What Does the July Angel Verchiel Govern in the Old Sign Tables?

What does “Congress” mean in Verchiel’s July row?

On page 52 of Lansdowne MS 1203 in Joseph Peterson’s edition, the row reads Le Lion, Juillet, Verchiel, Le Congrés. Peterson’s English gives the last entry as “Congress”, under a column heading that calls it the angel’s capacity, “the things over which they have power.”

A modern reader is likely to hear a meeting or a legislature in that word, which would make July’s angel a patron of assemblies. The other eleven entries in the same column point to a different sense.

Read down the column, it lists faculties of the body rather than offices: eyesight, hearing, smell, speech, congress, taste, operation, walking, anger, laughter, conjecture and sleep. Chapter V of Sefer Yetzirah, in Westcott’s English translation, gives the twelve simple letters of its alphabet a list of faculties that is almost the same set.

The first four places match exactly. In fifth and sixth place the two lists hold the same pair in reverse order: congress and taste against desire for food and the sexual appetite.

Five of the remaining six sit one place apart (walking and movement, anger, laughter and mirth, conjecture and thought, sleep). Operation stands seventh in Lansdowne, while work closes the Sefer Yetzirah list.

On that parallel, “Congress” in Verchiel’s row means sexual union, the faculty Sefer Yetzirah calls the sexual appetite. The reading rests on the matching lists, since no source cited here says the manuscript’s compiler copied the column from Sefer Yetzirah.

The parallel also stops at the faculties. A supplement that Westcott says is found in some versions of Sefer Yetzirah gives each sign its own faculty, and there Leo receives hearing while Libra receives sexual desire, so the two texts do not share one sign-by-sign scheme.

For a July birthday, the old row says less than most July profiles suggest. It ties Leo’s angel to one faculty in a twelve-part scheme of the human body, and it describes neither a personality nor anyone’s guardian.

Where does the July theme of holidays and play come from?

It comes from the modern Angels of the Months guide on the Archangels and Angels website, credited to Sue Harping of Leeds. Its July entry calls the month “the time for leisure and holidays” and “a time to play”, and it has Verchiel encourage time among plants and in nature.

The guide supplies no references, and its own editor notes that its seasons appear to relate to the Northern Hemisphere only. South of the equator the sun is in Leo during winter, so a July birthday in Sydney or Cape Town arrives in the cold months, nowhere near a summer holiday.

Neither the leisure theme nor the nature theme appears in the older tables. If the idea of rest suits a July birthday, it works as one modern author’s seasonal reflection, kept separate from what Lansdowne MS 1203 and Agrippa actually record.