St Andrew’s Tower, Peebles

St Andrew’s Tower in the Scottish Royal Burgh of Peebles, is a much restored relic from the town’s medieval past. Once the parish kirk, it contains a great number of ancient tombs and memorials. Many depict peculiar angels, as Scottish stones are wont to do, often wearing the wigs and hair styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when the tomb’s owners happened to die.

Although these rather charmingly tell us what early-modern Scots thought angels were like, or at least how they wanted their gravestones to appear, they add little to our understanding of genuine, angelic beings. For that, we must turn to the scriptures, but even then our imaginations are required to visualise that which is clearly difficult to frame into human words:

And I looked, and behold, a whirlwind came out of the North, a great cloud and a fire wrapped about it, and a brightness was about it, and in the midst thereof, to wit, in the midst of the fire came out as the likeness of amber. Also out of the midst thereof came the likeness of four beasts, and this was their form: they had the appearance of a man, And every one had four faces, and every one had four wings. And their feet were straight feet, and the sole of their feet was like the soles of a calf’s foot, and they sparkled like the appearance of bright brass. And the hands of a man came out from under their wings in the four parts of them, and they four had their faces, and their wings. They where joined by their wings one to another, and when they went forth, they returned not, but every one went straight forward. And the similitude of their faces was as the face of a man: and they four had the face of a lion on the right side, and they four had the face of a bullock on the left side: they four also had the face of an Eagle. Thus were their faces: but their wings were spread out above: two wings of every one were joined one to another, and two covered their bodies. (Ezekiel 1:4-11, Geneva Bible)

One day, we shall see these glorious beings for ourselves. Until then, let us look to One even more glorious, in whose beauty and majesty even these powerful creatures are in awe.