Sacred Number

A little book about the secret qualities of quantities for philosophers, mathemagicians and wizards of all ages. Includes a detailed page by page examination of the numbers from 0 to 12. Examines Gnomons, Cosmic Numbers, Magic Squares and Games. With extensive appendices

• Gregor Reischs sixteenthcentury engraving showing Pythagoras using a medieval counting board to form
• SACRED NUMBER thE SECREt qUAlitiES of qUANtitiES by Miranda Lundy with additional illustrations by A
• to parents, and children My sincere thanks to Adam Tetlow, Richard Henry, Daud Sutton, and John Mart
• 1 iNtRoDUCtioN What is number How do we distinguish the one from the many, or, for that matter, the
• 2 3 The Monad one unity Unity. The One. God. The Great Spirit. Mirror of wonders. The still ete
• 4 5 dualiTy opposites There are two sides to every coin, and the other side is where the Dyad lives.
• 6 Three is a crowd Male in some cultures, female in others, three, like a tree, bridges heaven and e
• 9 QuaTerniTy two pairs Beyond three we enter the realm of manifestation. Four is the first born thi
• 10 Phive life itself The quality of five is magical. Children instinctively draw fivefold stars, an
• 12 all Things sixy the hex The Hexad like its graceful herald the snowflake, brings perfection, stru
• 15 14 The hePTad seven sisters Seven is the Virgin, standing quite alone and having little to do wit
• 17 16 eighT a pair of squares Eight is two times two times two, and as such is the first cubic numbe
• 19 18 The ennead three threes Cats have nine lives, dress to the nines whenever possible, and seem t
• 20 Ten fingers and thumbs The fact that humans have eight fingers plus two thumbs must have worked i
• 23 22 elevenses measure and the moon Eleven is a mysterious underworldly number. In German it goes
• 25 24 The Twelve heaven and earth Twelve is the first abundant number, with factors one, two, three,
• 26 Covens and sCores into higher numbers Alas, in a such a tiny book as this there is not enough spa
• 29 28 The QuadriviuM four liberal arts How do we get a feel for numbers other than by their quantiti
• 30 gnoMons ways of growing Aristotle observed that some things suffer no change other than magnitude
• 33 32 TiMe and sPaCe cosmology and manifest number Looking around us, there are local numbers that p
• 35 34 BaBylon, suMer, and egyPT early number systems Around 3000 BC the Sumerians developed the earl
• 36 anCienT asia manipulating in tens In China a written decimal system with 13 basic characters has
• 38 geMaTria talking numbers and secret codes The Phoenicians used a very neat twentytwoletter conson
• 40 MagiC sQuares when it all adds up 41 Magic squares are a fascinating way of arranging numbers, an
• 42 43 MyTh, gaMe, and rhyMe numbers we grow up with Some of our earliest experiences with number occ
• 44 Modern nuMBers the dawn of quantity 45 When the ancient Greeks proved that the diagonals of squar
• 46 Zero nothing left to say Zero has been left until last, because in a sense it is not actually a n
• 48 49 Systems of numerals that use position or place value to signify the magnitude of a given digit
• 51 50 PyThagorean nuMBers exaMPles of geMaTria
• 52 53 furTher MagiC sQuares A magic square is normal if it uses whole numbers from 1 to the square o
• 55 54 1 One One Universal. 2 Two Forces TaoisT Receptive yin, Active yang. Two Perspectives Universa
• 56 seleCT glossary of nuMBer 57 1 The 1st triangular, square, pentagonal, hexagonal, tetrahed
• furTher nuMBers 1 4 10 19 31 46 64 85 109 136 166 199 235 274 316 361 409 460 514 571 631 694 760 82