Origin Published in 1531 in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, part of a set of alphabets he attributed to angelic or celestial origin.
Malachim, the Writing of the Angels, takes its name from the Hebrew malakhim, angels or messengers. Agrippa sets it out in the third book of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy in 1533, beside the Celestial and Passing the River alphabets. It is a cipher and not a language. Its twenty-two characters stand one for one against the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, in the Hebrew order from Aleph to Tav, so that what is written in Malachim is Hebrew. Each character carries over the whole of its Hebrew letter: the name, the pictographic meaning, the numerical value and the position in the sequence. The alphabet adds a form and nothing else. The letters themselves are composed of dots and connecting strokes, more angular and more crowded than the open Celestial forms, in the manner of astrological sigils. Its early use was angelic and talismanic inscription; unlike its two companions it was later taken up in Freemasonry, where it survives in restricted use in the higher degrees and turns up on Masonic jewels and certificates. The Latin transliterations in the tables are approximate, since several Hebrew consonants have no Latin equivalent and the last pairings follow position rather than sound.
Facts
Origins
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own accountPublished in 1531 in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy, part of a set of alphabets he attributed to angelic or celestial origin. 1 Attributed Author / CompilerSourced to the subject's own accountSet out by Agrippa in the same 1533 chapter of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy as Celestial and Passing the River; the name derives from Hebrew malakhim, angels or messengers. 1 Historical OriginSourced to the subject's own accountOne of several alphabets Agrippa presented alongside the Celestial and Passing the River alphabets as writing systems of angelic or planetary origin. 1 Identity
Script TypeSourced to the subject's own accountA cipher alphabet rather than a language of its own; its characters substitute for the letters of the alphabet of whatever language a practitioner is writing. 1 Learn More
The Writing of the Angels
Malachim takes its name directly from the Hebrew word malakhim, meaning angels or messengers, and Agrippa presents it in the third book of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 1533, as the second of his three angelic scripts alongside Celestial and Passing the River. Like Celestial, Malachim is a substitution cipher rather than an independent language: its characters stand one for one for the letters of whatever language, most often Latin or a European vernacular, a practitioner chooses to write.
Its letterforms are typically drawn as spare, angular strokes, generally considered visually distinct from both Celestial's rounded, star-like marks and Passing the River's more direct echo of Hebrew letter shapes, giving the three companion scripts a family resemblance in purpose and presentation while remaining individually recognisable, a deliberate variety that let a sixteenth century practitioner choose among several angelic-associated scripts for a given working rather than being limited to one.
A Cipher Among Ceremonial Magic's Working Tools
Along with Celestial and Theban, Malachim continued to circulate through the grimoire tradition for centuries after Agrippa's original publication, appearing in later magical manuals and, from the nineteenth century onward, in the working documents of ceremonial magic orders that drew heavily on Renaissance occult sources for their own ritual apparatus. Its use in these later contexts generally followed the same logic as the other cipher alphabets: writing a name, a word of power, or an instruction in Malachim rather than in plain Latin letters, on the reasoning that the encoded form carried a more fitting solemnity or a measure of privacy for material considered sensitive.
Because Malachim, Celestial and Theban all perform the identical structural function, ciphering an existing language letter for letter rather than constituting a separate language, choosing among them in practice has generally come down to aesthetic preference, the specific tradition a practitioner works within, or simple familiarity, rather than to any claimed difference in magical potency between the three; Agrippa himself presents all three as roughly equivalent forms of angelic writing rather than ranking them.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Attributed To
Derived From
Sources
1. Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Llewellyn, 1533Book III, the Malachim or Writing of the AngelsQuote, Book III, the Malachim or Writing of the Angels
Agrippa gives the Malachim script in the third book of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy (1533), its 22 characters answering to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet.
Malachim (reference article)
Wikipedia contributorssections on derivation, letterforms and modern useQuote, sections on derivation, letterforms and modern use
Malachim comes from the Hebrew for angels or messengers. Each letter has a distinctive symbolic form composed of dots and connecting lines. It is still used by high degree Freemasons to a limited extent.
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