THE MYSTICAL SEVEN
Posted by anthonynorth on May 18, 2008
No number seems to be more mystical than the number seven. Throughout the world there seems to be a ‘knowing’ about its wider significance. But why is this? Could the ancients have intuited something we have missed?
The number is forever associated with the spiritual. By this, we mean some form of god-force, best explained as something ‘other’ than us. Yet I’m uncomfortable with this definition.
If it is ‘other’, then we are separate to it.
I’d prefer the word, ‘above’. This suggests a possible god-force is ‘higher’ than us but not necessarily separate. It suggests that, at some level, we are ‘one’ with it.
Apart from the obvious ideas of God or gods, there are various hypotheses regarding this ‘higher’ force. Typical is Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’; and Lovelock began a tradition with his ‘Gaia Hypothesis’.
We are part of these concepts.
Our personal mind adds to the collective, of species, or planetary, consciousness. And I think such ideas could also add to our understanding of the paranormal.
Ideas in quantum theory add to it also. This concerns the role of consciousness within the universe. In the idea that observation is required for the universe to ‘be’, then our ability to perceive makes us as one with the reality we experience.
We can see, here, science and religion coming together.
Yet how far can we take this concept? Are the ideas in science and religion just two sides of the same coin, approaching a similar truth from two different directions?
Mathematics gives us the ‘law of large numbers’. Stated simply, this tells us that there is greater order the greater the number of things involved. Basically, the more numbers there are, the more the possibility of an ordered pattern, or event, developing.
We can bring that mystical ‘seven’ into this law.
It seems to be correct to life and the universe. Indeed, it seems that there are seven fundamental ‘groupings’ of things in the universe.
What do we mean by this? Well, there is the lifeform, the species, the planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the island universe, and the universe itself. Existence appears to have seven levels, each one bigger, and conceivably more ordered, than the lower.
Does each level have its own consciousness? Well, the first definitely does. It is our own mind. As for the species, Jung seemed to capture that; and ideas of Gaia seem to take the concept into the planetary level.
Could our consciousness ascend up the levels of a universal consciousness in this way? If so, would accessing the species level lead to telepathy; would accessing the planetary give us an ability to affect matter, as in psychokinesis? And what wonders could exist in even higher levels?
Of course, this is mere speculation – a mind wandering through the universe. But without ideas to capture our imagination, can either science, or religion, move on, cooperate, or adapt?
There is a universe out there. And we could be part of it in a far more fundamental way than we as yet understand.
© Anthony North, May 2008
BEYOND THE BLOG 
Thomas M. Barnes said
Huh?
anthonynorth said
Hi Thomas,
I can’t work out if you couldn’t understand, or you’re starting a new game: name the mantra. Oh well, I’ll play along:
Om
You’re next.
Dantheman said
Mr North,
This one was a little deep for me, Although I still gleaned the jist of it. I am wondering if you have looked into other numbers that hold meaning in various religions? The one that comes to mind is in the Jewish faith, every letter of the hebrew alphabet has an associated numeric value. In particular, the number 18 holds special significance because the two letters that derive the number mean “life” when put together. Anyway, just wanted to get your take on this. Hope I didn’t get too far off the subject.
anthonynorth said
Hi Dantheman,
Thanks for that contribution. I haven’t written much on the significance of numbers in the mystical sense, I must admit. I’ll try to address that some time in the future.
I came to ‘7’ here mainly because of my idea that the ‘law of large numbers’ could be a mathematical basis to higher consciousness.
Highly speculative, admitted, but that’s where enquiry begins.
Andy said
Number seven certainly seems to be a “spiritual” number. For example Chinese, Indian and Hebrew numerological traditions give it a special meaning, as well as Free-Masons (“G”). Number 1 divided by numbers 1-9 reveal that 1/7 gives the only “unpredictable” or “wandering” result, which no doubt was noticed by ancient mathematicians.
In I Ching (or Book of Changes) sequences like 777 doubled becomes “Heaven”, 888 doubled “Earth”, 999 “projected” would be hexagram 11, “Peace”, 666 projected would be hexagram 12, “Standstill” etc.
Though this is barely related, the fact that number 69 is a representation of Yin/Yang both visually and numerologially (6=”moving” female principle, 9=”moving” male principle) is… funny 🙂
omnilux11 said
4 + 3 = 7
4 represents the physical world (made up of earth, air, fire & water) and 3 the spiritual world (or God) based on the 3 attributes of God (Will to create, Power to create and the actual Creation/manifestation of the desire when will and power are combined) 7 represents the whole (Spiritual + Physical or As above, so below)
Here’s the Secret : You ARE God! Yes you & me and everything between. You create/manifest with your intention.
Ask & Receive!
Reflect & Enjoy!
anthonynorth said
Hi Andy,
Thanks for that. As for ’69’, I’ve always known mysticism and sex go hand in hand 🙂
Hi Omnilux11
I’ve written a lot on this blog about man’s ability to create his own world. You may have a point, but I’ll refrain from going round saying I’m God.
I don’t think society would understand 😉
Vince Healy said
Could ancient people have used paradigms about functions of the seventh chakra the basis for their sense of the sacredness of the number seven?
anthonynorth said
Hi Vince,
Quite possibly, but what interests me most is why most religions were facinated with the number – even those who didn’t accept chakras.
Nathan said
As for ‘69′, I’ve always known mysticism and sex go hand in hand.
No they don’t. One pulls you down and out the other pulls you up and in.
I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which.
Of course it is always cute to play fun with numbers or sex or ‘meanings’, but none of these have anything to do with mysticism.
Ask a mystic.
anthonynorth said
Hi Nathan,
‘… none of these have anything to do with mysticism.’
A definite statement there. I’d like to know how you work that out. I’ve been researching ‘mysticism’ for a quarter of a century and have only touched the surface.
There are so many varieties of mysticism, so many ways you can be mystical. You can approach deeper consciousness through anything, from music to, well, sex.
And of course, you can define, yourself, what you class as msyticism, and what you do not. I suspect your statement speaks of your biases rather than reality.
Cruentos Solum ( The Universe ) said
Euh, this was posted yesterday,
Sorry anthony 🙂
Hello everybody,
Please, do not blither … yet.
Here are a few coincidences involving numbers. I can’t fully explain them, but they do somehow, too, relate to the numbers 3, 7, 6, … which sort of are very ‘popular’ numbers… Although I wouldn’t use them if I play the lottery… very frequently.
So for starters, hold down your tab key, then type ‘42? with your numerical keypad: what do you get?
Supposedly, 42 is supposed to mean something ‘extraordinary’ to some writer but the issue is brought up to bring to light the ‘imaginary’ importance of some numbers, or simply, coincidences.
The next big number would be 7. Seven days in a week, seven skies ( or so some people say ), seven dwarfs, …
Let us take 7. If you open your ‘calc’ program ( windows calculator ) and type 22/7, then the result you get is this: 3,1428571428571428571428571428571. There is a recurring pattern, and although other computers have obtained more ‘precise’ values of Pi, there is no proof that there isn’t a recurrance somewhere. We can only figure that out once we get the actual value of 22/7.
Back to forty two: if we divide the number 42 by 2, we get 21. Why by two? well, because 2 is also an important number in life: couples. Man and woman, positive and negative… The universe could be a ‘mirror’, and so either side of it is only one half, in a certain direction, ‘perhaps’, moving away or towards the other ( man Vs woman & Protons Vs Electrons ). So if we take for example a universe made up of 42 ‘things’, then on either side of this universe there would be 21 ‘things’ or half’s. If you divide that by 3 you get 7. The concept here is symmetry. But 3… Why 3?
Here we go again. 3 is an important number. Nobody has really any clues as to why it is important, but nevertheless, there are three stages in life: pre-creation, or sperm and ovule, creation, or fetus, and birth, or life… We count to three to signify, assess, or signal a start or beginning of things… But 3 breaks the rule of symmetry so why do we opt for it? And 22 also breaks the rule of symmetry because if there is a 22 then the universe is not fully made up of ‘half’s’ as noted above, there is ’something’ that breaks the patter. Catch-22? Is ‘catch-22? simply an exeption? God perhaps, that is ‘part_of_universe ? …
Ok, let’s take a look at this again, 13. 13 seems to be a bad number. Brings really bad luck. And yet plenty of elevators seem to be hard headed about the ’spell’ and go on being foolish enough to number the floor that comes after 12… 13!!! Nonsense!!! And what’s more, people are dangerously toying with the idea by further not skipping the thirteenth day of any month, for that matter. They do tend to number their months 1 through 12, observing the rule for a change, but they tend to become reckless again when it comes to years!!! Sick!!!
Bullsh*t?
Exactly…
Humans do tend to ‘look’ for answers that ‘please’ them. Is that not what science is all about? Science actually does not explain anything. It simply ‘puts labels’ on things. Sure, we know about ‘gravity’ thanks to science, but we do not really know how it works. Sure, science tells us that science is influenced by ‘other’ things, but sooner or later, science becomes simply a ‘map’, rather than an explanation of how the universe works. It tells us that there is gravity, that gravity is influenced by orbiting planets, that planets exist in a vacuum because there is nothing in it, …
Let me give you an example. When you play the lottery, you don’t know if you’re going to win or not. But inevitably, 99 percent of people DO tend to look for a ‘motive’ to play certain numbers. As in why pick 21 over 9, and ommit 13 and not 7, which, in all aspects of probability, doesn’t affect your chances of winning in any way. Sure, you may find some way science will make you comfortable with playing certain numbers, the best example being probability, but probability simply tells us what could be and what could not be… But that doesn’t tell us anything we do not already know, whether or not we are aware of probability, and whether we do know it or not, if two humans mate, their offspring will be human, if there is such a thing…
So suppose you chose to base your lotto ticket number on some ‘obscure’ science. The probability that the number 13 will turn up in any lottery draw is say, very ridiculous compared to that of actually drawing a 1. So you play 1. And you win. Does that mean your ’science’ is right? No, it means you will be foolish again and play the number 1 because something has ‘puffed’ up your arrogance in relation to the fact that, using a certain logic, you can ‘predict’ or ‘explain’ an event, a thing, a concept…
It all comes down to logic. If you look at a computer, everything is made of logic. And using only 1 and 0, a ‘reality’ can exist, that can mean something, without actually being it. And all it takes is for a button to be pressed, the current to be removed, and that takes us back to square one: we have no ‘reality’. This is basically what has happened to religion, it was a ‘form of science’, explaining to humans where they are, because the idea of being ‘at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away’ is a pretty scary notion, and considering the odds of ‘possibilities’ makes it all the merrier for us to go ‘wild’ with our imagination, or knowledge, running away from certain ‘possibilities’, even believing that we can ‘influence’ them perhaps.
The point is science is evolving. But some of it is pretty useless, we just haven’t realised it yet. The most important part of science is the ‘map’ part, that which ‘relates’ each part of the ‘whole’, which is the universe if you shall, or ‘reality’, or ‘us’, or ‘everything’, to each other part in the same ‘whole’. In other words, think of it as a ‘connect the dots’ game. I’m pretty sure that when it all adds up, we will look at it, and say well, that doesn’t tell us anything actually. Of course, we can ommit some dots, and focus onto others: think ‘astrology’, and argue with an astrologist. No matter how long the debate is, if both are ‘affluent’ in their subjects, none will win because each has a certain angle that is ‘right’, certain dots that are ‘connected’, but if you look at it, they are both right, and wrong in the notion that they do ommit an awful lot of other points when they only selfishly look at what they each chose to look at. But if you stand back, and look at the whole, it will be meaningless, … in other words, there is no meaning to anything. Things just happen. It’s a lotto drawing each second and things just happen. Sure, we have happened, and that means something, but a lot of things mean something… And we are just ‘minute’ parts of the universe, and cannot possibly influence it. Really…
That may be scary, but it tells us that the number 7 means something special: it is a NUMBER! Just like every thing else, it may be classified, it may be linked to ‘every single other thing, life form, species, object, molecule, …’ in the same way that everything actually is linked to everything else, but that’s about it, really…
Hope I didn’t get too irrational with what I’m trying to explain, and I hope I didn’t deviate from the subject too much.
Sincerely,
Cruentos Solum,
Cheers
Cruentos Solum ( The Universe ) said
Hello, I know, I know, I was just trying to explain the following:
“4. Science complicates it further. The properties of the subatomic particle are such that we can never know its true state. The world is fundamentally a matter of probability.”. All I’m actually trying to say is, from the point of view ‘nothing actually happens for a reason’, that the number seven has absolutely no meaning, and is about as important as the letter ‘a’, a neutrino, …
The ‘preface’ simply puts other ideas into focus, but these ideas aren’t actually mine as such, I’m trying to sort of ridicule the concept of meaning… No sarcasm intended, I simply use the technique to get to the reader that’s all 🙂
So back to the topic, I would like to add this: the way we are trying to constantly find meanings to things may also be a thing that just happened. Therefore, importance can actually have significance, in terms of ‘volume’. In other words, if the number seven repeats on a certain level, especially in relation to events, happenstances, things, … that we can and do relate to quite frequently, then it will be a significant thing, so the significance of the number seven is simply one of frequency and customs.
Apologies for being vague 🙂
Sincerely,
C.S.
Cheers
Ratatosk said
What? What?
anthonynorth said
Hi Ratatosk,
For such questions concerning non-understanding, I suggest you read it again 😉
Taryne said
I just happened to stumble apon Cruentos Solum’s comment, a few years after it’s been made.
I understand what your saying, but I’d like to remind you that when it comes to the lotto, the numbers we choose are simply symbols, therefore all have the same probability- because they are in the shape of numbers, we may have an emotional atatchment to some and not others.
Otherwise I really enjoyed reading your comment.