There are the Seraphim, the Cherubim, and the Thrones; the Dominions, the Virtues, and the Powers; the Principalities, the Archangels, and the Angels. They are, all of them, angels. That is, beings made of spirit, rather than matter alone, or rather than spirit and matter both. But of these nine choirs, it is from only the lowest of them, the one that is furthest from the presence of God, not occupied with singing, or with praise of the divine, or with the overseeing of the cosmos, or the deployment of wonders and signs, or the protection of heaven, or the sustaining of those properties by which time and creation persist, but rather with the quotidian, the everyday, the humdrum, with, in a word, the affairs of humankind…yes, it is from this lowest choir that the guardian angels appear.