Halos

So what’s the deal with ‘em?
Are they just taken from artistic depictions of holy symbols seen with a divine light glowing about a figure (predominantly coming from behind their head)? Or do angel otherkin have phantom halos?

I read something about it coming from the Egyptian sundisks...

chaitea Wrote:So what’s the deal with ‘em?
Are they just taken from artistic depictions of holy symbols seen with a divine light glowing about a figure (predominantly coming from behind their head)? Or do angel otherkin have phantom halos?

As a cynic, I would say yes, the idea comes from artistic depictions of holy symbols, and people who literally believe in them misinterpreted those works of art as a primary source and their imaginations filled in the rest.

Actually, there's a theory that they're what got left over from pictures of people with full auras.

Seraphyna Wrote:Actually, there's a theory that they're what got left over from pictures of people with full auras.

Someone with more specific knowledge of the area might be able to clarify (I'm thinking Freetha), but off the top of my head I don't think Renaissance artists actually painted Jesus, the apostles, saints, angels etc in person and that there might have been a certain amount of imagination and metaphor involved.

Can someone who has read the Bible a little more cover to cover than I have tell us whether or not it ever describes anyone as having a halo? (I say the "Bible" as based on experience these threads tend to be rather Christian. If this in fact about pre-Christian religions and spirituality then I will be coloured amazed, though impressed.)

Generally the mentions are about generating great light but not floating halo thingies no.

I have consulted my dad, the pastor on the matter and he agrees with me.

The official artistic reason for the halos was to distinguish otherwise normal looking people from the more "mundane" people around them. After all, without a halo, Baby Jeebus is just another crying baby, and how else is your audience (or the Pope) going to know the difference between him and the 5 others you've painted in the picture?

It got started in the Byzantine mosaic murals to separate the Emperor and his family (the chosen agents of G-d) from other members of the court/peasants on the street. It then spread to iconography, and then to the wider artistic world as a means of representing supposed "holy" personages. If you'll notice, there are no depictions of saints/angels/Jeebus with halos before about 500-750 C.E., even though the people being depicted had been revered and sanctified for centuries already.

*raises hand* Some art-history and stuff in my head allows me to say...

They were originally things to symbol "glowing" with the inner light of holyness (or something along those lines). It's a litteral interpretation of "light" and "enlightnenment" that which evolved into stylized "disks" which over time were simplified into halos.

No, there are no actual work of art that which were produced of "actual" jesus, or his apostles or anyone else of that era. The pictures we think of when we hear the name "jesus" are no more than a few hundred years old. The common north-american one is even younger.

Angels as we think of them as "human beings with wings" are also something from relatively modern art.

Freetha Wrote:They were originally things to symbol "glowing" with the inner light of holyness (or something along those lines). It's a litteral interpretation of "light" and "enlightnenment" that which evolved into stylized "disks" which over time were simplified into halos.

Ding!

Further... I don't recall seeing anyone with a glow while I was in the hood (heeee), but I wouldn't doubt that some people will see an angel as having a glow of light centered around their heads. I seem to draw and project more energy from my crown than any other centre, so yeah... I just might appear to have a glowy noggin' myself.

The glow was a symbol of the persons' connection with the holy light that which is YHWH, for the most part.