Trifter

It’s the Gospel according to Nicodemus that first portrays St. Michael as the door warden of Paradise. This Gospel is accounted an apocryphal part of the Bible. Apocryphal means, that man has taken it upon himself to edit the word of God and decide what God has said and what He didn’t say. Apart from this obvious position, he fills many other aspects attributed to the bouncers of the Otherworld, like keeping track of good and bad deeds of souls, weighing and judging the souls after death and on the day of the last judgement, and accompanying them after death to the Otherworld.

If some of this reminds you of ancient gods and goddesses, that is no accident. Already in the first Book of Henoch (itself another apocryphal part of the Bible), these latter attributes are added to bring St. Michael on a par with his pagan counterparts like Thot, Anubis, and Horus (in Egypt) or with the Zoroastrian Immortals Rashnu and Sraosha. It is hardly surprising that he was found the right person in Europe to take over from his predecessors such as Nodens, Charon, or other door wardens in other religions.

Doorways to the Otherworld were most famous in places called Isles of Glass. A well known Isle of Glass is the Mont Saint-Michel in the Normandy region of France, the place where Arthur killed a giant. It is logical that only St. Michael could be made the patron saint of such a place, filling in at the same time as door warden for the locals and as Prince of Seraphim to hold it against unholy influences from the past.

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Later, the order in charge of Mont Saint-Michel  founded a dependency in Cornwall, and not surprisingly, this place is another of those Isles of Glass, St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall, or An Garrek Los y’n Cos. He place was most probably known already to the Greeks and Romans by the name of Mictis or Ictis.

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A further famous Isle of Glass is the Tor in Glastonbury, on top of which only the tower of the St. Michael’s church remains these days.

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And another famous Isle of Glass may be found in Skellig Michael in Ireland.

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But the Otherworld could be reached by other means than going to the Isle of Glass; all over Europe there were caves that were reputed to be entries to the Otherworld. One of those was in the region of Apulia in Italy, where the Normans built a St. Michaels church in a place called Monte Sant’ Angelo integrating the cave into the church. It says on the doorway that all sins are forgiven to whoever enters the cave, a clear indication that the cave is the forecourt to afterlife.

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If you dig into the archaeological history of a building dedicated to St. Michael, you will often find that there were earlier occupants to a holy site, be it a temple, a shrine, or a stone circle. It is one of the many ways by which Christianity integrated the locals into the new religion coming into fashion.