Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 October 1901 — MYSTICAL ODD NUMBERS. [ARTICLE]

MYSTICAL ODD NUMBERS.

Three, Seven end Nine Have Many **» v enltaurtttee to Their Credit. Three, seven and nine appear to have jeen the favorite numbers all tbs world ever. The ancients had three fates, three furies and three graces; Neptune’s trident had three prongs, Jupiter’s thunderbolt three forks sad Cerberus three heads. We have three estates of the realm, a man who accepts a bill has three days* grace and three persons congregated together may make a riot Shakespeare was well aware that he must have neither more nor less than three witches in ’’Macbeth,” and that the brindle cat must mew thrice, and our popular folklore insists upon three merry men, three blind mice and three wise men of Gotham. Three meals a day is the usual scale of feeding. Of a more mystical character than three is the figure seven, or, at any rate, it has a larger number of religious applications. Noah had sevea days’ warning of the coming of the flood, and when it came he took fowls by sevens and clean beasts by sevens into the ark; the ark touched on Mount Ararat in the seventh month, and after seven days a dove was sent out, followed seven days afterward by another. In Pharaoh’s dream there were seven fat and seven lean Una, which Joseph Interpreted to mean seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. At the destruction of Jericho seven priests bore seven trumpets seven days, and on the seventh day they walked round the city sevea times, after which the walls fell. la the apocalypse almost everything is seven, except the number of beasts. There are seven churches, seven golden candlesticks, seven lamps before seven spirits, the book with seven reals, the lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, seven angels with seven seals, seven kings, seven thunders, seven thousand slain, the dragon with seven heads and seven crowns, sevea angels bring seven plagues, and there are seven vials of wrath. In merely secular matters seven occurs frequently enough. We have seven wonders of the world, sevea champions of Christendom, seven sleepers, seven wise men, seven planets, seven deadly sins, seven ages of man, and our ordinary leases are made for seven or a multiple of seven years. But however mystically significant three and seven may be, they cannot lay claim to any such peculiarities as are the property of the figure nine. That the ancients had nine muses, nine rivers in the Infernal regions, a hydra with nine heads and nine gods for Lars Porsena to swear by, or that in modern times nine tailors to make a man, or that possession is nine points of the law, are facts that pale into insignificance after one has sat down with pencil and paper to investigate some of the special peculiarities of the figure nine. For Instance, if you multiply nine by any other number you will find that the figures composing the product when added together will always amount to nine.