Don't blink - Weeping Angels on board

Cincinnati Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum

Statues of angels are usually found in cemeteries, an eerily quiet place often peaceful and beautiful to look at, even those that are centuries old, overgrown and run down, with big head stones and mausoleums. Angels are watchers and protectors but there are also other types of  Angels. Angel of Grief is an 1894 sculpture by William Wetmore Story which serves as the grave stone of the artist and his wife at the Protestant Cemetery, Rome.  The term is now used to describe multiple grave stones throughout the world erected in the style of the Story stone.  Angels are mysterious, beautiful and intriguing, I have created my own series of angels out of stone, none are grieving, but maybe they should, they would at least be more expressive.  But that's another story for another time.

William Wetmore Story, Angel of Grief

But what if Angels were beings that are of unknown origins; we assume all angels were created by the hand of God and given a purpose to serve. It could be argued that they are beings of unknown origins, depending on your religious views. This isn't about religion, not totally! - okay some aspects of this post has a religious base to it, but what doesn't!?  For the past few days, I have been watching Doctor Who and there was an episode called  "Blink," which is about weeping angels and come to find out there are other episodes that deal with them.  Being intrigued about angels, I began to research Weeping Angels. No, they are not just statues that are alive and move in Blink, but actual statues that can be found in cemeteries, arboretums or cathedrals. Which is a creepy thought all by itself, and if they moved, it would be terrifying and cool. There are also the Nephilim (my favorite), who are the offspring of the sons of God and the daughters of man.  Some say they are giants, monsters, or aliens, and still exist. Would have been great topic to explore on X Files. (Remember that show!) Now let's see what The Doctors Weeping Angels are about....

The Weeping Angels are an ancient race of aliens from the Doctor Who television series. Steven Moffat, their creator, attributes their appeal to childhood games such as Grandmother's Footsteps and the notion that every statue is secretly a Weeping Angel.

Their usual mode of feeding is to send their victims back in time, which creates time energy to feed on. When they are not being observed by another being, they can move very quickly and silently, but when they are being observed, they become "quantum-locked", occupying a single position in space and becoming stone. In this state, they are frozen and difficult to destroy. They cannot suppress this reaction. If two Weeping Angels were to look at each other at the same time, they would be trapped in stone form until an outside force moves them apart. To prevent this, they often cover their eyes while moving - this makes them look as though they are weeping.

According to the Doctor, the Weeping Angels "are as old as the universe (or very nearly), but no one really knows where they come from." He describes them as the loneliest beings in the universe, since their quantum-lock reaction makes it difficult for them to socialize; he also describes them as "the deadliest, most powerful, most malevolent life-form evolution has ever produced." That said, in all their TV appearances, the Angels could communicate with each other and work in groups. The quantum-lock is apparently an evolutionary, instinctive, uncontrollable reaction to being seen. However if the Angels are scared themselves, this reaction can be exploited to make them believe they are being watched when they are not. Though they themselves cannot speak, they can communicate through the voice of a person they kill by removing their brains and reanimating their minds. They are also very physically strong, capable of snapping necks, though physically killing a victim is rare for them unless the need arises (such as stealing someones voice). Not so alluring now are they?
But wait!  there's more....

The Weeping Angels possess several notable abilities. In "The Time of Angels" it is suggested that when Angels need bodies for communication they snap their victim's neck and rearrange the brains for their purposes. The Angels speak in their victim's voice, as "Angel Bob", a fallen soldier of the Church, becomes the "voice" of the Angels and explains the Angels' motives and thoughts to the Doctor. As they close on more aware victims, their features transform from calm angels with normal proportions to more horrific, bestial demons with wide open mouths baring vampiric teeth and clawed hands. Their paramount ability is their speed, as they are able to close distances of meters literally in the blink of an eye, allowing them to reach a victim or move to an unseen or darkened area before their quantum-lock freezes them again.

With a touch, a Weeping Angel can send a person into the past, to before his/her own birth. The Angels feed off the "potential energy" of the years their victims would have lived in the present. The Doctor describes them as "the only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely" because their victims are otherwise uninjured and may live out their lifespans in the past. They can drain other forms of energy, such as that from electric lights, as seen in the Season 3 episode "Blink", or other electronics. Without power, the Angels start to decay, turn to stone without being watched, and corrode as a statue does; their speed is also extremely hindered if Angels reach starvation, as seen in The Time of Angels, lessened from meters to a partial step in a blink. This can be undone by providing the Angels with energy, but it is implied they can no longer acquire energy themselves in this state. In "Blink," the Angels stole the Doctor's TARDIS after trapping him in the past. The engine of the vehicle contained enough energy to feed them for a lifetime.

They have also exhibited the power to project themselves through images. In "The Time of Angels", an Angel trapped in the vault of the Byzantium is able to control a video screen that was playing video footage of it. It overrode the screen controls and could control nearby electronic equipment as well. The Angel is able to take over the screen and come through it in an attempt to kill Amy because "that which holds the image of an angel becomes itself an angel", from a warning in an ancient book on the Angels, found by River Song. Also in the novel "Touched by an Angel", a starving angel no longer has a physical being, and instead exists in the image viewed by cameras. As such whatever is the sight of the camera is in range of the angel. The angel retains fast movement, but at the cost of range. Normally as in The Time of Angels the image would walk right out of the screen, when it is starving it cannot do so. To stop movement, simply viewing the screen is enough to lock the angel. Do you really want to be touched by these angels? Let's reach out and touch Faith....

“When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.


Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them.
They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” - Genesis 6: 1 – 4

I don’t know about you, but the mysterious Nephilim fascinate me.  I mean, why wouldn’t they?  These mysterious “sons of God” (sometimes called “Sons of Heaven”) coming down to marry the “daughters of man.”  Kind of romantic, don’t you think?

But who were the Nephilim? Well, if you listen to most modern day churches, the Nephilim were “fallen angels” sent to earth for being naughty.  I’m not sure how sending them to earth was going to solve anything.  All it did was make them naughtier.  I mean, they were all having sex (GASP!).  With daughters of man (GASP!), and having babies and stuff. SHOCKING! Pretty indicative of the Puritanical foundations of my fair country and it’s churches, if you ask me.  Having sex equaled BAD.  Therefore God had to go and smash everything like a child having a temper tantrum.

Maybe some will call that sacrilegious, but it makes no sense to me.  What does make a little more sense are passages in the Book of Enoch and the Book of Jubilee.  European churches tossed these books out ages ago as being of “questionable origin.”  (Uhm, excuse me, aren’t ALL the books of the Bible of rather questionable origin?  That’s unless you’re a several thousand year-old creature who was THERE when they were being written. No?)

In any case, according to these books, the Nephilim weren’t necessarily fallen angels, but rather “Watchers.”  Those charged with keeping an eye on humanity.  Some think they were already here on Earth when they first cast eyes on beautiful human women, while others believe that they chose to leave heaven and go against the dictates of GOD in order to be with these beautiful women (Not a lot of women in heaven, apparently).  Whichever way you want to go, the end result was that the Nephilim (Watchers) ended up having sex with human females and having giant children who were insanely greedy and violent, not to mention cannibals.

Even worse, the Nephilim taught humans the arts of sorcery and war.  Niiiiice.  Of course, they also taught useful things like astronomy and the movements of the moon and tides.  Good stuff.  So, I guess you could say there were good Nephilim and bad Nephilim.  But eventually the humans called out to God (though in some instances it’s claimed the good angels called God’s attention to the FUBAR) and God saved humanity by, uh, killing them,  with a flood.  A flood which killed off everyone but Noah and his family (because he was a good man and didn't go around fornicating w/others), but unfortunately left some of the Nephilim still alive.

Yeah, that worked out well.  Because we’re so peaceful and stuff now, right.

But this is not the end of the theories on the Nephilim.  According to the Ancient Astronaut theory, the Nephilim were actually not angels at all, but alien beings.  Only instead of having sex, they were running some kind of hybrid breeding program.  The giants (and other weird creatures of mythology) were early experiments gone badly awry.

You can see how our ancient ancestors would mistake aliens for gods or angles.  I mean, they had SPACESHIPS, for crying out loud.  They were powerful in ways that couldn’t be explained with the knowledge of the time and so it was considered “magic” instead of the advanced technology and science it really was.  Therefore, perfectly ordinary beings became gods.

So, what is the truth? Were Nephilim bad angels sent to earth as punishment?  Were they Watchers who fell in love and chose to leave?  Or were they beings from another world?  Are they ”Sons of Heaven” in the literal sense? And that’s just the tip of the iceberg as far as theories and opinions go. Either way, it’s an interesting little side-note in the annals of our history.  One I wish they’d spent a little more time on. Can you imagine the stories a writer could get out of that tiny little bit of information?  A forbidden romance between an angel and a human;  A bloodthirsty conflict between two warring angel races with humans caught in the middle;  Aliens visiting earth for mysterious purposes.

Did we touch Faith, or were we touched by Angels or aliens? You decide, my plan is not to Blink, don't look away, don't turn your back.  Did they move? 

Thanks for reading my blog, hope is was at least entertaining. Feedback appreciated.

See you next time,

Same blog time, same blog channel. 

Blink!