The Age of Iron

A colossal, armored figure of Mars stands over a chaotic landscape of human cruelty, where soldiers pillage homes and bodies hang from gallows. In the top right, Astraea, the personification of Justice, ascends into the clouds with her scales, abandoning the corrupt world. In the foreground, laborers dig into the earth to mine the iron used for weapons of war, signaling the transition from natural abundance to material greed.

This print illustrates the Ovidian concept of the Four Ages, a fundamental narrative in Renaissance Neoplatonism representing the moral and spiritual devolution of humanity. The Age of Iron specifically signifies the loss of the 'Golden' state of divine connection and the descent into the discord and materiality that many esoteric thinkers, such as those in the Hermetic tradition, sought to transcend or reverse through the Great Work.