An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Numbers, their Occult Significance

A great deal of magical lore, some of which pertains to witchcraft, is concerned with numbers, and their occult properties and associations. The witches’ number par excellence is thirteen. Its significance goes back far beyond recorded history; so the accusation that witches used the number thirteen to mock Christ and his twelve disciples is untrue. Indeed, it is very possible that the reason Jesus chose twelve disciples was that he knew the mystical significance of twelve plus one. (See COVEN.)

The number seven also has great importance in lore and legend. Traditionally, the seventh son of a seventh son, or the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, is a born witch. In some of the rural parts of Italy, seven months’ children are believed to grow up with similar powers.

The original sacred seven are the seven heavenly bodies, which the ancients called the Seven Sacred Planets, though two of them, the sun and the moon, are strictly speaking not planets but luminaries. The order of the Seven Planets is usually written thus: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon. In astrological belief, all things on earth are ruled in some way by these seven powers.

Our seven days of the week derive from this very old concept. The sun rules Sunday, the moon Monday, Mars Tuesday, Mercury Wednesday, Jupiter Thursday, Venus Friday and Saturn Saturday.

The Old Testament is full of allusions to the number seven. In later times, the Christian Church formulated its Seven Sacraments, its Seven Deadly Sins, and so on. The pagan world had its Seven Wonders, and also the Seven Sages of Greece and the Seven Rishis of India. The world-wide and time-honoured sacredness of this number is proved by innumerable mystic groupings and uses of seven.

Another reason for the potency of seven is the most important and well-known constellation of our northern skies, the Plough, which consists of seven bright stars, and acts as a pointer to the Pole Star of the North. In Celtic myth, the North was the place of secret and dangerous powers. Spirits rode the Northern Lights, and dead heroes dwelt at the back of the north wind.

It is easy to understand, therefore, how the age-old magic of the number seven wove itself into witchcraft; as did the equally sacred and potent number three. There is a pre-Christian belief in the potency of odd numbers, which is remarked on by the Roman poet Virgil: Numero Deus impare gaudet, “God delights in odd numbers”. Shakespeare repeated this belief in The Merry Wives of Windsor: “Good luck lies in odd numbers . . . they say, there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.”

The occult philosophers regarded man as a triad: spiritus, anima, and corpus, or spirit, soul and body; though this triad by sub-division was extended into seven principles. In Nature, we have the father, the mother and the child. Also, the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral. The alchemists recognised three principles in their art, salt, sulphur and mercury, which are closely paralleled by the Indian concepts of sattwas, rajas and tamas.

Three represents the mean between two extremes, and this is the way in which most of the ancient philosophers used it in their symbolic systems. The Druids expressed their lore in triads; and their symbol was the Tribann, or Three Rays of Light. Qabalistic symbolism reveals this ancient idea as the Three Pillars: the Pillar of Mercy, the Pillar of Severity and the Middle Pillar of Mildness, which harmonises the other two; and Masonic ritual retains it under the form of three columns.

No wonder we constantly find the injunction in witchcraft, that the words of charms are to be repeated three times; or that concoctions of magical herbs should be of three, seven or nine different kinds, compounded together.

There is an old belief that certain years in people’s lives are years of destiny, called climacteric years. These are the 7th and the 9th, and their multiples by the odd numbers: 3, 5, 7 and 9. Thus the climacteric years of human life are 7, 9, 21, 27, 35, 45, 49, 63 and 81. Our custom of regarding a person as ’coming of age’ at 21 is a relic of this belief; it is the third climacteric year.

The mystic symbolism of numbers is an important part of practical magic. Magic squares, that is, numbers so arranged in a square that they add in all directions to the same figure, are powerful talismans, used in many ways in magical rituals. The simplest magic square, or Kamea, is that of the first nine digits, arranged thus:

Whichever way these figures are added, including diagonally, their sum will always be 15.

Many more complicated magic squares than this have been evolved. Strange as it may seem, mathematics is yet another human activity which long ago was linked with magic; and numerology, or divination of numbers, is still popular today. People believe in their ’lucky number’; and conversely, refuse to live in a house numbered thirteen. Indeed, the fear of the number thirteen is prevalent enough for some local authorities to have discreetly removed it from the numbering of houses; while hotel keepers banish it from the doors of their rooms. Some people carry their avoidance of thirteen to such lengths that psychologists have invented a name for their reaction: triskedekaphobia, a morbid fear of the number thirteen.

When we recollect that thirteen is the number of lunar months in a year, we can see how both this and the number seven are associated with moon magic. This may be the real secret of their magical reputation; as the waxing and waning of the moon are man’s oldest astrological observations.

The old common-law month was twenty-eight days, during which the moon displayed all her phases, and went round the compass of the zodiac. The number twenty-eight is not only four times seven, but also the sum of numbers from one to seven. Each period of seven days in the lunar month was associated with a different phase of the moon, and with a different state of the tides of the sea. There are thirteen lunar months to the solar year, with one day left over, which is why the expression ’a year and a day’ occurs so often in old Celtic myths.

The number three also associates with moon magic, because of the moon’s three appearances: waxing, full and waning; and again, this is possibly the oldest reason for its importance.

An old magical co-relation of numbers and astrology is as follows: Sun, 1 and 4; Moon, 2 and 7; Jupiter, 3; Mercury, 5; Venus, 6; Saturn, 8; and Mars, 9. Another magical relationship of numbers, based on the Qabalah, is: Saturn, 3; Jupiter, 4; Mars, 5; Sun, 6; Venus, 7; Mercury, 8; Moon, 9. These systems are not contradictory, though they might appear so; because they are used in different ways in magical practice.