Hamaliel or Hamabiel: Who Is the August Angel, and Why Do Some August Birthdays Get Two?

Hamaliel is the August angel in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, while Lansdowne MS 1203, a French magical manuscript edited by Joseph Peterson, writes the name Hamabiel each time it appears. Both texts give the angel to Virgo, and August is the month the tables pair with that sign.

The pairing causes a second problem. Virgo begins only about 24 August, so pages that sort birthdays by sign give most of August to the angel of Leo, and some settle the clash by calling one angel the primary guardian and the other the secondary.

Quick Facts

Agrippa’s spelling: Hamaliel, sixth sign angel, with Virgo, August and the belly
Manuscript spelling: Hamabiel on page 52 (sign table), pages 59-60 (list of characters) and page 82 (a ring recipe) of Lansdowne MS 1203
Capacity on page 52: Taste (Le Goût)
Leo dates in August: About 1 to 23 August, the row of Verchiel
Virgo dates in August: From about 24 August to the end of the month
“Secondary guardian”: A modern label; neither table uses it

Why do some pages give people born in August two guardian angels?

Some online profiles of the August angel describe Hamaliel as the angel who “primarily rules the Sign of Virgo” and also as “the secondary Guardian Angel of Leo natives born during the month of August.” That second role tries to fix a real mismatch between the month and the sign.

The old tables pair each sign with the month in which it begins. In the tropical zodiac Virgo starts about 24 August, with the exact day shifting slightly by year, so roughly the first 23 days of August belong to Leo.

A lookup that sorts birthdays by month gives every August date to Hamaliel. A lookup that sorts by sign gives 1 to about 23 August to Verchiel, the angel of the Leo row, and only the last week of the month to Hamaliel.

From about 24 August to the 31st, both rules return Hamaliel. A birthday on 10 August gets Verchiel by sign and Hamaliel by month, so its two names record two rules applied to one date.

The “secondary guardian” label keeps both answers by turning them into a ranking. Neither table supports that ranking: Lansdowne MS 1203 and Agrippa each give one angel per sign, and neither table names a guardian, primary or secondary, for any individual person.

Is the August angel Hamaliel or Hamabiel?

Both spellings have a source, and the choice depends on which text a page follows. Agrippa’s “Scale of the Number twelve” in Book II, chapter 14, lists Hamaliel sixth among the “Twelve Angels ruling over the signs”, in the same column as Virgo, August and the belly.

Lansdowne MS 1203 writes Hamabiel in its table of the signs on page 52, where the row reads La Vierge, Aoust, Hamabiel, Le Goût. The list of the characters of the angels of the signs on pages 59-60 repeats Hamabiel, and Peterson’s English list changes it to Hamaliel, with an asterisk, which elsewhere in the edition marks readings Peterson corrects, such as Zabpkiel to Zaphkiel.

Where each spelling of the August angel appears
Text and place	Spelling	What stands beside the name
Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, Book II, chapter 14	Hamaliel	Virgo, August, the belly
Lansdowne MS 1203, page 52, table of the signs	Hamabiel	Virgo (La Vierge), August (Aoust), taste
Lansdowne MS 1203, pages 59-60, characters of the angels	Hamabiel; Hamaliel in Peterson’s English	The angel’s written character
Lansdowne MS 1203, page 82, a ring recipe	Hamabiel	Other angels invoked in the same recipe
Angels of the Months, a modern guide	Hamaliel	August and perseverance

The third Hamabiel is the telling one. A ring recipe on page 82 names Hamabiel again in a list of angels to be invoked, so the copyist used the same form in three separate places rather than slipping once.

That consistency shows the spelling was settled within this manuscript, and it cannot show which form came first. Peterson’s introduction notes that the copy was never corrected despite occasional errors, so a spelling repeated three times can still be a repeated mistake.

Either spelling is accurate when it travels with its text: Hamaliel with Agrippa, Hamabiel with Lansdowne MS 1203.

What does the table say Hamaliel governs?

Lansdowne MS 1203 gives the Virgo row taste as its capacity, and Agrippa’s scale places the belly in the same column as Hamaliel. Both belong to a twelve-part map of the human body and its faculties, and neither describes the character of someone born under Virgo.

Perseverance, the quality most August profiles lead with, comes from the modern Angels of the Months guide. It calls Hamaliel “the angel of perseverance” and treats August as a time to review tasks, make changes and redouble effort, in a guide that cites no sources and follows the northern year.

Two further labels in modern profiles have no support in the texts cited here: Hamaliel as an angel of logic, and Hamaliel as a ruler of the order of Virtues.