I have, in my book, a collective character. An ensemble so strange, so deliberately mythological, that I hesitate to call them fictional. They are called: The Procession of the Bodiless Powers.
Their names echo through apocrypha and personal notebooks alike: Uriel — their Archon. And the rest: Raguel, Remiel, Ramiel, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael. Are they perfect? Of course. They are my imaginary friends who, out of sheer love, became real.
I gave them those names for a reason.
Raguel, Remiel, Ramiel — always meant to be women.
Michael, Gabriel, Raphael — inevitably men.
And Uriel… Uriel is different. The terrible angel who rules over the Inferno. The Archangel of Divine Fire. The one who, in another age, might have stood at the left hand of God — and now lingers in the footnotes of history, uncanonized, untranslated, unwanted.
I must confess something, Glorious Uriel:
When I look at you, I feel a strange sadness. You were the first, the fiercest, and now you’re the most forgotten.
Once a Prince of the Heavenly Powers.
Now… a discarded metaphysical relic.
An Archon exiled by canon law. A footnote in Heaven’s bureaucracy.
Their calling?
To encircle Dia — the being of light.
Their mandate? To be the gravity around which her singularity revolves.
Dia met them early in life — in childhood, perhaps even before language. Whenever I asked her about the first encounter, she’d wave me off:
“The circumstances are irrelevant.”
She only spoke of them when euphoric, when they emerged behind her shoulder like a procession of forgotten saints. She’d gesture toward them and say:
“They’re perfect, aren’t they? My imaginary friends who, out of love, became real. That’s why I named them like this… Raguel, Remiel, Ramiel — they were meant to be women. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael — destined to be men. And Uriel — the terrible angel who governs the Inferno. The exarch of this strange synod. The one without a gendered emblem.”
There were seven of them.
Three women. Three men. And Uriel — the seventh seal, so to speak.
They were always near Dia. Inseparable. Stylized, yes — but not performative. Aesthetic gravity fields unto themselves.
The world never quite knew what to make of them.
Were they a sect?
The cast of a dystopian film?
The haute couture inmates of a philosophical asylum?
They wore black — always black — but never as cliché.
Rather: as vocabulary. As silence. As defiance.
Their look whispered Goth Chic, Dark Romance, Bohemian Void, Celestial Minimalism.
If their garments weren’t signed by Azzedine Alaïa or Gareth Pugh, they at least felt that way.
When they entered a room, the air bent slightly. Conversations dimmed. The temperature changed by half a degree. They were received the way miracles are: in stunned disbelief.
Were they romantically entangled? I never knew. They touched like smoke.
Did they live together? Hold jobs? Eat?
Unclear.
But when they were near Dia — she became the hyperbole of their lives. Their axis. Their theology.
They were, and remain, The Procession of the Bodiless Powers.
And I, Andrei Jebeleanu, remain their reluctant scribe.
Andrei Jebeleanu 