Who Is Archangel Raguel, and Why Did Rome Reject His Name?

What Does 1 Enoch 20:4 Say Raguel Does?

Chapter 20 of 1 Enoch names "the holy angels who watch," and its fourth verse gives Raguel a single line. In R. H. Charles's 1917 translation he is "one of the holy angels who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries."

The luminaries are the sun, moon, and stars.

In the same book's astronomical chapters, 72 to 82, Uriel shows Enoch the laws that keep those lights on schedule, so Raguel's line sits inside a book that cares about the calendar of heaven.

Charles printed "takes vengeance on" between daggers, his mark for words he judged doubtful in the manuscripts. A portrait of Raguel built on the word "vengeance" rests on the least secure phrase in the verse.

Chapter 23 is the only place Raguel acts.

Enoch sees in the far west "a burning fire which ran without resting," and Raguel, "one of the holy angels who was with me," explains that it is "the fire in the west which persecutes all the luminaries of heaven."

Read together, the passages give Raguel a narrow job tied to heavenly order. He is linked with a force that keeps the lights moving, in a book where stars that miss their appointed times are punished.

Raguel is the third angel named in both surviving forms of the list, after Uriel and Raphael. The Greek text adds Remiel as a seventh name and calls the group archangels, while the Ethiopic version stops at six, so the title "one of the seven archangels" depends on the Greek form of the chapter.

Is Raguel in the Bible, 2 Enoch, 3 Enoch, or an Apocalypse?

Raguel is not named as an angel in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, or the deuterocanonical books. The Book of Revelation mentions "the seven angels who stand before God" at 8:2 without naming any of them.

Outside the canon the name turns up in only a few places, and some of the places readers are told to look do not hold it.

Davidson's dictionary places the 2 Enoch escort in 1 Enoch, and many websites copy the mistake.

None of these texts calls Raguel an angel of justice, fairness, or harmony.

Why Did the Roman Synod of 745 Reject Raguel's Name?

Raguel was not on trial.

On October 25, 745, Pope Zachary met with bishops and priests in Rome to judge Aldebert, a preacher in Gaul whom Archbishop Boniface accused of calling himself an apostle and handing out his own hair and fingernails as relics.

Boniface's envoy, the priest Denehard, produced a prayer Aldebert had written for himself. Further on, Aldebert wrote "I pray and conjure and beseech ye" and called on eight angels by name: Uriel, Raguel, Tubuel, Michael, Adinus, Tubuas, Sabaoc, and Simiel.

The same speakers added that "by divine authority" they knew the names of only three angels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. Zachary agreed, ordered Aldebert's writings kept in the papal archives "for his perpetual condemnation," and the synod stripped him of his priestly functions under threat of anathema.

The target was a prayer that "conjured" angels by name for one man's use, and the acts never mention 1 Enoch. Raguel and Uriel were caught by the rule that only names found in Scripture are safe, while Tubuel, Adinus, Tubuas, Sabaoc, and Simiel have no known history outside the case.

How Does the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Honor Raguel?

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church reads 1 Enoch as Scripture, and it is the church where Raguel has a feast. Its Sunday School Department lists him fourth of seven archangels: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Raguel, Uriel, Phanuel, and Saquel.

The department's lesson for children says Raguel is "appointed on Lights (Sun, Moon and Stars)," which keeps the luminaries role of 1 Enoch 20:4 in plain words. The same lesson says he "hunts and punishes Satan."

His monthly feast falls on the first day of every Ethiopian month, and his yearly feast is Meskerem 1, the Ethiopian New Year, which lands on September 11 in most Gregorian years.

Byzantine Orthodoxy gives a different answer. The Orthodox Church in America's account of the November 8 Synaxis names Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jehudiel, Barachiel, and Jeremiel beside Michael, and Raguel is not among them.

Who Made Raguel the Angel of Justice, Fairness, and Harmony?

The justice-and-harmony Raguel is a modern figure, and his parts can be traced to named writers.

The first step is in Davidson's 1967 dictionary, which reports, without naming who proposed it, that the luminaries line "is interpreted to mean that, for cause, he brings other angels to account."

That interpretation turned a line about heavenly lights into a disciplinarian of angels. Websites that call Raguel a sheriff or constable over other angels are repeating Davidson's gloss, not the Enoch text.

Doreen Virtue's Archangels 101 (Hay House, 2010) presents Raguel as the archangel who brings harmony to relationships and helps people act fairly, and her books and card decks paired him with pale blue light.

Virtue left that work in 2017, after her baptism in an Episcopal church, and has since told readers not to pray to angels. The role she made popular has continued on websites and in New Age angel practice without her.

Apart from the luminaries role and the name itself, nothing in the modern Raguel is older than 1866.