The caption describes daily contemplation of the figure as protection from earthly dangers.
- Planetary group
- ♃ Jupiter
- Mathers figure
- 23
- Printed plate
- V
- Text anchor
- Psalm 22:16–17
Mathers assigns blue and tin to this planetary group. The crop documents his printed linework; it does not reproduce the color or material described elsewhere in the edition.
What Mathers’s caption claims
The caption describes daily contemplation of the figure as protection from earthly dangers.
Within the Jupiter collection, this places figure 23 among themes of treasure, status, protection, visions, and relief from poverty.
Inscription, names, and script
Psalm 22:16–17: They pierced my hands and my feet; I may tell all my bones.
Seraph, Kerub, Ariel, and Tharsis occupy the arms of the cross.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is the crossing point of four name-bearing arms. Around it, a broad cross assigns one elemental ruler to each direction. At the edge, the suffering verse rings the whole.
Mathers plate and witness differences
The editor identifies the four names as elemental rulers. Numbering and wording of the psalm differ across traditions, so the 1889 English form should remain tied to this edition rather than silently normalized.
Plate V is an artifact of Mathers’s 1889 arrangement. His preface and final note say that he compared differing manuscripts and restored difficult Hebrew and magical characters. Sloane 2731 and Lansdowne 1203 remain distinct manuscript objects; this printed crop should not stand in for either one.
WORKED EXAMPLE
A diagram reading of figure 23
Follow the cross arms outward and name the four rulers before reading the border. The diagram uses a stable four-way frame; the verse about a pierced body overlays vulnerability on that ordered structure, explaining how the caption can frame the same image as protection.
View this figure in sequence
The Jupiter collection contains 7 figures, numbered 18–24 in the 1889 edition.