We're all familiar with the concept of the love and light angels and the concept of warrior angels that care about justice. Since they are manifestations of divine love, they are 'holy' and therefore 'good'. They are white arts.

Then we got the morally ambiguous angels who have done things for the sake of the greater good like torment evil entities, send out bad karma to right wrongs or smites things in the name of their divine superiors. Enochian angels in the CH shop page are dark arts.

And then we get the hypothetical extremely mean angels. These angels obsess over the concept of purity and hate sin and evil of any kind. Since they recognize that humanity is 'impure', they actively despise humanity/free will while simultaneously praising the divine. Their white light energy will harm or even kill those who are 'impure' in their eyes.
Since these angels are a representation of divine wraith, they cannot heal only purify or destroy 'evil'. Purification may consist of natural disasters and tragedy for the sake of Divine Will. But the angels themselves aren't evil, they are forces of nature. Like a shark eating fish,a cancer inflicting the body or an atom bomb blowing up, they are not evil but forces of nature. You cannot tell the difference between the actions of these mean angels and a black arts demon. Uh, bonus points if the mean angels enjoy the taste of the blood of ''sinners''. These angels have a body count but they are doing this because the Divine Will ordered them to deal with wrong doers. Oh and by the way, praying will make them stronger so praying to the divine to be protected from evil won't deter the black arts angels. The Divine Wills might be forced to counteract the BA angels extreme acts of purity by sending down the love and light angels to make everybody happy again.

Therefore the mean angels are extremely dark arts or (by human standards) even black arts since they genuinely believe that what they are doing is righteous. By Tv Tropes definitions, the mean angels are either Knight Templars or well intentioned extremists. The closest example for 'black arts' angels are the four horsemen of the apocalypse and the angel of death that kills the first born sons of the Egyptians.

Can Black Arts Angels exist?

I forgot to mention that the BA angels can manipulate people and things into doing horrible acts for the sake of the greater good...whatever that would mean. Getting someone to commit Genocide and then having that person die isn't off the table.

ARandomDemon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 12:54 am [...]
Can Black Arts Angels exist?

My conjecture...

I doubt there's a cosmic law that says other beings can become BA but angels are exempt. I'm using CH's definition of BA.

To me angels have an intrinsic angelic energy. They they have the energy that relates to their arts. Finally, there's their actions, which I guess can be seen as holy or unholy.

The key thing is what do we mean by 'holy'? Spiritual? An interest in enlightenment? If so, both WA & BA can be spiritual. (Humans can be and we're DA.)

I'm not the resident BA expert here but I guess a BA being is unlikely to have much interest in or put much energy into anything other than causing harm.

I don't really know what 'holy' really means. I don't read my magic books like I should.
When I say holy, I mean its supposed to be a generic catch-all term for the Divine regardless of what deity we're talking about. Doesn't matter what pantheon you point at, there's a concept of 'holiness' in every single one of them despite it being in different names.

I call these metaphorical angels BA because their actions definitely have caused harm like forcing someone to commit genocide of a thousand people just so this person could 'remove' the so-called impure from the world. Once the angels have lost interest in using that person, they will arrange for that evil person to die as well. Their minds are not like ours or the traditional love and light angels, they think murder over really petty 'sins' is justified.

Maybe it's us that decide whether to call something holy / divine. I wouldn't myself call the actions that you describe holy, whether they be by angels or humans.

Even if a deity specifically creates them for the sole purpose of punishing people to seemingly extreme ends?

I'm going to bring up Abrahamic religions since that's all I know.
The Christian/Judaism version of demons are considered evil. God allowed them to be evil even though he does not approve of them. God easily could deal with the demons for good but allows them to do demon things because... Since God is Alpha and Omega and also created good and evil, why does evil exist if he doesn't approve of it?

Anyway, Christian God also flooded the planet to kill everything and everyone except a few animals and a family and yet, his action is still holy.
If a demon had the power to flood the planet and did, their actions would be considered evil despite doing the same thing God did. Also God has ordered Abraham to sacrifice his son. If a demon tried doing that, they'd be smacked back into hell. But then again, Isaac didn't actually get killed, Abraham kills a Ram instead. It means through human lenses, God can do ''good'' and ''evil'' while still retaining his holiness.
Seemingly, the only thing separating their actions is the Will of the Divine. Angels in that example are extensions of Divine Will so therefore if they decide to flood the planet with God's consent, their actions are still holy since they didn't go against God. But why aren't demons considered extensions of Divine Will if God in this example had created good and evil and allows evil to exist thanks to free will? And still, why aren't demons extensions of Divine Will if God can do the same things they get punished for?

The worst of all diseases aren't considered evil and neither are the atom bombs we've made or the animals that eat each other because they are forces of nature. Death isn't evil either. It's the Divine Willing for these things to exist.

In theory, mean angels should also exist but it'll be a pain to astral travel and find one since they're epitome of purity. That would require tons of astral body work and heightening your vibrations to superhuman levels. If God thinks they're too aggressive, he can just send other angels to counteract the aggressiveness of the actions the mean angels would take by saving people from the disasters the MA caused. God could also force MA to chill out until he really hates somebody then he can just bring them out.
Logically the MA should be the nearest to the throne of the Abrahamic God like the Seraphim. IF you're pure enough to be near the throne of God, the mean angels won't touch you. But to meet one of those mean angels in person under normal circumstances would REALLY suck.

I forgot to mention the concepts of pure mercy and pure judgement.
Pure mercy means that one evil guy who stole a lady's purse won't get jailed and pure judgement means getting smitten for thoughtcrimes.
Those traits taken to its logical extremes can do harm.

Also moving away from the Abrahamic God example, if Zeus decided he didn't like this one fish in the ocean and zapped it with lightning (don't ask why), I think it would still be considered 'holy' even if the action is needlessly petty.

If Divine Will means the Will of the universe means just existing, then everything is holy because everything is allowed to exist.
If Gods doing pretty much everything including petty actions is holy, then there isn't a real distinction between good and evil.
Therefore mean/BA angels are holy too.
I guess I needed a place to write an essay on the nature of the divine forces.

Yeah.. this depends entirely on how you define things. If a being is acting based on orders from a higher divinity - your understanding of 'God' - then the actions remain divine no matter how atrocious we may find them, but now that descends into a question of if you think 'God' would be responsible for such.
It is well known that there are angels of destruction, in certain belief you have the chief Satan described as acting in accordance with 'God's will' rather than some rogue figure at war with creation.
From there we veer into a question of how much free will you think we have; are we not capable of these ruinous actions all on our own? Is this not simply the human experience? And if we are, if it is, would an angel need to control any of us in the way you describe to make things happen?

Holy is just another term for 'sacred', or sanctified. Anything can be sacred to anyone depending on their worldview. There exists the possibility of divine darkness - many adhere to that, and it involves those things that some find unpleasant such as death, sacrifice, apocalypse, decay, whathaveyou.. the shadow aspect of purity, those things that can cause havoc or at a lesser level discomfort but still be held as an experience which brings you closer to the divine - and so is sacred.

Being at death's door is literally sacred even though it elicits fear in many - you are close to 'God' in that moment. Darkness is a sliding scale and when we get into its umbra - the blackest point - it's really up to us what we see in it.

Getting down to the most objective view of malevolence - which would be something that only exists to, is only capable of hindering or harming us irrespective of who we are or circumstance, and without exception for anyone or anything (this is important).. to most minds it would cease to be considered an angel, as this would not be operating in accordance with or in the scope of creative force.
It would be argued that God/Creator/Divine would not intentionally enlist a presence that works entirely against God/Creation/Divinity: unless life is a game, those are the only true players, and we're all pawns in it - woe betide those who continuously return to the chessboard.
You see how even that comes down to belief. So decide for yourself if a malevolent angel can exist and still be divinely ruled.

Vipera aspis atra wrote: ↑Wed Apr 27, 2022 4:32 am Yeah.. this depends entirely on how you define things. If a being is acting based on orders from a higher divinity - your understanding of 'God' - then the actions remain divine no matter how atrocious we may find them, but now that descends into a question of if you think 'God' would be responsible for such.
It is well known that there are angels of destruction, in certain belief you have the chief Satan described as acting in accordance with 'God's will' rather than some rogue figure at war with creation.
From there we veer into a question of how much free will you think we have; are we not capable of these ruinous actions all on our own? Is this not simply the human experience? And if we are, if it is, would an angel need to control any of us in the way you describe to make things happen?

Holy is just another term for 'sacred', or sanctified. Anything can be sacred to anyone depending on their worldview. There exists the possibility of divine darkness - many adhere to that, and it involves those things that some find unpleasant such as death, sacrifice, apocalypse, decay, whathaveyou.. the shadow aspect of purity, those things that can cause havoc or at a lesser level discomfort but still be held as an experience which brings you closer to the divine - and so is sacred.

Being at death's door is literally sacred even though it elicits fear in many - you are close to 'God' in that moment. Darkness is a sliding scale and when we get into its umbra - the blackest point - it's really up to us what we see in it.

Getting down to the most objective view of malevolence - which would be something that only exists to, is only capable of hindering or harming us irrespective of who we are or circumstance, and without exception for anyone or anything (this is important).. to most minds it would cease to be considered an angel, as this would not be operating in accordance with or in the scope of creative force.
It would be argued that God/Creator/Divine would not intentionally enlist a presence that works entirely against God/Creation/Divinity: unless life is a game, those are the only true players, and we're all pawns in it - woe betide those who continuously return to the chessboard.
You see how even that comes down to belief. So decide for yourself if a malevolent angel can exist and still be divinely ruled.

I couldn't have said it better, myself! You've covered a lot of the fundamental points in how to approach it.