A Brevity of Angels

There is a tradition the ophanim, the encircled eye-bejeweled angels, are the planets on a universe level. When I learned this the wheels within wheels suddenly made historical sense. We know the sun is at the center of the universe and Earth moves about it. But an Earth centered universe had humans who kept noticing planets would backtrack in the sky, they would retrograde.

This is the astrological retrograde often complained about and mocked. In the sky the planets sweep, making circles within their circles. And the ancients noticed.

I myself see an ophanim as a totality of a life, at least on this lowest level. The cycles of behavior and patterns, the eyes you thought were others looking but were always you, the wheels within wheels spinning within. But that’s a different story.