are spirit guides and archangels differe

Yes — they come from different vocabularies, which is why they get mixed up. Both are spiritual/religious terms, not tarot terms.

Archangel — a specific, ranked category within a formal angelic hierarchy. The word means "chief angel." The idea comes from Jewish and Christian tradition: a named, ordered structure of angelic beings (archangels, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, and so on), with a few individuals having names and roles — Gabriel as messenger, Michael as protector, Raphael as healer. In that framework an archangel is a particular office held by a particular being. It implies a theology, a hierarchy, and often a name.

Spirit guide — a much looser term, and it doesn't belong to one tradition. Shamanic and many Indigenous traditions have their own distinct names and roles for guiding spirits, ancestors, or helpers, each with its own rules about how one is chosen and what duties they carry. The phrase "spirit guide" in its capitalized, New Age form is largely 20th-century Western popular usage, and it's deliberately non-specific: it covers ancestors, nature spirits, personal helpers, and — often — angels. It usually implies an ongoing personal relationship with something that isn't a named officeholder.

Why the confusion: "spirit guide" is sometimes used as a near-synonym for "angel," especially when the person believes a guide *is* an angel. And "archangel" is sometimes stretched to mean "any powerful guiding spirit." Once people use the words interchangeably, the distinction — a ranked office versus a personal relationship — disappears. It's a category difference (a rank in a hierarchy) versus a relationship category (who looks after this person).

Within tarot specifically: neither of these is part of the deck. There's no card for an archangel or a spirit guide. Some readers describe Major Arcana figures as guides — The Hierophant as a teacher, Temperance as a steady pacing presence — but that's the reader's interpretation layered onto the cards, not something Rider–Waite encodes. So if this came up in connection with tarot, the honest answer is that the cards don't carry this vocabulary; the deck speaks in suits, ranks, and archetypal figures.

One thing to hold onto: what I've given you is how these words are *used* across traditions, and where they overlap. Whether any of it describes something actually operating in someone's life is a matter of belief, not something a description can settle. I'd keep the two questions separate — the terms are comparable; the claims behind them aren't something I can verify.