Our Guardian Angels

The choirs of heaven, the seventy-two names, and the angels said to watch over each of us

Angels appear in the sacred texts and the folklore of nearly every age, usually as messengers of God endowed with great power and wisdom, and every culture that knows them gives them its own names and offices. They are held to have been created by God to guide, protect and help human beings. Art gives them wings and a purity that moves swiftly and silently through the heavens, and several religions teach that angels keep the record of what each person does, good and evil alike.

Popular imagination shows them sometimes as men and women with wings and sometimes as figures of pure light crowned with halos. Whatever one makes of the question of their existence, their hold on the human spirit is undeniable. Many people take comfort in the thought that no one is ever truly alone, that kindly powers watch over every life, and that comfort has outlasted every argument against it.

The Nine Choirs of Heaven

The classification that shaped Christian thought about angels comes from a Syrian writer of the late fifth or early sixth century who wrote under the name of Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul's convert in Athens (Acts 17:34), and is known today as Pseudo-Dionysius. In The Celestial Hierarchy he arranged the angels in nine orders, or choirs, gathered into three hierarchies of three. Much of what follows about their appearance and duties comes from later art and devotion rather than from Dionysius himself, who wrote sparingly about function and not at all about scepters and robes.

The highest hierarchy

The first three choirs stand closest to God and his throne. The Seraphim, the burning ones, take their name from the Hebrew root s-r-p, to burn. Isaiah saw them above the throne, each with six wings: "with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly," crying "Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts" (Isa 6:2–3). Their fire is the fire of love, and their whole existence is worship.

The Cherubim, for Dionysius, are the choir of the fullness of knowledge. In Ezekiel's vision they have four faces, of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle, and four wings (Ezek 1:5–10; 10:14), and two golden cherubim spread their wings over the mercy seat of the Ark (Exod 25:18–22). After the expulsion from Eden it was God who drove out the man, and the cherubim were set at the east of the garden "with a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life" (Gen 3:24), guardians of a door rather than its jailers.

The Thrones complete the first hierarchy, the bearers of God's presence and the instruments of his justice. Later tradition linked them with the ophanim, the wheels "full of eyes round about" that move with the living creatures in Ezekiel (Ezek 1:15–21), and some writers with the twenty-four elders seated around the throne in Revelation (Rev 4:4), though both identifications are interpretation rather than anything Dionysius states.

The middle hierarchy

The second hierarchy governs the created order. The Dominions, or Lordships, receive the commands of the higher choirs and pass them to the lower, regulating the laws of nature and the course of history; artists show them crowned and robed, holding scepters or orbs. The Virtues, called dynameis in Greek, are the choir of miracles, the bearers of grace and courage to those who strive for goodness, often pictured as radiant light. The Powers, exousiai or Authorities, guard the order of the cosmos and the borders of heaven against the forces of evil, and art shows them armed like soldiers.

The lowest hierarchy

The third hierarchy deals most directly with human beings. The Principalities watch over nations, cities and communities and inspire their rulers with wisdom and justice, and they appear in art crowned and bearing scepters. The Archangels, from the Greek arche, chief, and angelos, messenger, carry God's messages of greatest weight. Here the terms need care. In Dionysius's scheme the archangels form the eighth choir, near the bottom of the hierarchy, while in ordinary speech "archangel" is the title of the great named angels, which is why the same figures can seem both high and low. Catholic tradition names three from Scripture, Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, with Michael as leader of the heavenly host; Uriel comes from the books of Enoch and 2 Esdras. The Book of Tobit has Raphael call himself "one of the seven holy angels" (Tob 12:15) but names none of the others. The list of seven found in 1 Enoch 20 gives Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel and Remiel, while Eastern Orthodox tradition names Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jegudiel and Barachiel.

The Angels, last of the nine, are the messengers closest to us. Among them are the guardian angels, assigned to watch over each person, to guard each soul and to pray for it, and pictured in white robes with wings. They stand lowest in the hierarchy and nearest to human life, and so, for many believers, they matter above all the others.

Guardian Angels in Catholic Teaching

The Catholic Church holds firmly that each believer has a guardian angel, and it keeps a feast for them on October 2. It also takes a firm position against giving them personal names. The Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, in its Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001), states that the practice of assigning names to the holy angels should be discouraged, except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael, whose names are found in Holy Scripture (§217). The wording discourages rather than forbids, but its direction leaves no doubt.

The reasons are not hard to see. Scripture names only those three, and the custom of inventing others comes from sources outside Catholic teaching, much of it from the very occult and esoteric traditions this essay goes on to explore. The Directory's wider concern is that devotion to angels stay anchored in Christ and in God, rather than drifting into a private angelology that breeds superstition and a reliance on angels that crowds out their Maker. A guardian angel has a mission given by God, and a personal name chosen by the devotee risks remaking a servant of God into a companion of one's own design. The Church still teaches its children to pray to their guardian angels, as the old prayer Angele Dei shows, but it asks them to do so with humility and reverence, within the inherited tradition rather than by inventing new names.

Guardian Angels in Islam

Islam teaches that God has set guardian angels over every human being. The Qur'an speaks of angels in succession, before a person and behind him, who guard him by God's command (Q 13:11), and of noble recorders appointed over each soul who know all that it does (Q 82:10–12).

The commentators fill in the arrangement. In his commentary on 13:11, Ibn Kathir describes angels who take turns by night and by day: two on the right and left who record a person's deeds, the right-hand angel the good and the left-hand the evil, and two more who guard him, one before and one behind, so that four attend him by day and four by night. Ibn Jurayj, an early Meccan scholar, speaks of the two recording angels who relieve one another in succession through the day and night. A hadith narrated by Abu Hurayrah and preserved by both al-Bukhari and Muslim adds that the angels of the night and the angels of the day meet at the dawn and afternoon prayers, and when those who spent the night ascend, God asks them how they left his servants; they answer that they left them praying and found them praying. Ibn Abi Zamanin, in his work on the Sunnah, reports from al-Hasan al-Basri that four guardian angels take turns over each person, two by night and two by day, meeting at the dawn prayer.

Beyond these, every person has a constant companion, the qarin. In a hadith narrated by Abdullah ibn Mas'ud and preserved by Muslim, the Prophet said that each of us has been assigned a companion from among the jinn and a companion from among the angels, and the later commentator Mulla Ali al-Qari explains that the angelic companion inspires the soul toward goodness. Abu al-Shaykh, in his book al-Azamah, reports on the authority of Abdullah ibn al-Mubarak that five angels attend each person, two by day, two by night, and a fifth who never leaves him.

The numbers differ across the narrations, four in some and five in others, but the picture holds steady: angels who record a person's deeds, angels who guard him from harm, and a companion who never departs and moves him toward the good.

The Shem HaMephorash and the Seventy-Two Angels

In Jewish mysticism the Shem HaMephorash, the explicit or distinguished name, is a hidden name of God drawn from three consecutive verses of Exodus, 14:19–21, the verses that tell of the angel of God moving behind Israel, the pillar of cloud, and the parting of the sea. In Hebrew each of the three verses contains exactly seventy-two letters. When the three are written one above another, the first read from right to left, the second from left to right, and the third from right to left again, and then read downward column by column, they yield seventy-two names of three letters each. The Talmud alludes to a name of seventy-two in connection with the festival of Sukkot, and Rashi, commenting there (b. Sukkah 45a), explains it as drawn from these three verses. Later tradition held that Moses used this name to divide the waters.

Rather than names in the ordinary sense, the seventy-two triads are combinations of letters treated as keys to divine power, each expressing an attribute of God and each used in meditation as a way of drawing near to him. Christian Kabbalists and later occultists turned each triad into an angel by adding a divine suffix, -iah or -el. The first triad, Vav-He-Vav, becomes Vehuiah, "God exalted"; the second, Yod-Lamed-Yod, becomes Jeliel; and so on through all seventy-two. The angels are sometimes said to be matched to the triads by gematria, but the derivation runs by suffix, and the value of the first triad is 6 + 5 + 6 = 17.

The same later tradition gave each angel a span of five degrees of the zodiac, seventy-two spans of five making the full circle of 360, and grouped them in eight per choir under the nine Christian choirs of angels and the nine planets, a scheme that in its modern form includes Uranus and Neptune and so cannot be older than the nineteenth century. Each angel in this system has its own qualities and is invoked for its own purposes, healing, protection, wisdom, love and success among them.

The practitioners who use these names insist on reverence. The names are not toys or shortcuts, they say, but a sacred path, to be approached with sincerity, with study of each name's meaning, and with the aim of aligning oneself with the will of God rather than bending heaven to one's own.

The Number Seventy-Two

The number seventy-two carries weight in several traditions, often bound up with completeness, the whole of the world's peoples, or the whole of the divine name.

In Judaism its chief home is the seventy-two-letter name just described. It also shadows the count of the nations. The Table of Nations in Genesis 10 lists the descendants of Noah who spread over the earth after the flood, and rabbinic tradition, reading the Hebrew, counts them as seventy nations with seventy languages, scattered after the confusion at Babel, while the Greek Septuagint's version of the list comes to seventy-two. Christianity inherits the same ambiguity. Luke tells of Jesus sending out disciples two by two ahead of him (Luke 10:1), and the manuscripts divide between seventy and seventy-two, the number very likely chosen in either form to stand for all the nations of the world.

Islamic tradition knows the number from a well-known hadith in which the Prophet foretells that his community will divide into seventy-three sects, seventy-two of them astray and one saved. Seventy-two is also the traditional number of those who died with Husayn ibn Ali, the Prophet's grandson, at Karbala in 680, a memory at the heart of Shi'a devotion.

The yogic texts of India speak of seventy-two thousand nadis, the channels through which the life-breath flows in the subtle body. Astronomy offers its own echo: the slow precession of the equinoxes shifts the heavens by about one degree every seventy-two years, a figure that has fascinated students of ancient myth and calendar since the nineteenth century.

Guardian Angels in Devotion

The psalmist gave the guardian angels their charter: "For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways" (Ps 91:11).

The saints took the promise literally. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, the Capuchin friar who bore the stigmata, spoke often of his guardian angel as a companion in his ministry, and those who knew him believed that much of his direction of souls passed through that angel's help; he would tell his spiritual children to send him their guardian angels with their messages when they could not come themselves. Pope Pius XI, by several accounts, prayed to his guardian angel each morning and evening and credited it with help in his work.

The esoteric traditions know the guardian angel too. The Book of Abramelin, a German grimoire of the fifteenth century, attributed to Abraham of Worms and made famous in English through Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers's translation of 1898, sets out a long discipline of prayer, purity and retreat whose goal is the "knowledge and conversation" of one's Holy Guardian Angel, after which, and only after which, the operator may command lesser spirits.

In the PBMA tradition, members learn the name of the Divine Master's guardian angel as part of their spiritual formation, and the prayers include Akong Anghel nga Magbalantay, my guardian angel, a reminder that each member is personally watched over.

The Catholic Church's best-loved prayer to the guardian angel, in its Latin original, runs:

Angele Dei, qui custos es mei, me tibi commissum pietate superna, hodie illumina, custodi, rege et guberna. Amen.

In English: "Angel of God, my guardian, to whom God's love commits me here, this day be at my side to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen." In a few lines it gathers what all the traditions above say in their own ways, that we are entrusted to a guardian by the goodness of heaven, and that the guardian's work is to enlighten, protect, rule and guide.

Agrippa and the Threefold Keeper

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, the Renaissance philosopher and occultist whose Three Books of Occult Philosophy appeared in full in 1533, taught that every human being has three guardian spirits. In Book Three, chapter twenty-two, he writes that each person has a threefold good genius, as the 1651 English translation puts it, "the one whereof is holy, another of the nativity, and the other of profession." The holy genius comes from God and directs the soul toward its last end. The genius of the nativity, also called the genius of the geniture, descends from the arrangement of the heavens at birth and watches over a person's life. The genius of profession is given according to the course of life a person chooses and the work he takes up, and it can change when his calling changes.

The scheme often attributed to Agrippa in modern angel literature, of an angel of the body, an angel of the soul and an angel of the spirit, keyed to the month, the hour and the day of birth, does not come from him. It belongs to a later French tradition of the seventy-two angels, discussed below, and it should not be read back into the Occult Philosophy.

What Agrippa does give is a method for finding the name of one's genius from the birth chart. In Book Three, chapter twenty-six, "Of finding out of the names of spirits, and Genius's from the disposition of Celestiall bodies," he writes:

"By this art some of the Hebrew and Caldean masters teach that the nature, and name of any Genius may be found out; as for example, the degree of the ascendent of any ones nativity being known, and the other corners of the heaven being Coequated, then let that which had the more dignities of Planets in those four corners which the Arabians call Almutez, be first observed amongst the rest: and according to that in the second place, that which shall be next to it in the number of dignities, and so by order the rest of them, which obtain any dignitie in the foresaid corners: this order being used, thou maist know the true place, & degree of them in the heaven, beginning from the degree of the ascendent through each degree according to the order of the signs to cast 22. of the letters of the Hebrews; Then what letters shall fall into the places of the aforesaid Stars, being marked, and disposed according to the order found out above in the Stars, & rightly joyned together according to the rules of the Hebrew tongue, make the name of a Genius: to which, according to the custome, some Monosyllable name of Divine omnipotency, viz. El, or Iah is subjoyned."

In plain terms, the four angles of the horoscope are computed, the planets with the greatest dignities in those angles are ranked, the twenty-two Hebrew letters are laid out degree by degree from the ascendant around the zodiac, and the letters falling at the planets' places, taken in their order of rank, are joined into a name, to which El or Iah is added.

I tried the method on my own nativity. With an astrological calculator I located the planets in the four corners of heaven and read off the Hebrew letters falling at their degrees, which came out as Aleph, Bet, Gimel, Yod and Kaph, ABGYK. By Agrippa's rule, adding a monosyllabic name of divine power gives two forms of the name: ABGYK with El, Abgykel, or with Iah, Abgykiah. I record the result as an experiment in the method, and a reader who repeats it on his own chart will find that the steps, though laborious, can be followed exactly as Agrippa laid them down.

Finding Your Three Angels

Modern angel literature offers a simpler way to name one's guardians, built on the seventy-two angels of the Shem HaMephorash. The scheme descends from the French Kabbalistic tradition of the early nineteenth century, above all from Lambert Lenain's La Science cabalistique (1823), which gave each of the seventy-two genii its own span of the zodiac and its own qualities, and it has since been expanded in many popular works. It assigns each person three angels, each tending one part of the self.

The Angel of the Body watches over physical health and the material side of life, protecting from harm and supporting the practical skills by which a person earns a living. It is found by the five-day period of the year in which one was born. The Angel of the Soul tends the emotions and the mind, comforting in distress, inspiring creativity and intuition, and guiding growth through relationships and feeling. It is found by the twenty-minute period of the day in which one was born. The Angel of the Spirit is the bridge to the divine, guiding the search for truth and supporting prayer and meditation, and it is found by the exact day of birth. These angels are said to speak through dreams, coincidences and quiet intuitions, and to be recognized by those who make themselves open and attentive.

The table that follows gives all three. Five-day periods and single days account for only 360 of the year's days, so a person born between March 15 and March 19, or on February 29 in a leap year, takes all three angels from the birth hour. Someone who does not know the exact moment of birth can often narrow the hour closely and then choose, by reading the qualities of the angels in question, the one that fits his character.

The Islamic teaching of four or even five guardian angels suggests that three may not be the whole count. Some believers add that the hour of birth is the moment of greatest vulnerability, because, they say, it is then that the guardians report to the Almighty Father.

Table of the Seventy-Two Angels

Times are given on the 24-hour clock, so that a birth at 2:30 in the afternoon falls at 14:30 and one at 7:20 in the morning at 07:20. The Angel of the Soul is found by the hour of birth, the Angel of the Spirit by the day, and the Angel of the Body by the five-day period. Two angels share the name Lauviah, at positions 11 and 17.

No.	Angel	Hour of birth (Soul)	Days of birth (Spirit)	Period of birth (Body)
1	Vehuiah	00:00–00:20	Mar 20, May 31, Aug 11, Oct 22, Jan 2	Mar 20–24
2	Jeliel	00:20–00:40	Mar 21, Jun 1, Aug 12, Oct 23, Jan 3	Mar 25–29
3	Sitael	00:40–01:00	Mar 22, Jun 2, Aug 13, Oct 24, Jan 4	Mar 30–Apr 3
4	Elemiah	01:00–01:20	Mar 23, Jun 3, Aug 14, Oct 25, Jan 5	Apr 4–8
5	Mahasiah	01:20–01:40	Mar 24, Jun 4, Aug 15, Oct 26, Jan 6	Apr 9–13
6	Lelahel	01:40–02:00	Mar 25, Jun 5, Aug 16, Oct 27, Jan 7	Apr 14–18
7	Achaiah	02:00–02:20	Mar 26, Jun 6, Aug 17, Oct 28, Jan 8	Apr 19–23
8	Cahethel	02:20–02:40	Mar 27, Jun 7, Aug 18, Oct 29, Jan 9	Apr 24–28
9	Haziel	02:40–03:00	Mar 28, Jun 8, Aug 19, Oct 30, Jan 10	Apr 29–May 3
10	Aladiah	03:00–03:20	Mar 29, Jun 9, Aug 20, Oct 31, Jan 11	May 4–8
11	Lauviah	03:20–03:40	Mar 30, Jun 10, Aug 21, Nov 1, Jan 12	May 9–13
12	Hahaiah	03:40–04:00	Mar 31, Jun 11, Aug 22, Nov 2, Jan 13	May 14–18
13	Jezalel	04:00–04:20	Apr 1, Jun 12, Aug 23, Nov 3, Jan 14	May 19–23
14	Mebahel	04:20–04:40	Apr 2, Jun 13, Aug 24, Nov 4, Jan 15	May 24–28
15	Hariel	04:40–05:00	Apr 3, Jun 14, Aug 25, Nov 5, Jan 16	May 29–Jun 2
16	Hakamiah	05:00–05:20	Apr 4, Jun 15, Aug 26, Nov 6, Jan 17	Jun 3–7
17	Lauviah	05:20–05:40	Apr 5, Jun 16, Aug 27, Nov 7, Jan 18	Jun 8–12
18	Caliel	05:40–06:00	Apr 6, Jun 17, Aug 28, Nov 8, Jan 19	Jun 13–17
19	Leuviah	06:00–06:20	Apr 7, Jun 18, Aug 29, Nov 9, Jan 20	Jun 18–22
20	Pahaliah	06:20–06:40	Apr 8, Jun 19, Aug 30, Nov 10, Jan 21	Jun 23–27
21	Nelchael	06:40–07:00	Apr 9, Jun 20, Aug 31, Nov 11, Jan 22	Jun 28–Jul 2
22	Jeiaiel	07:00–07:20	Apr 10, Jun 21, Sep 1, Nov 12, Jan 23	Jul 3–7
23	Melahel	07:20–07:40	Apr 11, Jun 22, Sep 2, Nov 13, Jan 24	Jul 8–12
24	Hahiuiah	07:40–08:00	Apr 12, Jun 23, Sep 3, Nov 14, Jan 25	Jul 13–17
25	Nith-Haiah	08:00–08:20	Apr 13, Jun 24, Sep 4, Nov 15, Jan 26	Jul 18–22
26	Haaiah	08:20–08:40	Apr 14, Jun 25, Sep 5, Nov 16, Jan 27	Jul 23–27
27	Jerathel	08:40–09:00	Apr 15, Jun 26, Sep 6, Nov 17, Jan 28	Jul 28–Aug 1
28	Seheiah	09:00–09:20	Apr 16, Jun 27, Sep 7, Nov 18, Jan 29	Aug 2–6
29	Reiiel	09:20–09:40	Apr 17, Jun 28, Sep 8, Nov 19, Jan 30	Aug 7–11
30	Omael	09:40–10:00	Apr 18, Jun 29, Sep 9, Nov 20, Jan 31	Aug 12–16
31	Lecabel	10:00–10:20	Apr 19, Jun 30, Sep 10, Nov 21, Feb 1	Aug 17–21
32	Vasariah	10:20–10:40	Apr 20, Jul 1, Sep 11, Nov 22, Feb 2	Aug 22–26
33	Jehuiah	10:40–11:00	Apr 21, Jul 2, Sep 12, Nov 23, Feb 3	Aug 27–31
34	Lehahiah	11:00–11:20	Apr 22, Jul 3, Sep 13, Nov 24, Feb 4	Sep 1–5
35	Chavakiah	11:20–11:40	Apr 23, Jul 4, Sep 14, Nov 25, Feb 5	Sep 6–10
36	Menadel	11:40–12:00	Apr 24, Jul 5, Sep 15, Nov 26, Feb 6	Sep 11–15
37	Aniel	12:00–12:20	Apr 25, Jul 6, Sep 16, Nov 27, Feb 7	Sep 16–20
38	Haamiah	12:20–12:40	Apr 26, Jul 7, Sep 17, Nov 28, Feb 8	Sep 21–25
39	Rehael	12:40–13:00	Apr 27, Jul 8, Sep 18, Nov 29, Feb 9	Sep 26–30
40	Jeiazel	13:00–13:20	Apr 28, Jul 9, Sep 19, Nov 30, Feb 10	Oct 1–5
41	Hahahel	13:20–13:40	Apr 29, Jul 10, Sep 20, Dec 1, Feb 11	Oct 6–10
42	Mikael	13:40–14:00	Apr 30, Jul 11, Sep 21, Dec 2, Feb 12	Oct 11–15
43	Veualiah	14:00–14:20	May 1, Jul 12, Sep 22, Dec 3, Feb 13	Oct 16–20
44	Jelahiah	14:20–14:40	May 2, Jul 13, Sep 23, Dec 4, Feb 14	Oct 21–25
45	Sealiah	14:40–15:00	May 3, Jul 14, Sep 24, Dec 5, Feb 15	Oct 26–30
46	Ariel	15:00–15:20	May 4, Jul 15, Sep 25, Dec 6, Feb 16	Oct 31–Nov 4
47	Asaliah	15:20–15:40	May 5, Jul 16, Sep 26, Dec 7, Feb 17	Nov 5–9
48	Mihael	15:40–16:00	May 6, Jul 17, Sep 27, Dec 8, Feb 18	Nov 10–14
49	Vehuel	16:00–16:20	May 7, Jul 18, Sep 28, Dec 9, Feb 19	Nov 15–19
50	Daniel	16:20–16:40	May 8, Jul 19, Sep 29, Dec 10, Feb 20	Nov 20–24
51	Hahasiah	16:40–17:00	May 9, Jul 20, Sep 30, Dec 11, Feb 21	Nov 25–29
52	Imamiah	17:00–17:20	May 10, Jul 21, Oct 1, Dec 12, Feb 22	Nov 30–Dec 4
53	Nanael	17:20–17:40	May 11, Jul 22, Oct 2, Dec 13, Feb 23	Dec 5–9
54	Nithael	17:40–18:00	May 12, Jul 23, Oct 3, Dec 14, Feb 24	Dec 10–14
55	Mebahiah	18:00–18:20	May 13, Jul 24, Oct 4, Dec 15, Feb 25	Dec 15–19
56	Poiel	18:20–18:40	May 14, Jul 25, Oct 5, Dec 16, Feb 26	Dec 20–24
57	Nemamiah	18:40–19:00	May 15, Jul 26, Oct 6, Dec 17, Feb 27	Dec 25–29
58	Ieialel	19:00–19:20	May 16, Jul 27, Oct 7, Dec 18, Feb 28	Dec 30–Jan 3
59	Harahel	19:20–19:40	May 17, Jul 28, Oct 8, Dec 19, Mar 1	Jan 4–8
60	Mitzrael	19:40–20:00	May 18, Jul 29, Oct 9, Dec 20, Mar 2	Jan 9–13
61	Umabel	20:00–20:20	May 19, Jul 30, Oct 10, Dec 21, Mar 3	Jan 14–18
62	Jahhel	20:20–20:40	May 20, Jul 31, Oct 11, Dec 22, Mar 4	Jan 19–23
63	Anauel	20:40–21:00	May 21, Aug 1, Oct 12, Dec 23, Mar 5	Jan 24–28
64	Mehiel	21:00–21:20	May 22, Aug 2, Oct 13, Dec 24, Mar 6	Jan 29–Feb 2
65	Damabiah	21:20–21:40	May 23, Aug 3, Oct 14, Dec 25, Mar 7	Feb 3–7
66	Manakel	21:40–22:00	May 24, Aug 4, Oct 15, Dec 26, Mar 8	Feb 8–12
67	Eiael	22:00–22:20	May 25, Aug 5, Oct 16, Dec 27, Mar 9	Feb 13–17
68	Habuhiah	22:20–22:40	May 26, Aug 6, Oct 17, Dec 28, Mar 10	Feb 18–22
69	Rochel	22:40–23:00	May 27, Aug 7, Oct 18, Dec 29, Mar 11	Feb 23–27
70	Jabamiah	23:00–23:20	May 28, Aug 8, Oct 19, Dec 30, Mar 12	Feb 28–Mar 4
71	Haiaiel	23:20–23:40	May 29, Aug 9, Oct 20, Dec 31, Mar 13	Mar 5–9
72	Mumiah	23:40–24:00	May 30, Aug 10, Oct 21, Jan 1, Mar 14	Mar 10–14

Notes and References

Scripture follows the King James Version, with Tobit cited from the Catholic canon. Passages cited: Gen 3:24; Gen 10; Exod 14:19–21; Exod 25:18–22; Ps 91:11; Isa 6:2–3; Ezek 1:5–21; Ezek 10:14; Tob 12:15; Luke 10:1; Acts 17:34; Rev 4:4. Qur'an 13:11; 82:10–12.

Agrippa, Henry Cornelius. Three Books of Occult Philosophy. Translated by J. F. London: Gregory Moule, 1651. Book 3, chapters 22 and 26.

Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy: Principles and Guidelines. Vatican City, 2001. §217.

Ibn Kathir. Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Azim, on Qur'an 13:11.

Islamweb.net, fatwa on the number of guardian angels assigned to each person, citing Ibn Kathir, Ibn Jurayj, Ibn Abi Zamanin, Mulla Ali al-Qari and Abu al-Shaykh.

Lenain, Lambert. La Science cabalistique. Amiens, 1823.

Mathers, S. L. MacGregor, trans. The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage. London: John M. Watkins, 1898.

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The Celestial Hierarchy. In Pseudo-Dionysius: The Complete Works, translated by Colm Luibheid. New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, hadith of Abu Hurayrah on the angels who meet at the dawn and afternoon prayers; Sahih Muslim, hadith of Abdullah ibn Mas'ud on the companion (qarin).

SimplyCatholic.com, on the Church's guidance concerning names for guardian angels.

Webster, Richard. Spirit Guides & Angel Guardians. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1998. On Padre Pio and Pope Pius XI, p. 31.