Ars Occulta
Ars Occulta / Shem HaMephorash / Harahel
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Harahel
«God who knows all things»
- Choir
- Archangels
- Archangel
- Mikael
- Dates
- 11–15 ene
Harahel, "God who knows all things", follows the formula of the series: three letters of the Shem HaMephorash and the suffix -EL, which sets him on the side of power. He serves among the Archangels, the choir that in Pseudo-Dionysius communicates the weightiest messages, under Michael, from 11 to 15 January. He is petitioned for fecundity, well-managed wealth and profit in study and archives. Orias, his counterpart, transforms dignities and turns enemies into friends: accumulated knowledge against changeable favour.
An angel of the printing press cannot be ancient
Harahel is assigned treasures, banks, archives, printing and books, success on the stock exchange and an interest in the sciences. Read quickly it looks like one more list. Read carefully, it gives away its date.
No ancient Hebrew text hands out domains over the stock market and the printing press. That list is from 1823, from Lazare Lenain's La science cabalistique, published in Amiens, and it describes the world Lenain had in front of him: printed paper, the archive, the strongbox, speculation. He is the most useful angel in the series for seeing which century the series really belongs to.
The psalm allotted to him matches the name, which reads as the God who knows all things: «From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same, the Lord's name is to be praised».
What lies under that layer
Underneath there is very little, and it is very old. Three letters — he, resh, chet — that come out of the procedure of counting the three verses of Exodus 14, where they are not an angel but a fragment of a name of God. And the suffix -EL, which Johann Reuchlin added in 1517 to make them pronounceable.
Between 1517 and 1823 there is no biography. The female fertility and the obedience of children also attributed to him belong to the same nineteenth-century layer as the stock exchange.
Whom he binds
Thomas Rudd, in the seventeenth century, set each angel against the demon of its own number, to hold it down. The fifty-ninth draws Oriax, also written Orias, a marquis who teaches astronomy and grants dignities and the favour of friends and of foes.
The pair is worth looking at: both administer prestige. One grants it from above and the other negotiates it.
Sources
- Éxodo 14:19-21 · Johann Reuchlin, De arte cabalistica, 1517
- Lazare Lenain, La science cabalistique, Amiens, 1823 — archivos, imprenta, banca y salmo 113
- Robert Ambelain, La Kabbale pratique, 1951
- Thomas Rudd, Harley MS 6483, British Library; ed. Skinner y Rankine, 2007
Other angels of the Archangels choir
The hyperrealistic reconstruction of Harahel and those of the other 143 entities are published on Instagram as they are completed. See Harahel on Instagram →
WarningHistorical and artistic content. We do not recommend performing any ritual, invocation or practice involving these entities. This is outreach about texts from the 15th to the 20th century, not an operative guide.