Angel Weather

Here is a way to present high-level spirits like angels, demons, and gods, in an impersonal or at least incorporeal way that's not ghostly. It's based on the following:

The thought I have had that, to ants, humans most likely come across, generally, as a kind of weather—a passing high-pressure wave bending the grass, and a shadow against the sun.
An old idea I had of angelic "homes" based on the ground plan of the Temple, with Outer Court, Inner Court, Holy, and Holy of Holies.
The scenes in the chapter "The Descent of the Gods" in That Hideous Strength.
The earlier scenes, where Jane is talking to Ransom and something eldilic intrudes:
"They would say," he answered, "that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience."
Something in Jane that would normally have reacted to such a remark with anger or laughter was banished to a remote distance (where she could still, but only just, hear its voice) by the fact that the word Obedience—but certainly not obedience to Mark—came over her, in that room and in that presence, like a strange oriental perfume, perilous, seductive, and ambiguous ...
"Stop it!" said the Director, sharply.
Jane stared at him, open mouthed. There were a few moments of silence during which the exotic fragrance faded away.
"You were saying, my dear?" resumed the Director.

(I think, by the way, that here Ransom is barking orders at the Wraith of Perelandra, who, wraith though she may be, is also in some sense the goddess Aphrodite!)
And later in the same conversation:
"There," he said, "a very simple adjustment. Humans want crumbs removed; mice are anxious to remove them. It ought never to have been a cause of war. But you see that obedience and rule are more like a dance than a drill—specially between man and woman where the roles are always changing."
"How huge we must seem to them," said Jane.
This inconsequent remark had a very curious cause. Hugeness was what she was thinking of and for one moment it had seemed she was thinking of her own hugeness in comparison with the mice. But almost at once this identification collapsed. She was really thinking simply of hugeness. Or rather, she was not thinking of it. She was, in some strange fashion, experiencing it. Something intolerably big, something from Brobdingnag was pressing on her, was approaching, was almost in the room. She felt herself shrinking, suffocated, emptied of all power and virtue. She darted a glance at the Director which was really a cry for help, and that glance, in some inexplicable way, revealed him as being, like herself, a very small object. The whole room was a tiny place, a mouse's hole, and it seemed to her to be tilted aslant—as though the insupportable mass and splendour of this formless hugeness, in approaching, had knocked it askew. She heard the Director's voice.
"Quick," he said gently, "you must leave me now. This is no place for us small ones, but I am inured. Go!"

(I presume this to be a real Oyarsa, though I don't know which. No shooing them away.)

The general idea is that some higher beings are so vast and powerful that they have to make an effort to interact with us and NOT bowl us over. Furthermore, there is a rough natural sequence of rising manifestation as such creatures "approach" or raise the level of interaction, unless they do take the trouble to approach carefully or covertly. This natural sequence of rising manifestation is:

Inspiration
Motifs
Entourage
Realm
Epiphany

Let's make up an example. Suppose Jareth, the Goblin King from the movie "Labyrinth," played by David Bowie, is even more powerful and less human than he appeared in the movie and made a careless or open approach to a human being. Jareth is, of course, a creature of mara and maya, desire and delusion, including especially self-delusion. At least, that is his business and modus operandi with humans. A perhaps deeper motive of his is to enlarge his kingdom by acquiring goblins, one way being to recruit them from human babies. He could have still deeper motives we do not know.

Inspiration:: As you first become in danger of meeting Jareth, you become prey to feelings of paranoia, confusion, and self-doubt. You begin to dwell on how complicated even ordinary actions are, how grotesque even ordinary people can seem, how vulnerable children are.
Motifs:: While the ideas of the inspiration phase remain and intensify, you begin to think about and then, if at all possible, to notice crystal balls, owls, and mazes. Then you begin to encounter these thing, first as odd but possibly natural happenstance, then getting very odd (What's a crystal ball doing on your desk? Who put owl pictures up on all the cubicle walls?), then downright freaky (Owls in the office? Live owls?), then openly miraculous (Crystal balls dropping out of mirrors or monitors, sprouting out of cell phones as you watch. The cubicles rearrange into a maze, sliding and scraping as you watch, but also sneaking into new paths behind you.)
Entourage:: During the motif phase, you may have heard voices, including babies gurgling and crying. Now, actual goblins start showing up. At first, they will just enter normally or be there when you turn a corner or go through a door. Then they start to show up in showy ways, coming out of drawers or mirrors or from under carpets. They are working on Jareth's agenda; they talk to you or among one another about him, probably in terms he wants you to hear, e.g. how powerful and capricious he is, about turning your baby brother over to him, or about the inadvisability of trying to get your baby brother back from him. This won't prevent them from having their own agendas, whatever those are; they may take kindly to you (or not), or make a mess for fun, or steal small objects—whatever these particular goblins, do.
Realm:: So far, you've had Jareth's stuff introduced into the ordinary world. Now, the process is reversed and you are introduced into Jareth's realm. In his case, this is clearly the fay-haunted Labyrinth, with the goblin town in the center of it and Jareth's castle in the center of that. In light of the Sundering, we assume that, after you enter Jareth's realm, you may leave a certain amount of untidyness behind in the ordinary world, but nothing else, nothing weirder: no owls or crystal balls, no stray goblins.
Epiphany:: This whole process could have stopped at any point, if Jareth could get what he wanted without getting any "closer," any more manifest. If not, you meet Jareth (played by David Bowie in his late thirties, with cute little fangs, makeup and costuming inspired by the works of Brian Froud). This is the peak of the experience, of course, and whatever happens, happens.

We can go through That Hideous Strength for more examples:

In Jane's encounters in Ransom's room, first we have inspiration and motif from Venus (the idea of obedience as erotic and the perfume), but that gets chased off. Then we have inspiration and either motif or very strong inspiration from an incoming Oyarsa, and Jane exits. (Perhaps it is Perelandra, come to see what her Wraith is fussing about.)

A more complete, but still compressed, example is Jane's experience with Venus in the lodge:

She and Mrs. Dimble provide the inspiration themselves, setting the place up as a honeymoon cottage for Ivy and Tom Maggs. This seems to instigate what follows.
The warm weather and the flowers are motifs, of course.
The dwarfs are the entourage.
The cottage itself is turning into a springtime glade, bringing us hovering to the edge of the realm.
Venus herself shows up in the form of a Minoan lady, earlier in the proceedings. In fact, after inspirations, all the elements rather happen at once, but they are all there.

I am not proposing this as a law of manifestation, only as a common and natural sequence for it. We see closer approximations to it at St. Anne's because it is a "safehouse," defended territory. Out in the battle zone, we generally see nothing. Lewis was unfortunate enough to meet Oyarsa Malacandra in straight epiphany, without preliminaries (or at least without preliminaries from Oyarsa).

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