Mathers assigns the figure to favor, honor, Venusian matters, and the accomplishment of desire.
- Planetary group
- ♀ Venus
- Mathers figure
- 40
- Printed plate
- IX
- Text anchor
- Song of Songs 8:6
Mathers assigns green and copper 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 assigns the figure to favor, honor, Venusian matters, and the accomplishment of desire.
Within the Venus collection, this places figure 40 among themes of Venus spirits, favor, desire, attraction, and compelled presence.
Inscription, names, and script
Song of Songs 8:6: Set me as a signet upon thine heart, as a signet upon thine arm; for love is strong as death.
Letters within and around the pentagram form names of Venus spirits.
How the diagram is organized
The visible core is a small open center. Around it, a pentagram distributes letters along five arms. At the edge, the signet-and-love verse circles the star.
Mathers plate and witness differences
The editor identifies the letter groups by function but does not print a full name list. The biblical signet metaphor and the geometric pentagram are adjacent layers, not proof that the verse originally described this exact drawing.
Plate IX 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 40
Follow the five arms before reading the word “signet” at the boundary. The pentagram acts as a letter-bearing frame while the verse supplies the language of attachment; desire is produced by the relation between text and geometry.
View this figure in sequence
The Venus collection contains 5 figures, numbered 39–43 in the 1889 edition.