oh wow. now would be a great time to throw in some quotes from PERELANDRA and the coronation of the lord and lady. you know you have been affected by lewis' books if you automatically think 'eldil' when someone mentions 'angel,' and if you automatically think in ezekielian terms (like as the appearance of the likeness of the appearance of the likeness of) and massive incomprehensible morphing creatures composed of rainbow flashes of light--all shouting HOLY with their very essence.

The Great Dance does not wait to be perfect until the peoples of the low worlds are gathered into it...it has begun from before always. The dance which we dance is at the center and for it all things were made, Blessed be He!...
Never did he make the same thing twice... All is righteousness and there is no equality... The days of the fields of Arbol and the days of Deep Heaven itself are numbered not; thus is He great. He dwells in the smallest flower and is not crampled. Deep Heaven is inside Him who is inside the seed... The edge of each nature borders on that whereof it contains no shadow or similitude, as a point to a line so that world to the fruits of its redeeming. Blessed be He! All that is not itself the Great Dance was made that He might come down into it, fortunate the world where this was enacted in the centre of worlds. Blessed be He!
Each grain is at the center. The dust is at the centre. The worlds are at the center. The beasts are at the centre. The ancient peoples are there. The race that sinned is there. The gods also are there. Blessed is He! Each thing was made for Him, He is the centre, being with Him each of us is at the centre...each thing from the grain to the strongest eldil, is the end and final cause of all creation and the mirror in which His brightness comes to rest and returns to Him. Blessed be He!
In the plan of the Great Dance, plans without number interlock and each movement becomes in its season the flowering of the whole design to which all is directed, each at the centre and none as equals but by giving place and receiving it, the small in their smallness the great in their greatness and all patterns linked and looped together by the union of a sceptred love. Blessed be He!
He has immeasurable use for each thing made, that splendour may flow like a river...Blessed be He!

See, it's funny you mention the parallel between the eldil and angels.

The eldil are revered, either in the Malcandran/Perelandran or Thulcandran state.
If he hadn't tagged that attribute to their "characters" they would have just been spooky. But since he gives them "class" (if you will) there's a transcendent sense of dread.

In conjunction, he also mentions in POPain the difference between the fear of a "lion in the next room" and a "ghost in the next room." There's a whole different plane of thought attached to horror.

So both positive and negative aspects are magnified by both the fallen and clean eldil, or in our case, fallen and clean angels, by that reverence.

skin me alive and call me an imbicile, but i have never read the space trillogy. i take it i need to?

oh, oh yeah. OH yeah.

and this one...

He has no need at all of anything that is made. An eldil is not more needful to Him than a grain of dust: a peopled world no more needful than a world that is empty: but all needless alike, and what all add to Him is nothing. We also have no need of anything that is made. Love me, my brothers, for I am infinitely superfluous, and your love shall be like His, born neither of your need nor of my deserving, but a plain bounty. Blessed be He!

~ C.S. Lewis in PERELANDRA

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