Seven

The Number of Numbers

As may already have become evident the number seven is an important mystical and magical number. Since ancient times seven has been a revered and sacred symbol. The Babylonians translated the Sumerian word for seven into the Babylonian word for completeness or all. In Greek and Roman mythology the number seven occurs time and time again. In China seven is a celestial number (together with 1, 3 and 5).

The uraeus is a serpent as a head-dress of Egyptian kings and divinities. According to the pyramid texts: “the king absorbed the seven frontal cobras which then became the seven cervical vertebrae which commanded the entire dorsal spine.”

These cobras, which spit fire, recall the Kundalini serpent-fire of the Hindu tradition, and this passage also seems to refer to certain of the vital centres or chakras, one of which occupies precisely the place of the royal uraeua in the forehead. This spiritual light is called akh by the ancient Egyptians.

The Egyptians also divided the night sky into seven parts and the moon changes its phase every seven days resulting in the creation of the week, which completes its cycle four times every month. There are seven fundamental notes in music. (1) In numerology seven represents philosophy and wisdom. There are, according to H.P. Blavatsky, seven root races. Then we have the significance of seven as a lucky number and the seven wonders of the world.

Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, or the Unknown Philosopher, of the 18th century, declared that “numbers are the only sensible expression of the different properties of beings, which all proceed from the one and only essence.” Specifically of the number seven he viewed it as the ruling number of the manifested universe.

There is also the Hebrew candlestick with seven branches each representing, as put by Warren Kenton in The Celestial Mirror: (2) “a cosmic diagram of active and passive forces on either side of a central column of equilibrium.” Even in the Kabbalah itself all things depend on the seventh “for assuredly there can be no stability in those six, save (what they derive) from the seventh.”

In short seven can be found everywhere but nowhere as prominent as in the Bible. Faith Javane and Dusty Bunker show in their book Numerology and The Divine Triangle that seven is the principal number in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. Apart from such obvious examples as the fact that the Lord rested on the seventh day and the seven angels with seven trumpets in Revelations, they put forth the seven-fold path of the Lord’s Prayer as a union of the triad, or trinity, and the quaternary. The Lord’s Prayer can be found in Matthew 6:9-13:

1. Our Father which art in heaven,
2. Hallowed be Thy Name.
3. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as [it is] in heaven.
4. Give us this day our daily bread.
5. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
6. And lead us not into temptation,
7. but deliver us from evil:

The father, in the Lord’s Prayer, can be seen instead as the root i.e. our basic material self. The hallowed name is the sacred source of our feelings. The will which shall be done in earth as in heaven, above as below, is the vital energy that flow through us. The daily bread is the deeper emotions that we feed upon. The debt, the original sin, which we keep needs to be forgiven and overcome and we need to let our soul surface instead of becoming trapped by material temptation. This will deliver us from unimportant material evils and result in bliss and a heightened state of being as explained in the final statement, that symbolize the return to the heavenly state, nirvana or more appropriate a oneness with everything.

8. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

And in the figure 8 we see, yet again, the serpent or Ouroboros as a symbol of infinity and paradise regained. It is, spiritually, the goal of the initiate, having gone through the seven stages.

Augustus Le Plongeon writes in his book Sacred Mysteries among the Mayas and the Quiches, 11 500 years ago:

“Seven seems to have been the sacred number par excellence among all civilized nations of antiquity… That it was the number of numbers for those initiated to the sacred mysteries there can be no doubt. Pythagoras… calls it the ‘Vehicle of Life’, containing body and soul, since it is formed of a quaternary, that is: wisdom and intellect; and a Trinity, or action and matter.”

The Pythagorean Quaternary is the following sequence: 1+2+3+4 = 10 and has great significance since the union of the four numbers results in a oneness (3) and it can be represented as a triangle within a square (the 3 points of the triangle plus the four corners of the square equals seven).

Footnotes:
(1) The eighth is the beginning of the series again, the start of the higher octave.
(2) Published in 1974.
(3) 10 = 1+0 = 1.

© deviadah