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Alphabet Letters

Peh פ

PAY
Also Known As Peh
Hebrew Letters

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פ
Origin Develops the Achaemenid Aramaic chancery hand, adopted after the exile

Peh is the seventeenth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, its name meaning mouth and its gematria value eighty. It is one of the seven Double letters, attributed to the seven planets, and is given to the planet Mars. In the Hermetic scheme it corresponds to the tarot trump The Tower and to the twenty-seventh path of the Tree of Life, joining Netzach to Hod. As the mouth, it symbolizes speech and the creative or destructive power of the word, that which both utters and devours; fittingly it belongs to Mars, the planet of force and sudden overthrow, and to the card of the lightning-struck tower whose false structures are broken open. Peh also takes a final form (Final Peh) when it ends a word.

Facts
Disputed
Origin Period
Scholem places Sefer Yetzirah between the second and sixth century CE 5Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.
Origin Period
Survives in three recensions that do not agree in detail 5Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Gershom Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (Schocken Books, New York, 1961) surveys the manuscript recensions of Sefer Yetzirah and finds no single stable text: the surviving copies diverge enough in wording and in the letter-to-planet and letter-to-sign correspondences that quoting "the text" requires naming which recension is meant. Comparing the linguistic style, the doctrinal content and the external references made to the work across centuries of citation, Scholem argues the book could have been composed anywhere from the second to the ninth century CE, a span of roughly a millennium, with later Kabbalistic and Hasidic writers each reading it through their own era's overlay. The atlas follows Scholem's range rather than a narrower guess, and does not print the per-letter planet and sign tables at all, because doing so would silently pick one contested recension over the others.
Origins
Origin Period
Develops the Achaemenid Aramaic chancery hand, adopted after the exile 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin Period
Not the script of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin Period
Standard by the Hasmonean period; palaeo-Hebrew survives only on coins 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Place of Origin
The Levant, by way of the Aramaic administrative script of the Persian empire. 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin of the Name
Names travelled into Greek unchanged and meaningless 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin of the Name
Northwest Semitic words inherited from the older linear script 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Origin of the Name
Pictographic meanings (ox head, house, water) are modern reconstructions 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Sense of the Name
mouth 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
The pictographic sense is a modern reconstruction from the letter name rather than a meaning attested in the script's own period, and the atlas records that position elsewhere on this letter. The name itself is inherited; the picture behind it is inferred.
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
A criticism of the predictive method, not of the tradition itself 4
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
So many possible sums exist that a match can always be found 4
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Used as proof: the beast of Revelation, verse prophecy, Bible codes 4
Identity
Alphabet
Hebrew 1
Script Type
An abjad: the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew square script record consonants, read right to left, with vowels supplied either by the reading tradition or, in pointed texts, by the Masoretic vowel-pointing system. 1Tradition: The Hebrew square script
Position
Seventeenth of twenty-two in the Hebrew alphabet 1
Attributions
Associated Sound
One of the seven Double letters: voiceless bilabial stop p when hard, voiceless labiodental fricative f when soft 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Hebrew letter mysticism is a continuous, living Jewish tradition 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
One of the seven double letters, each hard and soft 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Runs through medieval commentary, golem lore, Abulafia, hasidic teaching 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Still studied and practised today 2Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
The seven assign to seven planets and seven opposite pairs 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Which planet goes with which letter is not recorded; recensions differ 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Wisdom/folly, wealth/poverty, seed/desolation, life/death, dominance/subjugation, peace/war, grace/ugliness 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters
Learn More
Peh: The Hebrew Letter of Mouth

Peh (Pe) is the seventeenth Hebrew letter and a double letter, sounding as a hard 'p' or a soft 'f'. Its name means 'mouth' and its value is 80; it is fittingly the letter of speech. The Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation), the foundational text of Jewish letter-mysticism compiled in late antiquity, divides the twenty-two Hebrew consonants into three groups: three 'mother' letters (Aleph, Mem, Shin) assigned to the elements Air, Water and Fire; seven 'double' letters, each with a hard and soft pronunciation, assigned to the seven classical planets and to seven pairs of opposites; and twelve 'simple' letters assigned to the twelve signs of the zodiac and the twelve months. As a double letter Peh is assigned to a planet and a pair of opposites.

A separate and much later system, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (founded 1888), mapped the twenty-two letters onto the twenty-two trumps of the tarot along the paths of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This tarot correspondence is a modern Western-esoteric overlay, not part of the ancient Hebrew or classical Kabbalistic tradition. The Golden Dawn attributes Peh to the planet Mars and to The Tower (trump XVI), the lightning-struck tower of sudden, forceful upheaval.

Peh: Scribal Tradition

Peh's name means mouth, and a long tradition in Jewish letter-mysticism reads the letter's ordinary, open square-script shape as a figure for revealed, outward speech, in contrast with the separate closed final form used at the end of a word, discussed elsewhere in this atlas, which some commentators read instead as a figure for speech held back, concealed, or not yet spoken. That contrast between an open, forward-facing form and a closed, final one is not unique to Peh among the Hebrew letters, but Peh's own name makes the pairing unusually direct, since the ordinary letter's literal meaning already names the faculty, speech, that the shape is said to picture.

Because Peh is one of the Sefer Yetzirah's seven double letters, discussed elsewhere in this atlas, a sofer must also distinguish its hard p and soft f pronunciations by the presence or absence of a dagesh in vocalised texts, a linguistic distinction layered on top of, and independent from, the open-and-closed symbolism attached to its two written forms. Peh's literal meaning is old enough to predate the square script itself, carried over from the earlier palaeo-Hebrew writing that Jewish tradition holds the current alphabet replaced after the Babylonian exile, a transition discussed elsewhere in this atlas, and the letter's mouth-shaped meaning has stayed remarkably legible across that whole span of script reform, since a mouth is one of the easier human features to render in a simple line drawing. Later Kabbalistic literature sometimes extends the reading further, treating the five sofit letters as a group, discussed elsewhere in this atlas, as pointing collectively toward concealed matters.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

The Tower, Tarot

In the Golden Dawn Kabbalistic attribution, The Tower corresponds to the Hebrew letter Peh by way of its Tree of Life path.

Source The Golden Dawn: The Original Account of the Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, 6th editionIsrael Regardie

Derived from This

Peh P, Alphabet Letters

Malachim Peh stands for the Hebrew letter Peh, and carries its value of 80. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Peh P, Alphabet Letters

Celestial Peh stands for the Hebrew letter Peh, and carries its value of 80. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Peh P, Alphabet Letters

Passing the River Peh stands for the Hebrew letter Peh, and carries its value of 80. Agrippa prints the three scripts in Book III of De occulta philosophia as tables of Hebrew equivalents. The sign shapes vary between the manuscript and printed traditions; the letter for letter correspondence does not.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa

Related To

Af (Fa) ፈ, Alphabet Letters

Af and the Hebrew peh continue the Semitic p. Hebrew kept the stop. Ge'ez shifted it to f, as Arabic did, which is why the fidel had no letter for p and later had to make two.

Source Comparative Dictionary of Ge'ez (Classical Ethiopic)Wolf Leslau
Ap ࡐ, Alphabet Letters

Mandaic Ap and Hebrew Peh occupy the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence. Hebrew keeps the inherited noun as the letter name and the numeral value 80; Mandaic keeps neither. Where the Mandaic shapes came from is disputed, a cursive Aramaic hand or the Parthian chancery script.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Fa ف, Alphabet Letters

Cognate letters. Arabic fa and Hebrew peh both continue the twenty-two letter Northwest Semitic alphabet, and they hold the same place in the inherited order and the same numeral value, 80. Neither is derived from the other.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Fi ࠐ, Alphabet Letters

Samaritan Fi and Hebrew Peh are cognates at the value 80, both continuing the same Paleo-Hebrew sign. The Samaritan name records the reading of this letter as f. Hebrew has a final form of it and Samaritan has none, the finals being a development of the Aramaic square script.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Final Peh ף, Alphabet Letters

The word-final form of Peh rather than a separate letter. Hebrew writes five of its consonants differently at the end of a word, and the two shapes stand for one and the same letter. The value 800 recorded here is the extended mispar gadol reckoning; in standard gematria the final form counts 80, exactly as Peh does.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Pe ܦ, Alphabet Letters

Syriac Pe and Hebrew Peh stand at the same place in the twenty-two letter Aramaic sequence and carry the same letter-numeral value, 80. The Syriac script grew out of the local Aramaic cursive of Edessa and the Hebrew square script out of the same Aramaic alphabet, so the two letters are inherited from one ancestor rather than borrowed from each other.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Pe, Alphabet Letters

Both signs continue the same Northwest Semitic consonant inherited from a shared abjad ancestor; this is a cognate correspondence, not a borrowing in either direction. Ugaritic and Hebrew share the same twenty-two-consonant core, with Ugaritic adding six further signs Hebrew never developed separately.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Peh P, Alphabet Letters

Celestial Peh is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Peh; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Peh P, Alphabet Letters

Malachim Peh is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Peh; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Peh P, Alphabet Letters

Passing the River Peh is a cipher glyph standing for the Hebrew letter Peh; Agrippa's Book III prints Celestial, Malachim and Passing the River as tables of Hebrew equivalents, letter for letter.

Source Three Books of Occult PhilosophyHeinrich Cornelius Agrippa
Pi π, Alphabet Letters

Greek Pi and Hebrew Peh are cognates. Both continue the same Phoenician sign, which is why both carry the numeral value 80 in their letter-number systems. A shared ancestor, not a borrowing in either direction. The Greek alphabet was adapted from the Phoenician abjad in the early first millennium BC, and the Hebrew square script descends from the same abjad through Aramaic.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Pi π, Alphabet Letters

Hebrew Peh and Greek Pi continue the same Phoenician pe; both carry the numeral value 80 in their letter-number systems.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Sources
1. The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996the chapter on the Aramaic scriptView the Source
2. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid
Moshe Idel, State University of New York Press, 1990the chapters on the letter-combination traditions and their reception
3. Sepher Yetzirah (Book of Formation)
Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Abraham)On Peh as a double letterView the Source
4. Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought
Underwood Dudley, Mathematical Association of America (Spectrum series), 1997the chapters on the beast, on the law of small numbers and on biblical sevensView the Source
5. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Gershom Scholem, Schocken Books, 1961the chapter on early Jewish mysticism, on Sefer YetzirahView the Source
Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, and the Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom
William Wynn Westcott, Theosophical Publishing Society / Internet Sacred Text Archive, 1887On the double letters and the planetsView the Source
The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume I
Stuart R. Kaplan, U.S. Games Systems, 1978For the Golden Dawn attribution (Mars, The Tower)View the Source
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