Mathers assigns mixed colors to Mercury and names a mixture of metals as its corresponding metal. The 5 figures cover spirit invocation, unusual requests, knowledge, messages, and opening barriers. Those claims belong to the historical edition; the diagrams can still be analyzed as arrangements of text, script, and geometry without treating the promised effects as measured results.
The Mercury plates progress from a sparse pentagram and bar to a busy radial wheel, a many-pointed star, and a quartered name field. Their captions emphasize response, knowledge, embassies, and opening, while their scripts resist one uniform reading.
How the Mercury sequence changes
The collection is not one emblem repeated 5 times. Its centers range from an open center to a crossing of two name axes. The framing systems likewise move between a simple pentagram carries the two names across its lines and a circle divided into four compartments. Reading the group in order makes those structural choices visible.
The perimeter often does a different job from the center. In the first figure, a double circle contains the sparse design without a verse; in the last, the gate verse turns the ring into a verbal threshold. A plate crop becomes misleading when those outer words are discarded as decoration.
5 Mercury figures at a glance
First Pentacle of Mercury
The first Mercury caption assigns the figure to spirits described as beneath the firmament.
Second Pentacle of Mercury
Mathers says the named spirits answer requests outside the other categories, though they are difficult to see.
Third Pentacle of Mercury
The caption invokes Mercury spirits, especially the four angels written in the figure.
Fourth Pentacle of Mercury
Mathers assigns this figure to broad knowledge, hidden things, and messenger spirits called Allatori.
Fifth Pentacle of Mercury
The last Mercury caption says the figure opens closed doors and overcomes barriers.
Text and plate comparison
| Figure | Mathers’s stated theme | Textual anchor | Plate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. First Pentacle of Mercury | spirits, pentagram, paired names | No biblical verse is identified | X, fig. 44 |
| 2. Second Pentacle of Mercury | Boel, unusual requests, sparse geometry | No biblical verse is identified | X, fig. 45 |
| 3. Third Pentacle of Mercury | angels, planetary characters, comparison | No biblical verse is identified | XI, fig. 46 |
| 4. Fourth Pentacle of Mercury | knowledge, Allatori, unidentified verse | Unidentified versicle in Mathers | XI, fig. 47 |
| 5. Fifth Pentacle of Mercury | opening, doors, comparison | Psalm 24:7 | XI, fig. 48 |
What the plate can and cannot establish
The crops preserve the figures as Mathers printed them, including damaged or uncertain readings he discusses in his notes. The linework establishes the edition’s layout. The accompanying prose supplies names, script identifications, and claimed purposes that may not be recoverable from shape alone.
Different manuscript witnesses can change spelling, letter shape, color, order, or even the set of figures. The individual pages therefore distinguish visible evidence from Mathers’s interpretation and from the broader Clavicula tradition.