Category Archives: Divination

A Woman Should Cover Her Head Because of the Angels

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Angels are depicted with red boots indicating their role as messengers of the heavenly court; red boots were worn by officials associated with the Byzantine imperial system and imperial messengers on imperial business were often identified by their red boots. So the angels, delivering messages from God to humans, were identified in icons as messengers of the King of heaven by their red boots as well.


For if a woman does not cover her head, let her hair be cut; if, however, it is shameful for a woman to cut her hair or shave it off, it is better to keep her head covered…. A woman should keep her head covered because of the angels. (1 Cor. 11:6, 10)

This passage is one of the most difficult in the New Testament for modern readers to understand. St. Paul talks about women keeping silent and their heads covered all because of the angels. How can the apostle who wrote these words also have written that in Christ there is neither rich nor poor, slave or free, male or female? What is he talking about in this passage?

Hairstyles were important in 1st century Greco-Roman culture. Elite women and men spent a lot of time and money to have their hair done “properly” and even the wives of the emperors could be criticized for having an incorrect hairstyle. Men were expected to have hairstyles that were very different from women; women were expected to wear hairstyles that made it easy to see that they were not men. So the easiest and most basic way to do that was for men to cut their hair short and women to keep their hair long; a woman who cut her hair short might as well shave it all off. Philosophers spent a lot of time and ink writing about proper, appropriate hairstyles.

St. Paul wants the Christian men and women in Corinth to be recognizable as men and women. The scandal of the Cross and Resurrection should be the only hurdle making it difficult for non-Christians to embrace the Faith; upending social norms should not be a reason for non-believers to reject the Faith. But what do the angels have to do with this?

Praying and prophesying involve exposing the worshipper to the power and influence of powerful spiritual entities. Some of these are good. Some are evil. Wearing their hair like a “proper” woman was a talisman against the evil spirits that might try to deceive a woman who was praying or prophesying or interpreting Scripture (a sub-genre of prophesy). Keeping their hair long and properly coiffed was a way to protect the Christian women of Corinth, allowing only the good angels to speak to them or inspire their words.

Perhaps one reason modern readers have difficulty with this passage is because we don’t take prophesying and angels seriously any more. Understanding preaching and interpretation of scripture as acts of prophesying and acknowledging the reality, importance, and power of the angels go a long way to make a difficult passage comprehensible and not as a misogynistic rant.

The Magi and Their Dream

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The magi have a dream in which an angel warns them to avoid revealing the location of the Christ-child to King Herod. So they go home via another route; as a result, King Herod slays all the boys in the region of Bethlehem who are 2 years old or younger.

In the gospel according to St. Matthew, we read that the Magi–the 3 kings–were on the road for 2 years, following the star that announced the birth of Christ to Judea but had to consult King Herod about where in Judea the new-born king might be located. Herod consulted religious authorities and scholars who told him that Bethlehem was the most likely location. He sent the Magi there but asked them to come and tell him where in Bethlehem they found Christ. They did locate Christ, worshipping him with gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (One story says that the gold was later stolen by the two thieves who were later crucified alongside Jesus. Another tradition suggests that Joseph and Mary used the gold to finance their travels when they fled to Egypt from Bethlehem.) But an angel warned the Magi all in a dream not to reveal the location of the Christ-child to King Herod and so they returned home via a different route, avoiding Herod. When Herod realized the Magi were not coming back to him, he ordered all the baby boys in the Bethlehem region to be killed, hoping to eradicate the baby who was the threat to his rule. But an angel had warned Joseph in a dream to take his family to Egypt and so they escaped, just in the nick of time; they returned to Judea only after Herod was dead.

The star the magi had followed was most likely a conjunction of Saturn (indicating the Last Days) and Jupiter (indicating a great king) in Pisces (associated with Judea and the people of Israel). Dreams were taken seriously as visitations of God, the angels, or other spirits. Dreams and astrology were acceptable tools of divination to discover or understand the will of God and were not considered “magic” by most people until fairly recently. But people who had such dreams might become proud or arrogant, telling others how special they were for having received such a visitation from God in a dream; many spiritual teachers had to warn their disciples against taking such dreams too seriously or becoming arrogant because of them. Rules were established for how to interpret such dreams and how much attention they should be given. But dreams can still inspire us or lead to new inventions, as this recent New Yorker article attests.

A shrine of the Three Kings at Cologne Cathedral, according to tradition, contains the bones of the Magi. Reputedly they were first discovered by Saint Helena on her famous pilgrimage to Palestine and the Holy Lands. She took the remains to the church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; they were later moved to Milan before being sent to their current resting place by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I in 1164.

Read more about the Magi in previous posts here and here.

Invention of the Cross

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St. Helen tests the crosses she discovers during the excavations of Golgotha in Jerusalem.

St. Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, is said to have discovered the True Cross in Jerusalem. (Because her son Constantine has seen a vision of the Cross when God promised him victory, locating and honoring the Cross was important to her.) Her discovery is known as the “Invention of the Cross;” the word invention means discovery, not just that someone invented or made up something that did not exist before.

The legend says that Adam was buried on a hill near what became the city of Jerusalem and that the hill became known as Golgotha. Adam’s son was given a seed from the Tree of Life in Paradise to plant in Adam’s grave. The seed grew into a tree whose fruit healed the sick. But eventually the tree was cut down and the lumber used for building projects. Some of it was used to build a bridge into Jerusalem and when the Queen of Sheba came to visit Solomon in Jerusalem, she realized how special the wood in the bridge was. She got down off her horse and bowed down in reverence to the wood before going across it. Later, when Jerusalem fell into ruin, the bridge collapsed. Much later, the Roman soldiers found the planks from the old bridge and used them to build the cross that Jesus was crucified on. So the lumber from the seedling of the Tree of Life became the Cross and the blood of Christ, the Second Adam, sprinkled Adam’s bones deep within Golgotha.

(The imagery in this legend expresses in poetic form a lot about the Cross—the ultimate Tree of Life—that is true but difficult to express otherwise. Bridges were metaphors for spiritual and religious practice that enable a person to transcend sin or earthly limitations; “pontifex,” the Latin word for “bridge-builder” also came to mean “priest.” The Queen of Sheba reverenced the material through which God would act to save the world; she is also associated with bringing the Ark of the Covenant (a metaphor for the Incarnation and the role of the Virgin Mary as Mother of God) to Africa for safekeeping—so the Queen of Sheba is twice associated with the ways God uses matter to save the world. The death of the Second Adam on Golgotha released the First Adam and all of us who are Adam’s children.)

When Jerusalem became a Roman city in the 2nd century AD, a temple for Adonis was built atop Golgotha. This helped identify Golgotha and the local Christians never forget what had happened there before the temple had been built. So when St. Helen came to Jerusalem in the early 4th century AD to excavate places important during Jesus’ life, the local Christians could tell her where to begin excavating to discover the place of the Crucifixion.

St. Helen began excavations and found three crosses beneath the temple. She had three sick men brought and touched the crosses to them. Two of the crosses did not heal the sick. One did. She had three dead men brought and the cross that had healed a sick man also raised a dead man.

The cross that healed the sick and raised the dead was identified as Jesus’ cross. It is also said to have been surrounded by lots and lots of basil plants; basil is therefore thought to protect against curses. It is also used to decorate the Cross in churches on feast days and to sprinkle holy water on the faithful coming to celebrate festivals in honor of the Cross.