The first lunar caption invokes Moon spirits and, like Mercury 5, claims to open fastened doors.
- Planetary group
- ☽ Moon
- Mathers figure
- 49
- Printed plate
- XI
- Text anchor
- Psalm 107:16
Mathers assigns silver and silver 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 lunar caption invokes Moon spirits and, like Mercury 5, claims to open fastened doors.
Within the Moon collection, this places figure 49 among themes of opening, water, night journeys, herbs and stones, dreams, and rain.
Inscription, names, and script
Psalm 107:16: He hath broken the gates of brass, and smitten the bars of iron in sunder.
IHVH fills the door center; IHV, AL, IHH and the angels Schioel, Vaol, Yashiel, and Vehiel flank it.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is a tall central door panel. Around it, side compartments and projecting bars create a gate elevation. At the edge, names and the broken-gates verse frame the architectural form.
Mathers plate and witness differences
Mathers explicitly calls the figure a hieroglyphic representation of a door or gate. This is an editorial visual identification supported by the plate’s architecture, unlike Mercury 5’s abstract crossed circle.
Plate XI 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 49
Read from the central door leaf to the side posts and projecting bars, then match those parts to “gates” and “bars” in the psalm. The drawing and verse reinforce one another more literally here than in most pentacles.
View this figure in sequence
The Moon collection contains 6 figures, numbered 49–54 in the 1889 edition.