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Description
The angel Metatron is one of the most enigmatic figures in all of classical Jewish mythology. Today mostly resigned to the confines of Rabbinic studies and the mysteries of Kabbalah, Metatron was once a much more widespread and popular figure to the people of the Holy Land, even to the point of becoming an existential crisis. The Babylonian Talmud recalls the heavenly journey of the 2nd century rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah. At the end of his trials, Elisha bears witness to a radiant angel permitted to stand in God's throne room while the rest of the choir is forced to sit. Overwhelmed by the audacity and power of this angel, the rabbi exclaims that "there are two Powers in heaven," rendering him the worst heretic of all. So who then, is this "Little Yahweh" as the historical sources often call Metatron, this angel who is elevated so high as to be confused for and named after the supreme god of Israel? Well, that's a little complicated. The name "Metatron" is almost definitely a loan word from another language, though from where exactly is a bit unclear. Two of the more likely answers are either from the Latin "metator", referring to a military official who goes forth and prepares the way for the army, or Greek "meta thronos" meaning "beside the throne", i.e. the Throne of God. If the image of a military figure serving as God's right hand angel sounds familiar to you, you're not alone. Some believe that originally, Metatron was an epithet for the archangel Michael which split off into its own entity, and then this figure merged with other esoteric tropes in early Judaism to create the more clear cut internal backstory:

In the Third Book of Enoch, a mysterious apocalyptic text following the tradition of the previous two Books of Enoch, it is described that the antediluvian patriarch Enoch was transformed into a being of fire, brass, and lightning upon his ascension to heaven thanks to his righteousness. This entity was thus dubbed Metatron, and was second only to God himself, even being called the "Lesser Yahweh" or "Little Yahweh". It is difficult to tell where or how exactly this tradition came about, but it was clearly a very popular image. So popular that the early rabbis had to stomp it out before the notion of the aforementioned "two Powers in heaven" got too out of hand. Some speculate that the berating and whipping Metatron received for making Rabbi Elisha commit heresy was a reflection of this fear. Some even speculate that it was specifically a response to the early Christians and their comparatively heretical claims that some poor carpenter ascended to heaven as God's equal. Though to be fair, these two heresies may have been philosophically indistinguishable to most locals at the time, so these two theories are not mutually exclusive.

While the story of Rabbi Elisha more or less steered the Jewish world away from Metatron, the figure of Enoch would remain extremely influential in Abrahamic occultism and medieval Kabbalah. Later Christian and Muslim scholars would swipe Enoch up and identify him with the legendary pagan wizard, Hermes Trismegistus. And it is this interpretation I have rolled with for Metatron in the Drake Hero universe. Metatron, being the heavenly scribe, dug into the archives and discovered the mechanism of supernatural phenomenon: they only exist as long as humans believe they do. Terrified at the arrogant inaction of the Canaanite pantheon in response to this revelation, Metatron reincarnated himself to escape their grasp and find his own way to free himself from this fate. He was reborn as the Greek god Hermes, and spent the next thousand years scheming to break free, before ultimately learning that it was a power out of the hands of any creature, mortal or divine. He thus devoted his life instead to the peaceful study of the weave of the Universe, sharing his knowledge with the likes of Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyana, waiting for the prophesied day that humanity would need it the most…

Design notes, there are shockingly few depictions of Metatron out there, at least that I could definitively identify as Metatron. I try my best to not just pull up Google Images and draw whatever first comes up when you just type a word in. I dig a little deeper and try to trace the images to their source because often people will just slap a generic looking art piece on an article and call it whatever they're talking about. Angels are really bad in this regard. You can throw up practically any image of a dude with wings and say it's an "ancient depiction of [insert angel name here]." But when you trace the icons they're either actually a completely different figure and/or about as ancient as Back to the Future. I only found one blurry image of a church icon depicting Metatron as this gold winged angel with black body feathers, but I couldn't find the specific church it was from or the confirmed name of the angel being depicted. But it didn't have any other providence so that's what I leaned into, though I only took slight inspiration from it.

I'll go into more detail about my design process with angels whenever I post my drawing of a generic angel I used for D&D, but the long and short of it is that I interpret angels as mechanical beings with internals like fancy hydraulic robota a la Ismail al-Jazari. Metatron is a little different, being more explicitly cyborg-ish if we go along with the robot metaphor. He was, afterall, born human, so he is meant to look a little more human than the normal drones. I design their wings with less biological mechanics in mind and more like a stained glass window or what you may see on a porcelain doll. For Metatron specifically, I obviously leaned more towards brilliant brass than gleaming porcelain. Instead of the usual halo for generic angels, I instead gave him a symbol known as "Metatron's Cube" which sadly there is little scholarly information on that I could trace at least. More often than not when you search online all you get is a bunch of new age sacred geometry crystal healing garbage. But it is named for the angel and is often utilized in media featuring him, and even I got to admit it's just a cool looking shape, I decided to roll with it.

Even if it is a pain in the ass to draw correctly each time.

Description
The angel Metatron is one of the most enigmatic figures in all of classical Jewish mythology. Today mostly resigned to the confines of Rabbinic studies and the mysteries of Kabbalah, Metatron was once a much more widespread and popular figure to the people of the Holy Land, even to the point of becoming an existential crisis. The Babylonian Talmud recalls the heavenly journey of the 2nd century rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah. At the end of his trials, Elisha bears witness to a radiant angel permitted to stand in God's throne room while the rest of the choir is forced to sit. Overwhelmed by the audacity and power of this angel, the rabbi exclaims that "there are two Powers in heaven," rendering him the worst heretic of all. So who then, is this "Little Yahweh" as the historical sources often call Metatron, this angel who is elevated so high as to be confused for and named after the supreme god of Israel? Well, that's a little complicated. The name "Metatron" is almost definitely a loan word from another language, though from where exactly is a bit unclear. Two of the more likely answers are either from the Latin "metator", referring to a military official who goes forth and prepares the way for the army, or Greek "meta thronos" meaning "beside the throne", i.e. the Throne of God. If the image of a military figure serving as God's right hand angel sounds familiar to you, you're not alone. Some believe that originally, Metatron was an epithet for the archangel Michael which split off into its own entity, and then this figure merged with other esoteric tropes in early Judaism to create the more clear cut internal backstory:

In the Third Book of Enoch, a mysterious apocalyptic text following the tradition of the previous two Books of Enoch, it is described that the antediluvian patriarch Enoch was transformed into a being of fire, brass, and lightning upon his ascension to heaven thanks to his righteousness. This entity was thus dubbed Metatron, and was second only to God himself, even being called the "Lesser Yahweh" or "Little Yahweh". It is difficult to tell where or how exactly this tradition came about, but it was clearly a very popular image. So popular that the early rabbis had to stomp it out before the notion of the aforementioned "two Powers in heaven" got too out of hand. Some speculate that the berating and whipping Metatron received for making Rabbi Elisha commit heresy was a reflection of this fear. Some even speculate that it was specifically a response to the early Christians and their comparatively heretical claims that some poor carpenter ascended to heaven as God's equal. Though to be fair, these two heresies may have been philosophically indistinguishable to most locals at the time, so these two theories are not mutually exclusive.

While the story of Rabbi Elisha more or less steered the Jewish world away from Metatron, the figure of Enoch would remain extremely influential in Abrahamic occultism and medieval Kabbalah. Later Christian and Muslim scholars would swipe Enoch up and identify him with the legendary pagan wizard, Hermes Trismegistus. And it is this interpretation I have rolled with for Metatron in the Drake Hero universe. Metatron, being the heavenly scribe, dug into the archives and discovered the mechanism of supernatural phenomenon: they only exist as long as humans believe they do. Terrified at the arrogant inaction of the Canaanite pantheon in response to this revelation, Metatron reincarnated himself to escape their grasp and find his own way to free himself from this fate. He was reborn as the Greek god Hermes, and spent the next thousand years scheming to break free, before ultimately learning that it was a power out of the hands of any creature, mortal or divine. He thus devoted his life instead to the peaceful study of the weave of the Universe, sharing his knowledge with the likes of Pythagoras and Apollonius of Tyana, waiting for the prophesied day that humanity would need it the most…

Design notes, there are shockingly few depictions of Metatron out there, at least that I could definitively identify as Metatron. I try my best to not just pull up Google Images and draw whatever first comes up when you just type a word in. I dig a little deeper and try to trace the images to their source because often people will just slap a generic looking art piece on an article and call it whatever they're talking about. Angels are really bad in this regard. You can throw up practically any image of a dude with wings and say it's an "ancient depiction of [insert angel name here]." But when you trace the icons they're either actually a completely different figure and/or about as ancient as Back to the Future. I only found one blurry image of a church icon depicting Metatron as this gold winged angel with black body feathers, but I couldn't find the specific church it was from or the confirmed name of the angel being depicted. But it didn't have any other providence so that's what I leaned into, though I only took slight inspiration from it.

I'll go into more detail about my design process with angels whenever I post my drawing of a generic angel I used for D&D, but the long and short of it is that I interpret angels as mechanical beings with internals like fancy hydraulic robota a la Ismail al-Jazari. Metatron is a little different, being more explicitly cyborg-ish if we go along with the robot metaphor. He was, afterall, born human, so he is meant to look a little more human than the normal drones. I design their wings with less biological mechanics in mind and more like a stained glass window or what you may see on a porcelain doll. For Metatron specifically, I obviously leaned more towards brilliant brass than gleaming porcelain. Instead of the usual halo for generic angels, I instead gave him a symbol known as "Metatron's Cube" which sadly there is little scholarly information on that I could trace at least. More often than not when you search online all you get is a bunch of new age sacred geometry crystal healing garbage. But it is named for the angel and is often utilized in media featuring him, and even I got to admit it's just a cool looking shape, I decided to roll with it.

Even if it is a pain in the ass to draw correctly each time.