Archangel Zadkiel: Forgiveness and the Violet Flame
Who Archangel Zadkiel is, what the name really means, why he is not in the Bible, and how old the violet flame actually is.
Some things we put down easily. Others we carry for years — an old grudge, a debt of guilt, an injury that has long stopped being useful and still gets rehearsed at two in the morning. Archangel Zadkiel is the figure that tradition assigns to exactly that weight: mercy, forgiveness, and the letting go of what has outlived its purpose.
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Archangel Zadkiel is the figure tradition assigns to mercy, forgiveness and transformation. The name is built from the Hebrew root tsedeq, righteousness or justice, plus el for God, giving roughly 'righteousness of God'. He is not named in the canonical Bible, which names only Michael and Gabriel; Zadkiel comes from later Jewish mystical writing and the medieval angelological tradition. He is often identified as the angel who stays Abraham's hand in Genesis 22, but that text names no angel at all — the identification is supplied by later tradition. The violet flame he is best known for is roughly ninety years old, entering the record with the I AM Activity founded by Guy and Edna Ballard in the 1930s and spreading much further through Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant from the 1960s. The older layer is different and arguably more coherent: in Kabbalah Zadkiel is assigned to Chesed, the sephirah of mercy, whose planet is Jupiter — called Tzedek in Hebrew, the same root as his name. In the psychological research on forgiveness, releasing resentment does not require condoning the wrong or reconciling with the person. Angel work is a spiritual practice; where guilt, grief or an old injury weighs persistently it is no substitute for professional support.
The name Zadkiel is formed from the Hebrew root tsedeq, righteousness or justice, joined to el for God.
Source/tradition: Hebrew etymology; the same root gives Tzedek, the Hebrew name for the planet Jupiter.
Zadkiel is not named in the canonical Bible, which names only Michael and Gabriel; Raphael and Uriel appear in books outside the Protestant canon.
Source/tradition: Biblical text; Raphael in Tobit, Uriel in 2 Esdras. Zadkiel appears in neither canonical nor deuterocanonical scripture.
Genesis 22 names no angel at the binding of Isaac; the text says only 'the angel of the LORD'.
Source/tradition: Genesis 22:11-12. The identification of that angel as Zadkiel comes from later interpretive tradition.
The violet flame as a devotional practice originates with the I AM Activity (Guy and Edna Ballard, 1930s) and spread through Elizabeth Clare Prophet's Church Universal and Triumphant from the 1960s.
Source/tradition: Documented history of twentieth-century American new religious movements, drawing on earlier Theosophy.
In psychological research, forgiveness means releasing resentment and does not require condoning the wrong or reconciling with the person.
Source/tradition: Established definition in the forgiveness literature, notably Enright's process model and Worthington's REACH model.
Zadkiel is counted among the great archangels and assigned the virtue of mercy, and in Kabbalah to Chesed, the fourth sephirah.
Source/tradition: Jewish and western esoteric angelology; Chesed's planetary attribution is Jupiter.
Zadkiel is the angel who stayed Abraham's hand.
Source/tradition: Later Jewish mystical tradition; not stated in the biblical text itself.
Calling on him with a cleansing candle and a clearly named intention is common practice.
Source/tradition: Contemporary angel and ritual practice.
Waves of relief, or repeatedly encountering words such as grace and mercy, are signs of Zadkiel's presence.
Source/tradition: Spiritual interpretation; repeated noticing of a word is explained in cognitive psychology as the frequency illusion.
VERIFIED = verifiable in scientific or official sources · TRADITIONAL = historically or culturally recorded · LIVED PRACTICE = widely practiced, experiential knowledge · NOT PROVEN = spiritual interpretation, not scientifically established.
This guide covers who Zadkiel is said to be, where the name and the stories actually come from, why the famous violet flame is much younger than most articles imply, and how people work with him. Some of what follows is documented history and some of it is a hundred years old at most, and it is worth knowing which is which.
What the name means
Zadkiel — also written Tzadkiel or Zadakiel — is built the way most angel names are: a Hebrew root plus el, God. The root is tsedeq (צדק), meaning righteousness or justice. So the name reads roughly as "righteousness of God." You will also see it rendered as "the one whom God graces," which stretches the root a little but points at the same territory.
That is a slightly surprising origin for an angel of mercy. Righteousness and mercy are, in most theological systems, in tension. Holding both is more or less the whole difficulty of forgiving anyone — deciding that something was genuinely wrong and putting it down anyway. The name has that tension built into it.
Zadkiel is not in the Bible
Worth stating plainly, because a great many pages on this subject imply otherwise. The canonical Bible names exactly two angels: Michael and Gabriel. Raphael appears in Tobit and Uriel in 2 Esdras, both outside the Protestant canon. Zadkiel appears in neither. He belongs to the later literature — Jewish mystical texts, medieval angelologies, and the grimoire tradition that fed into modern Western esotericism.
The most-repeated Zadkiel story shows the pattern clearly. He is often named as the angel who catches Abraham's arm at the binding of Isaac. Read Genesis 22 and you will find that the text names no angel at all — it says only "the angel of the LORD." The name is supplied by later interpretation. The scene is scriptural; the casting is tradition.
This is not a debunking. Traditions are allowed to develop, and a figure assembled over centuries by people working out what mercy means is a real thing with real weight. It is just a different kind of claim from "the Bible says," and the difference is worth keeping.
The violet flame is about ninety years old
Search Zadkiel and the violet flame arrives within the first paragraph of nearly every result, usually with the implication that it is ancient. It is not.
The violet flame as a devotional practice enters the record with the I AM Activity, founded by Guy and Edna Ballard in the 1930s. It was carried much further, and reached far more people, through Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant from the 1960s onward, where the violet flame decree became a central practice and Zadkiel its presiding archangel. That is the lineage. Twentieth-century American new religious movements, drawing on Theosophy before them.
Ninety years is not nothing — it is long enough for a practice to be tested by a lot of people. But it is a very different provenance from the Hebrew root of the name, and articles that blur the two are selling you an antiquity that isn't there.
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Here is the detail that almost never survives into the popular versions, and it is the most interesting thing about Zadkiel.
In Kabbalah, Zadkiel is generally assigned to Chesed — the fourth sephirah, whose name means lovingkindness or mercy. That fits perfectly. But Chesed's planet is Jupiter, and the Hebrew name for Jupiter is Tzedek — the same root as Zadkiel's own name. The name, the sephirah and the planet all lock together: righteousness, mercy, Jupiter.
Jupiter's traditional colours are blue and royal purple; its day is Thursday; its qualities are expansion, generosity, and the mercy of someone who can afford to be generous. None of that is violet-flame transmutation. The oldest and best-attested layer of Zadkiel is a Jupiterian figure — the open-handed one, mercy as abundance rather than mercy as purification.
The violet came later and largely covered it. Both readings are available to you. The younger one is simply not the older one, and the older one is arguably the more coherent, since it is the one the name itself supports.
What forgiveness actually is
The tradition and the research agree on a point that matters more than any of the above, and it is the thing most people get wrong when they try this.
In the psychological literature — Robert Enright's process model, Everett Worthington's REACH model — forgiveness means releasing resentment toward someone who wronged you. It does not mean deciding the wrong was acceptable, and it does not require reconciling with them, or even telling them. It is an internal move, available to you whether or not the other person ever acknowledges anything, and available whether or not they are still alive.
That definition rules out the two things that stall people most often: waiting for an apology that isn't coming, and believing that letting go means saying it was fine. Neither is required. The rest of it is largely a matter of repetition — noticing when the rehearsal starts and deliberately not finishing it.
Signs people associate with Zadkiel
Reported quietly rather than dramatically: a sudden and slightly out-of-character impulse to let someone off; an old story resurfacing but feeling lighter than it used to; an unexpected wave of relief or compassion; words like grace, mercy and freedom turning up more than usual.
The honest note on that last one: repeatedly noticing a particular word after it has been on your mind is a well-documented cognitive effect — the frequency illusion — rather than evidence of anything external. Which does not make it useless. If your attention has started catching on the word mercy, something in you has raised the subject, and that is worth listening to whatever you think is doing the raising.
What are you actually carrying?
Tick anything true right now. Nobody sees this but you.
Thursday, and the older practice
If the Jupiterian layer is the one that interests you, it comes with a working rhythm attached, and it is a very old one.
In the traditional planetary week — the system that named the days in the first place — Thursday is Jupiter's day. You can still see it in the Romance languages, where French jeudi and Italian giovedì come straight from Jovis dies, the day of Jove. English took the Germanic substitution and gave the day to Thor instead, which is why the connection is invisible in English and obvious almost everywhere else.
So the older way to work with Zadkiel is not a violet visualisation on any evening you like. It is Thursday: the day of expansion, generosity and the mercy of someone with room to spare. Blue and royal purple rather than violet. Tin and cedar rather than amethyst. Requests framed as opening and enlarging rather than as burning away.
That difference in framing is not cosmetic. Purification asks what needs destroying in you. Jupiterian mercy asks what you have enough of to give away — including, often, the grievance itself. For a lot of people the second question is the easier one to answer honestly, and it arrives at the same place.
As for amethyst, the stone most often paired with him now: the association is a straightforward colour match to the violet flame, and it therefore dates from the same twentieth-century layer. Use it if you like it. Just know that it is keeping company with the newer Zadkiel, not the older one.
A releasing practice
Five steps, none of them complicated. The structure is doing most of the work here — a thing with a start and a finish is easier to put down than a thought you keep having.
- Make the space. Somewhere quiet, phone elsewhere. Clear the room the way you prefer — a few passes of smoke or mist — and light a candle if you have one.
- Ask. In your own words, aloud or not. Plain sentences work better than formal ones.
- Name it. Say specifically what you are putting down — the person, the incident, the version of yourself you have been prosecuting. Vagueness is where this practice usually fails.
- Hand it over. Watch the flame. Let the image do what images do; you are not required to feel anything in particular.
- Close it. Say thank you. Let the candle burn down if you lit one, and go do something ordinary afterwards.
Expect to repeat it. Forgiveness is rarely a single event, and finding that the resentment is back next week does not mean the first attempt failed. It means you are doing the normal version of this rather than the advertised one.
Where this sits among the others
Zadkiel is the one you go to for mercy — for the grudge, the guilt, the ending. Michael is called for protection and Gabriel for messages and clarity; the full roster, and where each name actually comes from, is laid out in the seven archangels. For the neighbouring figure whose remit is love rather than release, see Archangel Chamuel.
One closing note that belongs in any honest article on this: angel work is a spiritual practice, and a good one. It is not treatment. If guilt, grief or an old injury has been weighing on you persistently, that deserves proper support alongside anything you light a candle for.
Common questions
What is Archangel Zadkiel the angel of?
Mercy, forgiveness and transformation. He is called on for releasing resentment, guilt and old emotional weight, and for closing out chapters that have gone on too long. In Kabbalah he is generally assigned to Chesed, the sephirah of lovingkindness.
What does the name Zadkiel mean?
It comes from the Hebrew root tsedeq, meaning righteousness or justice, joined to el for God — so roughly "righteousness of God." The same root gives Tzedek, the Hebrew name for the planet Jupiter.
Is Zadkiel in the Bible?
No. The canonical Bible names only Michael and Gabriel; Raphael and Uriel appear in books outside the Protestant canon. Zadkiel comes from later Jewish mystical writing and the medieval angelological tradition. He is often identified as the angel who stops Abraham in Genesis 22, but that text names no angel — the identification is supplied by later tradition.
How old is the violet flame?
Roughly ninety years. It enters the record with the I AM Activity founded by Guy and Edna Ballard in the 1930s, and was popularised much more widely by Elizabeth Clare Prophet and the Church Universal and Triumphant from the 1960s onward. It is not an ancient practice, and Zadkiel's association with it belongs to that twentieth-century lineage rather than to the older sources.
How do I call on Archangel Zadkiel?
Get quiet, light a candle if you like one, and ask in plain words for help releasing something specific. Naming the thing precisely matters more than any formula. Then stay open to the impulse to soften, and expect to repeat the practice rather than finish it in one sitting.
Does forgiving someone mean I have to reconcile with them?
No. In the psychological research on forgiveness — Enright's process model and Worthington's REACH model among others — forgiveness means releasing resentment. It does not require deciding the wrong was acceptable, resuming contact, or even telling the other person. It is an internal move and it stays available to you regardless of what they do.