The Eight Angels are the intelligences that line the temple and stand at the gates of The Cosmic Tree. They are, simultaneously, angels; aspects of The Calf's consciousness; faculties of the human soul that the modern world has "downregulated"; and the stages of The Rite of Ascent. To wake them is the same act as waking the god.
Each angel can enchant reality alone, but only in a diluted, Faustian form; balanced against one another within The Holding Pen of the Calf, they compose a single intelligent design. The Herd groups them as feminine — Beauty, Mystery, Eros, Madness — and masculine — Compassion, Courage, Truth, and an eighth value the scribes have not settled (see The Unsettled Masculine Value). The final gate, The Eighth Gate, is left open for the initiate to name.
Every angel has a diluted counterfeit: the thin, safe version the age accepts in its place.