St. Uriel Meditations

In the name of Light returning, I also summon URIEL, Dark Lord of Earth, who bringest all at last unto the Nether Shore, Companion of all who offer up their lives in the defense of others, guard this Chamber and witness the acts here taken. Come, mighty URIEL, and grace me with thy presence.

The past couple weeks, I've been meditating on St. Uriel.  He gets sort of a bad reputation.  In the above invocation, he's known as the Dark Lord of Earth, and sort of acts as the Ferryman.

However, in my meditations, I've come to a slightly different understanding.  He's the Lord of Earth.  All growing, living things come from the earth.  They all pass away, true.  But they all start here, as well.  His color is green for a reason:  He's the Lord of Growing things, as well.   So by being the Companion of the dying, he's also the shepherd of the living.

For the two are intimately intertwined, of course.  They are the flip sides of each other, and one cannot exist without the other.  Together, they form the whole which we confusingly call life.  Perhaps existence.  Life and Death, phases of existence.  And, given that Uriel is invoked last, it reminds us that light returning is at the end of life is light returning to it's source, so that it may arise once again as the cycle starts anew.

The element of Earth gets confused with a lot of things:  Jobs, money, etc.  Properly, jobs and money are the province of air:  they're ideas.  Wealth and work are the province of earth:  they're the material things that we do or produce.  The things which grow from our efforts are more properly the province of Uriel.