Playing with Numerology

[sdi]

In the Gibson's Complete Illustrated Book of the Psychic Sciences, there is a very fun chapter on numerology. It talks about how the names of things indicate their essential "vibration," and how that energetic effect is brought to bear on the nature of the named thing. I was playing with this today and found it pretty successful at describing what I tested. (Which is pretty weird.)

Here's one example. A bit over a decade ago, I started a small tech startup. It took a lot of hard work, but eventually we were quite successful, and I managed to sell the company last year just before the COVID panic broke the economy. In numerology, there are two important numbers associated with a thing: the date at which it was born, and the name by which it is known. I'll describe both of my company's numbers, below. (Apologies for omitting specifics, but I'd prefer to remain anonymous until my obligations to the acquiring company are complete.)

The date on which we first became known to the world reduces to the number 4. According to Gibson, "As a birth number, 4 stands for a steady, plodding nature, which always favors caution rather than risk. [...] Honesty and reliability are normal attributes with this birth number, but they hinge upon the satisfaction or security that the individual may gain from patience and perseverance." Our company's reputation was founded upon being easy-to-work-with, "low drama," and reliable. Indeed, we were the only company in our industry with these attributes—as it turns out, each of our major competitors had the cloak-and-dagger birth number of 7—and this was the driver of our success.

The name by which we were known reduces to the number 8. According to Gibson, "As a name number, 8 spells Success with dollar signs ($UCCE$$). People expect big results from a person whose name is tuned to this powerful vibration. [...] The weakness with this name number lies in [...] wasted efforts and indulgence in small things when large opportunities are available." As it happens, this was true on both sides: the company was notorious for failing to ship product, and yet we were financially successful despite ourselves. It is very likely we could have been two or three times as successful, had we not squandered so much effort!

I find these associations pretty interesting, and I wish I knew about them when I started the business: I might have picked numbers that were less serious and more fun! Still, I suppose exploring the occult aspects of it after-the-fact helps to make up for that, and I plan to play with numerology more as time goes on.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Not sure the numbers synch up perfectly, but wonder if there's some correlation to be had with the Cabala...4 is in certain mappings attributed to Jupiter, with all of those associations (including wealth), while 8 is mapped to your friend and mine, the good Mercurius.

Axé and all blessings with these developments in your life.

Fra' Lupo

[sdi]

You know, I'm really curious about the planetary associations of the numbers. Gibson assigns them as follows:

1. Sun
2. Moon
3. Mars
4. Mercury
5. Jupiter
6. Venus
7. Saturn
8. Uranus
9. Neptune

These seemed a little suspect to me. "Steadiness" and "Endurance" are not things I'd typically associate with Mercury!

[boccaderlupo]

I'm not sure who this Gibson gentlemen is, but perhaps that mapping works in his system--but I agree that association strikes me as off.

One mapping of the sefirot and planets:

1 and 2 are left out--I tend to associate them with the Demiurge and the Nous and/or Logos, but that's me.
3. Saturn: This could potentially gibe with the above, if we attribute to Saturnus the "expression" of spacetime.
4. Jupiter
5. Mars: Advantage...?
6. Sol: Harmony could conceivably be construed as dependability (?)
7. Venus: I could see an argument for the connection to "mystery"
8. Mercury: the association with wealth and success has potential here
9. Luna

10 does not fit into the pattern, but would fall to Terra--conceivably could make sense if we think in a cyclical manner, with one being a kind of reflection or refraction of 10. Reading his above associations, I could imagine an argument that those aspects fit, but...

Axé

[sdi]

Thank you for this. I've seen that number system before in Agrippa for the purpose of crafting magic squares. I also think I've seen JMG associate 1 with Neptune and 2 with Uranus? Still, I've only scratched the surface with the Tree of Life, so I'll need to spend a lot more time there before I can make comparisons, myself...

Walter Gibson, oddly enough, happens to be the creator the The Shadow. He also wrote widely on occult topics. (Actually, he wrote widely on lots of things. The man just couldn't stop writing.) I found a used copy of The Complete Illustrated Book of the Psychic Sciences and remembered that JMG had written about it, and figured I'd give it a go.

I am intensely curious where these associations came from. I have noticed that Manly P. Hall mentions the system in The Secret Teachings of All Ages:

There is also a system of calculation in vogue for the English language, but its accuracy is a matter of legitimate dispute. It is comparatively modern and has no relationship either to the Hebrew Qabbalistic system or to the Greek procedure. The claim made by some that it is Pythagorean is not supported by any tangible evidence, and there are many reasons why such a contention is untenable. The fact that Pythagoras used 10 as the basis of calculation, while this system uses 9—an imperfect number—is in itself almost conclusive. Furthermore, the arrangement of the Greek and Hebrew letters does not agree closely enough with the English to permit the application of the number sequences of one language to the number sequences of the others. Further experimentation with the system may prove profitable, but it is without basis in antiquity.

He then goes on to describe the same method of numerological calculation that Gibson uses. So this system was in use at least a generation before Gibson wrote about it, but beyond that I have no ideas. It might be a worthy Magic Monday question.

In any case, it's a quiet Friday night, so let me take a few minutes paraphrase Gibson's description of the numbers and take a stab at the associations:

1. Purpose. Aggression. Action. Ambition. The drive to acquire fame or to rule by might. Strong will. This sounds like Mars to me.
   
2. Antithesis, balance, contrast, maintaining equilibrium through a mixture of positive and negative. Ambivalence. I agree with Gibson's Lunar designation.
   
3. Versatility, talent, gaity, adaptability, dilettantism. I would place Mercury here.
   
4. Steadiness, solidity, endurance, patience. Definitely Saturn.
   
5. Adventure, attainment through travel and experience, restlessness, instability, uncertainty, "good luck." Jupiter seems fine here.
   
6. Harmony, sincerity, sensuality, earthiness or naturalness. Venus seems reasonable enough to me, though I question Gibson's use of the term "dependable," here.
   
7. Mystery, intuition, fancifulness, imagination, delusion, depth, knowledge, secrecy. Neptune?
   
8. Business, seriousness, logistics, executive capacity, ruthlessness, detail-orientedness. Uranus?
   
9. Influence, creative capacity (arts, music, skills, inventive capacity, etc.), power, charisma, pride. Sol.

Still, this is just a guess based off of the things that Gibson says. I'd really love to trace this back to its roots to get a better sense of why the numbers are given the meanings they are...

[boccaderlupo]

Fascinating. Yes, the disjunct between the 9 and the 10 certainly throws one off. Will have to read more on this, as I'm entirely green to it.

Axé

[sdi]

Here is a reference from 1911 with the same planetary associations Gibson uses, but with an apparently very different conceptualization:

1. Symbolises manifestation, assertion, the positive and active principle. It stands for the Logos, the manifestation of the Infinite and Unmanifest. It represents the ego, self-assertion, positivism, ego­tism, separateness, selfhood, isolation, distinction, self-reliance, dignity, and rulership. In a religious sense, it symbolises the Lord. In a philosophical and scientific sense, the synthesis and fundamental unity of things. In a material sense, the unit of life, the individual. It is the 0 made manifest. It is the symbol of the Sun.
   
2. The number of antithesis; also of witness and confirmation. The binomial, as plus and minus, active and passive, male and female, positive and negative, profit and loss, etc. It stands for the dualism of manifested life—God and Nature, Spirit and Matter, and their relationships. It denotes agreement, also separation, the law of alternation, subject and object, reflection. As uniting in itself opposite terms or principles, it denotes creation, production, fruition, combination. Primarily the two conditions, the manifest and the unmanifest, the explicit and the implicit. The symbol of the Moon.
   
3. The trilogy; the trinity of life, substance, and intelligence, of force, matter, and conscious­ ness. Creation, preservation, and resolution. The family—father, mother, and child. The three dimensions. The three postulates—the thinker, the thought, and the thing. Duality reflected in con­ sciousness, as in time and space, making a trinity of states, as the past, present, and future; there­ fore, extension of the self; the self-extensive faculty; volition; procedure; penetration. The symbol of Mars.
   
4. The number of reality and concretion. The material universe. The cube or square. Physical laws; logic; reason. Appearance, physiognomy, science. Cognition by perception, experience, knowledge. The cross, segmentation, partition, order, classification. The swastika, the wheel of the law, sequence, enumeration. The intellect; consciousness, as discerning between the spiritual and material, the noumenal and phenomenal worlds, represented by the higher and lower triad. Hence discernment, discretion, relativity. The symbol of Mercury.
   
5. Expansion is represented by this number. Inclusiveness, comprehension, understanding, judg­ment. Increase, fecundity, propagation. Justice, reaping, harvesting. Reproduction of self in the material world, fatherhood, rewards and punish­ ments. The seed-fruit or pomegranate, multipli­cation. The symbol of Jupiter.
   
6. The number of co-operation. Marriage, inter­lacing, a link, connection. Reciprocal action, counterpoise. The interaction of the spiritual and material, the mental and the physical in man, the psyche, psychology, divination, communion, sym­ pathy. Psychism, telepathy, psychometry. Alchemy. Conversion. Concord, harmony, peace, satisfaction. Goodness, beauty and truth, as tested by harmony. Attainment, restitution. Intercourse, reciprocity. Connubiality, the relations of the sexes. The symbol of Venus.
   
7. The number of completion. Time and space. Duration, distance. Old age, decadence, death, or endurance, stability, immortality. The seven ages, days of the week, etc. The seven seals, principles in man, notes and colours. The triad and quater­nary; the perfect man, Adam Kadmon; the cycle of evolution; wisdom, perfection, equipoise, balance, rest. The symbol of Saturn.
   
8. The number of dissolution. It denotes the law of cyclic evolution, the breaking back of the natural to the spiritual. Reaction, revolution, fracture, rupture, disintegration, segregation, de­composition, anarchism. Lesion, separation, divorce. Inspiration following respiration, afflatus, genius, invention. Deflection, eccentricity, waywardness, aberration, madness. The symbol of Uranus.
   
9. The number of regeneration. A new birth. Spirituality, sense-extension, premonition, going forth, voyaging. Telaesthesia, dreaming, clairvoy­ance, clairaudience. Reformation, nebulosity, pul­sation, rhythm; reaching out, extension, publication; archery, prediction, revelation; a thought-wave, apparition, wraith, mist, cloud, obscurity, exile, mystery. The symbol of Neptune.

[boccaderlupo]

My Cabala is amateurish at best, but interesting to note the association in this set of Neptune with, in the correspondences I listed, Luna, with their shared association of the tides and the moon. Very interesting.

Axé

[sdi]

To be honest, I get pretty confused about Uranus and Neptune, since the associations people give to them usually just seem like they're stealing them from other planets. I've got a lot of study ahead of me on them, I think.

[boccaderlupo]

My sense is that "the seven planets" have been with us throughout history and prior to the telescope, therefore the correspondences people have noted with them are more robust. So the "new planets" discovered since the arrival of the telescope may require some additional time for their full complement of associations to be fully understood.

Axé

[sdi]

This is a reasonable assertion, but then it strikes me that I should leave them be for a few thousand years until they've taken us for a spin around the zodiac a few dozen times...

[sdi]

Huh, turns out Agrippa himself lays out the correspondences of the numbers. My interpretation of what he says (since he goes on rather at length, and mostly makes large lists of things), is:

1. Unity. The generative principle. Leadership. Fire. Sol.
   
2. The receptive principle. Balance. Polarity. Equity. Charity. Love. Marriage. Friendship. Society. Discord. Confusion. Mischief. Strife. Misfortune. Luna is referenced obliquely, as She forms a pair with Sol.
   
3. Completion. Wholeness. Mercury is referenced obliquely, as Hermes Trismegistus (e.g. “possessing knowledge of the three worlds,” that is to say, “complete knowledge”).
   
4. Foundations. Solidity. The process of unfolding or of being generated. Extent in space (four directions) and time (four seasons). Law. Justice. Jupiter is obliquely referenced as the chiefest of gods, having a four-letter name (Zeus?) and four wings (representing the extent of His domain?).
   
5. Centrality. Versatility. Capability. Fortune. Favor. Mercury.
   
6. Perfection. Self-sufficiency. Harmony. (This is derived from six being a perfect number: 1*2*3=1+2+3.)
   
7. Majesty. Heights. Spirituality (as the three-fold soul joined to the four-fold body). Indivisibility (hence “mystery,” as something our intellect cannot dissect). Time itself (seven planets).
   
8. Fullness. Success. Safety. Conservation.
   
9. Imperfection or incompleteness (as falling short of 10).
   
10. Universality.

(He goes on with a few numbers above 10, but it's pretty clear that 1-10 are considered primary.)

It's clear that this is the source of at least some of these associations. It is interesting that Agrippa only explicitly assigns planets to 1 (Sol) and 5 (Mercury).

[sdi]

I'm embarrassed to say I finally figured the planetary associations out: it's simply the days of the week, with Uranus and Neptune added on the end.

[boccaderlupo]

Well, it's nothing if not straightforward!

Axé