Mathers connects the figure with war, anger, discord, hostile resistance, and terror.
- Planetary group
- ♂ Mars
- Mathers figure
- 27
- Printed plate
- VI
- Text anchor
- Psalm 77:13
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 connects the figure with war, anger, discord, hostile resistance, and terror.
Within the Mars collection, this places figure 27 among themes of conflict, healing, defense, coercion, and weather.
Inscription, names, and script
Psalm 77:13: Who is so great a God as our Elohim?
Eloah and Shaddai flank a large central Vau.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is an enlarged Hebrew Vau. Around it, a hexagram sets divine-name letters in opposed positions. At the edge, the psalm question forms the outer band.
Mathers plate and witness differences
Mathers calls the central Vau the signature of a Qabalistic figure. That interpretation is a late editorial gloss on a visible letter and should not be mistaken for a caption present inside every witness.
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 27
Start with the oversized Vau, then reconstruct Eloah and Shaddai from the surrounding letters. The border asks a question of incomparable power; the diagram answers visually by magnifying one letter and surrounding it with divine names.
View this figure in sequence
The Mars collection contains 7 figures, numbered 25–31 in the 1889 edition.