The caption claims the figure can be applied to an afflicted part against disease.
- Planetary group
- ♂ Mars
- Mathers figure
- 26
- Printed plate
- VI
- Text anchor
- John 1:4
Mathers assigns red and iron 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 claims the figure can be applied to an afflicted part against disease.
Within the Mars collection, this places figure 26 among themes of conflict, healing, defense, coercion, and weather.
Inscription, names, and script
John 1:4: In him was life, and the life was the light of man.
IHVH, IHShVH, and Elohim fill the hexagram; He repeats at its angles.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is a stacked set of divine names. Around it, a hexagram repeats the letter He at six points. At the edge, the Johannine life-and-light sentence surrounds it.
Mathers plate and witness differences
Mathers interprets IHShVH as a Christianized form made by inserting Shin into IHVH, then uses John’s prologue to argue for antiquity. That historical argument belongs to the editor, not to the linework itself.
Plate VI 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 26
Locate the inserted Shin in the central name before moving to the repeated He letters and the Gospel border. The worked sequence shows how Mathers makes a linguistic insertion carry the healing theme, then reinforces it with “life” and “light.”
View this figure in sequence
The Mars collection contains 7 figures, numbered 25–31 in the 1889 edition.