Nachiel

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The intelligence of the Sun

The character of Nachiel is drawn for Coven members.

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PlanetSun
Set overThe intelligence
In Hebrewנכיאל
Letters50 + 20 + 10 + 1 + 30
Which make111
✦

Nachiel is the intelligence of the Sun in Agrippa’s arrangement. It is set against Sorath, the spirit.

The character is not a drawing. It is the name itself, laid on the table of the planet. The Hebrew נכיאל has the letter values 50 + 20 + 10 + 1 + 30. A value larger than the square takes the cell that matches it by Aiq Bekar, so here 50 at 5. Joining those cells in the order the letters are written gives the figure, beginning at the small circle.

Added up, the letters of Nachiel come to 111 — the number every row and column of the square of the Sun comes to.

Where this comes from

Agrippa finished the three books of De occulta philosophia around 1510 and they were printed at Cologne in 1533. The second book is the one about number, and in it each of the seven planets is given a table of numbers, a seal, and two further figures for the intelligence and the spirit set over it. The figures here are traced from the English translation printed at London in 1651.

Henry Cornelius Agrippa, De occulta philosophia libri tres, Book II (Cologne, 1533), in the English translation printed at London in 1651. The text and the characters are in the public domain.

Traced from the plate, not redrawn. The broken strokes and thickened corners are the press and the paper; straightening them would change the figure.

Agrippa’s figures were recopied from edition to edition, and the later copies take liberties — Francis Barrett’s of 1801 redraws them with a free hand. Nothing here is taken from a redrawing.

Agrippa’s own figures do not always follow the method exactly. Where the plate and the method disagree, what is shown is the plate.

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