Philosophy of Number

Number symbolism

Notes from series of five lecture-classes

Friday evening background courses

January – February 1929, by MBM

Lecture I  January 25, 1929

Philosophy of number from the cosmological end.  Number begins above.  It takes in the very qualities and conditions of what we call number.  The virtue is not in number but in that more subtle thing which number symbolizes.

We must be on guard against numerology; that is a warping of the ancient Wisdom, and is grotesque.  The philosophy of number is man working with truth.  …  Numerology is in a different category from the gods working with number.

Number is the law of the Universe, in that it works with accuracy, precision, definiteness.  Not qualities of number per se, but since Creation was done accurately, and since that is what number best describes, here man is able to describe cosmological processes best in number.

Number starts with one and ends no one knows where.  In spite of its boundlessness we have one end in our hand, namely one.  A thread with the Infinite, by which we can, bit by bit, pull? to ourselves the Immensities.

Numbers, to man, are reversed to what they are for Deity.  One describes the beginning of perfection and unity; for man, his infancy.  A reflection.  What pertains to man in number is the reverse of what pertains to the gods.

Numbers as used in the ancient traditions are hidden numbers.  In names of ancient scriptures there is a hidden value, numerically, to be discovered.

The Doctrine of Reflections: it reverses, or puts upside down what we see standing upright.  Secondly, it distorts – the image reversed and distorted in its reflection.  We have to deal with the motif of unreality: that which is reflected is unreal; the phenomenal world as against the noumenal.

One   The number 1 is the best able to describe the Beginning of things to the master minds: No differentiation; no beginnings in the number itself.  Before manifestation takes place there can be no differentiation, no beginning.  Perhaps the most difficult to understand, because it includes in itself all else; indivisible; infinite; without dimension; inscrutable; no limit; without form and name; foundation of all things; root of all intelligible forms.  Because the beginning was inscrutable they assigned to it the number One.  Fichte: “It is the only life which exists entirely within itself.”

Nought   The Nought; nothing before that.  Represented by the zero.  If they tried to go back of the beginning they tried to describe it as the No Thing; the Nought; Night.  Cosmologically, the number 1 is the dawn of a new Day of Creation.  (there was?) a manifestation of Day-ness before the present Day.

So One represents the total of all that is to be.  It is therefore the first Point, the beginning of Manifestation: the Germ; the Number from which all life arises.  It is the Father — the First Father.  The God man has worshipped is the third Father.  The First Father is not known to man in his present condition.  The First Father is not the Creator, not Jehovah, nor any of the gods in the cosmogonies.

The  First Father is the First Mind, or the Will operative on the First Mind.  Is sometimes called the First, or the Divine Mind.  Sometimes it is called the True Father.

This First Father represents the paternity of all that is to be.  But that first Paternity draws back presently, and passes on the responsibility to the next generation.  There is a lack of words to deal with the Cosmic.  Sometimes this One is called Immutable, or the Absolute.  In the Indian tradition it is called Brahman Atman. In the mystical, it is called Infinite Self.  In the Egyptian, the Unutterable.

This number One is a supreme number and, for the Cosmic, represents, inclusively, all else.  As soon as we approach it from man, the reversal.  For man, it represents his infancy.  Our progression is from one, up; in the Cosmic, it is from One, out.  If man ascribes to one the qualities when it is in the high position, it is absurd.  In the Heights, it is Completion; Perfection; Undifferentiation.  For man, it is the reverse.

The Eastern cosmogony goes on: That One became Two, bisexual; from the Neuter; and the work of generation began.  (A (old) Rosicrucian variant of a tradition in St     ; Zen, from India.)  The Neuter becomes bisexual.  The significance inherent in them applies on many octaves.  Adam-Kadmon, neuter.  A division made in Adam and Eve, or body and psyche in inter-relation.  The work of separation and begetting.  But on the higher reaches, we cannot talk of male and female, but the active, impregnating principle, which is Will, against the primordial substance, or Water.

The Two is the substance, or the Waters, receptive to the Will; and when these Two become operative you have actually the philosophical beginning of all things.  In One it was without the potency necessary to bring about the activity, to bring about the worlds.  With Two, the generation and begetting begins, as we see, on a lower octave, with Adam and Eve.

The “children of Adam and Eve”, the different kinds of activity of man.  So, on the higher, the activities of the higher: Unity torn asunder, and we have the inception of the great Cosmic Sacrifice.  Now there will be constant begetting and responsibility; and those bring still others, the fruit, to all generations.  What was at rest in the unity of One, is now lost.  Peace is no more.

Two is also seen as the First, or Great Mother, in that it is the substance, or primordial Waters, on which all work is to take place.  (She) is sometimes known as the First Virgin, or Genetrix of all that is.  The same as the Great Egg; the Great Deep; the first Root Substance, or Moist Principle; the First Acacia.  The Two together: the Divine Parents; the First Androgyne.  And the Mystic Marriage is between One and Two; between Will and Substance; between Power and Wisdom.

What is this Stuff?  This is not the first Cosmic Day.  There must be Stuff left, converted back again into the Cosmic Night period from that previous Day.  Also that the experience of that previous Cosmic Day has contributed its values to this Stuff — the fruit of that experience.  In its superlative degree, it is Wisdom.  Wisdom, on another plane, is made of Stuff; the values of a previous Creation must have borne fruit, both to them and to the substance with which they worked.  The bulb holds the values of its maturing.  Therefore, our Substance, or our number Two, is not made up of physical stuff but of stuff of higher planes, which, nevertheless, is stuff.

Number Two is often described as Wisdom.  These Two, on a little lower level, are again seen as Heaven and Earth, Light and Dark; and when they mate, or are in juxtaposition, there is a gradual development of what becomes number Three.

Three now replaces Two: Life and Form mating, . . . . Heaven and Earth — these two, on whatever octave they are on, original, first, or in the lower — bring about a tension; we always have it where the poles of the masculine-feminine principle are opposite one another; and it must be, to be productive.

Three is the First Son, the perfect fruit of the First Mating; perfect Parents. These numbers are progressions of activities, not a man-child.  Born adult.  Born in full capacity of his powers.  No time or space to limit, and therefore perfection.  Limitation means primarily time and space.  This Son is the beginning of a new octave, for he is the parent, in turn of all that is to come.

The First Parent recedes as Three becomes active.  One, Two and Three comes from the first Trinity.  Whatever is work works in terms of three.  The first Word that was spoken.  Means manifestation, through mouth, as man sees it, but expresses the Mind; through the Breath, sends forth the Will which is in Him.  The Demi-Urge: because the First Son receives the responsibility from ONE.

There are many other octaves. . . . . . Three-fold man (the trinity) appears in Alchemy (philosophical alchemy); in Astrology (philosophy of); in every philosophical tradition.  In the family group.  In the reproduction of every flower. . . . Source of the understanding of the Trinity.  From China (we have): “Numbers begin at one; are made perfect at three; and terminate at ten.”  Every monad which is manifest is made manifest by the evolution of its trinity.  Only that which is expressed by three, can be an expression of the latency in one.

Three as the Second Mind.  “The First Mind brought forth another Mind, and it is the Mind that gives things form.”  The First Mind does not give form to things; it gives them a start.  The Second Mind is the real Creator.  Usually the Third Mind is the Creator.  Man cannot see very far.  Three falls into Four.

Four: Substance of the World Egg.  The Elements — the Substance out of which all things were made.  The First Mother is the Virgin Substance undifferentiated.  But as soon as Creation actually is to take place there must be a differentiation of the Elements.  We must have substances separated, to build.  Four is also Mother Stuff, but an octave further down.  This is also Virgin.  This is the Mother, or Womb, of all that is to be in Creation: the archetypal substance, divided into four Elements.

Plato calls this number She Who Receives — the feminine principle, the receptive side of things, who receives the impress of all that is to be.  Plutarch refers to it as the Cosmic House, – because the Four Elements are the very structure of the Cosmic, out of which all things are to be made.  Not only the things of our physical earth but of the Cosmic as well.

On lower planes, as applies to man, (they are) known as the four elements, the 4 directions, the cardinal points, the Four Sons of Horus (the bull, lion, eagle, man; implied in every great cosmogony).  Include the whole gamut.  The Four Rivers that flow out of Eden, the possibility of functioning on the four planes.

When these four are passed through from below up, man evolves the Four Sons of Horus.  Those Elements will be repeated on every plane; that will be the pattern on which everything in every plane is to be made.

Man is at the bottom, and these four represent the stuff of the worlds through which he will climb back.  Man must climb through Earth, Water, Fire, Air, on every plane, in order to return to the Source from which he came.  As he comes to know their nature on every octave he has the flavor of what they are on the next octave, and so is the better able to make his way there.  Developing the qualities of the Four Sons of Horus.  When you have the Four Sons you help Osiris back to the Upper World.

Four holds great significance for man, as structurally it reveals the tasks which man has to accomplish; for he is Osiris, dead, back to the higher region.

Lazarus in the tomb 4 days.

Four pillars that support anything substantial.

Base of the Pyramid.  The Pyramid indicating how the perfect structure is to be made.

North Wind: down breath from the great spheres.

Five  Beginning of a new series of activities.  The Son in manifestation.  Mother and Son.  Here we get the original expression of what is distorted in psychoanalysis of the Edipus complex — attraction of the child to the opposite parent.

5 is 4 and 3, which releases 5 to new perfection.  Also as 2 and 3 — Duad and Triad.

Five has to do, in man, with the planes of manifestation and the work by which he makes his way through them.  Five is the most human number, in this sense.

Aether (5th Element), which awaits man’s conquering: physical, psychic, mental, spiritual and the Divine.

Geometrical: 4 points and the point in the center.  The point in the center and the four dimensions reveal a new type of activity, work.  As if the processes of Beginnings had settled down, to work.

Plutarch says the work is one, but if not?, then five: earth, water, fire, air, and aether.

The Five Books of Moses; that is not accidental

Five Trees, of the Book of the Great Logos.

Five foolish virgins.  Five wise virgins, who entered.  The five senses.  When efficiently used, they serve material things.

Five fingers; and toes.  Man’s way of work.

In a sense, the number of imperfection; greater limitations; greater stage away from the original unity.

Sometimes seen as very potent: the Five Days of Power, dedicated to the gods.  (it is) wisdom to dedicate the days to the gods.  The “wise virgins” dedicated to the service of the Return, and in that sense, sacred to the gods.

If you know how to use your senses you will do nothing lesser with them.

(Answer to Question) Four, a flowing out from three.

Lecture II  February 1, 1929

1, 3, 10.  A Chinese proverb: about numbers beginning with 1, are perfected at 3; are ended at 10.  (Quoting) The First Logos brings forth the Lawmakers who make decrees; who, with the Trinity, make the ten.  Partakers, with the Three, of all that afterwards takes place . . . . Converge to a point — the center of life on the next plane.

Genesis I: the making of the archetypal Pattern.  (the Lawmakers and Trinity) above that  (They are) the production of Power out of the original Power House, or Source of all Sources, who are to be the energies, forces.  That is our Ten.

But as soon as those Ten get into operation, the first thing they do is to make the Archetypal World.  That immediately bring in the Four, the Great Mother.  On that flow, most dominantly, the Seven Lawmakers. …  All this still operating from above.

The way of Return is indicated by the upturned triangle.

Now Creation begins, in the sense of different spheres taken from the pattern of this World.  Principle of Reflection.

Way of the Return in Genesis III.

Seven  Proverbs IX.  In many people, only a few of the 7 are operating; they are so thick that the 7 do not operate.  But when they are fully operative, the gamut of the range of influence is working in any individual soul.  And the higher Spirit is found in such a person.

The highest correspondence on the physical are the seven Pole stars.

Other 7’s:  The seven Elohim.  The 7 heavens.  The 7 veils of Isis.  The 7 Virgins of Light.  The 7 Halls in the Book of the Dead.  The 7 Voices.

The Seven appear, in accordance with your capacity to become conscious of them. When you come to understand them they appear as Voices.  When as Principles, they are pillars.  When as means of a return to the first Trinity, they are doors.  It all depends on the condition in yourself with which you approach them.

In the relation of earth to these Seven, we find the 7 days of the week, the 7 tones of the scale, the 3 primary colors and their four combinations; the 7 women disciples who followed Jesus; and the 7 Sacraments, which are ways that the Seven operate in the Christian tradition.  The five planets and the two luminaries (Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Saturn.)  They are helpful to man making the upturned triangle.

Ways in which hey appear negatively: the 7 deadly sins: pride, wrath, gluttony, concupiscence, avarice, sloth, envy.  (But there are also the 7 virtues.)  The 7, the number of influences operative on man outside of himself.  And they appear on all planes.

Three: the Mystery from which all mysteries come; because it is the Activity.

Four : The first Depth, the beginning of all Gnosis.

8  The Ogdoad.  If the spheres of the 7 have been accomplished, then the stage of manifestation is over, and we come again to the sphere of the Nameless God, the Great Heaven, the Supreme.

5  The combination of 2 and 3.  It does not flow out of the 3 or the 7, but flows out of the 4 and out of the combination of 2 and 3.  It is not to be seen as from above but as an intermediate state, different from 3 and 4.

Five planes of manifestation, to which man, in his utmost reach as man, has access; not only Spiritual but the Divine.  The four directions, or states of a square, and the point in the center, making the fifth.  That point represents the completion of the work of the Five in man.

The five senses, fingers, toes; five virgins; five Books of Moses.  The five wounds of Jesus on the Cross.  The five loaves and two fishes.  Bread = substance, the means by which man operates from below up.

6  Different from 5.  2 x 3.  Masculine-feminine and the son in you on several planes; you are more effective than if they were all on one plane.  Hence this is the number of intensive work.  The six days of Creation.  If man has activity on the higher plane, Fire-Air, and if he has the three in the lower plane, he will run the gamut of the six days of Creation rapidly.

Six faces of the cube.  The sixth hour on the Cross; darkness came, the close of the six days of work, – compacted Pattern.  In the New Testament, Elizabeth, the mother of John, preliminary to the Christ, or Pattern-Maker; when the Angel Gabriel came to Elizabeth in the sixth month.

5 and 6 are first indicators of the means and then the scope, or range, of man’s activity.

We also have 6 as one-half the signs of the zodiac, which are the full pattern of man’s becoming.  Therefore six is not yet the whole story.  Six is half the story.

12  The boundary of man’s manifestation, the human manifestation.  Mark the gamut of the human evolution.  The Ring Pass Not.  Not the twelve constellations – they are merely insignia, showing what the Pattern is that man must work through.  When man has worked through both sixes he has accomplished the range of our human tasks.

From the analysis of the number 12 we find not only two sixes but the number 4 and the number 8: 4, the number of the Elements — physical, psychic, mental, spiritual.  Hence man has worked through the 4 into the influence of the 8, or Ogdoad; hence through with the 12.

The 12 months of the year.  The 12 tribes of Israel.  (Is ra el: the male principle, Ra; Is, Isha, the female principle; El, the son.)

The young god; or perfect trinity.  Illustrated by the 12 tribes of Israel.

12 stones in the breastplate of Aaron.  12 loaves of show bread.  12 disciples of Jesus.  The 12 stars in the crown of the woman in labor.  The age of Jesus when he first went to the temple.  He had accomplished a cycle and was working a Pattern of completion; so 12 was the proper age to do it.  You do appear first in the temple at “12”.  The 12 days of Epiphany.  12 lines on the cube.  12 labors of Hercules.  12 Titans (in the Greek cosmogony.)

13  12, the number by which man makes his ascent; intensive labors; earth, water, fire, air; when he is working below the horizon; and above, his work is 12.

13 is for man like the Ogdoad for the Cosmic Spheres, and represents not only the completed man, but the man who has stepped off and has become active.  It is so profound in its significance that it is, of all numbers, for man, the sacred man.  Taboo, for the crowd, because fearful of it.  It has registered as a fear in the unconscious of man.

Jesus and 12.  12 gods on Olympus.  12 trees in the Garden of Eden.

13 is that which is accomplished when the 12 are through.

Who rescued Prometheus?  Hercules.  He was the 13th generation; and why only the 13th generation can rescue.  It must be done by the 13th generation in yourself: 6, 12, and 1.

5, 6, 12, 13, relate to man.  1, 3, 4, 7, relate to the Forces which are operative from the Cosmic.

Lecture III

February 8, 1929

7 continued.  Shines through in many things.  On the physical plane, the seven stars around the Pole — only the physical correspondents of the seven Lamps, the seven Logoi, etc.  Where we deal with things that are the verity we will always find that correspondence.  The seven sacraments (known long before Jesus.)  7 associated with the five planets, sun and moon.  In those times they did not know Uranus and Neptune.

If you have gone through these seven sacraments you have opened the door to one of the streams by which the Seven can reach you.  If you do not open those doors the Seven cannot reach you: Baptism, with the moon; Penance, with Mars, etc.  The Seven are seen negatively in terms of the seven deadly sins.  Again, associated with the 7 planets.  The planets in our solar system are the localization of what on the physical plane are the Seven Lamps around the Pole.)

Sins close gates, and the influences of the Seven Lamps, or as represented by the seven planets, cannot flow on the individual man.  When those channels are open, from the standpoint of qualities in the self, we have the seven virtues; the same paths, now open.  This is one reason why 7 is known as the number of magic.

Therefore the number 7 is the number of wisdom.  When you have opened the seven ways, or opened yourself so that the seven can function in you, in all sorts of ways, then you have become wise, or a magician.

The Greek version of the negative side of things represented in the Minotaur.  The seven youths and seven maidens sacrificed to the Minotaur every year (means) gates closed to the operation of the seven.  Hence, you are paying a yearly tribute of negation to the monster.  Youths and maidens represent active and passive aspects, both of which suffer because of your negativity.  If you are too thick they fail to function, and you are closed to the seven influences.  They don’t come into full operating until later than the highest mind, but they begin before the higher mind.

Man has mixed the octaves of 7 and 12.  The 7 are forces there, operating, or ready to operate on man, when he makes conditions possible.

 

14, 28, 42 and 49

Fourteen is to be seen from two points of view: either an intensification of the 7, or as half the lunation of the moon.  In all cases, it represents the forces of Nature operating on man.  The nature of the moon is such that it makes a cycle in 28 days, or four weeks of seven days each.  This moon is closely related to the earth.  Is associated with man in many subtle ways; specifically, with that phase of man which we call the female side of things.

The moon has long been a symbol of the soul.  Or (it, the soul) is represented by silver.  The soul is Eve descending; and this Eve, descending, is the feminine side, the psyche, which goes through the whole evolution in earth.  This female side of things is therefore in intimate connection with the moon, and the moon’s cycle is 28.

It is associated with the feminine aspect; corresponding to the Four, which is the Mother Stuff out of which all things are made, multiplied by 7.  As though the 7, operating on the 4 actively, multiplying it, give us the 28.  Physical manifestation in the female body with the menstrual period, every 28 days; the classic correspondent to the lunation of the moon.

The moon waxes and wanes, 14 days each.  The 14 may be on the waxing or the waning side.  28 mansions of the moon in astrology; ruler (?) through which the soul, Eve, goes; increases and decreases.  Therefore represents the instability of the Element, Water.  Water comes and water goes, and there is the association, again, with the tides, on the physical plane.

42  is the number of work multiplied by 7.  6×7.  The seven Agencies which were produced by the Second Mind are operative: recognized either as Principles, Laws, Lords, or as in Egypt, the Forty-two Judges in the Judgment Hall of the dead.  A number of high attainment; and, for the gamut of work, the six days have been accomplished, and they have been done in the nature of the seven.

Found in the Jewish tradition by the 42-lettered name of Deity; that is, 42 letters which indicate the nature of Deity.  Four main names for Deity: one of four letters; a 12-lettered name; and a 42-lettered name; and a 72-lettered name.  They signify the powers inherent in Deity.

49  or 7 x 7, is a number of perfection, or completion.  The number itself and multiplied by itself.  What is known as Virgin.  Seven is the number of Virginity.  In that 7 is no factor in the making of any other number in the list of numerical values.  7 x 7 is Virginity multiplied by itself; from the standpoint of man’s accomplishment from below up, perfection; he has accomplished the masterwork of enabling the 7 to work perfectly, in their highest power.

Seen from the standpoint of the radiation of the 7 from the One Source, or the Three Sources, we have this permutation of the 7: first the 7 Logoi in the First Cosmic Sphere; the 49 in the second Cosmic Sphere; now, hierarchies in the next, 343; in the next, 2401.  So on, through the seven Spheres.  That is, in the seventh realm, 823, 543; as the number of the hierarchies at work in that realm.  An effort made to describe, via number, the radiations that come from the Seven.  Factually, they are many times more than that.

9  Nine, considered a very sacred number.  Contains that which is holy and blessed and many mysteries that are sacred.  A multiple of 3; that is, it contains three triplicities, or the Sacred Family on three planes.  It may be seen as the triplicity of the first, second and third Logos; as the spheres through which they work.  An illustration of activity accomplished by the mating of the masculine and feminine principles, and the result.  Therefore a number of work.  But it differs from the number 6, which gives the periods over which the work is done.  It is done by the uniting of Father and Mother and bearing the Son.  And if you haven’t the Son you haven’t life.

7  The influences that are radiating.  They are found in many of the ancient traditions.  Sometimes together, as the measure of Cosmic time and space; probably because the 3-ness is a number of Creation, and implies some kind of space and some degree of time.

The nine guardians of the three Light Treasures.  The Light Treasures are the three spheres in which Light is to be found — spheres in the Cosmic.

Nine is the number of every circle; because the circumference, which covers 360 degrees is reducible to 9.

Nine, as the first square of an odd number, symbolizes the heaven manifested in earth; and, in that sense, our three triplicities are the three Logoi whose operations link heaven and earth.  In order to be operative they must have the masculine and feminine principles, and produce results.

Unique qualities of the 9: Most powerful of all numbers.  If it is true that 9 is the perfected Activity (father, mother and son on three planes) we would expect that to be highly effective.  Would expect signs of correspondence in material things.  Nine, multiplying any number, is always reducible to nine.  Its power is so strong that it reduces everything else to itself — to its own nature.  That is the physical correspondent to the philosophical content of the number 9.

9 has had a taboo on it; not as well known as 13.

Some interesting correspondences: In poetry, the nine Muses.  In the Christian tradition, it is the ninth hour of Jesus on the Cross – the hour of darkest agony, – also of the greatest enlightenment.  In man himself, the triplicity which he must work out in body, soul and mind.

9 brothers.  9 streets.  9 months of gestation; 270 days (30×9).

9 gates to the human body: nine gates which are open in the human body.  (When he has run his whole gamut, then 12 gates open.  12 gates to the City in the Apocrypha.  Add the umbilical cord and the two breasts, and you get the 12.  The body being the physical manifestation of it, and the nine gates being the physical correspondent of nine gates, or roads, which man has to accomplish, the first as those which are inevitably open, and those three which man must himself accomplish.

10  If 9 is the most powerful of all numbers, ten is the most paradoxical of all numbers.  It contains the zero and the beginning of things.  Therefore the zero represents both the nought before Manifestation and the nought after.  One represents the beginning and the returning.  Hence, in this number we have the before the beginning, the beginning as the whole range, and the accomplishment of the gamut.  The number was originally made with the line across the circle (vertical line).  Unity, dis-memberment and return.  All in unity; all in manifestation.  Hence, a number of Cosmic paradox.

From the human point of view, ten is the number of harmony, completion.  But not in an octave that man runs but an octave of influence or power man can use.

Ten fingers.  Ten Commandments.  Illustrated negatively by the ten lepers.

Is to be studied as 3 and 7?  When we see the number 3 and 7 combined, we get an answer to the matter that is troubling so many people in regard to the apparent conflict between the Jewish secret tradition and many others.  In the others, we find the 3 and then the 7.  In the Jewish tradition we see them together, summed up as ten.  In the Zohar, Book of Splendor; the teaching of Adam-Kadmon.

If the zero, the unmanifest, is like the invisible Pole, the great Unknown God, then all the numbers 1, 2, 3 and the 7 are the work of Manifestation, and are, on that first level of the Cosmic sphere, an indication of the Pattern to be followed all the way through.  That Pattern, running all the way through in the Jewish tradition, is known as Adam-Kadmon — the Pattern Man, who preceded — the type by which all else was made.  (see diagram at end of notes.)

The Ten Zephiroth are illustrated in a book on the Kabbalah.  In the first triad: Crown, Intelligence, Wisdom.  Then: Justice, Mercy and Beauty (center).  Then: Splendor, Firmness and Foundation.  And, finally, the point below, as Kingdom.

Three triplicities, plus the One from whom all came.  The numbers of highest power, and the One.  The One, on which the Old Testament was supposed to have been built.  The Kabbalah, the tradition handed down by word of mouth, recorded in the Middle Ages; but the Book of Splendor is supposed to be the comments and interpretation of the Book of Genesis.

Others beside the Jews took delight in the mysteries hidden in the ten.  The most famous: what is known through Pythagoras.

The Tetractys.  In this design are hidden many other mysteries.  (Contains) the upturned triangle.  Man’s conscious evolution is built solidly when he becomes conscious (or solely.)

In the Tetractys are nine small triangles.  There are 4 points on each side.  In each sphere man extends himself he must function in four Elements.  Nine points on the circumference.  One complete triangle that is above earth.  As soon as man leaves earthly conditions (or condition) he is (or has) the aspects already moving to the higher plane.

The Pyramid at Giza a triple attempt to write in stone some of the significance hidden in this triangle.  Effort to move up to the point, gathering what has been scattered.  Four planes, or levels.  Four Elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air.  Only one point in the center, seen as the germinal point from which all manifestation came; all the rest in circumference.

(In the tetractys) a square with a point in it: the four-squareness which man must accomplish from the germinal point: earth-nature in man, broadened out to be four-square, and now ascending into heaven.

Diamonds in it: two, left and right side, male and female; heaven and earth-born, which must be balanced, and made to stand side by side.  Twins.  5 points (not) in the square — the five senses by which man accomplishes the work of the four-square.  Isis (4) watches over the process, and the one star is on the horizon.  Three complete diamonds (in the tetractys.)

 

 

160001

 

 

 

GB notes

 

 

pull?

 

 

160002

 

 

?

 

 

looked thru Wikipedia re Rosicrucians and couldn’t find anythings connected with a place starting with St.

 

 

160003

 

 

She has (perfections?) here, probably because of the following sentence using the word perfection.

 

 

160004

 

 

I assume this is where the end of the quote is.

 

 

She has (quote?).  Is she wondering of the next sentence is actually a quote?

Might be a quote from Thrice Greatest Hermes by G.R.S. Mead as follows: “And God-the-Mind, being male and female both, as Light and Life subsisting, brought forth another Mind to give things form, who, God as he was of Fire and Spirit, formed Seven Rulers who enclose the cosmos that the sense perceives.“

 

Lecture IV

MBM  February 15, 1929

Numbers to be discussed: 24, 36, 30, 33, 40, 50, 60

These flow from one number, but they are also independent.

24 is a number that does not appear often in the outer tradition, but in the inner.  Duplication of 12.  24 powers emanating from Elohim.  Remain divided between heaven and earth — 12 in the Cosmic sphere and 12 in the lower realms, where they are known as the Twelve Trees.  Repeated in the reflective, or phenomenal, world.

Any number is capable of many types of application.  It may appear on the negative side.  The 23 Invisibles, which are more radiant than the sun; but beyond the 24 Invisibles the actual region of the sun is more radiant than the 24.

36. 36. The sum of the first four odd and the first four even numbers. The power of 36.

The

30 a very important number.  Concerns man’s evolution: 3 x 10, or the 10 as the gamut, or completion, on the three planes.  Used, it indicates that there is the applied activity in the three-fold man — physical, psychic and mental.  Everywhere used as the period of preparation for the Larger – the period within which man does his work in his three-fold nature, and proves whether he can accomplish it.

30 is the period preceding true service.  Elijah at thirty heard the call.  Jesus began his ministry at 30.  Man is nature plus mind, and that which arises from man, or the Son of Man, or Son of the Human, or Mind, evolution.  Therefore 30 is used as sometimes Son of Man.  Jesus was “absent 30 days” at one time: much disorder.  The period of making the 30 is the period of disorder and noise.  Therefore, if you have been in a condition and leave it, you leave it in the condition of 30 – a negative use.

33. 33. Add 3 to 30. Then you have the perfect servant, or the one who ministers, having completed his period of work: the perfect service, beyond Son.  The 3 as the work of the Father, Mother, Son: Power, Wisdom, and of the Son who uses that power and wisdom, and is therefore born from them.

In that sense, we can apply the 30 plus 3 as the third day of the Resurrection. The thirty years of service were culminated by the three days, after which the Resurrection took place.  The Ultimate.  The 3 rays (?) to the Cosmic sphere, added to the 30.  The 33rd degree.

40. 40. Known as the quaternary. 4 x 10; a larger span than 30.  It takes in the four Elements: earth, water, fire, air.  When the 4 are involved in the 3 aspects of man, or earth, water, air, Fire, when the Fire corresponds to the spiritual plane.  40  should be understood both ways.  It is the completion of the work of the four Elements; up into the Spiritual Plane, in the larger sense.

The Flood in the Old Testament lasted 40 days and 40 nights.  A day and a night is a completion, a rhythm.  For 40 of these total periods the water came down from the skies, flooding the lower world.  There was undoubtedly a flood in the earlier period, but the Old Testament Flood means more than that.  It is written in terms of a pattern; nobody knows how long it did last.  Also, it probably didn’t come from the water from above; but it is used as a parable.  So you combine a philosophic meaning and a historical fact, without doing violence to either.

Describes a stage in the making of the higher evolution of man, the higher consciousness.  The lower self, which had become involved in the lower processes, is in a serious condition, and the Pattern needs to be set up: earth, water, fire, air.  Purify yourself, drown out the evils that belong to the earth, water, fire, air in you.

The rainbow is the symbol of the wellbeing which comes after regeneration, or cleansing.

40 days of the Lenten Cycle.  Combine it with the significance of the Flood, washing out the undesirable factors in the earth, water, fire, air, in you.  An aspect of the problems through which the soul must work.

In the Old Testament we are informed that Jesus was in the wilderness 40  days.  In the Old Testament, 40 years of wandering in the Wilderness before coming to the Promised Land of the Jews – the period which it is necessary for you to accomplish to travel in the Wilderness — the difficulty of the lower world — before we come into the higher consciousness: again a Pattern-making, preliminary struggle to the higher attainment.

Moses 40 days on Mt. Sinai; for the communion with the Spiritual plane, 40 is essential; the 40 alone will bring you into communion with the higher.

Elijah traveled 40 days to Mt. Horeb, and on the way he was refreshed by an angel, with bread and water.  At Mt. Horeb he had an experience — transformations in the self as the process goes on, but also capacity to observe a changing condition outside of yourself.  Now realities.  Genesis VIII, the conditions outside the self perceived.  In the case of the changing of water to wine, the Horus conditions are changing within the self.

    50 is not a progression from 40.  It is computedotherwise.  The 47th Problem of Euclid or the famoustriangle of Pythagoras.  Plato often refers to it.  Based on the numbers 3,4,5.  Apparently came from Egypt.  Osiris, as 3,

represents the Word, or what is issued from the Source, Jehovah.  4 represents the Mother, the 4 Elements.  5, that which comes from them, Horus, as having the means in the Cosmic spheres, and after that of earth, of having the power of the Five — the perfect activity which comes from Osiris and Isis.

Isis is more than the four Elements: all that belongs to the Mother-side of things.  The veils of Isis represent the barriers, or limitations in man, which make it impossible for him to conceive what the nature of this Mother-world is: the great Number, whose mysteries are so profound that man in his limitations is unable to conceive them.  As man, he can never lift the veils.

Osiris is the Source, that which stimulates Isis into productivity.  Horus aids Osiris to climb into Amenti.  That is the story as it relates to man.  In the Pattern-world, Horus is those aspects of Osiris, that is the energy of Osiris, put to work on the lower planes.  Just as Jesus is said to be the Son of God working in the earth plane.  So Horus is the son of Osiris working in earth.

50 continued:  Whenever a power is at work it is said to be squared.  Osiris squared is 9; Isis squared is 16; Horus squared is 25.  The sum is 50 — the sacred faces of the Unknown God.  Squares repeat the manifestation of a great number on the higher planes of 3, 4, 5, now visible and apparent, of which the triangle (the Pythagorean) is the original source.  Yet these 50 do not manifest in earth.  There are many stages through which they operate.  But if you accomplish the 40 years in the Wilderness you will see the fifty faces of the Unknown God.

The circumference of the triangle is 12.  12 hearkens again to the Pattern-world, by which man makes the 30.  He makes first the circumference of it, not the fulfillment.  If you add the two, you get 42 – 7 working through the 6.  Intensive work is multiplication.  With the 7 implied, or hidden, in it.

That means 50 is the number for the manifestation of Deity.  Used in many traditions: In the Babylonian, 50 great gods.  In the Jewish tradition, 50 days after Passover, Pentecost; Descent of the Holy Spirit.

30, the years of work before the 3 years of ministration.  Death at 33.  Then the 3 days in the darkness, a recapitulation of the three periods when man is in the unenlightened stage, ignorance; after which, the Resurrection.  That is Easter.

The Holy Spirit does not come until long after the Resurrection.  No haste.  Patient?????  The full realization of the Faces of Deity comes a long period after the ascent into the higher consciousness.

The Therapeuts had their greatest festivity on the fiftieth day.  Genetically, it is 7 x 7 plus one.  The seven have done their work, squared, or 7 x 7; then you add one, which is the beginning of the new, or the 50.  They considered it the most holy and the most perfect of numbers.

50 therefore corresponds to Illumination; to the Paraclete (Gnostic); to the Ascent of Atman in the Hindu; to the Divine Spirit in the Christian; to the coming of the Bridegroom in the Christian; to the Twice Born and the Great Initiate.

60, again 10 and 6.  These are not numbers applying to man; they are numbers beyond.  They do not relate to events taking place in earth, but in the Cosmic spheres, which man may begin to contact, or of which Jesus describes to his followers.

The Book of the Great Logos is (?) 60 Fatherhoods, one for each Treasure.  12 x 5.  5 represents the means by which Cosmic Forces work.  The completed labors of the five.

There are many ranges in the Cosmic.  This power which is the 60 is 60 and at the same time One.  It surrounds the First Mystery, and is the Light Image surrounding the Father — emanation from the Father.  That is not all that emanates.

 

Lecture V

MBM  February 22, 1929

 

When the 3 begins to work on anything, we have a right angle, 90°.  Therefore, when that work of Deity begins we have the first 3 working on the 90°, and we get the number 270.

Manifestation of the 3 working in man: When man also works and produces the 270, the period of human gestation — a lower application of the 3, and so we may inductively fathom some of the significance of the 3 x 90°.  The right angle made by the 3 and 4.

The interrelation of these numbers as they work one on the other.  A constant interpenetration of the 3, 4 and 5, and their multiples.  3, operating on the 5 and the 4 gives us 162 (3 x 54).  That is the number of the Father at work.  Therefore, in one sense, the number of the Son.  In another sense, it is the difference between 162 and 270, or 108.  This is the doubling up of the number of the Son on itself, namely 54.  Thus the work which is done on 270 — the mother number, productive, after the Father has stimulated it, gives us the sum of the Father and the Son.  162 is sometimes called the number of the Solar Logos.

3, the number of the Father at work; it works on the other two numbers.  4 is the number of Nature; and Nature working upon itself and upon the Son — 4 on 5 and 4, gives us 216 (4×5 plus 4 = 216.  That is the number of the Mother working upon the Son and itself.  It can’t turn back and work on the Father, so 30 is omitted.  Each of these, reduced, gives us the value of the 3, 4, and 5: 3 into 162 = 54.  5 into 270 = 54.  162 plus 216, and 270 equals 648.

648 reduced gives us the number 9.  18 reduced equals 9 (1 plus 8).  That gives us the power of the number 9, or the 3 x 3 in perfect interpenetration.  Or the 3 operative on three planes.  9 reduces everything to itself: the perfect power of the 3-fold Deity at work.  Not because of the inherent value of the 9 but because 9 is the correspondent on the lower planes.

What terrific Forces in the original Three!  The correspondence is only in the number, and the object of the philosophy of number is to give you a key that is valid to the Larger Mysteries.

The cube:  The problem of the cube.  All religions have revered the cube (cubic stone).  The  Black Stone at Mecca.  It may be understood, in relation, by the application of many types of symbolism; geometrical and numerical.

The Cubic City in the Apocalypse.  In it (the cube) are hidden all mysteries.  The Archetype.

When you look at a cube you can see only three faces; the 3 aspects of man which are visible.  In proportion as the Stone relates itself to man, so man has 3 aspects visible: body, soul and mind.  Natural man never sees more than that; supernormally, sees more.

7 points visible.  (the) seven influences from the original Source always work on the 3.

9 lines, paths of activity.  Faces, points, lines.  9 gates, channels, means.

When man is using all that is in manifestation he is using all that is on each plane.  Which brings him to the state beyond the natural state; for his mind is the instrument by which he transforms himself, by the help of the Seven, from the lower, or natural state, to the higher, or Cosmic, state.

If he does use the 9 means, those elements in the cube which are invisible begin to unfold.  3 unseen faces.  3 aspects which await man’s doing.

The Spiritual, the Divine, and the region beyond, rarely spoken of.  End of the Cosmic Day.

8 points; one more, that is, when we add the invisible point.  8 is the Resurrection number.  When man has learned to use the influences from the 7, then he goes on to 8.  It is the great Heaven beyond the Seven.  Seven heavens, and the eighth, or the Eighth State which man attains.  In the cube, the 8th that follows logically on the 7.  The significance of 7 concluded with 8.

3 lines making 12.  12 labors of Hercules.  The 12 corresponds with the regions which he attains when the 7 have worked on him; and when the six are accomplished.  The six are the complete stages of work.  When he has accomplished the labors of Hercules, the 7 have impinged completely, and he enters new world.

The 12, operative in man, the 7 operative on him.  When he has accomplished their gamut he is through with the human evolution.

How the alphabet was used numerically.  In the Hebrew, 22 letters.  In the Sephiroth, 3 and 7 (the Ten Zephiroth.)

The Kabbalist recognized 22 paths of Wisdom.  The alphabet, the basis of symbolical values.  They found so much meaning in the symbols of the numbers and letters that the alphabet and the Zephiroth became the 32 paths of Wisdom.

144,000 saved, (Apocalypse )

A D M, the original way of spelling Adam: A, 1; D, 4, M, 40.  All men destined to go through the process of involution and evolution, and to make their way out via the cube.

God Almighty (El Shaddai): 1, 30, 300, 4, 10.  Add them, and you get 345 (3, 4, 5).   The Hebrew tradition had the same numerical tradition of the famous triangle of Pythagoras.

Solomon  (Son, Sun)   S L M N — 60, 30, 40, 50 = l80.  Wise, because of 9.  The power of the 3 working in him perfectly.  He was a son of the Most High.

666 the Beast.  From one angle it connoted a Nero.

The number of 9 active on all the digits; plus the number of human gestation: 9×2=18; 9×3=27; 4×9=26; 5×9=45; and so on for 54, 63, 72, 8l — sum equals 396.  That is one of the most sacred numbers in the old Kabbala.  If you add 9×30, or 270, you get 666; the number of the Beast is complete man.  Something like 144,000.

Has to do with humanity but represents it from another angle.  Represents something which is called, for the sake of disguising it, the Beast.  The number 9 operating on all of the numbers and then brought down to earth through the period of gestation.

888  Jesus 888 in the Greek alphabet: 10, 8, 200, 7, 400, 200.  8, or that which has completed, or is beyond, the 7, represents the Solar Logos working below.  Hence, activity of the Solar Logos in earth.  The Father’s values in him.

Yod (or Iod) Hay, vow, Hay.  Yod, the Point; first letter in the mystery name of Jehovah.  Its first aspect, the secret hidden in the Point.  Hay is that which spreads out from it.  Vow means and.  Hay, again going out — more going out.  That is the way of Creation: a Beginning, spread of the Activity; then more and more.  Adjustment brings about He that was; He that is; He that will be.

In the Point, or that which comes from the Point, all things are summed up.

This 4-letter word contains, therefore, all that is, was and will be: J h v h . . . juxtaposition.  He that was; he that is; and he that is to come.

Values of the 22 letters, in their order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 200, 300, 400.

 

 

Number Symbolism

MBM  April 2, 1936

 

Number unique.  Like the other departments we have been studying.  Demarcation. Measurement.  Proportion.  A contribution from this department that no other department provides.  Geometry a first cousin.  But before God geometrizes there is this other scheme, which is number, or measure, or proportion.

With number we are closer to the scheme of Creation than with any other type of symbolism.  Precise, Computing.  Calculating.  Symmetry, adaptation, correspondence, regulation.  All of these implicit in number.  Not as implicit in any other kind, except, partially, in geometry.  When we are trying to find precise symbology we use number.

Number is the law of the universe.  “Thou hast ordered all things in number.”  A quote from Pythagoras: “The world is built upon the power of number.”

The root of the word means: that which is dealt out, or distributed.

Number starts with one.  Numbers run on without end, or one continues distribution.  Distribution of all things from one.  Progression from that in which all is homogeneous.  That which becomes heterogeneous — always a passing out from one.  Germ of the egg, which becomes the chick, but with number there is no end.  Because numbers can’t be conceived to have a conclusion.  Therefore, the philosophy of number is at once the most expansive and the most precise.

In the study of the use of the philosophy of number in symbolism we must start either with the archetypes or with man.  If we start with archetypes we start with zero.  What the circle is.  The point is number one.  The circle (zero) precedes one; out of that comes the number of one.  Out of the egg comes the germ which becomes the chick. Symbolical, but describes the beginnings of Creation: “In the beginning”, of this side of Creation; but that which was before the beginning is the zero.  In all profound philosophy (ies?) there is some consideration of that which precedes beginnings.

One:  Number one: Deity who begins manifestation.  You can get some intellectual approach to the Deity who was before the beginnings — the Deity of the Zero, which precedes the One.  Plotinus, who stands between the great Mysteries and their pronunciation to the world, speaks of the Nought.  It can’t be known.  Is symbolized by the Nought.  Nothingis seen as no thing.  Can’t know the Nought, but know that it must be greater than the One.

With One begins manifestation.  And then the progression.  You can’t tell when multiplication about anything is going to cease.

This point, – nucleus, dawn, is to be seen as from above.  Deity starts with One.  Man is many.  Man moves toward the One, and Deity toward the Many.  Man is infinitely differentiated.  And he has to learn to put Humpty Dumpty together again.  Humpty Dumpty is you.  Folklore and Wisdom-teaching.  The dismembered egg of man.  Do not talk about yourselves as a unity.  You have to see whether it refers to what man is going to be when he is at-oned, when man has put Humpty Dumpty together again.  And it can only be done by the science of the  soul; or where it is related to the One of Deity.

Sometimes one is spoken of as a seed, light spark, monad, which man intrinsically is.  Vulcan and the forge.  And the sparks fly.  Those sparks are monads.  That is the seed from which you grow.  You can’t wish yourself back to a monad, but from that monad you could grow a tree and relate all parts of that to a new and evolved whole.  But a whole can be composed of parts.  An entity is a one.  Monad is the only place where one can be spoken of in reference to humans.  Brahma, Infinity, First Cause, Undifferentiation, all refer to the number One.

The Unutterable: that always refers to the unutterable: there is so much that it can’t be told.  You can articulate Four; and out of that comes the Tetragrammaton, or four-letter name of Deity — Jehovah.  You can utter it with four, but not with One.

Creation quickly became Two: light and darkness, – that is, symbolically light and darkness.  Then became Four: earth, water, fire, air.  Then it is speakable.  Then it is substance.  The correspondence of the four: J-h-v-h.  The One is the known Source of all things, as the Zero is the Unknown Source.

Two.  Means division.  The Cosmic Sacrifice, – because unity is shattered for the sake of Creation.  As Paul said, in reference to a lower octave, but having the same connotation: “The whole Creation groaneth and travaileth . . . .”  There is an enormous suction of all things toward the Return to the number One.  We do not experience it in our lower nature.  As the rubber band.  Also known as Father-Mother.  Father, in the sense of the potency of the past — all that preceded the present beginning — and the Mother, – all the summing up of previous experience, – therefore feminine.  These are the Parents — highly abstracted from anything mundane.

Here too, when we have division, we have bisecting, –  even a sheet of paper.  Therefore, it is said, philosophically and symbolically, that with the coming of Two, or duality, appears Substance.  You can’t have anything, however simple, that has not two-ness — what we know of as duality, even the two sides of a thin piece of paper.  Long and short; dark and bright, – these two are the measure of substance.  Therefore, with two-ness comes Creation, both in the Large and with those things man does in earth.

Also, from another point of view, two brings into the picture the feminine principle; so that two, not as a progression, but in itself, is the symbol of the female principle. The first manifest mother.  If One and Two, they are Power and Wisdom; Spirit and Substance; Heaven and Earth; Father and Mother, or the Cosmic Parents.

Three  When these two bring forth a third, we have what is known as the First Logos, or First son.  That is, the first activity, after the germ, so it is the Will of the First Mind brought into action.  Sometimes called the Demi Urgos.

In reference to man, it relates to body, soul, spirit.  Relates to the family:  Father, Mother, Child.  In other words, it is the carrying through, or extending outward, of the One, Two and Three.  But if each number alone: One, Father; Two, Mother; Three, Son.

The three Great Amens:  Relates to these first three movements from the beginnings.  The three Baptisms.

The Chinese have a saying: Numbers begin at one, are made perfect at three, and terminate at ten.  Made perfect, because the idea of productivity of parents and their seed: will, wisdom and activity, that is the ideal triad.

Three is sometimes said to be Cosmos, or Creation.  Because Creation is the son, or fruit, of Will and Wisdom, which are One and Two.  The Three, or Cosmos, is the son of One.

Trinity.  If the Father is the Absolute, and the Holy Spirit is the productive principle, it is the Mother, Two, and the Son is Three.  So that your triangle can be seen in terms of numbers, as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Three is also seen as Life.  “He that hath the son has life.” (John).  The “son“ is a way of saying the fruit of action.  If you have action, or result, you have life.  Bring it down to humble levels.  If you have an idea, and determination to do something about that idea, the idea is mother, the determination is father; you will have results, – you will do something about it.  If you do nothing about it you don’t know life.  If you haven’t life about little things you will never have the great life.  Man works from below up.

Four  Here is the source of what is Known in mystical lore as the “widow’s son”.  To find this progression that we come to now, three cohabits with two:  the son cohabits with the mother, as distorted in psychoanalysis.  In each of us — written, buried, but waiting for liberation, the imprints of these laws, which are written into the beginnings of things.  Occasionally they come out ahead of time, and manifest.  In order to have our numbers flow out, be productive, yet include the past, there is this strange reference to three and two cohabiting, producing the four.  The Supreme Virgin, without substance, now gives four, who is another Virgin, because it is archetypal substance, as yet unused for any Creation.  Much too material, earth, water, fire, air.  That is the Virgin now, the archetypal substance, which is to be used, – the mother-stuff for Creation.  The Great Mother is not this stuff.  She is Wisdom.

The four elements, four directions, four rivers — the flow of energies out of these four elements, the four supports, the four quarters of heaven, – so that four repeats, because it is the kind of substance that makes all things; so we are bound to find those four repeated.  In great and small.  They occur in you.  The four sons of Horus.  The four great angels.  The four names of Deity.  The four names of Deity that we know are the four Powers made manifest.

Five  The duad and a triad, as far as Cosmic processes are concerned.  Or the Mother and the son, and the great Father recedes.  Because they come into activity, mankind knows of these five as gods, but the Great Father is unknown.  We also have the five points.

Five is a peculiarly human number.  We begin to see it in reference to man: the five senses.  Five loaves.  Five wounds of Jesus — the senses that will be wounded in you, to be transformed into something else.  Five trees: because these senses, before they are transformed, grow.  Jesus fed five thousand.  Five hymns, for the same reason as five virgins.  The five sons of Pandu, in the Gita.

The combination of three and four.  Now the son, who first cohabited with the mother, Two, has, in turn, a bride, the number four; and their son is the number five.  That gives the famous triangle, and we connect up with geometry: the three (vertical); four (horizontal), five (hypotenuse), – or 12, the complete man.  The perfect family yields the perfected fruit, or the complete man.  9+16+25=50.  Fifty is known as the mystical faces of Deity.  A super-octave on the Holy Family.  The fifty faces of Deity is the superlative on the Holy Family.  Twelve, is man completed, as Son of Man.  But that is not the end.  That is only the beginning of the next.  And the continuation of that gives the superlative octave: three, four, five, the holy family we can know something about.  One and Two fade out.  Holy means complete, perfect, following the pattern of the Will of Deity; the number Three carrying on in the wisdom of Wisdom-teaching, and bringing forth results.  The 3,4,5 triangle has to do with man.  In Egypt this triangle was called Isis, Osiris, Horus.

Six  The six days of labor.  Means six stages.  Because of those six stages the number six is associated with work, achievement.  Sometimes a sum of two triangles, but usually means six.  Our weekday still following the schemology of the number six; seven as being the completion, which is described in the Book of Genesis, though known ages before, because the number seven has been in our solar system.  Gradually ceasing.  Its archetype will still be there, because of the seven stars around the Pole.  Six, the number just before completion, and therefore of the work before that completion.  Seven, day (of) holiday, because the achievement is there.

The sixth hour of darkness, until the ninth hour.

The six Aeons under Yaldabaoth.

Sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy.

Six is half of the twelve; therefore also indicates a middle point.

Six sons of Mind, or the value out of the Days of Labor.  (Or “these sons of mine.”)

Seven  Belongs to an octave: days of the week, colors, sacraments; Seven Rulers; seven Elohim; seven veils of Isis.  Correspondent to the ideals.  Because the number seven is an ideal number we see also in earth its opposite; hence, seven points of darkness, or the seven deadly sins.  What are the seven deadly sins: pride, sloth, avarice, wrath, lusting, gluttony, envy.

Seven Seals.  Seven youths and maidens fed to the Minotaur in Crete.  Perhaps no number so much implied in symbology as seven.

“He who seeks me shall find me in children from the age of seven.”  “Wisdom has built a house and rested it on seven pillars.”  It is said that Adam was made of seven substances.  “The seven great beings who make the laws.”

Eight:  The number of the ogdoad, or the completion of an octave.  Therefore a supreme state.  If you think of man going upward on a ladder, different degrees of elevation out of the earth plane, then the ogdoad is that state.  It is also known of as the number of regeneration.  If seven is of perfection, and six of work, then eight is the number of rebirth.  Eight can also be seen as the substance on two planes: archetypal and lower.  “In the eighth have I found rest.”

Lecture of April 16th 1936

Seven related to octave, also twelve.  Eight is to seven as thirteen is to twelve, so the completion of an octave and the beginning of the new.

Seven has to do with the gifts of the gods, or the powers which influence the universe and man.  And the number twelve has to do with the stages of man’s evolution.  Therefore the number seven is associated with the gods and stages of the gods and twelve with stages of man toward the gods, and thirteen with his attainment of that.  Think of seven as substance and energy from the gods, therefore a godly number, and twelve as a human number; thirteen as the attainment of stature by man, but still a human number.

Eight is the super world as thirteen is the super man.  The ogdoad belongs to the greatest plane to which man can attain.  In the western musical scale there are both octaves, seven and twelve.  If you look at it carefully, you will discover it has the twelve.  Therefore something peculiarly satisfying to the ear in the western scale of the seven and the thirteen.  That which is behind the philosophy of number is quality and power.

The ogdoad, eight.  There is much lore about it.  It is to be recognized as the stage above the human evolution to which the thirteenth man goes.  Therefore, in the use of these numbers there is something of that great flavor in them even if used to lower illustrations.

Nine.  The three times three, or three triplicities.  If we go back to the number three, remember that was a highly important number – first Father, Mother and Son; therefore there is no more dynamic quality than the three and the three and the three or the number nine.  We must grant that this number has a very peculiar significance.  It must not be mixed up with any of the other numbers.

One use:  As the triple outpouring, or the three forces which came out of the original great reservoir or naught — obviously the influence of these logi.  The three logi are the Words, the breath of the Creative Force, animating all things.  We will conceive that that number nine has within itself the dynamic that will do the work of Deity, and return all things to Deity.  Therefore, there is a correspondence between that significance of nine and what the number nine does.  For instance, 8 x 9 = 72.  Multiply any number by nine and it always adds up to nine.  Mathematics has not worked out the mental logic of it.  That is known as the power of the number nine — that power which reduces everything to itself if like the power of the three logi, the three outpourings of the Unknown God, which will ultimately bring all things back to itself.  In the number nine is seen the work of consummation.

Ten.  Zero, the Unknown God.  You have its beginning with one.  In sum you immediately think of 3 + 7; the Triad, the first great group, and the powers of all the gods, known as seven.  So the whole gamut is there in the sum of it.  Now we know why it is complete at ten.  (Here MBM referred to the Chinese saying that numbers begin at one and are complete at ten.)  When you ponder on the esoteric content of number.

Twelve.  Why it is the number of man.  The four elements.  Therefore man must also partake of these four.  We know that in him are many forms of the three, both in the sense of beginnings that he must develop from the seed.  Threeness, also body, heart and mind.  When he has developed these in the four, he is twelve — 3×4.  But all have degrees of body, heart, and mind.  You haven’t expanded the four in the three.  So twelve is the measure of man in the gamut that he must walk to become the super man.  Man is climbing the mountain until he completes the twelve.

With the twelve completed, he is the Son of Man, Mind, and becomes the thirteenth man.  In the allegory, the twelve disciples are the powers which he won in the twelve labors of the hero.  Hercules, the strong man, mind, the one who wins through to the accomplishment of the 3×4.  Christ, a number as well as the one who attained it.  Or a Buddha, wherever that plane is accomplished.  Such a one moves to the Ogdoad, if he choses to go on.  He is Ocuoad worthy, though he may chose to come back.

Fourteen is associated with the moon and is therefore a soul number.  Fourteen, therefore, half the lunation, so 14 has to do with the number of the soul in its descent and therefore its dismemberment.  That is why the body of Osiris was cut into 14 pieces and scattered.  Then, changing my metaphor, the at-one-ment, or putting Humpty Dumpty together again.  That at-one-ment is the ascent of the fourteen.  So we have the soul growing small as it descends into earth, a mere point, even dark for awhile, then comes the rise again when it grows full.  The soul is a changeable thing, has been compared with the great sea.  The variableness of the soul is seen with the constant variability of the moon.  The psychic nature is like it, and the number 14 is always the going or the coming of the moon.

3, 6, 9.  Read about references to 3, 6 and 9 in connection with the Crucifixion the third hour, the sixth hour, and the ninth hour.  The darkest hour in earth corresponds to the beginning of the high hour in another plane, and illustrates again the blindness of men who judge according to earth instead of according to heaven.

The Tetragrammatan is the power of Deity in manifestation through this four-ness.  Name means nature.  The four-letter name of God.  The letters mean powers earth, water, fire, air in manifestation.

 

Lecture by MBM

April 30, 1936

24. 24. To be seen as the double of 12. References have been made to 24 as the superlative of 12, or to the 12 in the archetypal pattern which is in the heavens, and the 12 which is carried through in earth.

30. 30. The perfection of man. For instance, is seen as the number which gives the stature of man when he begins his service.  As with Gautama, Jesus, Ezekie

33. 33. The 30 3. The ideal of the 3 years of activity after his completion as a man.  The 33rd degree in masonry, where they have taken over that idea of the fullest measure of man, perfected and in service.

40. 40. In contrast, is a cosmic number because it takes in the number of an extra decade.Implies the working of a cosmic destiny on the three.  The 40 days in the wilderness.  That was a testing from the Cosmic.  30 days would be a testing of man.  40, completes his spiritual stature.  Testing by cosmic forces; another octave entering into man.  Either he is in that octave, or it is a fourth octave entering upon the 30.

42. 42. An important number. 42 = 6×7, is the six days of labor – the perfect number of 7.  So 42 is seen as one of the names of Deity.  The power of 42 is exceedingly Holy.    42 contains all the power and wisdom of the Creative Hierarchies working through the 7 throughout the six days.  Can refer to the six days of labor, to Creation in toto, is therefore the consummation of all those powers.  There were 42 generations from Abraham to Jesus.  That is the way so much of the occult lore of sacred scripture is interwoven.  It could not all be accident.  The Jewish race begins with Abraham, the perfection or climax in Jesus as the Christ.  That therefore, meaning the spelling of the perfection of.man is the 6×7, or 42.  And it was literally so in the generations from Abraham to Jesus.

49. 49. An important number, on 7 x 7. 49 is not used as much as 42.  When you think it through, you recognize why.  It is a superlative octave, in a way above the work of man.  It is above 42 as 13 is above 12; as 8 is above 7 in the work of gods.  So that 49, or what are known as the permutations of 49 all belong to Cosmic patterns, or to the great Hierarchies.  49, or 40 + 9 is the Light of the supreme states.  Philo refers to it also and the follower of Pythagoras.

36. 36. 3 + 6 = 9 16 + 20 = 36

             1     2

             3     4

             5     6

             7     8

            16     20

Four is the mother substance that is in everything.  That is why we take the first four odd numbers.  Four for the even numbers, spelling the substance of all things and put together, they are 36.  36 is not only 3 x 12, or the sum of the digits making 9, but it has within it this curious double sign.

28  4×7.  Belongs to the moon.  Now not 7, with the 7 powers or 7 forces but the four quarters that belong to the whole span of the moon.  Therefore, intimately associated with everything that belongs to the soul and to manifestation.  Therefore has to do with the tide, has to do with the female and menstruation, the mother side of things, the foundation, Eve, Mary.

Like water, it is not stable.  The changeableness of the moon and 28.  Nevertheless 28 for men in earth is a very important number.  Philosophically speaking, it is a number to be transcended; or, when the water becomes “the glassy sea” 28 is no more.  Your job, speaking philosophically, is to keep the 28 and not let it become 27.  Keep a full moon.

144. 12 x 12. Twelve is the gamut, the whole span that man must run. Represents the 12 signs of the Zodiac. Number also used in connection with the alphabet.  Every letter receiving a numerical order.

     A, B, G, D, H, M

     1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 40

Adam, ADM, equals humanity.  1, 4, 40 = 1440.  Reference to 144,000 in the Bible.  A religious sect that believes in predestination takes literally the statement that 144,000 are to be saved.  ADM means all of humanity and its numerical value is 144, and the ones who are to be saved are humanity or 1440.  144,000 means exactly the same thing.  Before it spelled Adam it was 12 x 12.  M, the mother, is 40.  ADM the smaller number.  In the book of Revelations it must be a bigger number, so it is made 144,000.  Instead of being seeds, it is fruit; instead of being an acorn, it is an oak tree.

666. The number of the beast is 666.Six is the days of labor in reference to earth.  Or man before he is perfected.  It is again humanity, but this time as a Beast.  But as a divine Beast, as Behemoth and Leviathan are divine beasts, that is patterned after the plans of Deity.  So 666 is not a beast of a terrible ruler like Nero, but something very beneficent.  Adds up to 9.  The work of the triple Logos come into effect.  Adam equals 9, a multiple of 9 so you see that is in the plan too.  The generations from Adam to Christ are 72, which equals 9.

El Shaddai.  Usually translated in the Bible as God Almighty.  In the original, it is spelled Al Sh Di.  Sh equals 300; A = 1. L = 30, D = 4, 1 = 10.  Together 345.  This is the almighty Creative Power.  The 3,4,5 Triangle.  Now do you attempt to know something of what God Almighty is.  Before you can give praise, you must know.

       I am that I am    A H I H    a s h r

           k 1             1          1

             5          R 300         5

            10            200         10

             5                         5  

21            501         21

The three columns added equal the number 543.  Those powers are eternally present and operative; 3,4,5, in various emphases.  There are shiftings in where the emphasis is; i.e. 543 and 345 make 12 in each case.  Twelve is contained in the operations of that number, or make the 12 manifest.

I H V H     I. 10

            H   5

            V   6

            H   5 

26 = 8

7 and 8 are numbers that belong to Cosmic patterns.  8 is the number simply called the Solar Logos.  Because it is the Word made manifest through Spirit, whose symbol is the sun, as the sun sustains all things.  So that triplicity is the symbol of what the Solar Logos is, the God of our Universe whose sign is the Sun.  (Ed. This paragraph relates to the name of Jehovah.)  In the greek, it is spelled 8 too meaning Jesus was a manifestation of the Solar Logos.

ᴨ (pi) equals 3.1416, the old philosophical number 3.1416.  How many times the diameter is divisible in the circle, but it never comes to an end.  Pi, the immeasurable proportion of the influence of the Cosmos in ail things.  The Pi proportion, therefore, is the unknown ever present element in all things.  It is something that cannot be taken out and measured just as man cannot measure the things of Deity.  It affects him, and he reckons with it, but it is neither tangible.nor measurable.  Recognition of the Pi proportion is the recognition of the immanence of Cosmic Influence in all things, but man never comes to the end of it.

Order and proportion and correspondence are amazingly immanent everywhere, the more you study number.  And you don’t wonder therefore that the philosopher in his study of number sees that number does something that no other form of symbolism does.  It gives the ordered symmetrical mind approach to Creation.  When it is said that Deity ordered all things, not as a mandate, but that it  means a proportionate adjustment, of not only substance but energy.  The folk who knew these things, or were inspired, perhaps by automatic writing.  In many cases, that is what inspiration meant in the early days.

A few bits re the uses of number in the Christian Bible.  Six pots of water were changed to wine.  It does not mean only changing the psychic nature into the spiritual nature, it means the whole range of human labor – the six-ness of things, the whole lower world, after which you have the upturned triangle.

The ten Commandments.  What did Jesus say about the Ten Commandments?  Peculiarly related to man’s doing and the commandments were to regulate man’s doing.  Jesus said there is a bigger commandment than the 10.  In other words the law was replaced by something bigger when you ascend toward the number 8 or the Solar Logos.  So we have the ten lepers way down.  Ten can be healed by 8 under certain conditions.  The Solar Logos healing the ten lepers.

12. How many years did Jacob serve for Leah and Rachel – 12.How many years did Job suffer – 12.  Twelve gates to the Holy City.  One is the negative, the other the positive; one the dark side, the other the side of opening.  As with the Ten Commandments and the ten lepers.  So the number 6 as water, and the number 6 as wine.  Job, the symbol of the final initiation, the highest in earth.

In what watch of the night did Jesus come to the disciples walking on the sea?  Matthew, Chap.14, verse 15.  What day was Jesus circumcised?  In the eighth day.  Luke, Chap.2. In each element there are appearances and powers.

The Tarot Cards

May 14, 1936

1 – 21 and the zero in the four suits.  Different opinions about this.  1, the magician, the initiate, Man.  The truly wise, the Logos in the human form, the super man, who uses the hidden powers of Life.

2, the priestess.  In a sense, the feminine side of the occultist.  The priest who administers from heaven to earth.

3; again feminine, the empress — universal nature.  The continuous power of reproduction.  The empire is nature.  The wisdom, the goddess  contained can be applied on a higher or a low octave.

4, the emperor, the great ruler.  The master of the four.  The Logos who went forth to rule.  The Tetragrammatan.

5, the hierophant.  The master, the priest, who transmutes the experiences by contacting and impressing, embracing the psyche, and thereby culminating the change through which the mystic has been moving.  Not exactly the priest, but a king to that.  Welds, wields the sacred science.  But has the keys.

6, the lovers.  The two aspects, masculine and feminine which must live constantly to make the hermaphrodite.  Adam-Kadman in action.  To bring these two aspects in harmonious relation is part of the great work.  The occult fact is that love has its roots in the self; is the mystic hermaphrodite in perfect relationship.  The seed of Adam-Kadman fulfilled.

7, the chariot.  Vehicle of Cosmic possibilities.  Ultimately of the Ascension.  In another sense, the mystically trained imagination.  The conveyance between God and man.  In that sense the imagination, for instance, must possess a chariot.  So must the High Priestess….  In the training what must take place in the great Work.  That both aspects must be turned up.  That power in the nth degree makes for the  possession of the chariot.

8, strength.  The force runs through the two of them.  The one who lives and functions consciously in two worlds at one time, and has become master of it, has that sign.  The two worlds interlink and therefore of power.  Also equilibrated — heaven to earth, earth to heaven.  In number philosophy 8 links the lower octave to the higher.  The invisible force that binds all creation.  The true number of love, which is not personal.

9, the hermit.  Esoterically the man who has the power developed in himself to bear the removal of the curtain of the threshold.  Who can sustain himself in crisis.  The capacity to withdraw from leaning on anyone or anything.  The occult meaning of al-one, the one who can bear being solitary in the occult sense.  The subjective force of knowledge and consciousness, and is on the path to larger initiations.  The force to guard against too early penetration.  Also seeing all your past; not being overcome by it, and still assimilating it.

10, the wheel of chance.  Tarot, Sphinx, the unsolved riddle, and yet the power of all, carrying the sword.  The four elements and the powers thereof and the book that you have written in earth, water, fire, air.  The wheel of fortune, which is Tarot and carries many other things, implies in its larger sense all the relations of cause and effect, which may still be interrupted by other operations of cause and effect.  Therefore fate in the larger sense, nature in her revolving circulatory movement.

11, justice.  Between the two pillars.  The sword upright, active.  Rule, not battling.  Justice is the hidden side of the balance between the pairs of opposites or the dawn of creation.  Also the laws that govern cause and effect.  Therefore Karma and all that that implies.  It is working for rightness.  Where the pairs of opposites are actively administered over.  Wears a red garment of action.

12, the hanged man, the one who has placed himself upside down so he is hanging from heaven instead of walking on earth.  The man who has made himself the upside down tree.  Implies suffering.  Abrogates the things of earth, but gains much in spite of that.  Not lip service but acts.  The narrow gate, to such higher states as the Hierophant, Emperor or Magician.  A stage to pass through or a power to possess at any time.  It is also the power of endurance.  Also spiritual consciousness brought down to earth.  Makes himself the elements in action, the Hammer of Thor.  None of these things belong to the physical side or physical sensitivity of any kind, but are to be apprehended only with the spiritual eye, that is, mind at the higher state.

13, death.  Who is death?  Only a crisis of transition.  A phase to the completion of one octave and the beginning of another.  The review of life is death when it is truly reviewed, because it implies the beginning of a new octave.  Not intellectually.  Brings about a change which is a death.  The two aspects are one.  There is no destruction but only transition.

14, temperance.  Has a certain relation to justice, yet is very different.  If you think of temperance as the tempering influences of time viewed from a higher dimension.  New perspective.  What is poured from the one cup into the other.  The power of spirit poured into soul, or of the soul into the human, and each tempering the other.  Time ceases, and all things are.  The two are linked.  The present flows two ways — into the past and into the future.  A new perspective through this greater consciousness.

15, the devil.  The sign of black magic.  The dark side of things — earth the fleshly side of things, Adam and Eve in sweat and suffering, the necessity that comes from creation and man’s descent.  Night.  That which belongs to manifestation.

16, the tower.  Is built up from earth.  Tied up with Babel.  The effort of man to reach the heights.  But when he uses nothing but earth to reach the Heights, he is smitten.  All the ideas that are man made — intellectualism, partisanship, religions, are man’s effort to reach the Higher.  So the danger of building from below must be taken into account.  The magician abides in the tower; it is his throne in earth.  Throws out false doctrine … is the symbol of his power.  Therefore, the higher consciousness that throws out the lower.  Relates to Unknowing the things you learn in earth because they are too puny; are refracted considerably by the facts of heaven.

17, the star.  Two vases.  That which wins the value out of the psychic sea.  The figure is looking into the psychic planes.  The imitations of such a position.  A world of mysteries but not the great mysteries.  Sometimes related to ecstasy, the ecstasy that is caught through the water from the light above.  The higher emotions are engendered by dipping into the water.

18, the moon.  Wolf and dog.  The wild nature and the tame nature.  You should never be in the water, but you should fish in the water for something.  The animal nature has a sensitivity toward the psychic, whether wild or tame.  It is drawing the soul out of the water.

19, the sun.  The center of life of our solar system.  And here is the symbol of that central force, which goes out to ride through life, carrying the banner, or garment, or substance, which presently enwraps it as it goes on its pilgrimage.  The four, in manifestation on the substance and life side both.  Or its creative power.  The drive carries on.

20, judgment.  The motif of ascension.  Occurs when you have what is in the foreground.  The Holy or whole family.  True judgment or the Resurrection occurs when you have the father, mother, son.  The decision, discernment, understanding, which require negation to the world.

21, the world.  Powers of the four elements, Cosmic powers, and within it, the figure of a woman with a double ruling power.  This is nature in full, in the enclosure of the egg; therefore Nature in manifestation.  (Three rules 21.)  Human life enclosed in the circle of Life consciousness.  It is the eternal young Virgin, nature in its true aspects, supported by the powers of the four rivers, in the living circle of green.  While the mother still stays virgin.

22, the fool.  Wanderer.  Zero.  Because it is either the all or the nothing.  The stepping forth into manifestation.  All the mystical treasure of experience condensed in the feminine container of the bag.  The white rose, the feminine symbol; the staff, the masculine symbol.  The dog, that which is sensitive and yet will descend with the pilgrim into the lower worlds.  The sun here is white.  Heritage implied in the bag.  The 22 cards correspond to the 22 letters of the alphabet.  Contain some of the profound mysteries pertaining to the universe and each individual soul.  Can be turned to simple or profound reading.

Philosophy of Number

from MBM series on Wisdom-lore 1946-47

Class I, February 20, 1947

The philosophy of number is a basic.  An index to all scriptures.  A short road to a number of other subjects.  You have to know about the teachings of many races if you learn about the philosophy of number.

Number appears over and over, something many races used in the same way.  Appears in the cosmogonies of the great races.

An old saying: Order is Heaven’s first law.  The first manifestation of that order is in terms of number, proportion, quantity, weight, condition — all of which are reported in number.  Indeed, you could tell the story of the successive steps of Creation in the use of number, if you know how to do it; laying hold of wonderful things about the order of the Cosmos; getting off the “island”. (of our ordinary planetary perspective.)

There are three avenues to keep in mind as we study the Wisdom in Number: 1) in relation to the Cosmos and the sequential steps of its unfoldment; 2) the doctrine of reflections: the same principles apply to the human steps, but in an inverted position, as a tower is reflected in the lake (with its highest point nearest your feet.)  Nothing of the larger Patterns is chance.  (If the water is quiet, re the reflection of the tower.)  Ruffled water, like numerology, a distortion, as when the water is choppy.

The third avenue is the use of number in great code names.  There are many of these in the Hebraic texts.  If you know what is meant by the number you will know what is meant by the name.  Kabbalah.  A secret code of number in name.

We will take up the first two avenues this evening starting with the first.

The Nought  “Before all things were, Nought was.  In some traditions, it is referred to as Chaos.  That does not mean disorder.  It means the Void.  Before the Beginning was Nought — N; the not-yet ordered into manifestation.  It does not mean that there was nothing.

One: The Beginning; the Germ, the starting.  “All things begin with the number one and run to Infinity.

From the first avenue, the Cosmic appears as the WILL, the MIND, the first emergence.  It contains everything that is to come, in its perfection — the perfection of the Cosmic is in the totality of the Nought.

In reference to man, it is also the germ, his beginning; but his beginning is not a beginning that is packed with the Nought and the fruitfulness of all power within; it is a naked one.  Doctrine of reflections.

(in ref to the Cosmos)  One is the First Light, the First Father — the Unknown and Unknowable Father.  With man, it is all potential.  It is knowable because it is so small.  The Godhead which starts with the ONE is the beginning of all things.

Two is known as the great Sacrifice.  Because it is the first great partition.  That which was a One is split.  Two is the first Root Substance, which is Wisdom, The Unknown Mother.

Two, for man, is the pairs of opposites: heat-cold, up-down, East-West, right-left, higher-lower; the heavenly self and the earthly self; conscious and subconscious.  Those two are the stretch, the extension of the line.  The point has become the line, with two ends.  Between those two ends all drama takes place.

Three  The emergence of the result of the mating of One and Two: the First Outpouring, the First Logos, the First Word, the First Son.  The Three-ness emerges out of the One and Two; so that Three contains One and Two.  The First Sonship.  Or you could take them separately.

Three, with man, is something else.  It is the beginning of fruitfulness, because, out of the two sides of himself, is born an activity, a three-ness.  There are superstitions about three, a distorted sense of (its) significance; back of it (three) a much distorted mystical fact.

This three-ness leads to the first obvious mother, Four.

Four in the planes above, and now in the planes below, has to do with the objective world.  Not so much with man, or with the Godhead, but as results from Three.  With Three comes the drawing of the Son upon the Wisdom which is inherent in Two, and which has emanated from One.  This is the story of Creation in Number.

Don’t be disturbed if it is not clear at once.  This is the way the great Wisdom-traditions condense the story.  They often use these numbers to refer to certain stages, so that in Number is hidden a whole chapter of meaning.  In this drawing of Three on Two is the archetypal Pattern of another distortion in our turbulent waters — the first Oedipus complex, the son cohabiting with the mother.  It is a mystical sequence.

So, as the result of this, the first Son, carrying out the Will of the Father, produced the four Elements, and they are the substance side of all things.  They produce, or are, the Four Rivers, the four streams, the four cardinal points, which are the substance of all planes between here and the ONE.  They are in different conditions — like water, vapor, ice, etc.  You label it (the substance) different names, according to the stage it is in.

The Four Elements have nothing to do, essentially, with the Godhead or the human being, but are the drapery which makes the stage of all things, though in different conditions.

Four is called by many different names: 4 elements, directions, four patterns, cardinal points, Spirits, Guardians, Shapers; four soldiers at the tomb of Jesus; four angels; four classic virtues; four women at the Cross.

As the result of the substance side three stages are set up — three great divisions of the world: Jupiter, the world of nous and spirit; Neptune, the world of the psychic; and the realm of Pluto, the lower world.

The great traditions all have that three-fold division.  But they also have the three in reference to the family.  Three may be known as the Son, the First Logos; also in terms of the triads, the great sets of gods of the various races: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva; Anu, Enlil, Ea; Amun-Ra, Mut, Khonsu; Ahura-Mazda, Anahita, Mithra; the First Outpouring, which is the Creator god.

The philosophy of Number helps you get away from the illusion of unity and a single godhead.  If you are studying the secret Wisdom you will sooner or later come to this: that that which was simple becomes complex; and you will see the unfoldment of the stages.  The first knowable God is the First Son, who is number Three.

The Triads (of gods) govern over what Number Three set up.  The Holy Family: Father, Mother, Son.  (in the outer?) God, Mary, Jesus.  (the first) in the mystical tradition.  Why called the Holy Family?  It could be interpreted by being spelled w h o l e, the whole-making family; the Complete; the thing that some of the great philosophers of Greece called the nuptial number — the wedding number, the number of productiveness.

We are using it in this work.  I am the masculine power, you are the feminine power; what you do as the result of it is the child.

What children could you have as the result of this class?  The “whole family” means parents which have offspring; an idea, for your cogitation over it.  Your conclusion is a holy family, but it is by thought of that that you learn the mystery of the Holy Family.  In mystical language, it looks to thirteen — the number which is complete, the perfect child, with l3.  He will have done the Twelve Labors of Hercules.

Four is the knowable Mother.  Two is the Supreme Virgin, the “She who is not known.”  In man are the opposites, and he struggles between them.  Then, as the movement develops, man’s three stretches out into the three-fold for you, the short range or the long-range: body, soul and spirit; the three gifts, or the three kings, or the three baptisms, of water, fire, air.

And so we could follow through with man, and with God, in a variety of quotations.

With Four there is also the mating.  Because the activity of Three works upon Four, or the Elements; or the First Logos shapes all things.  He is the Shaper God.

From that, is sprung another Son, known as the Second Logos, or the Second Outpouring.  The 3, 4, 5 triangle contains the mystery of all Creation.  The Unknown God is not here. Neither is Wisdom.  The first One and Two are unknowable.  With three, four and five comprehension can begin.

These numbers multiply true to themselves: 3-squared, 4-squared, 5-squared.  The design (of that triangle) is known by the names of the gods: Osiris, Isis, Horus.  The fifty faces of Deity (sum of the squares of the sides.)  Horus did the work.  The “fingers of Horus raised Osiris into Amenti.” — into Heaven.

Osiris, the symbol of the soul coming into earth.  Therefore he was rather quickly out of the picture.  But Isis brought up Horus, and he was the Horus who did battle with all the enemies of Osiris in earth.  By doing battle with them successfully he raised Osiris into Heaven.

Five did the work for Three, after having been brought up by Four.

The moon grows smaller for fourteen days.  Then the seed of the god in you begins to awaken; to do battle, by manifesting what has been gained through Isis; accomplishes the manifestation, and assists Osiris.  The thing which torn (the dis-memberment, the 14 pieces) is you.

Five, the Second Son, the Second Logos, the Second Outpouring, who does the work with man.  The first number is way in the background, the germinal Idea; Three set up the Pattern; Five begins to take it into manifestation.  It is the number of work.

As related to man: the five fingers; the five senses with which man works — the tools, primary tools.  The number by which he can raise himself up.  His first tools.  Do you think that is accident?  Or is it true that in the scheme of things heaven has worked out order, and that there is a Pattern which encloses all things.

The Five Virgins.  Five appears in the traditions, the mystic traditions: the Five Gathas make up the body of the righteous man, the tools.  The Pentateuch is seen as the especial meaning of the esoteric teaching of the Jews.

In the Greek, a fifth Element, Aether: the fifth Element of the mystical structure of the Universe.

Esoterically, monotheism always was.  The Hebraic tradition, supposedly introduced it. That is popularly true, but esoterically, no.

Two: the First Mother, the Virgin, Root Substance, the Great Deep.

One and Two: Power and Wisdom.  The First Parents, the Cosmic Parents.  On the earth levels: the pairs of opposites; two sides; male and female; life and form: “When the Two shall be One, then shall the kingdom of heaven be found.”  Yang and Yin, and the reciprocal movement of one to the other.

Three: the First Generative Force; the Logos: the Will of the One carried into activity.  Sometimes called the Demi-Urgos.  The Shaper.

Four: Root substance, now differentiated into the four elements.  Bread was even broken into four parts.  The concept of Lent (40 days) on the idea of four.  Forty days in the Wilderness.

Five: The Second Son; the Second Logos.  Associated with the five-pointed star.  On the earth level: the five fingers, five senses, etc.  The five Books of Moses.

Number is the law of the Universe, was written on the Temple at Delphi.

Philosophy of Number

 

Class II

MBM  February 27, 1947

Man’s progress from the phenomenal to the noumenal world.  (MBM contrasts the two.)  The phenomenal world does not contain the fundamentals.  The symbolism of Number in the Scriptures can aid in the progress from the phenomenal to the noumenal world.  The working of number is one of the quickest routes to seeing what noumena is.  It is something that has permanent meaning; that has to do with beginnings.

As at the Temple at Delphi (I repeat): Number is the law of the universe.  Move into the content of number — from the statistics to the content.

Six  The sum of two triads.  , three, is the number of creative, productive, masculine activity; the power of six, seen from above, as in the hands of Creative Deity.  Or, in something similarly related to the Heights: the six days of labor in the Book of Genesis.  Here the number is clearly not two triads but a triad, or a number 3, or perhaps even 5 at work.

     Six is also the progression from one to six.  In the Zoroastrian Avesta (Iranian tradition) there are numbered six supreme archangels.  The six over the six.  The Six who are responsible.

In the doctrine of reflections, the number six becomes the sequence of man’s labor, the human monad working his way up.  So for him also, six days of labor.

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy Mary went to visit her; the mystical preparation that had gone into that drama.  John was the forerunner.  Even in the foreshadowing, six is implicit.

In the Crucifixion: From the sixth hour there was darkness over the land, till the ninth hour.

The cube as a sign of completion (the six sides.)  It is also the pattern of the cross, folded up into a third dimension.  So it becomes a sign of completion, and the six days of work which man has accomplished to become as the cube.  In many traditions it is used as an archetype, dropped from heaven as a symbol of completion.

Seven  The number derived from the heavens; a sacred number.  In the ultimate, from the seven Pole stars.  Seven is given particular reverence in many traditions.

     In the Hebraic, the seven lamps around the Throne; the seven-branched candlestick. This seven comes from above.  It is not a number of man; not something that man is or does.  These powers are in the skies; the glyph, or symbol, of the mystical heavens.

In secret lore: “Wisdom has builded her house and set it on seven pillars.”  No Wisdom without seven — without the fullness that the seven means.  Not seven things in earth but the range of seven from above our activity.

Stonehenge, seven wonders of the ancient world.  Seven Buddhas.  The seven lamps which come down to earth.  In Egypt: the seven halls.  The seven veils of Isis derived from it.  In the Greek, seven substances of man.  Seven in the Book of Revelation..

      The seven plagues — evils.  Protection to the monads; loosens them and drives them on (or to drive them on) that they don’t become halted on the way.

     The seven great operative principles.  Ways that matter and energy operate — the mechanics of things.  These seven should bless the evolving man.

     It can be seen sometimes as 4 plus 3; the elements and the three, activity over it.

     In the Vedas; the seven sleepers.   Inside teaching of the seven Elohim.

     The seven colors of the rainbow.  Seven notes of the scale.  The seven days of the week.  Lesser reflections of the great Seven.

Eight  Seen from above, the reference to the four elements in the higher world and the four elements below.  But seen as a progressive number, it refers to the great region of the Eight (Ogdoad.)

     There are also seven great planes, or stages, of manifestation knowable to the human evolution.  Not here, but in its progressive unfoldment.  The plane above that is known as the Ogdoad — therefore the plane above the sevens planes.  The plane where the great Powers are; the plane above manifestation.  The supreme state, above the seven spheres.

     From the point of view of man, it is the power to win that stage.

     Odin’s horse had eight legs — the powers of the eight….. Hermod, also in the Norse tradition.

     Eight rings (?)  Funeral pyre of Baldur.  Relates to the Adam and Eve story, the descent of the light spark becoming the human.  Therefore the eight is the promise that in this, which is the destruction of the lower forms of Baldur, is the promise of the eight, the attainment of it.

     In another sense, the symbol of the Christ stage.  The eighth day after his crucifixion Jesus appeared to his disciples.

     Circumcision is set for the eighth day; symbol of the leaving off of the lower nature.

The number of the Unknown God — not knowable to man.

Nine  Three 3’s.  Refers to the three Outpourings, or three Logoi, often mentioned: the first, in the number three; the next in the number five.  Made much of.

     The number three on different levels.  Hence in the number nine is the fullest activity of the creative hierarchies; if you like, of God.

Where it is active it reduces all things back to itself.  Multiply any number by nine, and then add the sum of the digits; you will find that it always comes back to nine: 4 x 9 = 36; 6 x 9 = 43, etc.  Even in big numbers.

     What is this peculiar power that always reduces 9 to itself?  The power of 9 has been active in it — an interesting correspondence.  It reduces things back to themselves; not quickly, but through the ages.  “The dice are loaded!” and there is a compelling power working.  It is the number 9.

     “Barley grows nine cubits high.” (Egyptian)  Barley is the plant from which the Egyptians made the wine.  Barley and wheat: wine and bread.  Wine is the symbol of the transformed spirit, or nous; the completed being.

     The Greeks had nine Muses.  They administered over life; the ministration over those nine stages.

     In the ninth hour Jesus ascended in infinite Light.

     The nine months of gestation — but the foreshadowing of nine; of other kinds of completion.

     In the Iliad: Nine days through the army went the arrows of the god Apollo: the gamut of pressure.

     In the Hindu: Vishnu appeared nine times.

Ten  A paradoxical number.  Composed of the nought and the one.  It contains in itself therefore the emergence from the nought, the beginnings, and the completion of a cycle — a great span.  Pythagoras said: This is the all complete, the fully accomplished.

     The Ten Commandments: the effort to try to embrace everything.  Of course, it did not; it was the desire of the writer to do that.

     The ten plagues in Egypt — the negative side; not being in harmony with.

     Ten generations from Adam to Noah.  Ten from Noah to Abraham.

     Pythagoras stimulated and energized, and set working again, at the time of the Greek supremacy, the significance of number.  He saw that order, proportion, lawfulness, were at the very roots of things.

     Chinese: All number begins with one, reaches perfection at three, and is completed at ten.

The tetractys gives a key to all things in manifestation.  On this, as in the number ten, all things come to completion, as the Chinese said.

Philosophy of Number

from Wisdom-lore series, Part I

MBM  Class III, March 6, 1947

Work on the tetractys.  (levels, triangles, points, combinations, symbolism; how greatly comprehensive it is )

Ten the symbol of the growth of man.  Tree of man.  The first three, or Triad, and the seven, are the ancient Hebraic Zephiroth.  In the Kabbalistic lore:  1) Crown; aged of the Aged, or the Macrocosm, or the point.  The First Wisdom (here) seen as masculine.  Intelligence, or Mind active, is the closing of the First Triad.  The ideal pattern of man; the Heavenly Man; the archetypal Man; the First Adam.

     ADAM is made up of the number ten; Crown (1); Wisdom (2) and Intelligence (3).  Next: Love (4) and Justice (5); and Beauty (6), resulting from the uniting of love and justice.  Firmness (7).  Splendor (8) or Glory — the further outpouring of the second Triad.  7 and 8 lead to Foundation (9).  10 is Kingdom, as manifested in earth.

Eleven  Usually refers to a period just before the completion of an octave or a cycle, which is a cycle of the number twelve, and therefore related to the stellar mythos . The eleventh hour.  The last step, or opportunity, before the cycle is completed.  Therefore a kind of warning. There is much more about eleven, but we cannot take it now.

Twelve can be considered from three different points of view.  It is double six, or the number of work, and effort, and trial.

     It is four and eight – 4, the mother substance, as the Elements, and eight, the number of resurrection, rebirth; and therefore containing, if the text so indicates, the significance of the resurrection from the four.

     Most familiarly, it is related to the twelve constellations, the ancient stellar mythos — to the time when it was known as the Great Circle, inside of which the human evolution was taking place.  It was inside of the circle of twelve; therefore twelve is the completion of a cycle.  Favorably, or as a warning, the signs of the zodiac (are) related to the four Elements in three different ways.

     These twelve are related to the twelve sons of Jacob; the twelve tribes of Israel; the twelve stones in the breastplate of the High Priest; the twelve loaves of showbread in the Holy Place.

     Many other references to twelve: The twelve gods on Olympus.  The twelve labors of Hercules.  The twelve labors of Gilgamesh.  Sometimes called the twelve gates of the human body.  All of which are correspondences of the little to the big.

     Twelve represents the outer boundary inside of which the human evolution is taking place.  You can think of that boundary like a gigantic melting pot, inside of which the processes which belong to our human evolution take place.  The rim is the constellations.

     In the Egyptian: the twelve sons of Ra.

     Twelve in regard to the life of Jesus . . . . joining the octaves.  The (symbolism) caught the meanings even if not always the historicity.  He was “twelve years old” when he came to the Temple (and challenged the elders. GB.).  Esoterically, Jesus had completed the octaves that belong to his youth.

     In the Journey through the Wilderness the number twelve repeats and repeats.

     In the Acts of Thomas.

     The Lodge Floor, basis of the checkerboard: black and white, East and West; North and South; light and shade; pleasant and unpleasant; pleasure and pain.

     Customs in the Christian church based on the application of the number: the twelve days after Christmas — a little twelve after the great twelve of the year, which brings in the New Year, though of course that is at the winter solstice, not January 1st.  So Epiphany is an application of the twelve in a small cycle.

     The Book of Revelation is full of number.  A reference to twelve fruits on a tree.  In fact, that idea of twelve fruits appears in many traditions.  Like the Twelve who surround the soul.

In learning to read esoteric lore you have to be quick to grasp the idea and to see that the idea of the twelve who surround the soul, in that Hebraic-Christian text is identical with the twelve fruits on a tree, where the tree is used as the growth of man.

Thirteen in the Western world, has carried the greatest taboo.  Humanity is incredibly superstitious and slow to learn.

As far as man is concerned, it is perhaps the most wonderful number that we have — the most joyous, vibrant.  But it contains great mysteries, and there have been in the past those who have put a scare, a taboo, on the mysteries in number.  It has not always been possible to do what I am doing now.  The number thirteen is the completion of twelve and the standing apart, or above, from twelve.  It means therefore not only the twelve completed, but the mastery, the accomplishment.

Hence thirteen is the number of mastery, completion, a standing above and apart from the twelve labors.  The self is standing apart from the twelve.  Would not that be something joyous?

This number is not used very much, for the obvious reason that there are not very many who have attained that completion, nor is there much to which the number can be applied.  But you will see that again and again the number appears: Ezekiel’s vision of the perfect temple, 13 x 10 cubits.  13 is the number of an offering (?).  The 13th man; the 12 disciples.

     Sometimes, as used in the Greek tradition, that it was Hercules who counted (or was counted) as the 13th generation from Prometheus, and that it was Hercules who rescued Prometheus.  Prometheus, in the esoteric side of the story, is the hero self in you, which is, as it were, chained to a rock; and you will have to stay there until it is rescued by the thirteenth man.  That means the thirteenth man in you, or the twelfth generation.

The Thirteenth Aeon, or Thirteenth Sphere: the correspondence above to what man is working out below.

Fourteen  Within the lunar mythos.  There are times when 7 and 7 are seen in the use of the number 14, but generally fourteen is the number of the moon’s lunation, either waxing or waning.  From the point of view of evolution it should be waxing.

The whole idea of the soul is feminine; therefore as the twelve who attend the fourteen.

In the Book of Job, at the end of his test, he is possessed of 14,000 sheep; with fourteen the moon is full.  The number 14, used like that, is not unlike, but not as powerful, as the number twelve.

The Gospel of Matthew is careful to point out that there were fourteen generations from Abraham to David; and from David to Babylon; and from Babylon to Jesus.  The fourteen does not now represent a completion of a full octave but an octave out of a great octave.

The number seven appears much in the Great Pyramid.

Twenty-eight  number 14 doubled makes 28, the complete cycle of the soul.  Sometimes used for involution and evolution.  Sometimes used as a little cycle within a big cycle.  The complete nature of the soul.

Thirty appears much in the old Hebraic lore.  David was thirty years old when he began to reign; Joseph, also, when he stood before the king of Egypt.

     When someone slays thirty men, the octave of ten and three-fold man.

     Jesus, when he began his ministry, was said to be thirty.  Symbolically, he was thirty.  Therefore, in order to become thirty, symbolically, you have had to slay thirty beasts, or animals.  Because there is seen an adversary to every step forward.  Joseph had attained the stature, or dignity, of the complete human being — body, heart and mind.

Thirty pieces of silver paid for Jesus.  As it is, preliminary, in Zachariah.  They are what was necessary to be offered up to become what Jesus became in the allegory which he lived.  The thirty pieces of silver is over determined, because it is not only thirty but silver; associated with the moon.  The payment of thirty pieces is an occult, or esoteric, requirement to become what Jesus became in the allegory.

Forty  Consider it in contrast with 30.  Four-fold man: earth, water, fire, air; or, if it can be accomplished, the bull, the lion, the man, the eagle.  The spiritual octave.

When this number appears in sacred texts it is usually used as a number of preparation or of testing.  The forty days in the Wilderness that Jesus spent before he undertook his career.  That forty is seen as a period of intensified testing.  The allegory says he fasted during that period.  You fast when you hold back the natural law in yourself.

The forty days of the Flood.  Especially important to the Hebraic.  Represents the whole cycle, the intensified, bitter-sweet testing….Endurance through a whole span.

Solomon reigned forty years.  (Solomon = Sun man.)

Fifty, a sacred number.  Also, as 7 x 7, or 49.  Therefore the square (of a number) which always means the outward expression of the seven and the standing apart from it.  As 13 above 12.  A period of festivity that has been greatly revered by many peoples.  The Therapeuts were one.

Fifty was the number of the Babylonian gods.

If the sum of the squares of the triangle (the 3,4,5t right-angle triangle) is 50, the fifty faces of Deity, those fifty faces are the same in significance as the fifty gods of Babylon: the manifestation of, as it were, a god.  Numbers, like a diamond, have different facets, which you bring out as you lay hold of them.

Fifty (in the) descent of the Paraclete.  Because the fifty is the symbol of the Messenger.

The number is the symbol of the Thrice-born.  The number of Illumination.  In the Kabbalah, called the Fifty Gates of Wisdom.  Related to the fifty faces or the fifty gods.

Fifty days of Easter to Pentateuch.

The number of that which is related to the Great Worlds.  Therefore different from 13, which is standing beyond the 12 and looking down into the world.  The number fifty comes from above.  It has been the number of those who have sojourned on high, or are rapport with the Heights, and may come down.

In another tradition, it is called the number of the solar Logos; the outpouring of the Spirit upon our earth.  Like the sun, materially, so the Solar Logos.

A throw-ahead to what we will take up next week: In the Book of Revelation is a curious reference, at the end of one of the chapters: 666 is the number of the beast.  (Ch. XIII.)

42  This also has a riddle . . . Maimonidies “Guide to the Perplexed.”  Six times seven.  (Sorry, no notes here. GB.)

Actually, we have three octaves.  Ten: and that relates to man.  Twelve, that also relates to man, but from a different angle; different implication.  Therefore, those two octaves we can connect up with man.  But another octave that does not connect up with man, and that is seven.

So eight is to seven, which really refers to great forces, great agencies, which play upon man but which man has nothing to do with himself.  A paradox.  Whereas 10, 12, 13 does relate to man.  Ten, the full number of man’s powers, activities: ten fingers; a span of man’s abilities, starting from the physical.

Philosophy of Number

1. Wisdom-lore Series, Part I

1946 – 47

MBM  Class IV (last) March 13, 1947

666 in Apocrypha.  With great symbolism there is much overdetermina-tion; not just one reference but many references.  Application on many planes.  An exciting factor.  “Here is wisdom: let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred three score and six.”

     Six, the number of effort, the full span of effort, applies to three planes.  The measure, or number of a man: body, heart and mind.  The perfect lower man; the animal who has grown up from below.

It repeats in full in 18.

9, the number of power, that converts everything back to itself.  The secret power of the number is the inherent power of converting everything to its occult, or spiritual, or noetic nature.

This number (666) is not the lower animal, in the sense of a beast to be repudiated, but is a measure of the completion of the lower stage, in whom is latent the mystery of the higher octaves.  Read this chapter.  (XIII of Revelation.)

144 (Ch. XIV)  The idea of the Saved, the 144,000 which were to be redeemed from the earth.  12 x 12.  The multiplication, adding to the power.

     The alphabet had its number corresponding — the Hebraic, Greek and others: A D M (Adam) a type of incoming humanity — the generic name, Adam.  They are destined to be saved.  The plan is that all sons of earth, or man, are to find their way up.  144, the measure of more than a man — an angel.

     Another reference to 144 in Ch. 21 (Revelation?) and in Job 4216.

     The name Solomon:  S L M N = 16, 30, 40, 14; adds to 180, the degrees that the sun travels from horizon to horizon — the numerical value of the sun in its visible journey, associated with this name.

     Y H V H: 10, 5, 6, 5 + 26, double of 13.  As the name of the Worker-God, Jehovah, it is therefore the manifestation of this God.

     If you add up that number (26) the 2 and the 6, it is 8.  That is the same as the numerical value, in Greek, of the name Jesus.  Therefore the power of the 8, sometimes known as the solar power, the solar power itself.

The Kabbalists, in the Jewish lore, take great delight in working out various correspondences.  They see, for instance, that A D M added up makes 9 (1 + 4 + 40) and 666 = 9 (i.e. 18).  So that, in essence, the significance of the 9, embryonically in A D M, is the same type as in 666, which is the expanded 9.

A pi proportion (ᴨ) in the name of the Elohim.  A symbol of the endless power of the Creative Deity, and therefore can never be measured; as the ratio can never be found for the ratio of the diameter to the circle as to conceive the power of the Creative Deity. Squaring the circle mathematically has been considered impossible, the carried out to a large number of decimal places.

El Shaddai: 1, 30, 300, 4, 10 + 345.  Is seen as a correspondent to the 3,4,5 triangle.  Sometimes perhaps they go too far; sometimes very clear.

Theo, or Theos  (spelling?)  = 9, 4, 70, 60 = 144:  sign of the power of the Creative God.

Correspondence to the cube and the lodge floor, in geometrical symbolism.

In the cube, one = the whole design.

In the lodge floor: 2 triangles (if bisected diagonally); other opposites: black and white, vertical and horizontal.  3 divisions.

Doctrine of Reflections: The power of 3 in man in earth as there is above, in the cube (3 visible faces); the power of the Heights is in the small.  The dewdrop in reflecting the heavens.

Two, the dual nature.  Defeat and victory, both in the picture.  It is by the way of this and the other opposites that you go up.

Four, the four Elements.  The Mother-side; descent and ascent.

Five, the hypotenuse of the 3,4,5 triangle; common to both the descent and the ascent.  The meeting point is the Son.  The Holy Family.

Twelve, the total number of the squares in the ledge floor.  The Cross implicit in the design.  Folded up, it becomes the cube.

 

In the cube

One (repeated) the whole thing.

Two  You could not have a higher dimension unless the powers of the opposites were assimilated — perfectly counterbalanced against each other.

Three.  Three faces are visible.  Cross (when unfolded) the pattern for man.  The 666 who will become the 144.  The genetic cross.  Therefore the power over the opposites.  The hands extended in power.  This is really man.  The three faces correspond to three-fold man.  Three dimensions.  The three invisible faces correspond to that in man which is invisible.

Six  The complete number of service.  The days of work.  Six labors.  Completion of a part of his task.  Six manifestations — three in this world, three in another.

Seven  Where is seven?  7 points (visible).  7 corners.  Beneficial forces from above, like the seven Pole stars; or, in the great constellations which are the archetype for the seven large points from which radiation comes out.  So this seven are points, points of power, or significance, because they bind, or hold, everything else together.

Eight.  The Ogdoad or the stage beyond the seven.  Or, beyond the power the seven contribute is an Immensity, and is invisible; the point in the center (of the cube).

Nine visible lines.  Outpouring — an indication of the direction of activity.  A number of great activity.  It is logical that 9 should be demonstrated by lines and 7 by the points.

Twelve  Nine visible and three invisible lines.  The implication is: that when man answers, or responds, on the seven points and the nine lines of activity he comes into the fullness of expression, which is twelve.

 

. . . . .

 

Brief summing up

The philosophy of number stimulates our reverence for order, proportion, law, relationship.  The effect of that point (?) to enter into your conduct.  Even in little ways.  You won’t be wasteful.  Neither over- nor under-use.  You will think with a clarity.  It will affect your life intimately.  You will discover that you can’t be careless – it is not consonant with number.  “Order is heaven’s first law.”

. . . . . as you work, it works on you.  There is no end to it.

Number begins with one and goes on to Infinity . . . . .

carry that responsibility….