The Symbolism of Numbers: History, Meaning, and Facts

Dr..

Kamal Abdul Malik

December 23, 2022

When we were young, we used to play with the children of the neighborhood a game called “Al-Falaq, Fat and Dila seven laps”, and “The Seven Bricks”, and we did not ask why the number 7 and not 5 or 6. Since the early ages, humanity has had a close relationship with numbers, contradictory, oscillating between love, hate and intimacy And strangeness, and tranquility, and fear.

The ancient Babylonians observed and recorded the movements of the planets as numbers and used them to predict eclipses and other astronomical phenomena;

And the priests of ancient Egypt used numbers to predict the flood of the Nile, and in the Pythagorean doctrine, numbers are the basis of the entire universe, and the goodness of this universe lies in the presence of numerical harmony and consistency.

The ideas of Pythagoras were a combination of the numerical features of musical sounds as well as mysticism: the number 3 symbolizes the male, the number 4 the female, and 10 is the perfect number.

And the number 3 is widespread in folk tales, as the hero tries to solve the problem three times and succeeds the third time, “the hill is repentant.” And the number 5 we find in popular belief protects people from the envy of others, and they call it five and five.

Some numbers are frightening. Strangely enough, millions of rational people are so terrified of the number 13 that hotels delete it from their floors, planes don't have row 13, and Formula One racing car numbers skip from 12 to 14 so that, for example, it would be numbered 22. Car from 1 to 23.

Many underground movements have their own sacred numbers, as do organizations such as Freemasonry.

Mozart's music, especially The Magic Flute (1791), contains many references known to Masonic numerology.

Numerical coincidences abound, and are often too remarkable to be rationally explained.

It is not surprising that many people are not convinced that these coincidences have a logical explanation.

For example, some mention the following similarities between two presidents of the United States: Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy (see Martin Gardner's book, Dr. Matrix's Magic Numbers (1985).

• Lincoln was elected president in 1860, and Kennedy in 1960.

• The two were assassinated on Friday.

• Lincoln was killed at Ford's Theatre.

Kennedy was killed in a Lincoln convertible built by the Ford Motor Company.

• The first name of President Lincoln's private secretary was John, and the last name of Kennedy's private secretary was Lincoln.

• Booth shot Lincoln in the theater and fled to a warehouse.

Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and fled to the theatre.

One explanation for a coincidence of this kind is selective reporting.

Anything suitable for interpretation is retained and what does not fit is discarded.

Thus, the coincidence of the day of the assassinations is emphasized, ignoring the differences in the month and the number of days in the month.

(Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, Kennedy on November 22.)

More precisely, only one choice is made out of many possibilities, and that is the one that maintains the numerical pattern.

Sometimes the date of birth is used, sometimes the date of election.

If these numbers and dates do not suffice, what about the dates of college graduation, marriage, firstborn, first inauguration, or death?

Let's look at a picture of Lincoln and his counterpart Kennedy: Don't we see that Lincoln has a beard, while Kennedy appears clean-shaven.

Don't mention beards then, because they don't support the argument here.

God created the Public.

Visiting scholar at Harvard University

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