Where the Names come from

Three verses in Exodus tell how the angel and the pillar of cloud moved between Israel and Egypt, and how Moses stretched his hand over the sea (Exodus 14:19, 20 and 21). In the Hebrew text each of these three verses has exactly 72 letters.

The medieval commentator Rashi, explaining a line in the Talmud (Sukkah 45a), describes how the Names are read out of these verses:

• take the first letter of the first verse,
• the last letter of the middle verse,
• and the first letter of the last verse.

Then move one step inward each time: the second letter of verse 19, the second-to-last letter of verse 20, the second letter of verse 21, and so on. The middle verse is read backward. Seventy-two steps give seventy-two three-letter Names. Rashi gives this explanation while commenting on a prayer the Mishnah records from the Temple willow ceremony: "Ani vaho, please save us" (Mishnah Sukkah 4:5). He identifies both words as Names from this list: והו (Vav He Vav) is the first Name and אני (Aleph Nun Yod) is the thirty-seventh.

This is the Kabbalistic and rabbinic tradition, and it belongs to that tradition. We present it here with respect and with credit to the sages and scholars who preserved it.

How we checked this list

We took the Hebrew text of Exodus 14:19 to 21 from Sefaria ("Miqra according to the Masorah"), counted the letters (72, 72 and 72), and applied Rashi's rule letter by letter. All 72 Names in the table below match that reading. The only differences are cosmetic: Hebrew has special shapes for some letters at the end of a word (ך for כ, ם for מ, ן for נ). This table writes each Name with the end-of-word shape on its last letter, which is a common convention. Some published charts write the plain shapes instead (for example מיכ for #42 and יבמ for #70). The letters are the same.

Reading the table

• Hebrew: the three letters of the Name, read right to left.
• Letters: the names of the three Hebrew letters, so a reader without Hebrew can follow along. These Names are not words and have no fixed pronunciation.
• Name in later tradition: from the Renaissance onward, Christian Kabbalists (Johannes Reuchlin, then Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Athanasius Kircher, and later Lenain in La Science Cabalistique, 1823) turned each Name into an angel name by adding the ending -iah or -el. Spellings vary a great deal from book to book (Jeliel or Jelial, Aniel or Haniel, Rochel or Roehel).
• Association: a one- or two-word theme as given in popular modern angel lists. This column is symbolic (a Column C reading), not history. The wording differs from book to book and is not found in the Hebrew sources. Where a popular list uses medical wording, we have kept only the non-medical part of the theme. Nothing on this page is a health claim.

The 72

Notes on variants

• Repeated triplets. The reading itself produces some identical three-letter Names at different positions: והו at #1 and #49, לאו at #11 and #17, מבה at #14 and #55. Later tradition gives them different angel names (Vehuiah and Vehuel, for example), so the position, not the letters alone, identifies the Name.
• #39. Reading the Masoretic text gives רהע (Resh He Ayin). Some printed charts show רעה (Resh Ayin He). We follow the direct reading.
• #17. At least one widely used modern table (the Wikipedia table based on Reuchlin) writes the angel name for #17 as לוויה, which would come from the letters of #19. The direct reading of the verses gives לאו, the same letters as #11.
• Zodiac. In later Western esoteric tradition (the Golden Dawn system, as collected in modern reference books such as Stephen Skinner's The Complete Magician's Tables), each Name is also given a five-degree slice of the 360-degree zodiac, starting with #1 at the first degrees of Aries. Since 72 times 5 is 360, the Names fill the circle exactly. Different books start the count at different points, so we do not list dates here.

A note on this page

This page is offered as history, scripture and contemplation. It is not religious instruction, and it makes no claim that reading, writing or reciting these Names changes anything in the body or the world. If you want to go deeper, the primary texts linked below are the best place to start, and a teacher within the tradition is better still.

Sources

• Exodus 14:19 to 21, Hebrew text, "Miqra according to the Masorah", Sefaria: https://www.sefaria.org/Exodus.14.19-21 (letters counted and Names derived on 8 October 2026)
• Rashi on Sukkah 45a, Sefaria: https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Sukkah.45a
• Mishnah Sukkah 4:5, William Davidson Edition, Sefaria: https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Sukkah.4.5
• Wilhelm Bacher, "Shem ha-Meforash", The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906): https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13542
• "Shem HaMephorash", Wikipedia (table of the 72 angels after Reuchlin; notes on Agrippa and Lenain): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shem_HaMephorash
• Benebell Wen, "The 72 Shem Angels and Their Tarot Correspondences" (reference handout, 2020), drawing on Stephen Skinner, The Complete Magician's Tables (2006), Robert Ambelain, and Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book 3: https://benebellwen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/the-72-shem-angels-reference-handouot.pdf
• Severything working list of the 72 (associations column), compiled by the site owner from popular modern angel lists