Harold Bloom on the Terrifying Angels and Inner Divinity You Never Knew
When we think of angels, the mind often conjures images of sweet, chubby-cheeked cherubs on greeting cards. Our modern ideas about spirituality can feel sanitized, simplified, and stripped of their original power. We talk about dreams or the afterlife in ways that barely scratch the surface of millennia of human thought on these profound subjects. But what if these concepts were once far more magnificent, complex, and even terrifying?
This is the challenge posed by the brilliant literary critic and historian Harold Bloom in his book, Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection. Bloom peels back the layers of pop-culture spirituality to reveal the raw, powerful, and often startling origins of Western mystical thought. This post will explore four of the most profound and counter-intuitive takeaways from Bloom's inquiry, offering a glimpse into an ancient spiritual landscape that is far wilder and more personal than most of us imagine.
The Angels of Antiquity Were Terrifying, Not Tame
The first major lesson from Bloom's work is that our modern image of angels is a pale imitation—what he calls a "current debasement"—of their historical form. Forget the gentle, winged guardians of popular culture. The beings described in ancient traditions were not here to be cute; they were forces of nature, awesome and overwhelming.
Bloom seeks to restore their original grandeur, a power that could inspire both awe and fear. As the book's description so vividly puts it:
...he reveals to us the angels not as the kitschy cherubs we know today, but as magnificent, terrifying, sublime beings who have always played a central role in Western culture.
This rediscovery of awe is a potent antidote to the sentimentality that often clouds modern spirituality. To encounter an angel, in this ancient sense, was not to be comforted, but to be fundamentally changed by an encounter with the sublime and the terrible. This encounter with an external, terrifying sublime was a key feature of ancient spirituality, but the Gnostics argued the ultimate encounter was not external at all, but internal.
The Gnostic Secret: Divinity Is Within You
At the heart of Bloom's study is the ancient spiritual philosophy of Gnosticism. Far from being just another historical "ism," Gnosticism proposes a revolutionary idea about the nature of divinity and the human self. It is a path not of faith in an external being, but of knowledge of an internal one.
Bloom defines this central concept with beautiful simplicity. Gnosticism, or gnosis, is:
...the knowing that God is not an external force but resides within each one of us.
This is a radical departure from the idea of a distant, external God who hands down rules from on high. For the Gnostics, the divine spark is not something to be sought in the heavens, but to be discovered deep within the self. This "knowing" is the ultimate spiritual quest, an inward journey toward a truth that was always already there.
Near-Death Experiences Have Ancient Roots
The "near-death experience" is often treated as a modern phenomenon, a product of new medical technologies and psychological inquiry. People report tunnels of light, encounters with deceased relatives, and a profound sense of peace. But Bloom's work reveals that these otherworldly journeys are anything but new.
He draws a direct line from these contemporary accounts back to the most ancient spiritual practices. In his book, he explores the historical parallel in a section on "Shamanism : otherworldly journeys." This connection is staggering. It suggests that the modern near-death experience isn't an anomaly of the hospital age, but a continuation of an ancient human technology for exploring consciousness itself—a practice as old as shamanism. It re-frames a modern curiosity as a timeless, universal human quest for what lies beyond the veil.
A Mystical Thread Connects Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
In an age often defined by religious division, Bloom's work uncovers a powerful, shared mystical thread running through the three great Abrahamic faiths. He argues that Gnosticism is not a forgotten heresy but a vital undercurrent that connects seemingly disparate traditions at their most profound, mystical level.
To make his case, he draws upon the core mystical literatures of each religion, finding common ground in Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Gnosticism, and Muslim Shiite Sufism. Finding this shared spiritual DNA—a focus on personal knowledge, divine immanence, and mystical experience—is a profound revelation. It reminds us that beneath doctrinal differences, these great traditions may be asking the same fundamental questions about humanity's relationship with the divine.
A New Way of Knowing
Harold Bloom's exploration of gnosis is more than a historical survey; it is an invitation. It challenges us to look past superficial beliefs and sentimental images to find a more direct, personal, and powerful form of spiritual understanding. His work doesn't offer easy answers but instead, as the book jacket notes, "urges us toward transcendence." He points the way toward a spirituality based not on blind faith, but on the courageous act of knowing.
If the divine spark is within you, where will you begin your search?
