Angels Watching Over Us

The word angel comes from the Greek, angelo, which mean “messenger.”  For thousands of years, thousands of translations, countless written descriptions and oral accounts speak of divine winged messengers draped in pure, white robes, underscoring humankind’s ageless belief and fascination with angels.  Fundamental to Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the concept of angelic beings is very similar in all three faiths: spiritual beings created by God before the world was created, whose role is to glorify God, minister to God, and particularly, to act as God's messengers to humans in matters of great importance (such as the announcement to Mary in Christianity and the revelation of the Qur'an in Islam).  Read more . . .

The Concept of Evil

One of the more interesting and perhaps revealing aspects of the concept of “evil” is that while the belief in its existence may be cross-culturally universal, how it manifests within a given culture relates directly to the norms and accepted moral standards of that particular culture.  Although seen as the opposing force of “good” by many cultures around the world today, by and large, evil has a regional definition that reflects types of behavior deemed threatening to societal stability.  Thus, what is perceived as evil in one cultural setting (the public display of breasts, for example, in Amish country, Lancaster, PA) is seen as a societal norm in another (such as on the beaches of Brazil or the French Riviera).  In Lancaster it represents an insidious “evil” that could taint and undermine long-standing cultural mores, while in France it is a healthy and normal interaction with nature that few people give a second thought.  Read more . . .

The Birth of Heavy Metal Music: Diabolus in Musica

For many children of the 60s, it all began with the opening tones of a song by a rock band that until a few weeks earlier had called themselves Earth.  Just three little tones.  But three tones that instantly instilled such a sense of dread and darkness that the minds and imaginations of a generation founded on peace and love suddenly discovered their thoughts turning not to Flower Power and Love-ins, but to the darker side.  To the realm of “evil.”  The realm of Diabolus in Musica–the Devil in Music.

The introductory album by England’s most bad-ass bar band Black Sabbath, the self-titled, Black Sabbath, hit the streets in the U.S. on June 1, 1970.   But having been released four months earlier in the UK on Friday, February 13, bootleg copies of the album had already made their way to turntables all across America, with a new direction in music already apparent as it wafted in sinister-sounding waves from garages and basements all across the country.  With the Devil’s Triad the first thing jumping out at you–and it actually felt as though it did–this LP circulated among the cool and hip like a welcome venereal disease we’d all catch eventually anyway.  Read More . . .