American British author, healer, and educator Ambika Wauters’s nonfiction book
The Angelic Year: Healing Through Angelic Meditation (2000) is a season by season guide to the angels that inspire each time of year, with specific meditations and prayers to call upon each celestial being and directions on how to better employ their power and guidance in your own life. Full-color illustrations accompany the text.
Wauters opens the volume with an introduction, in which she explains the important role angels play in our lives, whether we realize it or not. They are sources of unconditional love and support, and they are always helping us navigate our lives. They are ready to supply wisdom when it comes to making decisions; encouragement during challenges and emotional upheaval; and hope when optimism is stretched thin and one's faith may feel on shaky ground. They are also present in human lives to show us all the possibilities we cannot yet see, stretching our perceptions of what we can accomplish and ushering us into a whole new way of viewing the world and all things seen and unseen.
To commune with the angels, no special skills are necessary. Wauters stresses that angels are always at work, whether one actively engages them or not. However, consciously summoning them is a way to better harness the benefit of their knowledge and positive energy. And it takes no tools or talents, either; only an open mind and clear intention to call forth our angels. Wauters states that we need not prescribe to any specific kind of mysticism or religious practice to reap the rewards of an angelic relationship. We only have to remain open, understanding and respecting these beings as the mysteries they are, acknowledging that our souls have always sought the highest truth—a trust the angels can provide.
There are three main ways to connect with your angels. The first is through meditation: a process of sitting down, settling into the body, and clearing the mind. By tuning in to the quiet spaces around you, you start to center, and you're in an ideal place to deepen your communion to God and His angels. The second is through prayer, expressing either through words or thoughts your specific goals, fears, wishes, or pleas to an ever-present God and your team of angels. The third is through visualization, imagining in your mind's eye how you want a situation to play out or what you conceive your angels—or even God—to look like; visualization requires a creative leap of faith…and imagination. Any of these avenues can link you with your angels.
Wauters then offers practical advice on how to use this book. She bases the structure on Christian and Jewish calendars, so you can pick up the book at any time of year, flip to the exact week, and see what angels are most active at present. Or, you can simply pick up the book and flip to a random page, bearing in mind that there are no such things as coincidences, and the book will lead you to the page you most need to read at that moment. And, of course, you can always read the book from cover to cover to plan out the year in advance, setting up special rituals or celebrations to welcome certain angels at certain times of the year. It is important to utilize the book and its information in the ways that feel most appropriate to you.
The first section of
The Angelic Year discusses the major Christian and Jewish festivals. These are the holidays most of us recognize: Christmas, Hanukkah, Rosh Hashanah, Advent, Easter, and Passover, to name a few. Wauters profiles the angel most associated with each of these days. The Angel of Resurrection appropriately ties to Easter, while The Angel of Miracles is understandably most active during Hanukkah.
The second section touches on what Wauters calls The Higher Principles. These are the overarching figures—including Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary—that inspire and dispatch the angels.
The next four sections cover each season, starting with spring. Wauters separates each month into four weeks, then she offers those four weeks for each sign of the zodiac, so readers can find angel insights for their astrological symbol. Some of the angels visited during these periods include the Angels of Renewal, Earthly Desires, and Inspiration (spring); the Angels of Worth and Peace (summer); the Angels of Guidance, Creativity, and Exploration (autumn); and the Angels of Wholeness, Friendship, and Forgiveness (winter). The Archangels Raphael, Uriel, Michael, and Gabriel serve as the guiding energies of each respective season.
The Angelic Year ends with a full index, a list of acknowledgments, a bibliography of further reading resources, and credits for the various images that appear throughout the volume.