21 concepts
Falls from grace
The Lost Angel refers to the several falls from grace that the human race has experienced. They are moments when our species has been on the brink of extinction; according to Judeo-Christian teachings, there have been only three of these moments.
(See chapters 27, 100)
Amrak
Armenian for “the box.” But in reality, it is a stone tablet that, according to The Lost Angel, can activate the adamantas, allowing them to emit high-frequency signals and alter nearby electromagnetic fields. The amrak is very similar to the invocation tablet built by John Dee, of which we only have a few actual examples.
Phonetic Kabbalah
System by which the sounds of a word or phrase are used instead of the actual meaning to transmit a hidden “secret” message. John Dee used this method in some of his writing. This method is the mother of homophone games or play on words. Martin Faber uses this method to transmit a hidden meaning to Julia Alvarez in his kidnapping video in the novel.
(See chapter 43)
Adamantas
Literally “stones of Adam.” Those who possess two of these stones can use them to communicate with God and other higher beings, a theme that runs throughout The Lost Angel. In the book, it is written that the stones are of a “celestial origin,” as unique as any stone NASA has brought back from the moon. Later on, we learn the stones become activated during solar storms. Julia Alvarez learns that they are first described in the ancient epic of Gilgamesh, though it is the sixteenth-century mystic John Dee who gives them this name, which you will find reference to in an actual fragment of his work Monas Hieroglyphica included in the novel.
Campus Stellae
The Lost Angel makes several references to this modern monument built into an interior wall of the cathedral at Santiago, near the door leading to Platerias. It is a metal sculpture fashioned in 1999 by the artist Jesus León Vázquez and it is said to represent the medieval idea that to reach Santiago, one must follow the field of stars, or the Milky Way. It so happens that many place names along the Way of St. James have names that refer to stars, establishing a tie between the terrestrial and the celestial like nothing seen in any other place on earth.
Chester Arthur (1829-1886)
Twenty-first president of the United States. Under his administration, the Office of Naval Intelligence was created and became the precursor of all the U.S. secret services such as the FBI and CIA. His administration also oversaw the creation of the Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona in 1882. In the novel, Arthur also prompts the creation of Operation Elijah, born of the era’s obsession with the Great Flood and whose goal was to study the end of civilizations such as Atlantis and to communicate with “higher planes.”
(See chapter 69)
Chintamani
One of the many “communication stones” to which traditions throughout human history refer. The term comes from a Sanskrit word. The chintamani stone in particular is associated with Nicolas Roerich, who named one of his famous series of paintings after it. This glowing stone served as a key to the underground utopia of Shambhala, a hidden paradise where scholars oversaw the evolution of our species. Andrew Tomas described the chintamani in detail in his book Shambhala: Oasis of Light.
The chintamani stone is surrounded in rich lore the world over, such as in Tibet during the reign of Tho-tho-ri Nyanstan, around a.d. 331. There, it was prized as a talisman fallen from the sky, coming to Earth on the back of a wind horse named Lung-ta. It was considered such a sacred object—it was called the “Treasure of the World”—that it was only brought out into public to mark spiritual changes or changes in consciousness in humanity. Perhaps that is why it so often shows up in Tibetan folklore.
(See chapter 76)
Ignatius Donnelly (1831-1901)
A lawyer, congressman and former governor of Minnesota. His writings were extremely influential in his time, particularly his book Atlantis: the Antediluvian World (1882). It is still considered one of the most lauded works of its time. And many still refer to Donnelly's assertion that ancient Egyptian, Hindu, and Central American cultures were founded by survivors of the global flood that destroyed Atlantis. Furthermore, he postulates that the royalty from Atlantis went on to be deified as the original gods of ancient mythology. He surmises that this explains commonalities across the globe, such as pyramids, common symbolism such as the spiral, and the obsession with astronomy.
Despite his controversial ideas, Donnelly is considered one of the most learned politicians ever to pass through Washington, DC. And not just because of his writings about extinct civilizations, but also for his in-depth study of geology, botany, and linguistics. One of his lesser-known works deals with trying to find hidden messages encrypted in the works of William Shakespeare.
(See chapter 46)
Great Flood
Despite what many believe, this is not simply a Judeo-Christian myth. Just as Sierra writes in The Lost Angel, there are more than a hundred separate stories across the world that tell of humanity’s destruction by a global flood. One of the most famous is the Hindu story of Manu and the fish that tells him of an impending flood. There’s also the Aztec story of Tana and Nena, who escape the god Tlaloc’s wrath after he tells them about his plan to drown all humans. And more famous still is the Greek myth of Prometheus, who warns his son, Deucalion, and Deucalion’s wife, Pyrrha, about Zeus’s plan to destroy them all.
(See chapter 29)
In the novel, Martin Faber is convinced—as are a growing number of climatologists—that the flood is a metaphor for the last great climatological event, when the melting polar ice caps brought an end to the last ice age some eleven to twelve thousand years ago. That would have happened just before the first human civilizations, such as the Göbekli Tepe (in Turkey), are recorded to have appeared.
Epic of Gilgamesh
Written four thousand years before the birth of Christ, this story found etched on clay tablets and unearthed in modern-day Iraq is the oldest literary text known to man. It tells the story of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian king determined to seek out the gods in paradise and reclaim man’s right to immortality. The story claims that only one human had ever achieved immortality: an antediluvian king named Utnapishtim, whom the gods spared before they destroyed the world in a flood. In the epic, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh that immortality lies with a species of plant that exists only at the bottom of the ocean. Gilgamesh seeks out the flower of eternal life, but just as he is about to reach it, a serpent steals the plant and Gilgamesh must return home empty-handed.
(See chapters: 31, 35)
George Carver Jr. (1930-1994)
Carver was a CIA expert who was interested in Noah’s Ark; his story is told at length in The Lost Angel. He was a twenty-six-year veteran of the CIA, joining in 1953, and handled important missions in West Germany and during the Vietnam War. During his many public lectures over the years, he confirmed that the CIA had discovered something “strange near the peak of Mount Ararat.” That led other parties to ask for this information to be declassified under the Freedom of Information Act. This finally came to pass a year after Carver’s death in 1995, and it confirmed that the CIA had in fact been interested in the “Ararat Anomaly” as far back as 1949.
(See chapter 77)
Book of Enoch
Written in the second century B.C., it is attributed to Enoch, potentially the first biblical prophet who did not have to die in order for Yahweh to take him to Heaven. The book goes into great detail about the fall of the angels and the reasons God was so determined to destroy mankind with the Great Flood. This book was almost unknown in Europe until the nineteenth century when copies were introduced from Ethiopia. But there is substantial evidence to suggest John Dee had privileged access to the book's contents as early as the sixteenth century.
(See chapter 27)
James Irwin (1930-1991)
This astronaut’s search for Noah’s Ark is detailed in The Lost Angel (chapter 91). Few know that he wrote a book about his travels to Ararat in his mission to prove the existence of the biblical ship. In More Than an Ark on Ararat (1985), Irwin, the eighth man to set foot on the moon, admits to his failed expedition but not to a crisis of faith. In the book, he concludes that the ark would be discovered when God—not man—thought it was time, exposing his personal religious views on existence. After returning from the moon, he founded a Christian group called High Flight, through which he organized seven separate expeditions to Mount Ararat in search of the ark. His perseverance and bravery as a test pilot served to save his life on more than one occasion but not to achieve his ultimate goal: to show that just as man walked on the surface of the moon, so did God on Earth.
Coronal Mass Ejection - CME
Once every eleven years or so, the sun cycles through a period of pronounced activity when the surface of the sun erupts and sends waves of radiation and solar winds out into the cosmos. It has been well documented that if one of these waves of radiation strikes Earth, it can affect the planet's electromagnetic fields and electrical networks. These solar storms are categorized according to their strength. And the Class X storms, referenced in this novel, are the most severe. They can seriously affect the climate, telecommunications, even human health. The Class M storms are more brief but can also cause smaller blackouts and affect activity in the polar regions. Class C storms are the mildest and often go unnoticed.
Enochian
A language that John Dee supposedly received from divine communication with angels in the sixteenth century. It is made up of twenty-one letters, nineteen invocations and more than one hundred inscrutable tables of composite letters, whose combinations would allow humans to establish contact with a “higher plane.” However, the Enochian language was all but forgotten until the early nineteenth century, when occult groups such as Golden Dawn studied it, and they have preserved it to this day. Symbols taken from this language are peppered throughout The Lost Angel at pivotal points—including the strange psalms that the character Artemi Dujok recites, which are part of John Dee’s original invocation phrases.
(See chapter 98)
John Dee (1527-1698)
A complex and multifaceted man who lived during the reign of England’s Queen Elizabeth I, he was as lauded for his scientific knowledge as for his mastery over the occult arts. Despite lacking any actual supernatural ability, this Catholic “wizard” aligned himself with a sketchy medium, one Edward Kelly, in 1581 with the goal of communicating with angels and other beings on “the other side.” He attempted to do this via a pair of stones, fully convinced that magic and alchemy were as legitimate a way of speaking to God as any orthodox religion. He claimed to have received instruction from celestial beings on how to speak the language of angels, which he named Enochian, and how to build a talisman that facilitated this communication, one that shows up throughout The Lost Angel. Although his dealings in magic somewhat diminished his credibility, Dee was well known for his developments in geometry, cartography, and astronomy, and he wrote sixty-nine works, most of which are stored in their original form in the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology in Oxford.
(See chapter 13)
Yezidi
This relatively unknown religious and cultural minority—of which there are fewer than one hundred thousand members on earth—can be found peppered throughout Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Armenia, and it plays a pivotal role in The Lost Angel. And not just because one of the main protagonists, Artemi Dujok, is a member of this tribe of “fallen angels” descended from Melek Taus, but also because of their particular history. First off, the Yezidi believe they are direct descendants of Adam but not Eve. They believe in reincarnation and the innocence of the angel Lucifer and they revere snakes. All of this has cast them in the role of “devil worshippers,” making them persecuted by everyone from Muslims to the deposed Saddam Hussein. That history has drawn a wide variety of people to them, from writers such as H. P. Lovecraft—who immortalized them in his short story “The Horror at Red Hook”—to contemporary Satanists such as Anton LaVey.
They also have notable connections to the myth of the Great Flood. Ain Sifni, the largest city in Kurdish Iraq, is, according to the Yezidi, the place where the flood began. The city’s name actually means “Noah’s boat.” On the outskirts of the city, people can visit the well that, according to legend, overflowed to begin the Great Flood. It is supposedly protected by Baba Sheikh(or the “Yezidi Pope”), who resides there to venerate the tomb of Adi, its founder.
Monas Hierogliphica
This symbol created by John Dee encapsulates the formula needed to understand a new kind of science, one made up of kabbalah, alchemy, and mathematics, which the expert Frances Yates says “would have allowed whoever mastered it to go up and down the levels of consciousness . . . up to the highest level where Dee believed he had found the secret to communicating with angels via mathematical computations.” This singular symbol, often only interpreted as magical entity, takes on a deeper meaning in The Lost Angel, where it comes to stand for an entire prophesy that can be understood through modern science.
Monas Hieroglyphica also is the title of John Dee’s most famous work. Published in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1564, it was written in just twelve days. It’s largely regarded as a study in alchemy, but well-known semioticians (those who study signs and symbols) such as Umberto Eco believe it was Dee’s attempt at recording a character-based alphabet. In fact, Dee twists, turns, and parses the symbol to formulate twenty-four other theorems with distinct meanings. And so it fits Sierra’s assertion that the symbol is a compendium of hidden cosmological information.
Operation Elijah
The fictionalized secret intelligence operation that U.S. president Chester Arthur created at the end of the nineteenth century. Its objective is to control all manner of communication with any higher intelligence. It runs under the purview of the National Security Agency (NSA).
Juan de Estivadas
His tomb is perhaps the best known in the “church of tombstones,” Santa Maria a Nova, in Noia, Spain. Sculpted in the fifteenth century, it shows the likeness of the former Galician businessman and merchant spectacularly carved in stone, his head resting against a stone pillow bearing his name. Hidden in his name is a code that is fundamental to The Lost Angel’s plot.
Great and Terrible Day
An Old Testament reference to the end of the world and the return of the prophet Elijah, which appears several times throughout the novel. “Behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, Before the day of the Lord comes, the great and terrible day.” (Malachi 4:5).