Idle Speculation on Number Theology

[sdi]

(As a disclaimer, before I begin, I should note that I am not a magician and everything I say here is entirely speculative. Don't rely on it for anything other than ideas!)

I have an idiosyncratic theory (per Plotinus and the other Neopythagoreans that I have read) that various types of numbers fall into three different categories based on their essential potency:

• The weakest numbers are the even numbers. This is because they may be divided into two equal groups and set against each other, tying their energies up and preventing action. (It is for this reason, I think, that the Pythagoreans considered even numbers passive.)

• The middle class of numbers are the odd composite numbers. These may not be set against themselves—there's always a "tie breaker," a majority, and so there is always direction and the possibility of action—but they may still be divided is some way or other, and thereby weakened.

• The strongest numbers are the odd prime numbers. These may not be divided at all, and thus always possess their essential unity. (And, as Proclus tells us, unity is power.)

(We may as well classify 1 with the prime numbers, even though it is not technically prime, since obviously it is as indivisible as it gets; further, within a class, smaller numbers have greater potency than larger numbers.)

One thing that is common in folk magical practice is the combining of harmonious elements into a whole (e.g. in an amulet, etc.). I wondered to myself whether it were possible to combine elements that were each individually strong (e.g. odd, prime) and strong in combination (e.g. odd, prime). For any two elements it is not, and the proof is trivial: two odd numbers, when summed, form an even number. Therefore, one must add an even number to an odd number to get another odd number, thereby introducing a weakness. However, it is possible with three elements: a couple trivial examples are 1+3+7=11 and 3+5+11=19.

I might suppose a prime number of ingredients, combined in prime terms into a prime total, might be more potent than other combinations. But an esoteric number theory of this sort does not seem to be well-developed: all systems I've seen only assign meanings to 1-10 (and higher numbers are considered in light of those). I'd be curious to see a theory treating the primes as conveyors of essential meaning, but there is an infinity of those...