The Watcher’s Defence

The Divided Name

The 72 Shem HaMephorash

The seventy-two angels of the divided Name of God. The angelic counterpart to the seventy-two Goetia demons. Each angel countermands a specific spirit.

The Shem HaMephorash — the “Explicit Name” or “Divided Name” of God — is drawn from the three verses of seventy-two Hebrew letters each in Exodus 14:19–21, the verses describing the parting of the Red Sea. Read together in the boustrophedon (alternating) order, the verses yield seventy-two three-letter names. Each name became, in the Christian-Kabbalistic tradition synthesised by Athanasius Kircher, Cornelius Agrippa, and later by Lenain in La Science Cabalistique (1823), the name of an angel.

The seventy-two Shem HaMephorash angels are the angelic counterpart to the seventy-two Goetia demons of the Lesser Key of Solomon. The site holds both catalogues. Each Goetia spirit, recognised by its operating pattern, has an angel whose office is precisely the protective opposite. The reader who suspects a pattern in modern life is given two pages: the demon, named, and the angel who answers.

The structure of pairing each demon with the specific angel whose office overcomes it is older than the Lesser Key. The foundational text is the Testament of Solomon (1st–3rd century CE), in which Solomon binds each interrogated demon by the name of the angel that compels its obedience. The structural logic the Shem catalogue uses is the same. The fullest development of the Shem HaMephorash itself — the seventy-two-letter divine Name from which the seventy-two angel names are drawn — appears in 3 Enoch (the Sefer Hekhalot, 5th–6th century CE), the foundational Hekhalot text in which Rabbi Ishmael ascends and Metatron reveals the names and offices of the angels of the divine throne-room. See the Sources page for the full provenance of both texts.

How the catalogue is organised

The seventy-two are grouped into nine choirs of eight, each choir under the regency of a known archangel. The order from #1 (Vehuiah) follows the spring equinox: each angel rules five degrees of the zodiac and roughly five days of the year. The order corresponds, position by position, with the Goetia from #1 (Bael) onward.

The nine choirs

The seventy-two are arranged in nine choirs of eight angels each, in the descending order Dionysius the Areopagite recorded in the sixth century:

Seraphim (1–8)
Regent: Metatron. The burning love that surrounds the divine throne. Element: Fire. Stone: Clear Quartz.
Cherubim (9–16)
Regent: Raziel. The keepers of the knowledge of the divine glory. Element: Earth. Stone: Lapis Lazuli.
Thrones (17–24)
Regent: Zaphkiel. The seat of the divine justice. Element: Water. Stone: Sapphire.
Dominions (25–32)
Regent: Zadkiel. The regulators of the work of the lower angels. Element: Water. Stone: Amethyst.
Powers (33–40)
Regent: Camael (Chamuel). The warriors against the disordering of the cosmos. Element: Fire. Stone: Ruby.
Virtues (41–48)
Regent: Michael. The workers of miracles and granters of grace. Element: Air. Stone: Topaz.
Principalities (49–56)
Regent: Haniel. The guardians of nations and the makers of leaders. Element: Earth. Stone: Emerald.
Archangels (57–64)
Regent: Raphael. The messengers between heaven and the mortal house. Element: Air. Stone: Carnelian.
Angels (65–72)
Regent: Gabriel. The direct attendants on individual souls. Element: Water. Stone: Moonstone.

The Full Catalogue

The 72 Angels in Order

The Same Hour

The Name Was Divided So It Could Be Called.

The seventy-two-letter name was not invented in the medieval scriptorium. The three verses of seventy-two Hebrew letters were already in Exodus when the rabbis began, in the early centuries, to read them in the alternating order. Kircher set them out for Christian readers in 1652. Agrippa had named them already. Lenain published the Catholic-Kabbalist synthesis in 1823. The tradition has not been quiet for two thousand years. The seventy-two were named because the seventy-two operate — each at its own office, each against its own opposite, each available to the reader who has been given the name.

Septuaginta duo nomina, septuaginta duae lucernae.
Seventy-two names, seventy-two lamps.

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