ColossiansOne

divine name · developed c. 200–1300 CE

The Seventy-Two-Letter Name

Seventy-two three-letter names extracted from three verses of Exodus — and the reason the number seventy-two keeps appearing on both sides of this corpus.

Rabbinic and kabbalistic JudaismJewishSolomonicShem HaMephorashThe 72 names of God

What the sources claim for it

The divine name in its extended, operable form — the version with enough parts to assign.

What is it made of?

Three consecutive verses of Exodus, each exactly seventy-two letters long, written one above another — the first in order, the second reversed, the third in order — and then read downwards in columns of three.

14:19

First verse

72 letters

+
14:20

Second verse

72 letters, reversed

+
14:21

Third verse

72 letters

+
72

The columns

three letters each

=

Seventy-Two-Letter Name

  1. 01

    First verse · 72 letters — 'And the angel of God … removed and went behind them.' Written in its normal order.

  2. 02

    Second verse · 72 letters, reversed — The reversal is the whole technique: it is what makes the columns read as new words rather than as the verses themselves.

  3. 03

    Third verse · 72 letters — 'And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.' Normal order again.

  4. 04

    The columns · three letters each — Seventy-two three-letter names, one per column, each of which later tradition assigns an angel.

History

Where does the Seventy-Two-Letter Name come from?

Exodus 14:19–21 has three consecutive verses of exactly seventy-two letters each. The rabbinic and later kabbalistic technique writes them in a grid — first forwards, second reversed, third forwards — and reads off seventy-two three-letter names in columns. Kabbalistic tradition then attaches an angel to each, producing the seventy-two angels of the Shem HaMephorash.

The number's reappearance elsewhere in this corpus is not coincidence, and should not be overstated either. Seventy-two angels of the Name, seventy-two spirits in the Ars Goetia, seventy-two spirits in Weyer's earlier list: the Renaissance Christian kabbalists who read Jewish sources are the transmission point, and the demonological seventy-two is best read as a mirror built deliberately rather than as an independent tradition arriving at the same count.

The larger argument

Why is it in a corpus about spirits?

Seventy-two is the number that gives this corpus its shape on both sides. Seventy-two angels of the Name, seventy-two spirits in Weyer's list, seventy-two in the Ars Goetia: the demonological count is a deliberate mirror built by Renaissance readers of Jewish sources, not an independent tradition that happened to arrive at the same total. Anyone counting the Goetia and finding significance in the number is finding significance somebody put there.

Afterwards

What did it turn into?

Popularised outside Judaism first by Renaissance Christian kabbalah and then by nineteenth-century French occultism, where the seventy-two angels acquire a calendar and a set of correspondences no Hebrew source gives them.

Which texts describe it?

Oldest first, with what each one does with the mark. A mark described in a Bronze Age incantation and a mark first drawn in a seventeenth-century manuscript are different kinds of claim, whatever the shape has in common.

Nearby

Related marks

The Tetragrammaton

Four letters that stopped being pronounced and became, in consequence, the most powerful thing you could write on a piece of equipment.

The Seal of Solomon

A signet ring, not a shape. The Testament of Solomon makes it the instrument by which every demon in the book is compelled to give its name.

The Brass Vessel

The container the legend says Solomon sealed the spirits into, thrown into a lake and opened by Babylonians who expected treasure. It is where the Ars Goetia says its seventy-two came from.

AGLA

An acronym, not a word: Atah Gibor Le-olam Adonai, 'Thou art mighty forever, Lord', compressed to four letters and written on almost everything.

The Hexagram

Two interlocked triangles that were ornament almost everywhere before they were a Jewish emblem anywhere — and a spirit-binding seal in between.

The Lamen

The one piece of Solomonic equipment worn rather than drawn: a disc at the breast carrying the divine names, and the operator's own credential rather than the spirit's.

All symbols