7 Archangels in Western Occultism

[Nymree]

Hi all, I'm getting to know the lore surrounding the 7 archangels, as it comes up in a branch of  traditional Celtic witchcraft that I'm studying. I've been able to find Catholic canonical references to the first four angels, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel. However, when it comes to the last three angels, it appears that only Eastern Orthodox traditions and a few others actually name the last three angels, and they appear to be more obscure in Western Christian theology.

How did Raguel, Zerachiel and Remiel enter Western occultism, was this through Kabbalah? Or perhaps Gnosticism? I'm trying to determine if using their names and associations might be considered cultural appropriation of Jewish mysticism, for example, I'm hoping to start honouring each Archangel on their days of the week or invoke them in ritual.

 I'm also aware that all 7 were acknowledged in Roman Catholic canon prior to 382 CE, and crop up in a talisman around 8th or 9th century CE. I suppose I'd just like to know if their use in Western occultism came from early Catholicism, or Kabbalah, and how others tackle their complex cultural history.

[Sefiru]

Hi all, I'm getting to know the lore surrounding the 7 archangels, as it comes up in a branch of  traditional Celtic witchcraft that I'm studying.

I have no idea if this is related, but the Yazidi religion is focused around seven angels (and the summary on Wikipedia does show some resemblances to Kabbalah, so the thread is there ... *dons tinfol hat* )

[SunflowerP]

Hi all, I'm getting to know the lore surrounding the 7 archangels, as it comes up in a branch of  traditional Celtic witchcraft that I'm studying. I've been able to find Catholic canonical references to the first four angels, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Uriel. However, when it comes to the last three angels, it appears that only Eastern Orthodox traditions and a few others actually name the last three angels, and they appear to be more obscure in Western Christian theology.

How did Raguel, Zerachiel and Remiel enter Western occultism, was this through Kabbalah? Or perhaps Gnosticism? I'm trying to determine if using their names and associations might be considered cultural appropriation of Jewish mysticism, for example, I'm hoping to start honouring each Archangel on their days of the week or invoke them in ritual.

 I'm also aware that all 7 were acknowledged in Roman Catholic canon prior to 382 CE, and crop up in a talisman around 8th or 9th century CE. I suppose I'd just like to know if their use in Western occultism came from early Catholicism, or Kabbalah, and how others tackle their complex cultural history.

It looks like that could prove to be a really deep research rabbithole.

I read your post and thought, 'I'm sure those aren't the names I've seen for the other three,' and went to Wikipedia to check. And, yes, what I'd encountered was (one set of) the Eastern Orthodox names - but EO Christianity sometimes includes an eighth, and various other traditions have different numbers and/or use different names.

I won't try to summarize the results of my 'quick' (but not as quick as I'd initially expected it to be; I wound up poking at it for most of an hour) look; it makes more sense to let you look and sort out for yourself what's relevant and what's not.

Sunflower

[Nymree]

It looks like that could prove to be a really deep research rabbithole.

I read your post and thought, 'I'm sure those aren't the names I've seen for the other three,' and went to Wikipedia to check. And, yes, what I'd encountered was (one set of) the Eastern Orthodox names - but EO Christianity sometimes includes an eighth, and various other traditions have different numbers and/or use different names.

I won't try to summarize the results of my 'quick' (but not as quick as I'd initially expected it to be; I wound up poking at it for most of an hour) look; it makes more sense to let you look and sort out for yourself what's relevant and what's not.

Sunflower

I had a brainwave spurred on by your reply, thank you!

They could possibly be from John Dee and Edward Kelley's Enochian tradition, taken from communion with angels and some occult interpretations of the Book of Enoch - which was once considered canonical in Catholicism but fell out of favour around 4th century CE. Its still acknowledged as having historical or theological value however. This later fed into the Golden Dawn and might explain that the 7 archangels of folk witchcraft in England originated from 16th century ceremonial magic, which tracks with a lot of our magic history.

I'm not sure if I could strictly term that cultural appropriation then, although I'm not Jewish so I don't have the right to say for certain. They seem baked into Catholic history, if ancient, and occasionally crop up on some Catholic online articles/conversations about the 7 Archangels being unnamed canonically but mentioned in the Book of Tobit. In this case, it's likely a matter of finding a decent source for naming and associations, which modern Catholic sources and medieval ceremonial texts seem to have enough to say about.

Please do challenge that take (and I extend this to everyone) if that summary seems out of pocket however.

[SunflowerP]

Please do challenge that take (and I extend this to everyone) if that summary seems out of pocket however.

That sounds plausible to me, as a hypothesis to subject to further examination. The difficulty is that Dee and Kelley didn't claim to be working from an actual surviving copy of the ancient Book of Enoch, but that they had direct interactions with angels in which they were given 'secrets contained within the Book of Enoch'.

So the key question for your purposes, ISTM, is whether, of the fragments of the Book of Enoch that survived after the Christian Church decided it wasn't part of the canon, Chapter 20 (or enough of it to provide the archangelic names Raguel, Saraqâêl, and Remiel) was among them or not.

That might not be directly demonstrable (just because some translation or quotation survived to the 16th century doesn't mean it wasn't lost thereafter, but before anyone did any sort of formal tabulation of surviving fragments), but another angle is whether Dee and Kelley actually used those archangelic names.

Otherwise, I think you'll need to look for a much later date - certainly after the Ethiopian version of the Book of Enoch was discovered and translated, and most likely the late 19th century when the ceremonial magicians of the Golden Dawn were reviving the Enochian system.

It's notable, though, that though the Book of Enoch was largely lost by the 1500s, its name was known enough for Dee and Kelley to invoke it in their 'lost secrets of the ancients' narrative (I can't help but parallel this to the 'grandmother story' trope in 20th century neoPagan witchcraft).

(Also, it looks like archangels weren't a significant feature in Kabbalah or earlier Jewish mysticism, nor
in Christian Cabala; that seems to have been a development within Hermetic traditions.)

Sunflower

[Nymree]

It's notable, though, that though the Book of Enoch was largely lost by the 1500s, its name was known enough for Dee and Kelley to invoke it in their 'lost secrets of the ancients' narrative (I can't help but parallel this to the 'grandmother story' trope in 20th century neoPagan witchcraft).

(Also, it looks like archangels weren't a significant feature in Kabbalah or earlier Jewish mysticism, nor
in Christian Cabala; that seems to have been a development within Hermetic traditions.)

Sunflower

I found this interesting note in a wiki article too - not a great source but a starting place at least:

"There are three (irreducible) lists of these seven archangels. One comes from the Book of Enoch, (which is accepted as canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, itself representative of the Oriental Orthodox churches). The second is from the tradition of the Chalcedonian Orthodox Church (which, interestingly enough, coincides with that of the Gnostics [...] Finally, the third comes from such great Church Fathers as Sts. Dionysius the Areopagite and Gregory the Theologian. All of these three different lists, however, agree on the names of the first four archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel."

https://orthodoxwiki.org/Archangel

It's interesting that they don't feature strongly in Jewish mysticism - maybe a Hermeticism route, working back from the Golden Dawn, might be worth looking into as you say.

If the above source is correct though, which needs to be verified - could it be the case that the Golden Dawn might have recycled very early on references to the other angels from the works of figures like Gregory the Theologian, and adapted them into their magical system along with the long list of other magical traditions they took from?

A friend has also sent me a page from the Heptameron that lists the angels as Michael, Anael, Raphael, Gabriel, Cassiel, Sachiel and Samael. That would be a 13th c. Italian source then. The same page lists the angelic correspondences to the astrological hours.

I think the takeaway I'm getting from this is, there's plenty of Western sources in occultism listing 7 archangels, mostly from pre-1500s. Their continuity into the 1900s is it's own beast, but if I have some old musty books to draw from, I can then work with those sources in my own practice.

In that same line of thinking, I'm wondering if it might be worth just going the from-scratch route of cobbling together my own structure from various Western occult sources, as I have a feeling trying to find the source will become a bit of an impossible quest.

I feel mostly safe knowing it's likely not cultural appropriation, at least, given that this form of angelic magic appears to crop up in a lot of different places in my cultural vicinity. Although I'd feel much more confident knowing where this specific tradition comes from, I suspect that if I keep digging through medieval European grimoires long enough, I'll eventually find it.

[sevensons]

I have no idea if this is related, but the Yazidi religion is focused around seven angels (and the summary on Wikipedia does show some resemblances to Kabbalah, so the thread is there ... *dons tinfol hat* )

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[SirPalomides]

Hi all, I'm getting to know the lore surrounding the 7 archangels, as it comes up in a branch of traditional Celtic witchcraft

If such a thing existed (it doesn't) why on earth would 7 archangels come up in there?

The SHWEP podcast has some excellent episodes on the Enochian literature, the hekhalot and merkavah literature, Jewish magic, and the "Solomonic" traditions which all tie into this question. All extremely well-researched and worthwhile.

These traditions were once very much important in Judaism but seem to have largely fallen by the wayside in the post Second Temple period, persisting more in Christian circles (and Islamic too, if I recall correctly). If we're talking about "Hermeticism" we need to be specific as this movement undergoes a lot of variation and development. Nowadays people are usually thinking about the Renaissance or modern Hermetic stuff which is heavily Christianized.

[Sophia C]

If such a thing existed (it doesn't) why on earth would 7 archangels come up in there?

OP may mean Irish and/or Scottish folk magic, where St Michael is often referenced. All depends how you define magic, of course, but (for example) the Carmina Gadelica is full of references to him. And there’s this Irish prayer to all the archangels, one for each day of the week https://codecs.vanhamel.nl/O'Nowlan_1905a. So if we’re talking more recent folk practice, there are archangels to be found.

But I haven’t seen references to the 7 archangels - not using that phrasing. Would be curious to know where this comes from.


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