Visions of angels -- Their current debasement -- Metatron, who was Enoch -- The Catholic angelic hierarchy -- The fallen angels -- Angels, miracles, and America -- The answering angel -- The nature of dreams -- Sigmund Freud's dream book -- Prophecy and dreams -- The "near-death experience" -- Shamanism : otherworldly journeys -- The astral body : the zelem -- Immortality and resurrection -- The resurrection body -- The hermetic corpus : divine man -- Christian Gnosticism : Valentinus and resurrection -- Sufism : angel of earth and garment of light -- The Kabbalah : Metatron, the lesser Yahweh -- The Kabbalah : Luria's transmigration of souls -- American centuries -- Gnosis of the world to come -- Coda : not by faith, nor by the angels : a Gnostic sermon

"In this commanding and impassioned inquiry, Harold Bloom draws on a lifelong study of religion and, in particular, of Gnosticism, the knowing that God is not an external force but resides within each on of us. Through the ancient literatures of Jewish Kabbalah, Christian Gnosticism, and Muslim Shiite Sufism, 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. He allows us to feel their splendor, and to experience the powerful role that dreams and near-death experiences have held throughout the centuries. And in the dazzling final chapter, he delivers a Gnostic sermon in which he urges us toward transcendence."--BOOK JACKET

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