Practice · Tools · Ars Goetia
Ring of Solomon
A silver ring held before the operator's face in encounters the text associates with noxious fumes.
What the source describes
The Goetia gives the ring a very specific gesture: it is worn on the middle finger of the left hand and held against the face. The catalogue repeats that instruction for kings such as Beleth, Berith, and Astaroth, while the separate ring caption says it preserves the operator from the spirits' stinking fumes.
Historical setting
The Ars Goetia is the first part of the seventeenth-century Lemegeton compilation. Its diagrams and implements belong to that textual setting; attribution to Solomon is part of the work's traditional frame, not a historical authorship claim.
Common uses
It is raised between face and apparition during particular conjurations. The gesture and placement are more textually secure than the common modern tendency to treat any engraved ring as a universal talisman of authority.
Form, materials and reconstruction
The relevant catalogue entries specify silver. Peterson connects the damaged central lettering in the manuscript image with forms of the Greek term for the 'unpronounceable' name and the Tetragrammaton, but notes that the other manuscripts do not preserve the same stray glyph. The uncertain lettering should remain uncertain in any redraw.
Element: No fixed element
This source does not assign this particular instrument a fixed element. Its materials or effects should not be turned into an elemental correspondence without a named source.
Sources and variations
This ring is neither the Secret Seal that closes the vessel nor a general planetary ring. Its material, finger, and face-covering gesture come from specific Goetic passages.
Primary account used here
Lemegeton, Ars Goetia, 'The Ring of Solomon' and the entries for Beleth, Berith, and Astaroth ↗
Further references
- Lemegeton: manuscript introduction ↗Places the Goetia within the larger five-part compilation and identifies the manuscripts used.
- Key of Knowledge, Add. MS. 36674 ↗A related Solomonic witness for comparing circles, instruments and ritual layout without treating the texts as identical.