The Archangel of Vengeance and Justice

Raguel is named in the Book of Enoch as one of the holy watchers, "who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries", the angel who calls the other powers to account and executes judgement upon them when they transgress. His name is read as "friend of God." In the scheme of seven archangels that circulated in early Christianity he is sometimes counted among them, the enforcer of divine justice and harmony who ensures that even the angelic host remains within its bounds. He is named in no book received as canonical, and his position was contested early: a Roman council in the eighth century is reported to have condemned the veneration of angels beyond the scripturally named few, Raguel among them, precisely because his authority rested on the apocryphal Enochic literature. Where he survives in tradition, it is as the archangel of fairness and just retribution, the guardian who watches the watchers.