Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Archangels

Cassiel

KASS-ee-el
Planetary Archangels

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Origin 1200 to 1600

Cassiel, associated with Tzaphkiel, whose name means the Contemplation of God, is the planetary archangel of Saturn, the angel of temperance, time, patience, and solitude. He belongs to the medieval planetary tradition, where he presides over the slow, weighty, and karmic side of life. As the Saturnian archangel he governs what Saturn rules: time and limitation, discipline and endurance, boundaries, grief, karma, and the lessons that come only with age and hardship. He is invoked on Saturday and in workings for patience, protection, endings, and dealing with loss or the dead. In the Tree of Life the Saturnian office belongs to Tzaphkiel, archangel of Binah, the sphere of Understanding, and his colors are black, indigo, and lead-grey.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1200 to 1600 1Tradition: The grimoire tradition
Place of Origin
Latin Europe 1
Place of Origin
Reach the Renaissance through the medieval Latin grimoires 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
A late medieval grimoire commonplace, with no identifiable originator 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
No individual author 1
Rival Systems
A Rival System's AttributionSourced to the subject's own account
Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy: the angel of Saturn is Zaphkiel. Cassiel does not appear in his table of the seven angels at all. The name recorded here belongs to the scheme of the planetary hours and the days of the week. 2Tradition: Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Identity
Ruling Planet
Saturn 1
Learn More
A Planetary Archangel

In this collection Cassiel appears as the archangel governing Saturn, one of the seven "planets" of pre-modern astronomy (the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn). Pairing an archangel with each planet belongs to the tradition of Western ceremonial magic and Christian Kabbalah, where it was set out in works such as Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533) and the later pseudo-Agrippan Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, and codified in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Several archangels are listed more than once in this collection because they were inherited through three overlapping schemes, planetary, elemental and sephirotic, that Western esotericism never fully reconciled; Cassiel here carries the planetary attribution to Saturn. The scheme is presented as a documented esoteric tradition rather than as religious doctrine or as a claim about spiritual beings.

Shabbatai, and the Angel of the Seventh Day

Saturn in Hebrew is Shabbatai, from the same root as Sabbath, because Saturn holds the seventh day. The planet and the rest are named for each other, and Cassiel inherits both.

The Heptameron gives him Saturday. The name is unstable in transmission even by the standards of this subject: Cassiel, Casziel, Qafziel, Kafziel and Castiel all appear in lists that are otherwise describing the same office, and later devotional and popular literature has picked up several of them independently.

Saturn's classical character governs what the tradition then says about the angel. Saturn is the outermost of the seven visible spheres, the slowest, the coldest, the planet of limit, time, endurance, mourning and solitude. Its metal is lead and its temperament is melancholic. The grimoire literature accordingly gives Saturn's angel a notably restrained character, an angel more often described as observing and permitting than as acting, which is a reading of the planet rather than a report about the angel.

The same structural problem appears here as with Jupiter. The sephirotic table assigns Binah, Saturn's sphere on the Tree, to Tzaphkiel, so one planet carries two archangels depending on which system is consulted, and the two names have nothing to do with each other. As with Michael and Raphael, the disagreement is real, old, and unresolvable, because no authority stands over both systems.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Cassiel belongs to the medieval planetary tradition of Western ceremonial magic, where he governs the slow and weighty side of life. He has no scriptural warrant.

Cassiel is paired with Saturday and Saturn in the scheme of the planetary hours that also names the weekday. Cassiel does not appear in Agrippa's own table of the seven planetary angels at all.

Source Grimoires: A History of Magic BooksOwen Davies
Saturn, Planets

Cassiel holds the Saturnian office in the seven planetary archangels, presiding over temperance, time, patience and solitude.

Belongs to Tradition

Hermeticism, Religions

One of the planetary, elemental and sephirotic archangels of the Western esoteric synthesis, the scheme by which this atlas classifies the type.

Originates in Language

Hebrew, Languages

The name is Hebrew in form, built on the theophoric pattern of a stem plus el, God, but unlike most of its neighbours its stem is not securely identified and the atlas does not supply a meaning for it.

Related To

Tzaphkiel, Archangels

The tradition associates Cassiel with Tzaphkiel, the archangel of Binah, on the ground that both hold the Saturnian office. The two rows are kept apart because one is a planetary attribution and the other a sephirotic one.

Sources
1. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Owen Davies, Oxford University Press, 2009chs. on the medieval and early modern grimoireView the Source
2. Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Llewellyn, 1533Angelic correspondences in occult philosophyView the Source
A Dictionary of Angels, Including the Fallen Angels
Gustav Davidson, The Free Press, 1967Entry for the archangel CassielView the Source

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