Messengers of Hope
by Gesso Cocteau

Guardian Angel

My angels are messengers of hope, healing and compassion. They are not perfect, but flawed in texture and proportion revealing the torment and suffering that they take away and exchange for protection and social justice. They are bold and humble at the same time.

Angels are here to heal us, to restore lost faith, broken trust and innocence. They help replace feelings of unworthiness with happiness as they help us enter the world of love. Throughout history angels have inspired poets, artists, writers, prophets and religious leaders as well as everyday men and women. Angels are associated with higher nature, joy, beauty, fulfillment, laughter and peace.

Fifty years ago when I was three years of age I walked away from my home, I do not remember much about it except for a few images but mainly what my Mom and sister have related to me since about what happened. I was missing for over three hours. During this time I do remember someone taking my hand. This person seemed to have on a scarf and large coat. She took my hand and kept me from crossing a busy street and must have called the police to say she had found a lost child. Then I remember a policeman taking me home to my family. I remember standing next to him as he drove me home, (this of course was before car seats). I never knew just who the figure was that held my hand and kept me from entering the busy intersection but I always, in the depth of my heart thought it must have been an my guardian angel. This angel saw a child who needed protection and protected me. Throughout my life there have been many incidents of protection and kindness shown to me, I have tried to reflect these experiences in my new body of work called ‘The Messengers’. The word angel comes from angelos which is the Greek word for messenger. Angels are messengers. They are messengers from the heart that allow us a greater understanding and connection to our Spirit.

Guardian Angel Front

My humble hope is that through this body of work I can be of assistance as an artist to bring a symbol of extreme compassion, gentleness and love to all who see and experience my messengers. The word 'angel' comes from the Greek angelos, which is a translation of the Hebrew word mal'akh, meaning 'messenger', a being who carries messages between the human world and some other realm or realms of existence, someone who is an intermediary between 'down here' and 'up there'.

Humans have always responded to winged characters, it is in our genetic make-up from thousand of years ago. Below are just some of the civilizations that we know had strong ties to winged human motifs.

The Sumerian society is the oldest civilization that left behind evidence of the use of a winged human theme. The Sumerians flourished around 3,000 BC between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in present-day Iraq. These people believed in a diversified realm of spirits and goddesses, they also had faith in angelic forces who ran errands between the gods, goddesses and humans. The Sumerians believed that every human had a ‘phantom’ a ghost like figure that we now would consider a ‘guardian angel’. This being was a constant companion for a person throughout their life.

Excavations in Sumeria show proof of altars that seemingly are dedicated to guardian angels. Also found in ancient Sumerian homes are stone engravings of human figures with wings. Later after Sumeria had been conquered by Semitic tribes with polytheistic beliefs. These tribes borrowed the notion of angels and split them into groups to answer to the many Semitic gods, now ranking hierarchies of angels, which persisted into religions to follow. After Sumeria cane the Assyrian and Babylonian cultures. Winged figures can also be found among the icons of these ancient civilizations.

Messenger Angel

Egyptian iconography includes ‘winged humans’. Isis, queen of all the Egyptian goddesses is often represented as a woman with wings. Since Summeria and Egypt were somewhat on the same timeline. The peaking of Summeria with the first few dynasties of the great culture of ancient Egypt, around 2,500 BC, archaeologist were inclined to believe that artifacts, ideas and iconography between Sumeria and Egypt were shared through traffic of trade and travel.

How did the images of angelic beings find their way into the hearts, minds and iconography of the Sumerian people? Where did the notion of an angel come from before that? We are lucky to have had the extremely durable stone artifacts of this period handed down to us. Just because a prior culture did not commit itself to the written word, to pictures or carvings that would last thousands of years does not mean that there was no culture.

Almost certainly, the motif of a winged human figure goes back much further than Summeria , in fact the motif almost certainly goes back into the shamanic mist of time. Intuition tells us that the iconography of angels must be rooted in the ancient shamanic cultures of Central Asia, predating even the culture of the Sumerians in the fourth millennium BC.

Closeup Of Guardian Wings

Certainly angels or messengers, however we want to refer to them, go back so far in time that every human has some notion or vague feeling for the winged angelic beings. However they can be of assistance in a world so plugged into fear and violence we should all feel free as to listen to our dreams and our mythologies and take strength and nourishment from them.

Guardian Back