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Sacred Correspondences
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Reading an Attribute List Critically

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Reading an Attribute List Critically

Given how much of this system is recent, a few tests are useful when a source states that a particular angel governs a particular thing.

Ask whether the claim is about the name or about the position. The seventy-two are a numbered sequence occupying fixed degrees of the zodiac. Most attributions turn out to be properties of the position, of the decan, its planetary ruler, its tarot card, rather than of the name. That is testable: identical names in the list carry different attributes, which they could not do if the attribute came from the name.

Ask which language the wording came through. Attribute lists in English are frequently translations from French, and the French is frequently Lenain or a descendant. Distinctive phrasings survive translation and can be tracked.

Check whether the Hebrew is given. Sources that print the three-letter root are working from something. Sources that give only a Latin-letter name and a virtue are usually copying another list.

Distinguish contested from unsourced. The date of the Bahir is contested. The relation of the Shem system to earlier Jewish angelology is contested. The claim that the fourteenth angel governs justice is not contested by anybody; it is simply unsourced before the nineteenth century, which is a different situation and calls for a different kind of scepticism.

Notice the silences. No source explains why a given name received a given office. No source states the rule by which the verses were selected. No source accounts for the duplicate names. A tradition that has answers for everything except its own construction is telling you where its confidence comes from.

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