My parents are both pretty fervent Catholics. They actually both work for the Church. Naturally, they wanted all us kids to have it be as much a part of their lives as ours. So when I told my mom that I didn’t want to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, she wasn’t pleased.

Confirmation is basically the Catholic rite-of-adulthood. You get to pick out a saint’s name, and the Bishop from your diocese comes by and during a special Mass, says your name and like anoints your forehead with holy oil or something - (chrism, actually (more on that later). Supposedly, back in the day, the bishop got to slap you on the face also. That’s what I always heard, but I’ll have to verify that’s really true. I think the point is that it was one of those passages in life that’s supposed to be really drastic. And like in primitive peoples, you’d probably have a ritual involving scarrification or some other semi-torturous physical thing that would stay with you forever after as a reminder of your passage. Anyway, for me, the really psychologically potent analogue to that ritual was when I got my tattoo last year.

So right, my mom was basically like “Just do it now, because it will be much more complicated to get confirmed should you want to do it later.” Which was basically a reference to my possibly getting married under the auspices of the Catholic Church one day. Which is certainly also never going to happen. But anyway, I went through with the whole thing, and took all the retarded classes for it, and even picked out a “confirmation name“. Right, so the whole ordeal itself was pretty pointless. But I recently got to thinking about and reading up on my confirmation name.

It’s Raphael.

Like the ninja-turtle. Yes. But my favorite was always Donatello, because he “does machines.” But anyway, that’s not why I chose it. I chose it because technically you’re supposed to pick a saint’s name which you want to hold up as like a role model for your life. Always looking for loopholes, I instead chose Raphael, who is an archangel - but technically also considered a saint under the convoluted veiled polytheism of Catholicism.

Raphael means “God heals” or “God has healed.” He is one of three archangels mentioned in the “official” version of the Bible, along with Michael and Gabriel. Depending on who you ask, the other 4 archangels have a ton of different names associated with them.

According to quizilla’s “Which archangel are you most like” online personality quiz, it totally checks out that I picked Raphael as a name (although they spell it with an “F”):

Rafael. You’re most like the ArchAngel of Healing.
You want people to shape up, and you nag. But
you mean well, and you’re well loved despite
it. Or because of it. You bring the donuts
even as you tell people to eat more veggies.
Man, what a weird photo they chose for that. The ass on that guy could crack a walnut.

Right, so the two reasons I like(d) the Archangel Raphael as a mystical figure was that he stood for both healing and travel, being the patron saint of healers and travellers. That seemed oddly appropriate in a way I couldn’t explain back when I picked it, and which seems only more appropriate to me now.

Let’s see, here’s some random stuff about the Archangel Raphael, just to give you a feel for traditional and contemporary thought on him:

Raphael is charged to heal the earth and has a special charge of protecting the young, the innocent, and travelers…This identity came about because of the biblical story which claims that he “healed” the earth when it was defiled by the sins of the fallen angels in the apocryphal book of Enoch.

Raphael is one of seven Archangels who stand before the throne of the Lord…

In the Book of Euocb, Raphael is the guide to Sheol, the Judaic underworld, and it was he who was sent to bind the fallen ‘watcher’ Azazel, burying him under rocks in a desert place on earth. According to the Talmud, he is one of the three angels who visited Abraham after his circumcision.

…A legend taken from the book of Solomon says that when Solomon prayed to God for help in the building of a temple, God answered with the gift of a magic ring brought to the Hebrew king personally by Raphael. The ring, engraved with the pentalpha, (5-pointed star), had the power to subdue all demons. It was with the “slave labor” of demons that Solomon was able to complete the building of the temple. It was also Raphael who gave Noah, after the flood, a medical book said to have been the famous “The Book of the Angel Raziel”.

Raphael rules over Mercury, Wednesday and Saturday. He is the governor of the South and the element of Fire. He is often shown carrying a pilgrim’s staff.

He also figures in an Apocryphal Old Testament story in the Book of Tobit.

The blind Tobit sent his son Tobias out to collect some money; the boy was accompanied by the Archangel Raphael in disguise. Raphael helped him to catch a fish, the heart, liver and gall of which were used by Tobias to drive away a demon and cure his father’s blindness.

There’s a painting of this scene in the National Gallery.

And here’s an excerpt sort of New-Agey thing for you about healing powers of Raphael:

We are all healers for ourselves and each other, whether we go through training to practice a formal type of healing or whether we simply respond as needed when the occasion arises, we all should be aware of how we are supporting the healing process of others and remember to call upon this archangel to support ourselves lest we take on the problems and issues of others and make them our own.

One last cool thing I want to mention about the Archangel Raphael is that he is purported to have been sent by God into the desert to “bind” the demon Azazel. (If you remember the excellent 1998 supernatural thriller with Denzel Washington, “Fallen,” Azazel was the name of the demon causing all the problems in the story). Azazel goes back to an old Hebrew tradition, involving the Day of Atonement:

In Lev. xvi. the single allusion to Azazel is as follows: On the tenth day of Tishri the high priest, after first performing the prescribed sacrifices for himself and his family, presented the victims for the sins of the people. These were a ram for a burnt offering, and two young goats for a sin-offering. Having brought the goats before Yhwh at the door of the tabernacle, he cast lots for them, the one lot “for Yhwh” and the other “for Azazel.” The goat that fell to Yhwh was slain as a sin-offering for the people. But the goat of Azazel (now usually known as the “scapegoat”) was made the subject of a more striking ceremony. The high priest laid his hands upon its head and confessed over it the sins of the people. Then the victim was handed over to a man standing ready for the purpose, and, laden as it was with these imputed sins, it was “led forth to an isolated region,” and then let go in the wilderness.

Also, some scholars believe that “Azazel belongs to the class of “se’irim,” goat-like demons, jinn haunting the desert, to which the Israelites were wont to offer sacrifice…”

According to other traditions, Azazel was one the “Watchers” or “Grigori” sent down by God to guide early humans. However, the Watcher Angels were supposed to have taken human husbands and wives, and taught humans all kinds of bad shit that God didn’t want them to know. Azazel is credited with the following:

he taught men the art of warfare, of making swords, knives, shields, and coats of mail, and women the art of deception by ornamenting the body, dyeing the hair, and painting the face and the eyebrows, and also revealed to the people the secrets of witchcraft and corrupted their manners, leading them into wickedness and impurity;

And this is where Raphael comes in:

until at last he was, at the Lord’s command, bound hand and foot by the archangel Raphael and chained to the rough and jagged rocks of [Ha] Duduael (= Beth Ḥadudo), where he is to abide in utter darkness until the great Day of Judgment, when he will be cast into the fire to be consumed forever

More about Azazel on Occultopedia.

From Pantheon.org

And from Delirium’s Realm (which is the best online demonology reference I’ve seen)

Also check out this Google image search of Azazel

This one for Archangel Raphael’s even better.