Mathers associates the last Mars pentacle with hail and tempest.
- Planetary group
- ♂ Mars
- Mathers figure
- 31
- Printed plate
- VII
- Text anchor
- Psalm 105:32–33
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
Mathers associates the last Mars pentacle with hail and tempest.
Within the Mars collection, this places figure 31 among themes of conflict, healing, defense, coercion, and weather.
Inscription, names, and script
Psalm 105:32–33: He gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land; he smote their vines also, and their fig trees.
El and Yiai occupy the center; other names use Hebrew and the Celestial alphabet.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is paired divine names at the center. Around it, an angular multi-point field holds spirit names. At the edge, the hail-and-fire passage fills the rim.
Mathers plate and witness differences
The editor remarks that El and Yiai share a numerical value and distinguishes ordinary Hebrew from the Celestial alphabet. Those are two separate claims: one arithmetic, one palaeographic.
Plate VII 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 31
Read the paired center first, then distinguish the two scripts before reaching the weather verse. The diagram layers numerical equivalence, named spirits, and a destructive biblical scene; the storm claim is the final interpretive layer, not a picture of weather.
View this figure in sequence
The Mars collection contains 7 figures, numbered 25–31 in the 1889 edition.