Where 7 Comes From

Quote of the day:
“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”
--Oscar Wilde

Scads of cute little news stories have popped up about the fact that today is 7/7/07. All of these news stories cite instances of the number seven appearing in our daily lives. But not a one has said how the number came to be significant or “lucky.”

There you have it. Another example of how we have lost a coherent sense of where we’ve come from. Or at least THAT we’ve come from somewhere.

There probably are many people who think seven became lucky in Las Vegas. You could say we are “illnumerate,” though I think that term is used to describe widespread math inability.

The specialness of seven goes waaay back to ancient numerology, in which a particular meaning was attached to certain numbers.

Specifically, the number 4 was used to signify the earth (everything that was on the ground or came from the ground). The number 3 was used to signify the heavens (everything that was up that was visible).

This meant that any equal combination of 3 and 4 signified completeness or perfection. Thus seven was understood as the perfect number. So was 12 (3x4).

Likewise, 6 (7-1) was considered a permanently imperfect number. So was 13 (12+1).

This was the understanding as the stories in the bible were written down, edited and assembled. That’s why there are seven days of creation, 12 tribes of Israel and 12 apostles. And the instruction to forgive “seventy times seven” originates from this. There are multiples of seven and 12 in stories throughout the bible. And, of course, the ever-present-in-Revelation-and-horror-movies 666.

The number 40, 4 times ten, is an earth-bound number. Thus it is used to describe the number of years the Israelites were in the wilderness with Moses, the number of days of rain that caused the flood and the number of days of Jesus’ temptation.

In the early days of Christianity there came to be 3 faces of god, the trinity. Meanwhile, there were the four corners of the earth and the four elements of ancient alchemy--earth, air, fire and water.

Later, as our system of time evolved, there were 7 days in a week, 24 hours in a day and 12 months in a year.

And then, there came craps.

It all came from way back.