Is Sandalphon the prophet Elijah?

In some kabbalistic writing, yes. Moses Cordovero, a sixteenth-century kabbalist, identifies Sandalphon with Elijah, who was taken up to heaven without dying in 2 Kings 2:11. The Talmud's Sandalphon passage does not make that link.

Is Sandalphon Metatron's twin?

Later sources call them brothers. The name is usually derived from Greek synadelphos, co-brother; Emek ha-Melekh (1648) reads the two lads of Genesis 48:16 as the pair; and Golden Dawn tables put Metatron at the top of the Tree of Life and Sandalphon at the bottom.

What color is associated with Sandalphon?

It depends on the system. Crowley's 777 gives Malkuth, Sandalphon's sefirah, citrine, olive, russet and black, while the Learn Religions profile assigns him red. Neither color scheme comes from Jewish sources.

Who Is Archangel Sandalphon, the Prayer-Bearing Angel?

Q: Who is Archangel Sandalphon?

Sandalphon is an angel of Jewish mystical tradition. The Talmud (Hagigah 13b) describes him standing on the earth behind God's chariot and weaving crowns for God, and later Hekhalot texts and the Zohar make him the angel who brings human prayers before God.

Q: Is Sandalphon in the Bible?

No. The Talmud connects Sandalphon with the wheel on the ground in Ezekiel 1:15, but that is a rabbinic reading: Ezekiel names no angel, and no other biblical book mentions him.

Archangel Sandalphon is the angel Jewish mystical texts place behind God's chariot, so tall that he stands on the earth while his head reaches the living creatures of Ezekiel's vision. The Talmud says he weaves crowns for God, and later mystical writers made him the angel who brings human prayers before God. That second role is why modern books call him the angel of prayer.

The Bible never mentions him, and he is missing from the oldest Jewish lists of four and seven archangels. He comes from the Merkabah literature about the heavenly chariot. Most of what modern profiles add, from the prophet Elijah to music to earth colors, was attached in later centuries by writers who can be named and dated.

The prayer role also has scriptural neighbors. Raphael in the Book of Tobit and an unnamed angel in Revelation both bring prayers before God, but neither text mentions Sandalphon.

Quick Facts

Name meaning: Usually derived from Greek synadelphos, co-brother; a scholarly proposal, not a settled etymology
Primary role: Weaves crowns for God in the Talmud; brings human prayers before God in later Jewish mysticism
Earliest source: Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 13b, in a reading of the wheel on the ground in Ezekiel 1:15
Biblical status: Not named in any book of the Bible and absent from the oldest Jewish lists of four and seven archangels
Linked figures: Paired with Metatron as his brother; identified with the prophet Elijah by Moses Cordovero
Common symbols: Crowns and fire in Jewish sources; flower garlands, earth colors and music in modern ones

What Does the Talmud Say About Sandalphon's Height and Crowns?

The earliest text to name Sandalphon is the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Hagigah 13b. Rabbi Elazar reads the wheel on the ground beside the living creatures in Ezekiel's chariot vision (Ezekiel 1:15) as an angel who stands on the earth while his head reaches the creatures above. A baraita quoted in the same passage names this angel Sandalphon, says he is taller than his fellow angels by a distance of five hundred years' travel, and says he stands behind the divine chariot weaving crowns for his Maker. A page earlier, Hagigah 13a gives the same five hundred years as the distance from the earth to the first firmament, so the measure makes Sandalphon span the gap between the ground and the heavens.

The Gemara then questions its own picture. Ezekiel 3:12 blesses God's glory "from His place," which the rabbis read as meaning that no one knows where that place is, so no angel could walk up and set a crown on God's head. Their answer is that Sandalphon says a name over the crown, and the crown goes and rests on God's head by itself. In the oldest Sandalphon passage, the angel prepares the offering but does not hand it to God.

Pesikta Rabbati 20, an early medieval collection of homilies, adds fire. When Moses ascends to receive the Torah, the angel Hadarniel guides him until they reach the fire of Sandalphon, and Moses is so afraid that God places Himself in front of him for protection. Before any prayer role appears, Sandalphon is a figure of height and fire whom even Moses cannot face.

The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) notes that Sandalphon is missing from the oldest Jewish lists of four and seven archangels and that no non-Jewish source of its time mentions him. He belongs to the esoteric chariot lore of the Talmudic rabbis. Calling him an archangel applies a rank from lists that never included him to a figure the rabbinic texts describe only by his height and his station behind the chariot.

How Did Sandalphon Become the Angel Who Carries Prayers?

The prayer role belongs to the mystical writing that came after the Talmud. In the Hekhalot texts about the heavenly palaces, and in several passages of the Zohar (ii 58a, ii 246a, iii 252b), Sandalphon keeps his place near God in the seventh hall, is described as the fiercest fire, and brings the prayers of human beings before God. Wilhelm Bacher and Ludwig Blau, who collected these passages for the Jewish Encyclopedia, observe that his nature stays the same across them: the giant of Hagigah 13b is now also the one who carries human words upward.

Liturgical poetry spread the role. In the piyyutim, the hymns added to synagogue prayer, Sandalphon appears as an angel of prayer, and the eleventh-century poet Solomon ibn Gabirol treats him that way. Folk manuals handed him narrower charges: Sefer Raziel places him over the month of Adar, Amtahat Binyamin puts him over the shofar blasts of Rosh Hashanah and recommends his name for protection in the forest, and his name appears on an amulet against miscarriage.

Read in that order, the role grows in steps. The Talmud supplies height, a place behind the chariot and crowns; the palace texts and the Zohar add prayer; the hymns make prayer his best-known task; and the folk manuals attach him to a month, a ritual sound and protective charms. A modern profile that opens with "Sandalphon carries our prayers to God" starts at the second step and leaves out the first.

Is Sandalphon in the Bible, and Was He Once Elijah?

Neither the Hebrew Bible, the deuterocanonical books, nor the New Testament mentions Sandalphon. The nearest verse is Ezekiel 1:15, the wheel on the ground beside the four living creatures, and the link between that wheel and Sandalphon is Rabbi Elazar's reading in the Talmud, not something Ezekiel says.

Churches that keep feasts of the angels do not list him either. The Orthodox commemoration on November 8 honors Michael with Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jehudiel, Barachiel and Jeremiel. The Catholic Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001, paragraph 217) discourages giving names to the holy angels except Gabriel, Raphael and Michael, whose names appear in scripture. Sandalphon reaches Christian readers through Longfellow's poem, Golden Dawn diagrams and modern angel books rather than through any church calendar.

The Elijah identification comes from Kabbalah. Scripture never records Elijah's death: 2 Kings 2:11 has him carried up to heaven in a whirlwind after a chariot of fire separates him from Elisha. The sixteenth-century Safed kabbalist Moses Cordovero identifies Sandalphon with Elijah in chapter 14 of his work on the heavenly palaces, and the Jewish Encyclopedia points to related material in the medieval prayer book Mahzor Vitry and in the later Yalkut Hadash. The Talmud's Sandalphon passage never mentions Elijah.

The identification follows the same pattern as the older tradition that Enoch, who "walked with God: and he was not" (Genesis 5:24), became Metatron: a man whose death scripture does not report receives an angelic name. Quoted accurately, Elijah as Sandalphon is a teaching of named kabbalists, and the Books of Kings contain no trace of it.

Why Is Sandalphon Called Metatron's Brother?

The brotherhood starts with the name. The usual derivation takes Sandalphon from the Greek synadelphos, co-brother, and the Jewish Encyclopedia notes that the texts make him the brother of Metatron rather than of God. The derivation is a scholarly proposal, and the name article sets out the rival explanations and why none of them is settled.

Kabbalists then gave the pair a biblical verse. Naphtali Herz Bacharach's Emek ha-Melekh (1648) reads "the lads" whom Jacob asks the redeeming angel to bless in Genesis 48:16 as Metatron and Sandalphon. In Genesis the lads are Joseph's sons Ephraim and Manasseh, so the reading turns a family blessing into a statement about two angels.

Western esoteric diagrams fixed the pair at opposite ends of the Tree of Life. In the attribution tables Aleister Crowley published in 777 (1909), which draw on Golden Dawn teaching, Metatron is the archangel of Kether, the crown at the top, and Sandalphon is the archangel of Malkuth, the tenth sefirah at the bottom, with Metatron's name printed in brackets beside his. Modern writers who call the two twins are drawing on some mix of the Greek derivation, the Genesis 48 reading and this diagram, three sources from very different periods: an etymology proposed in nineteenth-century scholarship, a seventeenth-century kabbalistic reading and a twentieth-century occult table.

Can You Ask Sandalphon to Carry a Prayer?

Jewish sources separate carrying a prayer from receiving one. The mystical texts describe Sandalphon bringing prayers before God, and the hymns picture him in that role, but the prayer itself is addressed to God. Maimonides' fifth principle of faith, in his commentary on Mishnah Sanhedrin 10, rules out praying to the angel himself: worship belongs to God alone, not to the angels, and in J. Abelson's translation, "Let us adopt no mediators to enable ourselves to draw near unto God."

Modern angel devotion takes a different line. Whitney Hopler's profile for Learn Religions describes people asking Sandalphon directly to deliver their prayers and songs of praise to God. That practice belongs to contemporary spirituality; the Jewish sources that created the figure picture him carrying prayer rather than receiving it.

None of these sources promises an answer. The palace texts and the Zohar describe Sandalphon bringing prayers before God, and none says he decides the outcome or that a request phrased a certain way will be granted. A page that sells him as a courier who guarantees delivery has added a promise the tradition never made.

The mouth of an old cast iron wall post box photographed close, the paint chipped around the slot — The slot of an old cast-iron post box, its paint chipped.

A prayer that stays close to these sources is addressed to God and can be spoken or sung, as the piyyutim were. Sandalphon enters it, if at all, as an image: a figure standing on ordinary ground whose head reaches the throne, so that words begun in daily life are pictured rising the whole distance.

Where Do Sandalphon's Flowers and Music Come From?

Sandalphon's images come from very different centuries, and the newer ones are the best known. The flowers come from poetry. In "Sandalphon," published in Birds of Passage (1858), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow describes the "Angel of Prayer" gathering prayers that "change into flowers in his hands, / Into garlands of purple and red." Longfellow calls his own story "a fable, a phantom, a show, / Of the ancient Rabbinical lore." Some modern profiles, including the Learn Religions entry, trace the garlands to the liturgy of Sukkot without naming the prayer, which leaves Longfellow's poem as the earliest version a reader can check.

Where each Sandalphon image first appears
Image	Earliest source that states it	Period
Standing on the earth, head among the living creatures	Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 13b	Late antiquity
Weaving crowns for God	Babylonian Talmud, Hagigah 13b	Late antiquity
Fire that frightens Moses	Pesikta Rabbati 20	Early medieval
Bringing prayers before God	Hekhalot texts; Zohar	Late antiquity to 13th century
The prophet Elijah transformed	Moses Cordovero	16th century
Flowers and garlands made of prayers	Longfellow, "Sandalphon"	1858
Earth colors citrine, olive, russet and black	Crowley, 777, from Golden Dawn tables	1909
Angel of music	Modern devotional profiles	Contemporary

Music is the newest title. Hopler's profile calls him "the angel of music" who "rules over music in heaven." The older sources come near it only through sound: Amtahat Binyamin assigns him the shofar blasts of Rosh Hashanah, and the piyyutim that invoked him as an angel of prayer were sung. Neither makes him a patron of musicians, so the title is best treated as modern devotion extending those details.

A brass tuning fork resting on the closed dark lid of an upright piano — A tuning fork on a piano lid. The older texts give Sandalphon crowns, fire and the shofar; the title angel of music is modern.

Why Do Modern Writers Call Sandalphon an Earth Angel?

The earth language has two checkable sources. The first is the Talmud's own image: Sandalphon is the angel who stands on the earth, the one chariot angel placed on the ground. The second is the Golden Dawn's Tree of Life, where he governs Malkuth, the Kingdom, the sefirah of the physical world.

In Crowley's 777, Malkuth's colors in the Queen Scale are citrine, olive, russet and black, drawn as four quarters, and those are the earth tones that modern Sandalphon meditations inherit. Other modern profiles give him a different color altogether: Learn Religions associates him with red, which it also assigns to Uriel. The disagreement shows that color correspondences belong to particular systems and authors, and none of them comes from the Jewish sources.

A grounding meditation built on Malkuth and its colors works inside Hermetic Qabalah, the Western esoteric system the Golden Dawn organized from Jewish and Christian Kabbalah after its founding in 1888. That system has its own internal logic, but its Malkuth correspondences are not what the Talmud or the Zohar say about him.

Which Other Angels Carry Prayer, and How Does Sandalphon Differ?

Other angels carry prayer in texts with firmer scriptural standing. In Tobit 12:12, Raphael tells Tobit that when he and Sarah prayed, "it was I who brought the record of your prayers before the glory of the Lord." In Revelation 8:3-4, an unnamed angel at the golden altar offers incense, and the smoke rises before God from the angel's hand together with the prayers of the saints.

The Orthodox Church adds Selaphiel, whom the Orthodox Church in America's November 8 entry calls "the prayer of God, impelling to prayer" and who "prays to God for mankind." Selaphiel prays for people and moves them to pray, while Sandalphon, in the mystical texts, brings prayers other people have already made.

Angels linked with prayer, and where each claim is written
Figure	What the source says	Where it is written
Sandalphon	Stands on the earth and weaves crowns for God; later brings prayers before God	Hagigah 13b; Hekhalot texts; Zohar
Raphael	Brought the record of Tobit's and Sarah's prayers before God	Tobit 12:12
Unnamed angel	Offers incense with the prayers of the saints at the golden altar	Revelation 8:3-4
Selaphiel	Prays to God for humankind and moves people to pray	Orthodox commemoration, November 8
Metatron	Given permission to sit and write the merits of Israel	Hagigah 15a

Beside these, what sets Sandalphon apart is where he stands. Raphael and the Revelation angel carry prayer inside scripture's own stories, while Sandalphon is the giant fixed on the earth behind the chariot, and his prayer role comes from Jewish mysticism rather than a canonical book. Gabriel moves in the opposite direction, bringing God's messages down to Daniel (Daniel 9:21-22) and to Zechariah and Mary (Luke 1). Metatron, the brother he is most often paired with, is remembered in the Talmud as a scribe who writes, not as a bearer of prayer.