The caption claims protection in combat and the reversal of an attacker’s weapons.
- Planetary group
- ♂ Mars
- Mathers figure
- 30
- Printed plate
- VII
- Text anchor
- Psalm 37:15
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 protection in combat and the reversal of an attacker’s weapons.
Within the Mars collection, this places figure 30 among themes of conflict, healing, defense, coercion, and weather.
Inscription, names, and script
Psalm 37:15: Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bow shall be broken.
Eight forms encode “Elohim hath covered” in the Malachim alphabet.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is a small central circle. Around it, eight equal spokes carry encoded protective words. At the edge, the weapon-reversal verse completes the outer ring.
Mathers plate and witness differences
Mathers explicitly names the Malachim or angelic alphabet, so the internal signs are encoded letters rather than free-standing planetary marks. Redrawings that substitute ordinary Hebrew change the visual register.
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 30
Follow a single radius from hub to encoded word, then let the border provide the plain-language gloss of reversal. The repeated spokes imply protection on every approach; the psalm gives that geometry a sword-and-bow narrative.
View this figure in sequence
The Mars collection contains 7 figures, numbered 25–31 in the 1889 edition.