Name 1 of the 72 Names of God: Vav-He-Vav (והו)

Among the 72 names of God, the first is the three-letter Name Vav-He-Vav, written והו in Hebrew. It is the opening column of a table built from three verses of Exodus, and it carries the number 1 in the traditional sequence. This page sets out its letters, its derivation, its angel and Psalm verse, and the place it takes in a Luckwell sigil. Everything here is presented as tradition and art, not as a claim about anyone's life.

The three letters and their values

The Name is spelled ו, ה, ו: Vav, He, Vav. In standard Hebrew gematria (mispar hechrechi) Vav is 6 and He is 5, so the three letters add up to 6 + 5 + 6 = 17. Agrippa gives the Hebrew letter values in Book II, chapter xix of his Three Books of Occult Philosophy.

• ו Vav, value 6. The Golden Dawn attributes it to Taurus and to the tarot card V The Hierophant. Its King-scale colour is red-orange.
• ה He, value 5. The Golden Dawn attributes it to Aries and to IV The Emperor. Its King-scale colour is scarlet.
• ו Vav again, value 6, with the same attributions as the first.

These are Golden Dawn conventions, recorded in the Hermetic Qabalah tradition. They are not found in the Exodus text itself.

On how to say it: the triplets are not pronounced as words in Jewish practice, so Luckwell spells them as letter names. The aids we show, VAHV, HEY, VAHV, are Luckwell's own choice of pronunciation for the page and the key. They are not tradition.

Where the Name comes from

The 72 Names are derived from Exodus 14:19–21. Each of these three verses has 72 letters. The verses are written one above the other, and the middle verse, verse 20, is read reversed. This is the boustrophedon arrangement, with the direction of reading turning back on itself. Reading down the columns then gives 72 groups of three letters. Column 1 gives this Name, and column i gives Name i. The scheme is described in the Wikipedia article on Shem HaMephorash and in an explanation on Chabad.org.

Some triplets repeat, so the number matters more than the letters. Vav-He-Vav occurs twice, as Name 1 and as Name 49. The other repeated pairs are #11 and #17 (לאו) and #14 and #55 (מבה). For that reason Luckwell always keys a Name by its number and never by its spelling. Name 49 has the same letters as Name 1 but belongs to a different place in the sequence.

The angel name, rank and Psalm verse

Later tradition, in the line from Reuchlin (1517) to Rudd, attaches an angel name to each of the 72 Names. For Name 1 the angel is Vehuiah. The rank is Seraphim, which is the first choir of nine in this scheme. The Seraphim cover Names 1 to 8, then come Cherubim (9–16), Thrones (17–24), Dominions (25–32), Powers (33–40), Virtues (41–48), Principalities (49–56), Archangels (57–64) and Angels (65–72).

The Psalm reference that Rudd's tradition pairs with this Name is Psalms 3:3. Luckwell cites the reference only and does not paraphrase or extend it. Treat the angel name, the rank and the verse as a historical layer of association built on top of the letters.

Which intentions route here, and how it appears on the sigil

Luckwell gives each of its twelve intentions a subset of the 72 Names. Name 1 is used by one of them, release. Internally Luckwell tags it "release/past". That tag is our own neutral routing label, derived from the Name's traditional associations, and it is not tradition. If you choose that word, you can read more in the page on a sigil for letting go.

On the finished sigil, the three letters sit on the outer ring. They are also traced on the same magic square as your name, in the accent colour, so the Name appears twice: once as lettering and once as a line across the grid.

How Luckwell builds it

The Name belongs to one layer of the sigil. The engine chooses a 72-Name by a hash of your birth date and your intention, within the subset for that intention. For one person and one intention the choice is stable. A different intention draws from a different subset.

The trace follows the engine's kamea rules, after Agrippa II.xxii and the Golden Dawn convention. Each Hebrew letter becomes its gematria number, and any number larger than n² is reduced by Aiq Bekar until it fits. For Vav-He-Vav the values are 6, 5 and 6. All three already fit even a 3×3 square, whose largest number is 9, so none needs reducing. The engine then joins the cell centres with straight segments. A small circle marks the first cell, a short bar marks the last, and a loop marks a repeated cell. The first and third letters here share a value, so the path comes back to a cell it has visited. The Name's own line is the only one drawn in the accent colour.

Compare the full scheme in the page on the 72 Names from Exodus, or browse the whole Luckwell archive. If you want to see this layer on a sigil of your own, you can forge your own from a name, a birth date and a single word.

FAQ

Luckwell is for entertainment and self-reflection; a sigil is a focus for your own intention, not a promise about health, money or the outcome of any event; 16+.