Angels on the Job

The traffic is terrible and you’re running late for an important business meeting. At last you arrive, hang up your coat, and open the door to the conference room. You slide into an empty seat and look around. You can’t help noticing that there is tension hovering in the air. No one pays any attention to you. Then one person looks at you meaningfully; the others seem unusually preoccupied with their pad and pencil. The discussion is definitely constrained. No one is really saying what’s on his or her mind. The chair of the meeting now turns to you and asks you to present your new idea. What’s the best strategy? Ask the angel of the moment.

The concept of the angel can be enormously helpful to us, particularly in our careers, if we can catch the drift of its meaning in a new and creative way.

When we examine the role of the angel in ancient literature, it becomes clear that the angel is only secondarily a messenger. First and foremost, angels preside over a situation. They hover over a particular moment, over a particular problem.

In modern terms, the concept of the angel can best be compared to the idea of the force field. Magnets, for example, exert a force that attracts iron filings from a distance. Within the field of force, the magnet arranges the filings in an order that can be described and even predicted.

In the language of analytical psychology, an angel is an "archetypal" image for a force field that has a specific character and operates independently of our own conscious field. By understanding the nature of such independent "angelic" fields, we can interact creatively with them to transform situations in often remarkable ways.

Let’s consider as an example the Angel of the Furnace from the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament. The story begins as everyone is ordered by King Nebuchadnezzar to fall down and worship an immense gold statue. Certain nasty slanderers are out to get Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who, as faithful Jews, are not going to worship the statue. When the king hears of their intransigence, he goes into a raging fury and orders them thrown, bound, into the furnace at seven times its usual heat.

Continued on page 2: Let the Angel of the Furnace protect you »