Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Archangels

Michael

MY-kay-el
Planetary Archangels

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Origin 1200 to 1600

Michael, whose Hebrew name means Who is like God, is the planetary archangel of the Sun and, in most orderings, the chief and prince of the archangels. He is named in the books of Daniel, Jude, and Revelation, where he is the great captain of the heavenly host who casts down the dragon, and he is honored across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (as Mikail) alike. As the solar archangel he carries the qualities the Sun rules: light, life, vitality, sovereignty, courage, and victory over darkness. In the Western magical tradition he is invoked on Sunday and in solar workings for protection, strength, truth, and the banishing of evil. His symbols are the flaming sword and the scales of judgment, and he is most often shown in armor with wings outspread, treading down Satan or weighing the souls of the dead.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1200 to 1600 2Tradition: The grimoire tradition
Place of Origin
Latin Europe 2
Place of Origin
Reach the Renaissance through the medieval Latin grimoires 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
A late medieval grimoire commonplace, with no identifiable originator 2
Attributed Author / Compiler
No individual author 2
Origin of the Name
Hebrew Mikha'el, who is like God 1
Origin of the Name
One of only two angels named in the Hebrew Bible 1
Scriptural Reference
Named in Daniel 10 and 12, in Jude 1:9 disputing with the devil over the body of Moses, and in Revelation 12:7 leading the heavenly host against the dragon. 3
Language
Biblical Hebrew 1
Rival Systems
A Rival System's AttributionSourced to the subject's own account
Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy: the angel of the Sun is Raphael, and Michael is the angel of Mercury. That is the exact reverse of the pairing recorded here. What is recorded here is the scheme of the planetary hours and the days of the week, which descends through the grimoires and not through Agrippa. 4Tradition: Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Identity
Also Known As
Saint Michael 1
Also Known As
St Michael 1
Ruling Planet
Sun 2
Learn More
Michael and Raphael Change Places Between Two Systems

This collection lists these angels three times over, under elemental, planetary and sephirotic headings, and the reason is that Western ceremonial magic inherited three separate attribution systems and never reconciled them. The clearest evidence of the failure to reconcile is visible in the material set out here.

In the planetary system, inherited from the grimoire tradition and codified by Agrippa, Michael governs the Sun and Raphael governs Mercury.

In the sephirotic system, as the Golden Dawn taught it and as Crowley's tables record it, Tiphareth takes Raphael and Hod takes Michael.

Those two statements are in direct conflict, because Tiphareth is the sphere of the Sun and Hod is the sphere of Mercury. The same two angels are assigned to the same two heavenly bodies in opposite arrangements, depending on which of the two systems is being consulted. Both assignments are recorded here, in the planetary and sephirotic groupings respectively, and a reader moving between them will find Michael solar in one place and Mercurial in the other.

This is not a defect in the recording. It is a real and known inconsistency in the sources, and it has been noticed by practitioners for well over a century without being resolved, because there is no authority that could resolve it. The planetary attributions descend from late antique and medieval angelology through the Latin magical literature. The sephirotic attributions descend from Jewish Kabbalistic sources by a different route. The Golden Dawn adopted both and tabulated them side by side.

The elemental grouping is more stable, because it is younger and has a single source: Raphael in the east with Air, Michael in the south with Fire, Gabriel in the west with Water, Uriel in the north with Earth. That is the arrangement of the order's banishing ritual and it is essentially uniform in modern practice, which is what a nineteenth-century construction with one point of origin produces.

The practical consequence is that an attribution in this subject is not a fact about an angel. It is a fact about a system, and the system has to be named for the attribution to mean anything. Sources that give a single planetary correspondence without saying which tradition it comes from are concealing a disagreement rather than reporting a consensus.

Where the Name Appears, and the Shrines That Followed

Michael is one of only two angels named in the Hebrew Bible, and everything he does there is national rather than planetary. Daniel calls him one of the chief princes, then your prince, then the great prince who stands over the sons of your people. He is a guardian assigned to a nation, and he appears in the middle of a conflict between such guardians.

The New Testament adds two scenes. Jude has him disputing with the devil over the body of Moses and declining to bring a railing accusation, a passage that quotes a text no longer in the canon. Revelation has him leading the armies of heaven against the dragon. The Qur'an names Mika'il once, alongside Jibril, in a warning to those who set themselves against God's angels.

From those few verses grew one of the largest cults in Christendom, and it settled on high and remote places. The shrine on Monte Sant'Angelo in the Gargano is the oldest in the Latin West; Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy, St Michael's Mount in Cornwall and the monastic rock of Skellig Michael off Kerry repeat the pattern along the Atlantic. His feast on 29 September became Michaelmas, one of the English quarter days, which is how a warrior angel ended up governing rents and the start of the legal and academic year.

The Latin requiem asks that the standard-bearer Michael bring the souls of the dead into the holy light, so he weighs and escorts as well as fights, and medieval judgement scenes hand him the scales.

None of that is solar. The attribution of Michael to the Sun is a later overlay, laid by the magical literature onto a figure who already had scripture, a cult and several hundred churches.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Sun, Planets

Michael is paired with Sunday and the Sun in the scheme of the planetary hours that also names the weekday. That scheme runs through the grimoires, not Agrippa, whose own table gives the Sun to Raphael instead.

Source Grimoires: A History of Magic BooksOwen Davies

Belongs to Tradition

Michael is named in the Epistle of Jude and in Revelation and is venerated as an archangel across the Christian churches.

Hermeticism, Religions

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

Islam, Religions

Mika'il is named in the Qur'an, in Surat al-Baqara.

Judaism, Religions

Michael is named in the Book of Daniel as the prince who stands for Israel.

Depicted In

Archangel Michael, confirmed via the named card title "You Are Protected, Archangel Michael".

Archangel Michael, confirmed on The Emperor and The Wheel in the Major Arcana correspondence list.

Source Angel Tarot Cards (Penguin Random House listing)Doreen Virtue and Radleigh Valentine

Archangel Michael, one of the confirmed fifteen archangels this deck keys its forty five cards to.

Archangel Michael, the only archangel confirmed among this deck's forty five named cards.

Element Of

Michael and All Angels on 29 September is one of the few holy days the English reformers kept in the Book of Common Prayer, with a collect that asks God to order the ministries of angels and men.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Reformed teaching affirms the ministry of angels and refuses their worship and invocation, so Michael is confessed as a servant of God and never addressed in prayer.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Chabad keeps the angelic texts of the traditional liturgy and reads them through the Lurianic frame set out in the movement's own writings.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Michael carries a commemoration on the twelfth day of every month of the Coptic calendar, the most frequent angelic observance in the Coptic year, and churches under his name are among the oldest foundations in Egypt.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The Synaxis of the Archangel Michael and the Other Bodiless Powers on 8 November heads the Orthodox commemoration of the angels, and Michael is addressed as the taxiarch, the commander of the heavenly host.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The Ethiopian church keeps a monthly commemoration of Michael and receives the Book of Enoch as scripture, which gives its angelology a longer roster than the Western churches use.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Haredi practice keeps the full angelic liturgy of the traditional siddur, including the bedtime invocation of the four archangels and the Sabbath hymn welcoming the ministering angels.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Hasidic teaching keeps the angelic figures of the Talmud and the Kabbalah as real orders of being, and the bedtime and Sabbath angelic texts are said in full.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Karaite Judaism receives the angel named in Daniel as the prince who stands for Israel, while the rabbinic bedtime formula that ranges four archangels about the sleeper belongs to the Oral Torah the movement does not accept.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Lutheran calendars retained the feast of Saint Michael and All Angels, while the Augsburg Confession refuses the invocation of angels and saints and has the day preached as a witness to God rather than as an appeal to the archangel.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The bedtime Shema in the Ashkenazi rite sets Michael at the right hand of the one lying down, Gabriel at the left, Uriel in front and Raphael behind, which is the most widely said angelic text in Orthodox practice.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

The Roman calendar keeps 29 September as the feast of Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, the three archangels named in the scriptures Rome receives, and Michael is invoked in the Roman rite as the defender of the people of God.

Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account

Twelver teaching receives Mikail among the angels the Quran names and gives him a place in the traditions of the Imams alongside Jibril and Israfil.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Sunni, Denominations

Mikail is one of the two angels the Quran names alongside Jibril in the passage warning whoever is an enemy of God and his angels, and he is counted among the angels closest to God.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)

Held Differently

Christian Science, Denominations

Christian Science reads the angels of scripture as God's thoughts passing to man rather than as personal created beings, so Michael names a spiritual quality and not an individual.

Source The Oxford Handbook of New Religious MovementsJames R. Lewis (ed.)
Jehovah's Witnesses, Denominations

Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Michael is a name borne by Jesus Christ in his heavenly office rather than a separate created angel, so the archangel and the Son are one person under two names.

Source The Oxford Handbook of New Religious MovementsJames R. Lewis (ed.)
Latter-day Saints (Mormonism), Denominations

Latter-day Saint scripture identifies Michael as Adam, the Ancient of Days, the first man in his premortal and resurrected office rather than an angel of a separate order from humanity.

Source The Oxford Handbook of MormonismTerryl L. Givens and Philip L. Barlow (eds.)
Seventh-day Adventism, Denominations

Adventist teaching identifies Michael with Christ, reading the name as a title meaning who is like God rather than as the proper name of a distinct being.

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

Rejected Here

Humanistic Judaism, Denominations

Humanistic Judaism is nontheistic and keeps the Jewish calendar, culture and ethics without supernatural beings, so no angelic order appears in its liturgy or its teaching.

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)

Originates in Language

Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)
Sources
1. The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)
Anonymous (multiple authors)Daniel 10:13, 10:21 and 12:1View the Source
2. Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Owen Davies, Oxford University Press, 2009chs. on the medieval and early modern grimoireView the Source
3. The Holy Bible
Anonymous (multiple authors), Robert Barker, 1611View the Source
4. Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Llewellyn, 1533the tables of planetary intelligences and their angelsView the Source
A Dictionary of Angels, Including the Fallen Angels
Gustav Davidson, The Free Press, 1967the entry on Michael and the variant orderings of the archangelsView the Source

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