Why number comes before image
Book II does not begin with talisman pictures. Its early chapters argue that mathematical learning is necessary, then move through one, two, three, and successive numerical scales, the forms of numbers, numeral systems, and the values assigned to letters. Only after this preparation does chapter 22 present the planetary tables. The order matters because the square is meant to join arithmetic, planetary hierarchy, divine names, intelligences, spirits, and graphic characters in one object.
Each planet receives a square of a different order. Saturn begins with three cells to a side; Venus receives seven; the Moon ends with nine. The order controls the number of cells, the constant obtained along a line, and the total of all entries. These totals are then matched to names whose Hebrew letters carry numerical values. The table is consequently both an arrangement of integers and a coordinate field on which a name can be converted into a line.
The progression from numbers to tables also joins quantity to hierarchy. Seven is associated with Venus before the seven-by-seven array appears; the array then expands seven into forty-nine positions, a line total of 175, and a complete total of 1225. Agrippa treats those derived values as signatures that can accommodate different classes of names. Arithmetic supplies the internal constraints, while the planetary attribution supplies their meaning. Neither part alone produces the printed complex.
Several graphics share one printed page
The 1651 Venus page separates the seven-by-seven table from a group headed “The Seals, or Characters.” That plural matters. One figure is the seal of Venus derived from geometric relations in the square, while other figures encode the named intelligence Hagiel and spirit Kedemel. A later reproduction can place all of them around one talisman, but Agrippa’s page preserves different routes from table to mark. The planetary seal and a character traced from a name are related products, not interchangeable labels for one glyph.
Karl Anton Nowotny’s reconstruction of the woodcuts also shows that the process was not perfectly mechanical. Lines join numbered cells, while rings, hooks, crossings, or indentations can mark beginnings, endings, repeated values, and changes in place value. Tens or hundreds may be reduced to positions available inside a smaller square. The engraver also appears to favor legible, balanced shapes. Variant or mistaken strokes therefore belong to the transmission history of the diagrams; a clean modern redraw can conceal exactly where the early print is irregular.
The chapters after the tables widen the same method. Geometry, musical proportion, bodily measure, celestial observation, zodiacal faces, and planetary images all turn relation into form. A celestial image is therefore not simply the square redrawn as a picture. It uses another kind of measured agreement: the material, figure, color, planet, zodiacal degree, and hour are coordinated under an election. The square and the image share a demand for correspondence, but their graphics are produced by different procedures.
Worked reading: how the 7×7 Venus table generates names and characters
Read the first row of the Venus table: 22 + 47 + 16 + 41 + 10 + 35 + 4 = 175. The middle row also totals 175, as do the columns and two principal diagonals; all forty-nine cells contain the integers 1 through 49 and sum to 1225. Agrippa treats 49, 175, and 1225 as Venus numbers: the square’s cell count, line constant, and total. In the accompanying name scheme, the Hebrew letter values of Hagiel total 49, while those of Kedemel total 175. The names therefore fill two different numerical dimensions of the same square.
A character is made by following the cells that correspond to the successive letter values and joining those positions. Hagiel can be traced within the 1–49 range; Kedemel requires the convention that converts a value such as 100 to a usable place-value position. The method explains the family resemblance between a name and its angular character without pretending that every stroke is inevitable. It also reveals a fault: the figure assigned to Bne Seraphim totals 1252 by Nowotny’s calculation, not the required Venus total 1225. The page is most informative when its arithmetic, naming system, drawing conventions, and error are read together. The square generates a framework for characters, while the surviving woodcut records human choices and mistakes within that framework. Reading the numbers beside the marks recovers a process that a detached modern sigil image leaves invisible.