Poiel represents the divine flow of abundance that provides for all needs and grants unshakeable happiness to the soul.

In Dürer's engraving Saint Jerome in His Study , a quiet room is flooded with light. The scholar bends over his writing desk, a lion and a dog sleep peacefully on the floor, and a skull rests on the windowsill as a reminder of mortality. Everything in the scene is ordered, patient and clear. In the Kabbalistic tradition of the seventy-two angels, this is the atmosphere of Mebahiah, the angel who brings moral lucidity into the work of the mind and the hand. Mebahiah is the patron of those who write, teach and create with a conscience. His gift is not cleverness, but integrity: the harmony between what a person knows, what they say and what they do. The Fifty-Fifth Name The Shem HaMephorash, the "explicit name" of God, is a Kabbalistic teaching that draws seventy-two names of three letters from three verses of the Book of Exodus (14:19–21). Each name came to be associated with an angel who expresses one aspect of the divine power. Mebahiah is the fifty-fifth of these...

In the church of San Vitale in Ravenna, a mosaic from the middle of the sixth century shows Emperor Justinian standing with his court, a halo around his head and a golden bowl in his hands. Priests flank him on one side, soldiers on the other. The image says that power was meant to stand between heaven and earth, ordered by faith and sustained by merit. Yet the empire that Justinian ruled is gone, as every empire has gone. In the Kabbalistic tradition of the seventy-two angels, one name keeps watch over the question of what makes a kingdom last: Nithael, the angel of empires and legitimate success. Nithael is invoked by those who build something meant to endure: a house, a trade, a school, a reign. He is asked to protect it from decay and from the envy of rivals, and to let it flourish by merit rather than by trickery. The Fifty-Fourth Name The Shem HaMephorash, the "explicit name" of God, is a Kabbalistic teaching that draws seventy-two names of three letters from thre...

In Raphael's fresco The School of Athens , the great thinkers of antiquity fill a vast hall of arches. Plato points to the heavens, Aristotle gestures toward the earth, and around them mathematicians, astronomers and philosophers debate, write and teach. It is a portrait of the mind at its most luminous. In the Kabbalistic tradition of the seventy-two angels, this is the realm of Nanael, the angel of high learning and spiritual science. Nanael brings the light of divine understanding into philosophy, science and the study of sacred law. He is the patron of those who seek to understand the hidden order of the world, and of those who teach that order to others. The Fifty-Third Name The Shem HaMephorash, the "explicit name" of God, is a Kabbalistic teaching that draws seventy-two names of three letters from three verses of the Book of Exodus (14:19–21). Each of these names came to be associated with an angel who expresses one aspect of the divine power. Nanael is the ...

The Book of Exodus begins with a people in chains and ends with a people on the road. The sea parts, the pursuers fall behind and the long march toward freedom begins. It is no accident that the seventy-two names of the angels are drawn from the very verses that tell of this crossing. One of them, Imamiah, carries the memory of that deliverance, and tradition calls him the angel of liberation. Imamiah is invoked by those who are held back by walls of any kind: a prison, an unjust power, a fear that will not loosen its grip. He is also the traveler's angel, asked to protect those who set out on long and uncertain roads. The Fifty-Second Name The Shem HaMephorash, the "explicit name" of God, is a Kabbalistic teaching that draws seventy-two names of three letters from three verses of the Book of Exodus (14:19–21). Each name came to be associated with an angel who expresses one aspect of the divine power. Imamiah is the fifty-second of these names. Its three Hebrew lett...

Like the tools in Dürer's 'Melencolia I', Hahasiah represents the patient, alchemical inquiry required to understand the divine works of nature.

Daniel represents the restorative power of divine mercy that provides comfort and justice in times of trial.

In the sixteenth century, the Spanish friar John of the Cross drew a small diagram of a mountain. A narrow path climbed it in a straight line, and along the way he wrote a single word over and over: nada . Nothing. The soul, he taught, rises only as it lets go. He called the work The Ascent of Mount Carmel . Across centuries and traditions, mystics have pictured the spiritual life as a climb, a ladder or a staircase leading toward light. In the Kabbalistic tradition of the seventy-two angels, a name stands for that upward movement: Vehuel, the angel of elevation and spiritual grandeur. Vehuel is invoked by those who feel called to something higher than their daily concerns. He is asked to lift the soul above pettiness, and to help it recognize in its own life a measure of true greatness. The Forty-Ninth Name The Shem HaMephorash, the "explicit name" of God, is a Kabbalistic teaching that draws seventy-two names of three letters from three verses of the Book of Exodus (...

Guido Reni's masterpiece depicting Archangel Michael defeating Satan—a powerful representation of the celestial warrior's role in maintaining the cosmic equilibrium between light and shadow.

Stained glass depicting scenes from the Book of Daniel — it is in Daniel 10 that the Bible offers its most explicit glimpse of the Principalities, the angelic princes appointed over the great nations of the earth.