The caption associates the figure with ruin, destruction, death, and spirits said to bring news from the south.
- Planetary group
- ♄ Saturn
- Mathers figure
- 14
- Printed plate
- III
- Text anchor
- Deuteronomy 6:4 and Psalm 109:18
Mathers assigns black and lead 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 associates the figure with ruin, destruction, death, and spirits said to bring news from the south.
Within the Saturn collection, this places figure 14 among themes of constraint, adversity, night work, protection, and destructive claims.
Inscription, names, and script
Deuteronomy 6:4 and Psalm 109:18: Hear, O Israel: IHVH our God is one IHVH; the border compares a curse to a garment, water, and oil.
The Shema is placed on the triangle; a central Yod anchors the figure.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is a single Hebrew Yod at the center. Around it, a triangle mediates between the center and circular frame. At the edge, the hostile psalm verse runs around the outside.
Mathers plate and witness differences
This figure joins two different biblical passages with a directional claim in the caption. Mathers’s English explanation makes that composite legible, but it should not be flattened into one scriptural quotation or one undifferentiated seal.
Plate III 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 14
Read the Yod as the smallest unit, then the triangle as the first expansion, and only then the two textual layers. The calm unity statement lies inside; the cursing verse forms the exterior pressure. Their placement creates a deliberate interior/exterior tension.
View this figure in sequence
The Saturn collection contains 7 figures, numbered 11–17 in the 1889 edition.