Introducing the Planetary Angels

The seven archangels have been with us for millennia. Most people just don't know there are also the seven planets.

To indigenous cultures across the globe, the world was alive with Living Spirit. Everything had an animating force — places, objects, plants, animals, people and even ideas. It was the shaman's role to connect the tribe to the spirit realms and thus maintain a healthy relationship between worlds. They used various tools — psychic skills, working with dreams, creating art, drumming, chanting, and more — to cross between worlds.

But the central avatars of the divine realm were the seven visible planets. Called by the Corpus Hermetica the "seven governors of the world," as the moving elements of the heavens, they were responsible for weaving the fabric of the material world into existence. In other words, they were the celestial midwives of the natural world.

The Greeks called the planets daimons — guiding Spirits.

With the coming of the institutional Christian Church, there was little room for animism and lesser spirits, only the One God. And so talk of daimons was — quite literally — demonized.

But Spirit always finds a way. And so, even in the darkest of ages, interest in angels blossomed.

The word angel derives from a Greek word meaning "messenger." The Bible alludes to a vast heavenly host, chief among them the "seven angels who stand before God" (Revelation 8.2) or the "seven punishing angels" (Ezekiel 9.2). These archangels govern all of the heavenly host. In iconography and religious practice, they take the place of the seven planetary daimons. To the Christian mind, allying with angels was far safer than what Renaissance scholar Marsilio Ficino would later call "star demons."

We have dozens of angel-planet catalogs penned between the 6th and 19th centuries; not all agree on which archangel represents each planet. But there's enough consistency in the tradition that the planetary spirits still shine through the angels' wings.

The links between astrology and angelology run deep. Beyond the seven archangels, there were lesser angels for every astrological sky-division — the 12 solar Zodiac signs, the 28 Lunar Mansions, the 4 triplicities, the 36 decans, and the 72 quiniaries. To the Medieval mystics, for any moment in time, an ever-shifting heavenly host was teaming up to infuse the world with spirit and lift matter to transcend itself.

It's a beautiful vision worth recovering.

In the posts that follow, I'll introduce you to each of the seven planetary angels. You'll have to decide for yourself what to make of them. But the tradition is clear on one thing: reading about them is only the beginning. Communing with the planetary angels is a mystical vision — one you must experience for yourself.

The Seven Planetary Angels

• Michael, Archangel of the Sun
• Gabriel, Archangel of the Moon
• Raphael, Archangel of Mercury
• Hanael, Archangel of Venus
• Camael, Archangel of Mars
• Zadkiel, Archangel of Jupiter
• Cassiel, Archangel of Saturn