The Ancient Significance of Numbers
Many strange legends surround the life of Pythagoras, a Greek thinker born around 600 B.C.E, and the secrets he kept. The Oracle of Delphi foretold his birth and life, predicting to his parents that they would raise a man unsurpassed in beauty and wisdom. It was widely circulated at the time that he was born by immaculate conception, his mother impregnated by the god Apollo. He lived one hundred years and started an esoteric secret school in Italy where he taught, by divine inspiration, the subjects of mathematics and geometry, music and astronomy. He invented the term philosopher, a modest term for a thinker, while his intellectual contemporaries all called themselves ‘sages.’
Very little of his actual teachings survive to this day, seeing how his students took vows of silence and secrecy. The Pythagorean Theorem, the most famous and only mathematical idea to escape his school, is taught in every high school geometry class. Those initiated into his secret cabal 2500 years ago saw him as half man, half god and revered him as such. Aristotle, and some of Pythagoras’s other contemporaries, recorded a few of the ideas from his secret school in their own works. Among the most interesting philosophical ideas that Pythagoras taught was the theory of numbers. Each number, one through ten, had important and significant meaning to this secretive way of thinking.
One
The Throne of Jupiter, One is the mind. 1 is the essence of all thought. One is singular and the most powerful number, as such associated with the Sun as well, because this number is the center of the universe. Other names for this number are ‘ship’ and ‘chariot’ and, around it, revolve love, piety and truth. It has no beginning and no end, is entirely good, and in the sense of time it is NOW, because eternity knows neither past nor future, knows neither beginning nor end.
Two
If 1 is the Father, 2 is the Mother. This number expresses duality and the simultaneous polarity of all things. It represents harmony, tolerance and marriage, but also evil, darkness and inequality. Two was commonly associated with Isis (or Mother Nature). While the number signifies ignorance, because it is the first number to depart from the deific One, it is the mother of wisdom, because wisdom can only grow out of ignorance.
Three
This number signifies the union between 1 and 2, the Child of the Father and the Mother, the number of knowledge, and represents Saturn, the god who ruled over time itself. The triangle, a sacred geometric shape, is made up of three corners and three sides. The three wisdoms are associated with this number: geometry, astronomy and music. Also, wisdom is to see the three sides of time: past, present and future.
Four
4 is the most perfect number. The soul of man consists of four properties: mind, science, opinion and sense. All fours are intellectual. It connects all beings, elements, numbers and seasons. The world, signified by 36, is made up of the addition of the first four even numbers and the first four odd numbers. The first four integers, 1, 2, 3, 4, added together equal 10, which is the greatest of all numbers, signifying the universe. Four is the makeup of the universe.
Five
This number is equilibrium, because it divides into 10, the universe, two equal parts. Five is the symbol for light and vitality and also represents the fifth element, ether, apart from the other four elements of air, water, earth and fire. By signifying the fifth element, this number is the superiority of the spiritual nature over the material nature. Five also represents all superior and inferior beings, is the number of Venus and immortality.
Six
Sacred to Orpheus, 6 represents the creation of the universe and the birth of the soul. This number is also the symbol for marriage, because it is the union of two triangles, one masculine and one feminine. Fate is in the number 6, as is time, immortality and the totality of the world (3+2+1=6). This number also signifies harmony in music, which, to the Pythagoreans, was one of the ways to communicate with the gods.
Seven
The 3 (spirit, mind and soul) descend into 4 (the world) and the sum is 7. Seven signifies religion. 7 is a sacred number to many ancient belief systems and is symbolized by the cube, which has six sides and a seventh mysterious point within. In the midst of six directions (north, south, east, west, up and down) and in the midst of six elemental properties (earth, fire, air, water, spirit and nature) stands One: Man. Geometrically speaking, the center point of a cube is Man, from whom radiates six pyramids.
Eight
Half of 8 is 4, half of 4 is 2 and half of 2 is 1, reestablishing the number 1 as the building block of the universe. Eight was called, by Pythagoreans, the little holy number. The number represents Neptune, as well as love, prudence and law.
Nine
The first square of an odd number (3 x 3 = 9). This number signifies failure and shortcoming, due to it falling short of 10 (the universe) by 1 (the deity), but also represents Mankind, partly because of a human being’s gestational period. 9 is boundless like the ocean and the horizon, limitless because there is nothing beyond it but 10. Nine is associated with the god Prometheus, who, in legend, steals fire from the gods to give to mankind for the good of civilization.
Ten
10 is the nature of all numbers, the most perfect and greatest of all numbers, according to Pythagoreans. It is both heaven and the world, the entire universe and all within. 10 is tireless and everything, and specifically refers to power, harmony and memory. It is associated with Atlas, who carried the world on his shoulders, and the Sun itself, the maker of light and life.
Just as Pythagoras’s life and teachings was shrouded in mystery, so was the account of his death. A well known story about the death of Pythagoras is that he rejected a potential student from the school, who turned on him and led a violent mob against him, burning down his school with Pythagoras and his followers inside. Another story is that the mob attempted to burn down the school but Pythagoras’s followers sacrificed their lives in the fire for their teacher’s escape. Yet another story is the attempt on the life of Pythagoras at the school was unsuccessful, but he was found and burned alive inside an inn, resting for the night, after the escape. But the most tragic of all the tales about the end of Pythagoras’s life was this: He survived all the assassination attempts on his life, while his students did not, and a short time after his school was incinerated, Pythagoras died of a broken heart, despondent over the fact that his destiny to illuminate mankind would forever remain unrealized.
