I just came into possession of a full size Holy Table (fixed from the erroneous Casaubon version via Robert Turner). Having never used Enochian in the classic John Dee style, I am pretty excited at the prospect of doing so. It was fitting then that I soon found myself doing a re-reading of Mysteriorum Liber Primus by Dr. John Dee (translated by Clay Holden). Eventually, I got to the part describing the Ring.

Dee writes:

“It shewed to be a Ring of Gold: with a seal graved in it: and had a rownd thing in the myddle of the seale and a thing like a V, throwgh the top of the circle: and an L, in the bottom: and a bar ——— cleane throwgh it: And had these fowre letters in it, P E L E.”

I’ve seen this ring quite a number of times and have always wondered what PELE referred to (aside from a Hawaiian Volcano Goddess and a Brazilian soccer player). Benjamin Rowe, describing the ring states: “The letters PELE (Latin for: he will work wonders) were inscribed in the four corners.” The problem with this translation is that it’s not Latin, it’s Hebrew.

Agrippa mentions in Book III Cap.11 of The Occult Philosophy, “that place in Judges” where the word pele or peli is used in the sentence: “Nomine meum quod est (Peh Lamed Aleph)”; meaning, “My name, which is [Peh-Lamed-Aleph]”. All I found in Dowry-Raines was the word mirabile (miraculous) where Agrippa said PELE should be. Due to this, I thought for a little while that it might just be the English “Aleph” spelled out in reverse—you know—the way Hebrew is normally written, right to left.

My research lead me to an Old Testament Hebrew version of Judges 13:18. There it was: alp, which in any Hebrew-English dictionary or concordance means, “wonders or miracles.” Perhaps to avoid confusion, these letters should be substituted in Hebrew on the ring instead of the Roman letters PELE.

One very interesting thing I’ve noted on the ring is the center design. It is extremely curious that Dee, in the paragraph on the ring says to use a “thing like a V” instead of just “V” in contrast to the very specific “and an L”. But if one notes the way the circle cuts through the V and L; turning the design upside down, the “thing like a V” becomes a thing very much like an “A.” And most have probably already put two and two together and noted that this spells “AL,” a very well known name of God. Again, it is my feeling that this should probably be in Hebrew also.

As an aside, regardless of how Dee translated PELE; my favorite theory is that it may have meant originally to be transmitted as ELEP (Aleph Lamed Peh) in reverse. This makes sense if you consider how Dee spells EMETH, (Aleph Mem Tau), and how some of the Enochian “mysteries” were transmitted in reverse, such as the word SOYGA from the Book of Soyga. Soyga is ‘Agios’ (Greek for “Holy”) spelled backwards. Thus, it would be no surprise to me if PELE were a phonetic reversal of Aleph. The only thing keeping me from buying into this whole cloth is a further message from Michael concerning the ring:

“Wonders are in him, and his Name is WONDERFULL: His Name worketh wonders from generation, to generation.”

In any case, I’m pretty firm in my belief that however you decide to translate PELE, it should certainly be spelled correctly and in the proper language!

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