At the start of my trip, shortly after arriving in Dublin, I taxied to the rented flat of archaeologist Joanna Pyrgies. I had discovered Joanna's beautiful and extensive website ARCHAEOLTRAVEL a year earlier and an article she had written on St. Michael's Sword. It was obvious she was well-read, researched, and had traveled the world. She knew a lot about the monasteries and St. Michael that I was going to be investigating. When my travel plans led me through Dublin, I asked, and she agreed to an interview.  

When we were done, and as I piled into my taxi to take me to the train station, she handed me a copy of her Masters dissertation titled The Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace: Origins of the Iconography in Ireland. I wasn't sure how the topic of such research would help me, but I took the bound offering and just yesterday finished reading it. Joanna's insight into the iconography of the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego and the Babylonia kind Nebuchadnezzar (Daniel 3), provided insights that gave meaning to the travel I was about to make. But of course, I would not make sense of it until after the trip was over.

Joanna was comparing the iconography of the three Hebrews found on wall paintings, and carvings in crosses found in Egypt and Ireland. One would not normally make a connection between Coptic (Egyptian) Christian art and Irish iconography, but Joanna has found such a connection. I was surprised that her findings applied to Angel Quest and the ordeals I experienced on my scouting trip. Our interview had nothing to do with with any of this, so what I share below comes from her disseration. 

Characteristic of these ancient iconography images (the one at the right is modern for clarity), the three children (actually Jewish men who were administrators in the Babylonian kingdom) have their hands in orant gestures (raised, palms up, in prayer), and there is a fourth person in the picture, an angel for protection. You can see that in the wadi wall painting above.

The thematic message is this:

Redemption from an ordeal of fire comes from the hands of angels.

Joanna notes that it was early Christian persecution that made this Old Testament story so popular. Consequently, it was represented time and again throughout the early Christian world.

When we think we're alone and going through a struggle, there may well be another looking after us—our Guardian Angel, who "links the light of redemption to our ordeal." I certainly felt that way many times as I dragged my 80 pounds of luggage through airports and train stations, not understanding the foreign language signs, looking for the car rental office that (unknown to me) was 10 km away in another train station. (More on that later.) There were many such ordeals on my trip, which surprisingly always ended in some kind of redemption. But the same is true of the monastery buildings I visited and the ordeals men went through to build the heaven-reaching edifices. 

As I labored to climb to the sanctuary of these seven monasteries, I often thought of the ordeal that men who built them experienced. The multi-ton blocks of stone and building materials carried across difficult if not impossible terrain to high-up elevations. They knew they would never see the full redemption of their labors, for the buildings would take generations to complete. The redemption (the completion of the building) would be for later generations later to experience. 

For the early persecuted Christians, as for the three Hebrew administrators in the fiery furnace, their life-long ordeal expressed at once a hope of triumphant over death. They hoped their fourth (and angel or Jesus) would descend and quench the flames of their struggle.