the
second one, a group of angels fell after copulating
with human females. This bit of speculative theology,
as well as the full texts of the relevant apocryphal
books, is contained in her fascinating
Forbidden Mysteries of Enoch: Fallen Angels and the
Origins of Evil.
See also Book of Jubilees; Enoch; Satan; War in
Heaven
For Further Reading:
Davidson, Gustav. A Dictionary of Angels: Including