Out of the heaps of snow we’ve been getting lately, someone in my neighborhood has fashioned a great big Cupid in her front yard…or is it a cherub? Shoot, is Cupid himself some kind of cherub? I stood contemplating those questions for a minute or so until my dog started snuffling about at the smooshed remains of a sandwich beginning to emerge from under the packed snow, and I figured it was time to move on.
Christmas came and went with its cards adorned by chubby-cheeked winged babies. Now it’s Valentine’s Day, and they’re back again. We’re accustomed to calling these charming figures cherubs. But it’s a biblical word, and in the Bible, cherubs are nothing like that.
Fierce guardians of sacred space, the biblical cherubs (“cherubim,” if we’re using Hebrew grammar) are muscular and stern, more Legion than “Precious Moments.” Some are described as hybrid beings combining human-like features with awesome beasts — lions, bulls, or eagles. They guard or partly compose the throne of God and can be deployed for divine transport. So, it would seem that the only thing these imposing cherubim have in common with those mischievous cherubic angels is that they all have wings. Or is it?
The word itself may connote a divine intercessor and is perhaps related to an ancient Near Eastern word meaning “to pray.” The creatures so described were thought to mediate between the earthly and heavenly realms, carrying prayers and relaying blessings. Similarly, the biblical cherubim, despite their supernatural features functioned within the human sphere. They communicated what was sacred and holy to earth, and kept what was divine safe from human flubbery. Over time, the cherubim were identified as angels, nearly the highest of the high — just one step down from the seraphim. Over yet more time, they came to be considered youthful and their human features emphasized, while the wings remained.
In other words, they came to look a lot like Cupid, the Roman Eros and son of the goddess of love. Cupid, who armed by his mother Venus with magic arrows to shoot the much-too-beautiful human Psyche instead fell in love with her. Their fraught relationship became secure only when Psyche, which means “Soul,” was granted immortality. The ancients say that Cupid and his arrows still wing their way from heaven to earth impaling unsuspecting humans with love. Judging from this season’s cards, it would seem that we believe them. And why not?
Finally, the biblical cherubim are not the same as the corpulent flying cherubs of Renaissance art, and neither are the same as the young lover god. Yet it occurs to me, at Christmas and Valentine’s Day, that they share much in common. Don’t they all move between the mundane and the extraordinary, between earth and heaven? And each keeps the sacred, in its way. For when Love loves the Soul, mortality is transcended, the divine touches earth, and we humans are initiates in a powerful, dangerous, and holy mystery. I walked past that Cupid down the block again recently. After a little melting, it’s remarkably graceful and still mostly white, soaring a few feet off the ground (thanks to yet more snow). From its taut bow, a frozen arrow points toward the house next door, and I wonder if cherubic love, sweet and terrifying, is looking for a way in.
