The first Mercury caption assigns the figure to spirits described as beneath the firmament.
- Planetary group
- ☿ Mercury
- Mathers figure
- 44
- Printed plate
- X
- Text anchor
- No biblical verse is identified
Mathers assigns mixed colors and a mixture of metals 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 first Mercury caption assigns the figure to spirits described as beneath the firmament.
Within the Mercury collection, this places figure 44 among themes of spirit invocation, unusual requests, knowledge, messages, and opening barriers.
Inscription, names, and script
No biblical verse is identified: No separate verse is printed around this figure.
The letters form the names Yekahel and Agiel.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is an open center. Around it, a simple pentagram carries the two names across its lines. At the edge, a double circle contains the sparse design without a verse.
Mathers plate and witness differences
Mathers’s note is brief and supplies only two names. Later elaborate attributions should not be projected backward onto this unusually spare plate.
Plate X 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 44
Trace the pentagram as one continuous crossing form, then locate the two names on its arms. With no verse or crowded border, the figure’s analysis depends on the relation between a simple star and a paired naming scheme.
View this figure in sequence
The Mercury collection contains 5 figures, numbered 44–48 in the 1889 edition.