Definition: A Roman priest once told a Greek colleague that his gods had no myths, only rituals. The Greek laughed. The Roman was not joking. For early Christians, the same could be said of angels. Thrones are the third sphere of the ninefold angelic hierarchy, celestial beings who serve as living chariots of God’s throne and conduits of divine justice. They appear first in the 1st century BCE Book of Enoch, where they are called “the Thrones” – not a rank of seat, but the seat itself made conscious.
Where Do Thrones Appear in the Bible?
The word “thrones” as an angelic class appears exactly once in canonical scripture. In Colossians 1:16, Paul writes: “For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him.” The Greek word is thronoi, plural of thronos, and it sits alongside other celestial powers as something distinct from human authorities.
The passage does not define them. It only says Christ created them, and that they belong to the invisible order of creation. For the details of what thrones actually are, the earliest Christians turned to texts that never made the canonical cut.
The Book of Enoch (1 Enoch, composed between 300 BCE and 100 BCE) gives the first sustained description. Enoch 61:10 describes “the Cherubim, and the Seraphim, and the Ophannim, and all the angels of power, and all the angels of principalities, and the Elect One, and the other powers on the earth and over the water.” The Ophannim – Hebrew for “wheels” – are what later Christian angelology would call Thrones.
Ezekiel’s vision in chapter 1 of the Hebrew Bible describes the same beings without naming them. The prophet sees “four living creatures” each accompanied by “a wheel intersecting a wheel” that moves in four directions at once. The wheels “were full of eyes all around.” Those wheels, those eyes, those intersecting circles of fire – that is the Thrones.
The Hierarchy: Where Thrones Sit in the Nine Choirs
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, writing in the late 5th or early 6th century CE, gave Western angelology its definitive structure in The Celestial Hierarchy. He arranged the angels into three triads, each triad containing three choirs.
The first triad, closest to God: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.
Thrones occupy the third position of the highest triad, directly beneath the Cherubim and Seraphim. Their function in this arrangement is specific. The Seraphim burn with love. The Cherubim know with perfect wisdom. The Thrones receive divine justice and bear it downward into creation.
Pseudo-Dionysius wrote: “The name of the most exalted and magnificent Thrones denotes that which is exalted above every lowly material thing, and that which is firmly fixed, and that which is utterly free from all material imperfection.” He called them “the God-bearing beings” – not because they carry God physically, but because they manifest God’s judgment without being consumed by it.
Thomas Aquinas confirmed this arrangement in the 13th century. In the Summa Theologiae (I.108.6), he wrote that Thrones “are so called because God sits in them, and this signifies that in them God dwells in a special way, so that through them He judges.” Aquinas specified that Thrones are the angels through whom God executes divine judgment, not the angels who merely announce judgment.
The Wheels of Ezekiel: What Thrones Actually Look Like
Ezekiel 1 describes the beings that later tradition identified as Thrones in terms that resist visual representation. “The appearance of the wheels and their work was like the color of beryl, and the four had the same likeness. Their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.”
The Ophannim (wheels) are not adjuncts to the Thrones. They are the Thrones. Early Jewish mysticism in the Merkabah tradition (2nd century BCE to 6th century CE) treated these wheels as a distinct angelic class that carries the divine chariot. The Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice, found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, describe “the wheels of the chariot, the cherubim and the ophannim” as separate but coordinated beings who sing in antiphon.
The eyes matter. Every surface of the wheel-was-full of eyes. Early commentators read this as literal omniscience: the Thrones see everything because they are made of sight. Aquinas took a more moderate position, arguing that the eyes represent the Thrones’ perfect contemplation of divine truth.
The fire also matters. Ezekiel describes the wheels as burning with “coals of fire” that move “like torches.” Later mystics in the Hekhalot literature (Jewish apocalyptic texts from late antiquity) wrote that the Thrones are composed of fire so pure that it does not burn – it only illuminates. The same idea appears in Dante’s Paradiso (Canto IX), where the Thrones in the third sphere of Heaven appear as “living flames” that pulse with the rhythm of divine love.
What Thrones Do: The Function of Divine Justice
Pseudo-Dionysius assigned three functions to the Thrones in The Celestial Hierarchy (Chapter VII). First, they receive the divine illumination directly without mediation. Second, they remain unmoved – “firmly and unchangeably fixed” – so that God’s judgment can flow through them without distortion. Third, they call other beings to the same stability.
That stability has a practical consequence. The Thrones do not descend to interact with humans. They stay where they are, at the threshold of the Godhead, and their work reaches earth through the lower choirs (Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Archangels, and Angels). This is why no biblical story features a Throne appearing to a human. They cannot be seen directly by mortal eyes. Ezekiel saw the wheels, but the wheels are the garment of the Thrones, not the Thrones themselves.
John of Damascus (8th century CE) clarified this in An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith: “The Thrones are so called because God sits upon them; for they are seats of God. They are called Thrones because upon them the Lord rests.”
Thrones in Esoteric and Occult Traditions
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888 CE) incorporated the Thrones into its angelic system. In the Golden Dawn’s Book of the Concourse of the Forces, the Thrones correspond to the sephirah Binah on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life – Understanding, the third sphere, associated with Saturn and the element of Water in its passive aspect.
The correspondences are precise: Binah receives the raw force from Kether (the Crown) and Chokmah (Wisdom) and shapes it into form. The Thrones do the same work in the angelic realm: they receive the undifferentiated divine will and give it structure as judgment.
Aleister Crowley, in Liber 777, assigned Thrones to the 18th path of the Tree of Life, aligning them with the zodiacal sign of Aquarius. This is a minority position. Most esoteric systems keep the Thrones with Binah, emphasizing their role as the vessels of divine form.
Modern angelology movements, particularly those influenced by the 19th-century occult revival, sometimes depict Thrones as beings of pure geometry. The wheels, the eyes, the intersecting circles – these become mandalas of divine order. Some contemporary practitioners of angelic magic use the Thrones as focal points for legal and judicial prayers, working the angels of justice rather than the angels of mercy.
Common Misconceptions About Thrones
The confusion that we most often encounter in the library runs as follows: Thrones are the physical seats that angels sit on. The term “thrones” in angelology does not mean the object. It means the being. A Throne is a person, not a piece of furniture.
A second error: Thrones are the same as Cherubim. Ezekiel saw both, and they are different. The Cherubim in Ezekiel 1 are the four living creatures. The wheels are the Ophannim, the Thrones. Later iconography merged them, especially in the iconostasis of Eastern Orthodox churches, but the original text keeps them separate.
Third: Thrones are a New Testament invention. The Book of Enoch and the Merkabah tradition predate Christianity. Paul’s mention in Colossians is a late echo of a Jewish angelology already centuries old.
Fourth: Thrones punish sinners. Divine judgment flows through Thrones, but Thrones do not execute punishment. The lowest angels handle enforcement. Thrones remain in the presence of God, transmitting judgment downward without participating in its earthly consequences.
FAQ
Are Thrones mentioned in the Book of Revelation? No. Revelation mentions elders sitting on thrones but never the angelic class called Thrones. The Thrones as a choir are absent from John’s vision.
How many Thrones exist? No source gives a number. Jewish apocalyptic texts describe “myriads of myriads” of Ophannim, but the count is symbolic of infinity, not census.
Do Thrones have wings? The Ophannim in Ezekiel do not have wings. The four living creatures (Cherubim) have wings; the wheels themselves do not. Later art added wings for visual clarity.
Can humans become Thrones after death? No. The nine choirs are fixed angelic orders. Humans become angels in the sense of becoming like angels, but they do not enter the angelic hierarchy as Thrones.
What is the difference between a Throne and a Dominions? Thrones belong to the highest triad and mediate divine judgment. Dominions belong to the middle triad and regulate the duties of lower angels. Thrones are closer to God.
Closing
The Thrones are the stable center of the angelic world, the living seats of divine judgment that Ezekiel saw as wheels of fire and eyes. Their stillness carries God’s justice into the moving world. If you want to understand how the angelic hierarchy fits together, explore our guide to angelology and the full structure of the nine choirs. For the beings that sit closest to God, see the entry on Seraphim. For the angels who execute judgment on earth, read about the Powers.