Samyaza

The name "Shemyaza(z)" means "the (or my) name has seen," "he sees the name," or "I have seen." It is also spelled "Sahjaza", "Semihazah", "Shemihazah", "Shemyazaz", "Shemyaza", "Sêmîazâz", "Semjâzâ", "Samjâzâ", and "Semyaza".

In the Book of Enoch, one of the apocryphal writings, Samyaza is portrayed as the leader of a band of angels called "sons of God" or "Watchers" (grigori in Greek). These Watchers became consumed with lust for mortal women and entered into machinations against heaven in order to consummate their sinful desires. In the Book of Giants, found at Qumran, Samyaza, through this forbidden prostitution, fathers two half-breed giant sons, Ohyah and Hahyah.

When the rebel angels first meet upon Mount Hermon to organize their secret society of 200 members, Samyaza, as their recognized chieftain (under Azazel, who had rebelled against God and the heavenly host), initially doubts the initiates' resolve to forswear heaven. This they had planned to achieve through dark combinations and clandestine oaths under penalty of death, thereby binding themselves to that treachery in which they would use their heaven-acquired knowledge to create a counterfeit religion on earth to satisfy their lusts and carnal desires:

And Semjâzâ, who was their leader, said unto them: "I fear ye will not indeed agree to do this deed, and I alone shall have to pay the penalty of a great sin." And they all answered him and said: "Let us all swear an oath, and all bind ourselves by mutual imprecations not to abandon this plan but to do this thing." Then sware they all together and bound themselves by mutual imprecations upon it. (1 En 6:3-5)

Thus having convinced the other Watchers to join him in fornicating with women, Samyaza continues to collude and to plot with these other Watchers to seduce females from the human tribes. The resultant offspring from this unnatural prostitution and breeding are giants, called Nephilim in the Book of Genesis. Together, they dominate, murder, and exploit the inferior races of men — beginning in the days of the righteous patriarch Jared, the father of the prophet Enoch — their debauchery thereafter rising to new heights: "And there was great impiety and much fornication, and they went astray and all their ways became corrupt" (1 En 8:1-2). Enoch subseuently has a sleep-vision, called the 'Animal Apocalypse', which relates:

"a star fell from heaven, and it arose and ate and pastured amongst those oxen. And after this I saw the large and the black oxen, and behold, all of them changed their pens and their pastures and their heifers, and began to moan, one after another. And again I saw in the vision and looked to heaven, and behold, I saw many stars, how they came down and were thrown down from heaven to that first star, and amongst those heifers and bulls; they were with them, pasturing amongst them. And I looked at them and saw, and behold, all of them let out their private parts like horses and began to mount the cows of the bulls, and they all became pregnant and bore elephants and camels and asses. And all the oxen feared them and were affrighted at them, and began to bite with their teeth and to devour, and to gore with their horns. And they began, moreover, to devour those oxen; and behold all the children of the earth began to tremble and quake before them and to flee from them ... (1 En 86:1-6)

But perhaps the Watchers' most grievous sin was to teach and instruct humankind, blasphemously, in various forbidden arts, sciences, and celestial "secrets" or "mysteries" of the true heavenly gnosis or knowledge — especially that Wisdom possessed by Azazel, who taught them also the secrets of war (from magic, metallurgy, and weaponry to seductive ornamentation, jewelry, and cosmetics) — all of which ultimately, though not surprisingly, brings down the wrath of Heaven.

God commanded the angel Gabriel to cause the Watchers and giants to wage civil war:

And to Gabriel said the Lord: "Proceed against the biters and the reprobates, and against the children of fornication: and destroy [the children of fornication and] the children of the Watchers from amongst men [and cause them to go forth]: send them one against the other that they may destroy each other in battle: for length of days shall they not have[.] (1 En 10:9)

Finally, the judgement of the Watcher-associates of Samyaza is described.

And the Lord said unto Michael: "Go, bind Semjâzâ and his associates who have united themselves with women so as to have defiled themselves with them in all their uncleanness. And when their sons have slain one another, and they have seen the destruction of their beloved ones, bind them fast for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, till the day of their judgement and of their consummation, till the judgement that is for ever and ever is consummated. In those days they shall be led off to the abyss of fire:〈and〉to the torment and the prison in which they shall be confined for ever. And whosoever shall be condemned and destroyed will from thenceforth be bound together with them to the end of all generations[.] (1 En 10:11-14)

Once the archangels and the host of the righteous had rained war and destruction upon the Watchers and giants, God caused, after several generations, the Great Flood of Noah to wipe out the corrupt remnant of the earthly races. For when the "eternal covenant" and eternal law had been broken, in the fallen angels' revelation to the profane creatures of the earth of heaven's sacred knowledge, lawlessness ensued, which corrupted and destroyed. But after the diluvial judgment, God removed the lawlessness that came from the perverted knowledge and restored again His covenant with Noah and his sons, returning fertility and harmony back to the creation.

In the Book of Giants, Shemyaza (or Šahmīzād in the Manichaean version) begets two sons, who together battle the Leviathan. However, they are not portrayed as heroic, but as boasting about their own victory; a symbol of royal failure to keep one's power in this world, as after the defeat of the Leviathan, Shemyaza and his offspring are slain by the four punishing angels.[3]

In legend, he is the seraph tempted by the maiden Ishtahar to reveal to her the Explicit Name of God. Often it is speculated that a main reason for Azza's expulsion from heaven is that Azza objected to the high rank given to Enoch when the latter was transformed from a mortal into the angel Metatron. In Solomonic lore the story is that Azza was the angel who revealed to the Jewish king the heavenly arcana, thus making Solomon the wisest man on earth. Of the 2 groups of angels headed by Metatron, one of the groups, the angels of justice, were under the rulership of Azza, who at this time had not yet fallen. Uzza is the tutelary angel of the Egyptians.[4]

Azza, according to the rabbinic tradition, is suspended between Heaven and Earth along with Azazel as punishment for having had carnal knowledge of mortal women. He is said to be constantly falling, with one eye shut and the other open, to see his plight and suffer the more. It is said that he now hangs, head down, and is the constellation of Orion.[5]

Before the fall, Ouza was of the rank of Seraphim.[6]

Ouza also was one of the major items of worship in the pagan Arabic culture, before the rise of Islam. Al-Uzza and Al-Lat (The Ouza and the Lat) were considered the Daughters of God and were prayed for. However, with the appearance of the monotheistic religion of Islam, the worship of any other god beside God (Allah) was defeated. The mention of Al Lat and Al Ouza was made in the Chapter of the Star (Surat Al Najm) [chapter no. 53] in the Quran:

19. Have ye seen Lat and 'Uzza,

20. And another, the third (goddess), Manat?
21. Shall the male gender be yours and the female be His?
22. Behold, such would be indeed a division most unfair!

23. These are nothing but names which ye have devised,- ye and your fathers,- for which Allah has sent down no authority (whatever). They follow nothing but conjecture and what their own souls desire!- Even though there has already come to them Guidance from their Lord!

• Satan