Welcome to Winged Wednesdays, where I talk about my favorite winged beings–angels!
Since writing my post Watchers – What Are They? a few months ago, I’ve discovered a few new things about those angelic bad boys known as the Watchers, or Grigori.
Why are they so bad?
The term “Watchers” was first coined in the Book of Enoch, one of the apocryphal texts of the Bible that never made it into an official version. In the Book of the Watchers, Enoch describes how these angels, whom he refers to as “the sons of god”, fell for the daughters of men.
Though the Book of Enoch itself never made it into the Bible, this particular story seems to have crept into Genesis 6:1:
The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.
Grigori – a name born of scandal!
In the thirteenth century, when the Roman Catholic Church found out that angels had procreated with women, it was scandalous. Angels were supposed to be genderless, heavenly creatures. How was it even possible to have relations with women if they had no um… equipment, so to speak?
Being rather clever, the church created a new category, the Tenth Choir of Angels, and the term ‘Grigori’ was apparently born.
Until that point, there were only nine choirs of angels. This tenth choir apparently all fell, and, because they were disobedient, they were killed later in the great flood. Convenient, don’t you think?
Prisoners in Heaven?
According to some, the souls of the Grigori are kept in the fifth Heaven, Machon, a divine, sulfurous prison blazing with smoke and flames. It is a place without either ground or sky, but apparently not all bad. Angels sing God’s praises all night here, only to become silent in the morning, so God can hear the people on earth (a bit of a conundrum, because it’s always morning somewhere!).
Did they ever exist at all?
My point in all of this is if the Roman Catholic church made up the name “Grigori” and the idea of a tenth choir to explain a damned group of bad boy angels (who acted on their desires and fell to the sin of lust), then maybe, just maybe, the Watchers weren’t really Grigori. Perhaps the angels Enoch talked about were another type, or even a battalion of 200 ordinary angels who fell to the sins of the flesh. What if all the angels who came here had weaknesses to overcome?
The story of the Watchers is shrouded in mystery, and much of their lore is left to interpretation. In my upcoming novel, The Watcher, I use a slightly different mythology that builds on the idea of angels having weaknesses. I promise to tell you more about it soon, in an upcoming post.
Thanks for visiting! Now, I want to hear what you think about this post! Did you know all this? Did it pique your curiosity about the Grigori?
Lisa Voisin 
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