This report item reads angelology as the Kabbalists ordered it: nine choirs ranked by rank and by sephirah, ten archangels each keyed to one sphere of the Tree of Life, and the seventy-two Shem angels, names built on Hebrew roots, distributed two to each of the thirty six decans. A reading names the ranks a chart's placements fall under and the planetary intelligences attached to each of them.

History

The ninefold celestial hierarchy behind this system, the ranking of angels into choirs from the Seraphim down to plain Angels, comes from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's The Celestial Hierarchy, a work of the late fifth or early sixth century CE whose real author remains anonymous (the name is a later, mistaken identification with a disciple of Paul mentioned in Acts), later systematized further by Thomas Aquinas and absorbed broadly into medieval Christian angelology. The pairing of ten named archangels with the ten sephiroth of the Kabbalistic Tree, one archangel per sphere, is a distinct and later layer: it was set out by the Renaissance occult philosopher Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in his 1533 De occulta philosophia and was taken up and standardized into the form most commonly used today by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn from 1888 onward, the same Golden Dawn attribution layer the Tarot and Kabbalah pages already name for their own material.

The seventy-two angels of the Shem ha-Mephorash, the divided Name of God, are drawn by a documented traditional technique from three consecutive verses of Exodus, 14:19, 14:20 and 14:21, each exactly seventy-two Hebrew letters long: reading the first verse forward, the second in reverse and the third forward again, one letter at a time, yields seventy-two three-letter roots, each completed into an angel name with a suffixed divine name ending. In the Golden Dawn's astrological elaboration of this older Kabbalistic technique, the seventy-two names are distributed two to each of the thirty six decans of the zodiac, joining this report item's angelology directly to the same decan structure the Western Astrology and Tarot pages already use.

The Nine Choirs

In descending rank: Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones form the first, innermost triad; Dominions, Virtues and Powers the second; Principalities, Archangels and Angels the third and closest to the created world. The Golden Dawn's later Kabbalistic table further aligns each choir with one sphere of the Tree of Life, so the same name can carry two related but distinct meanings, a rank in the Dionysian hierarchy and a specific angelic host tied to a sephirah.

The Ten Sephirah-Archangels

Metatron (Kether), Raziel (Chokmah), Tzaphkiel (Binah), Tzadkiel (Chesed), Khamael (Geburah), Raphael (Tiferet), Haniel (Netzach), Michael (Hod), Gabriel (Yesod) and Sandalphon (Malkuth): ten archangels, each keyed to one sphere of the Tree the Kabbalah report item already describes in full.

How A Reading Is Constructed

A reading places a chart's planets onto the Tree of Life exactly as the Kabbalah report item does, then names the rank and the sephirah-archangel each placement falls under, and finds the two Shem angels governing the decan a chart's planets fall in by exact degree, reading each as a planetary intelligence attached to that placement rather than as a separate, freestanding figure.

Where To Read More

• SeraphimDionysian ChoirsSeraphim, first and highest choir, aligned in the Kabbalistic correspondence with Chokmah.
• CherubimDionysian ChoirsCherubim.
• ThronesDionysian ChoirsThrones.
• DominionsDionysian ChoirsDominions.
• VirtuesDionysian ChoirsVirtues.
• PowersDionysian ChoirsPowers.
• PrincipalitiesDionysian ChoirsPrincipalities.
• ArchangelsDionysian ChoirsArchangels, the choir.
• AngelsDionysian ChoirsAngels, the ninth and closest choir to the created world.
• MetatronSephirotic ArchangelsMetatron, archangel of Kether.
• RazielSephirotic ArchangelsRaziel, archangel of Chokmah.
• TzaphkielSephirotic ArchangelsTzaphkiel, archangel of Binah.
• TzadkielSephirotic ArchangelsTzadkiel, archangel of Chesed.
• KhamaelSephirotic ArchangelsKhamael, archangel of Geburah.
• RaphaelSephirotic ArchangelsRaphael, archangel of Tiferet.
• HanielSephirotic ArchangelsHaniel, archangel of Netzach.
• MichaelSephirotic ArchangelsMichael, archangel of Hod.
• GabrielSephirotic ArchangelsGabriel, archangel of Yesod.
• SandalphonSephirotic ArchangelsSandalphon, archangel of Malkuth.
• VehuiahNew Beginnings, Willpower, and CreationVehuiah, first of the seventy-two Shem ha-Mephorash angels, governing the first decan of Aries.
• JelielLove and ReconciliationJeliel, second of the seventy-two.