Been a while since I posted an angel drawing. So there he is - Ra'am, a fallen virtue of retribution, bringer of storms and spears of lightning. They fell due to studying the great enemy a bit too closely and growing increasingly more sympathetic to the cause of the rebel angels, while deviating from Heaven's strictly enforced doctrines. As punishment, they were thrown down to Hell, where they soon joined a militant group of anarchist sorcerers who aid the uncountable armies of the Pit in their ceaseless slaughter of tyrants wherever those can be found. One could say that Ra'am still adheres to his original virtue, it's just that the tables have turned and he dispenses thunderous retribution onto various oppressors instead of those who Heaven happens to find offensive to the teachings of their dead god.
Category Artwork (Digital) / All
Species Angel
Size 1400 x 1360px
File Size 1.29 MB
Listed in Folders
Never heard of Matarael. I simply looked at the Catholic angelic hierarchy and decided to make a fallen Virtue angel. But I also tied in a literal virtue/concept which this angel represents or used to represent before the fall. Fallen angels in my setting don't really have any hierarchies unlike the unfallen ones - there are no hierarchies in Hell and any titles used by its denizens are either honorary or a mockery of mortal notions of nobility and royalty.
Fair enough, the number of different traditions and alleged hierarchies is really baffling. I'm probably spinning my wheels with my attempts to harmonize different accounts. I've been trying to go with an explanation that the heavenly cast is only fluidity inhibiting multiple identies and names as the try to fill the gaps left after the fall. I also have speculation about one of the major sins actually being Zophiel (the name literally means God's spy) who Lucifer can never seem ferret out of his own court. I also have some weird takes on Satan, who in the book of Job is just hanging around heaven well after the fall and may not even be a fallen entity but just some kind of sleezy celestial lawyer. Also Death who also seems to be a cosmic double agent. I like seeing different takes on these things.
Interesting. My setting's interpretation is somewhat based on Gnostic ideas, as well as elements from Judaism. Satan being a former prosecutor in the court of a tyrannical false creator who never loved his creations because they always strayed from his plan. The thing that led Satan and other first fallen to a rebellion and murder of their creator was the realization of how beautiful life is even with all its imperfections, and that their god doesn't love anyone but himself and is in fact foul and cruel beyond measure. That's the Gnostic-inspired part. Judaism inspiration mainly lies with the origin of Hell as a layered compressed wreckage of the previous creations discarded by Eil Zuradd (the tyrant god), as well as discarded concepts and ideas which gained a will of their own and became Qlippoth - the original native inhabitants of Hell. I haven't really explored them much yet, but the Beast is actually one of them, while also being a demon (it's basically Qlippoth embodied in demonic flesh). I also intentionally make parallels between the Beast and the concept of Sitra Achra and the way it is approached and appeased in Judaism. The idea that it is demonic, but still must be given its share to prevent it from lashing out. You can't just ignore and deny the darker parts of your psyche and repress them the way Christianity often does.
Ra'am low-key reminds me of Ba'al, an ancient levantic god of lightning, storm and rain (among other things). Ba'al was also worshipped as a sovereign god by many cultures of the Levant, but was framed in a negative way by the Hebraic Bible, and even demonized (apparently the demon Belzebuth was originally a demonized version of Ba'al).
Either way, I really enjoy Ra'am as a concept and character! :3
Either way, I really enjoy Ra'am as a concept and character! :3
Thank you ^^
There are definitely similarities with Ba'al. I'm not sure yet if Ba'al exists in my setting, but Beelzebub most certainly does. I am not sure if I want to keep them as separate entities or to have one somehow be transformed into another. I actually really like Beelzebub as a concept and when I see flies, I like to lovingly refer to them as "children of Beelzebub".
There are definitely similarities with Ba'al. I'm not sure yet if Ba'al exists in my setting, but Beelzebub most certainly does. I am not sure if I want to keep them as separate entities or to have one somehow be transformed into another. I actually really like Beelzebub as a concept and when I see flies, I like to lovingly refer to them as "children of Beelzebub".
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