Claims Shem angels are not angels

[Lunarscorpio]

I stumbled across someone on Reddit claiming the 72 Angels of the Shem Hamephorash are not angels due to their attribution as Mercurial genii/spirits by Franz Bardon. The text will be pasted below. I am still new to the occult so I am easily spooked by certain concepts. If anyone has worked with the Shem angels, would this claim be true?

Spoiler: Claim

The 72 Shem HaMephorash “angels” are not angels, regardless of what your books or grimoires may tell you. These entities are, in fact, Mercurian arch geniuses. You can easily discover this by looking in Franz Bardon's The Practice of Magical Evocation book. These names are a one-to-one match. They are identical, even in order. Some spellings may be slightly off depending on the source. I’m only posting this because I have not seen this mentioned elsewhere, and even Google AI is pushing these things as energies instead of entities. I assure you, Google is wrong.

These entities should not be treated mildly and some of them are incredibly powerful. You should not try to evoke or invoke these things on a whim or for fun. They are not evil, but some of them are powerful enough where just them noticing you can physically affect you and even harm you. They do not behave like angels. They do not appear like angels. They are adamant they are not angels. Treating them as such, and trying to contact them assuming divine entities will not harm you because everywhere refers to them as “angels,” can lead to disaster.

The fact that these beings have been pushed this way is dangerous, and it should not be taken lightly. Even the concept of commanding or binding an angel into a circle (or whatever the hell you think you're going to do) is silly. But trying to contact these specific Mercurian genii, not understanding what they are, is like poking a cosmic bear that can warp spacetime. Some of them may ignore you, but others may not take kindly to intrusions at all, and you should not incorporate them into anything you are doing flippantly.

I'm not going to post screenshots. This is easily discoverable if you are truly interested. Find any list, or any book that names the 72 Shem HaMephorash “angels,” compare them with the 72 genii of the Mercurian Zone in Bardon’s work, and leave these things alone unless you absolutely know what you are doing.

That is all.

 

[Yazata]

I haven't read the book. But what if someone said Bardon's Mercurial arch genies aren't genies but Angels because the names are a 1 to 1 match?

 

[Lunarscorpio]

I haven't read the book. But what if someone said Bardon's Mercurial arch genies aren't genies but Angels because the names are a 1 to 1 match?

Right, the reasoning felt a bit off. And it could be UPG based off of other things the user posted. Hm.

 

[Faria]

I stumbled across someone on Reddit claiming the 72 Angels of the Shem Hamephorash are not angels

Bardon's "Mercurial Genie" thing, like the rest of his work, is made-up by Bardon and has no relevance outside of his work.

The 72 Shemhamforash seals come from Robert Ambelain's 1951 "Practical Kabbalah." His source for them (he claimed) is an 18th century book, combined with the text version (without the seals) in Lenain's "Arsenal Manuscript 2495." They appear in the Rudd variant Lemegeton as the back side of the demon seals, also 16th century.

In 1989, almost fifty years after publishing his book, Ambelain claimed that the seals in the book are evil and not angelic, owing to people using the book who became suicidal, went crazy, or got cancer.

The tradition of using the 72 names as divine or angelic names is at least 500 years old, maybe more.

I think that in a general sense if you attempt to invest your whole being into a spiritual path or practice, and yet it's full of holes and you don't know where the holes are, you're going to end up abused and confused by it. When weird things happen, you won't know why or what to do about it. I think that's what happened to Ambelain and his friends' misfortunes: they thought they were more competent than they really were. They wanted to think of themselves as clinging to the skirts of divine beings, and when any kind of hard-to-process reality hit them, they saw it as an effect of their esoteric work, and so made a point to attach those fearful superstitions to the sigils.

 

[Angelkesfarl]

Good evening. I see that Islam—yes, Islam again—some might ask: 'Will you never stop talking about it?' Well, how does a man of intellect think?I am a Muslim, men. I am going to speak about a religious text that has remained a constant reference for at least 1,447 years. It is as firm as it was then, and I believe it stands as something far more ancient and enduring than any manuscript you possess.

There are verses I will not write here out of respect for their sanctity, but I will point to the core idea. In the Islamic scripture, regarding the Day of Judgment, the Lord asks the Angels: 'Did you take these servants of Mine as worshippers for yourselves?' The response is a thunderbolt: The Angels reply, 'No, O our Lord, they used to worship the Jinn; most of them were believers in the Jinn.'

I am writing a summary of knowledge here because of the difficulty of translating sacred texts, and I hope it is respected just as I respect all other divine books. Did Bardon see a truth that Ambelain was deceived by? I do not claim the man was a Muslim, but he was speaking of a purely scientific and real matter. Who placed crosses on the sigils of angels that existed long before the birth of Jesus and his mother (peace be upon them)? Do not fear my words, but be wary.

In the book Shams al-Ma'arif, the author reveals the depth of the heritage translated and reformulated according to the Islamic Sufi thought of that time. Writing around 622 AH (approximately 1212 CE), he spoke about these names, stating that the Jews placed the 'Corrected' and 'Inverted' systems in the 'breaking' (Taksir) of certain Torah verses. They extracted names and organized them to harness the 72 celestial movements (the decans). He warned of the grave danger of inverting divine names—referring to the 'plough' system followed by the Kabbalists in organizing verses. The 'breaking' from the center, which we call the 'Heart of the Heart,' is a severe danger, and its results are divine wrath upon those who do it.

Later, in another section—as was their rhythm to separate scientific points and move in parallel but divergent directions to cloak knowledge in a prose that is impossible for anyone but their students to grasp—let me break the ban and speak from the heart. By the way, whoever ate sweets tonight, they were delicious, a gift from a Christian friend. To return to my narrative: he said that the names can be adjusted by moving in the normal way, following the 'Knight’s move' in Chess. By following this method, you ensure the purity of the text and avoid tampering. The result is similar names that you can align with the astrological ideas of Agrippa to extract new names.

A pleasant journey to the scholars of this edifice. Let us consider that even the slightest deviation will shift you, through the astronomical rotation of angles and the sciences of Notariqon and Atbash, to unexpected results belonging to other entities—Jinn, demons, or whoever they may be—but they will certainly not be the ones intended.

The real issue here is not just the entities themselves, but the human tendency to project personal incompetence onto ancient spiritual mathematics. It is not the symbol that causes the disease; it is the lack of spiritual 'immunity' (Shema/Fortification). When an amateur tries to channel a 10,000-volt current into a 10-volt circuit, the circuit melts. Was the cause for Ambelain, his men, and Bardon's system a power less than the spiritual beam directed at them? Or did they overstep their boundaries and fall into a trap within their interpretations of Kabbalistic writings—writings protected by a fence capable of electrocuting anyone who does not belong to them?

Come on, men, let’s stop hiding behind books written by men who died broken. Will the truth be found in a guide dating back to 1951? If you, dear writer, feel fear entering a certain path, then you are simply not ready yet. That is all.