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Angels and Spirits, the tradition mapping the ordered hierarchies of angelic and other spirits, carries a live tie into six religions in this atlas, tied for the strongest open convergence candidate at this tier alongside Pilgrimage and Almsgiving/Charity below: Bahai, Christianity, Gnosticism, Islam, Judaism and Zoroastrianism.

Three Abrahamic Accounts, and the Older One Scholars Tie to Them

Judaism, Christianity and Islam each supply this tradition's machinery directly, by the atlas's own record. Judaism supplies the ranked hosts, the named archangels, and above all the seventy-two-fold divine name unfolded from three verses of Exodus, from which the magical current derives its angels, though rabbinic Judaism itself warns against petitioning them rather than God. Christianity ranks the angels in nine choirs and assigns offices to Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, while the grimoire tradition that grew alongside it paired those hierarchies with the seventy-two catalogued demons of the Goetia. Islam holds belief in angels an article of faith, created of light and without power to disobey, with Jibril bringing the revelation and Munkar and Nakir questioning the dead; the jinn are recorded as a separate order made of smokeless fire, unlike angels able to be good or evil. Zoroastrianism is the fourth and the oldest: it ranks under Ahura Mazda the six Amesha Spentas, bounteous immortals each governing an aspect of creation, and the yazatas worthy of worship, an ordered hierarchy scholars have long argued shaped the later Jewish and Christian angelology the other three build on.

Two Religions That Read the Hierarchy Differently

Gnosticism and the Bahai Faith are the two ties that do not extend the same hierarchy, they contest it. Gnostic myth is densely peopled in its own right: aeons emanating in pairs from the unknowable Father, and archons ruling the planetary spheres as jailers of the soul rather than as servants of God, which inverts the ordinary valuation of the celestial hierarchy the first three religions share. The Bahai writings go further and deny the hierarchy any separate standing at all: angels are treated as a symbol for perfected human souls and for divine confirmations rather than as a separate order of beings, so the ranked hierarchies of the Western tradition, by the Bahai Faith's own record, have no place in Bahai belief. Six religions, and only four of them are describing the same thing.

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• Angels and SpiritsCosmological DisciplinesThe discipline itself, tied for the strongest open convergence candidate at six religions
• JudaismAbrahamic (Monotheistic)Supplies the ranked hosts, named archangels and the seventy-two-fold divine name
• ChristianityAbrahamic (Monotheistic)Ranks the angels in nine choirs; its grimoire tradition pairs them with catalogued demons
• IslamAbrahamic (Monotheistic)Holds belief in angels an article of faith; names the jinn a separate order
• ZoroastrianismMonotheistic DualistThe oldest of the four; scholars argue its hierarchy shaped the other three
• GnosticismEsoteric / OccultInverts the hierarchy: archons as jailers of the soul rather than servants of God
• Bahá’í FaithAbrahamic (Monotheistic)Denies the hierarchy separate standing: angels as symbol, not a separate order