My thoughts on the number 7
The number 7 or the Hebdomad has always vested itself with a kind of mystique. However, when we look for interpretations, all we can find is a basic list of things that appear in sevens, like the seven planets, the seven these and the seven those. Modern authors don't do any better than ancient ones. Actually, ancient Greek authors (Plato, Nichomacus of Gerasa, Proclus, Plutarch, Jamblichus etc.) of course knew its meaning, though they insisted on not revealing it, and modern ones lack the capacity to see it symbolically.
Based on the Pythagorean Tetraktys (τετρακτύς, the array of the numbers 1, 2, 3 and 4), I think the key to its meaning is the old Pythagorean issue of the One and the Many, which is most famous for being the philosophical topic of Plato’s dialogue Parmenides. For Pythagoreans the Tetraktys was sacred. Indeed, it comprises the elements for any thought about the world. The 1 is symbol to the Absolute One, the Absolute Totality. It has two unique characteristics: it is indivisible and absolute. In other words, it is neither subject to divisibility nor to multiplicity. Why are these characteristics unique? You, for instance, are indivisible, but as a human being you are subject to multiplicity. The totality of rational beings is not subject to multiplicity (for being a set-theoretically totality), but is subject to divisibility. This is by the way the reason why the absoluteness of the One can’t be mistaken by the totality of all things, otherwise we’d fall into pantheism. I won’t digress here about the other numbers, though it suffices to tell that 3 represents the rational part of the soul and 4 represents matter. Of course, 2 represents the incomprehensible process of differentiation between the One and the Many.
To begin with, what is this topic about? Look around! We live in a word of multiplicity, the world of the Many. That being so, how can the Many be differentiated from the Absolute One? Emanation? Procession? Tzim-Tzum as the Cabalists say? There is no answer. Even Heidegger asked this question, why is there being instead of nothing? So I synthetize the Tetraktys like this: (a) there is the Absolute One (some may call it God) and there is the world (the Many); (b) there are two principles in the world, Spirit and Matter and (c) we can’t know anything about the differentiation between the One and the Many. These are the main elements for any further metaphysical thought about the world.
The totality of things explained by the Tetraktys is symbolized by 10=1+2+3+4, the Decad, and the natural numbers within the Decad, that is, the numbers from 1 to 10. Cabalists interpret the array from 1 to 10 as the path from emanation, 1, to transcendence, 10. In the middle, 5 represents Man. Whatever, the real question is: what does the 7 mean in all these? Well, any even number is subject to divisibility. For example, though 8 fits only once within the Decad, it is divisible by 2. Now take the odd numbers. 3 is indivisible but fits thrice within the Decad. So is 5, which fits twice. The number 9 fits only once within the Decad, but it is divisible by 3. It remains the number 7. It is indivisible (it is a prime number), so it participates in the divine characteristic of indivisibility. I use the the verb “to participate” in the Platonic and the scholastic sense (like in Thomas Aquinas). For Pythagoreans the equivalence to participation was mimesis. In addition, 7 fits only once within the Decad, so it is not subject to multiplicity either. It therefore also participates in the other divine characteristic.
In sum, the number 7 is neither subject to divisibility nor to multiplicity, like the One. That is why it is considered a divine number. It is the symbol of these two fundamental divine aspects of the One.
So what? In many mythological systems around the world, spiritual ascension is symbolized by a connexion between earth and heaven. For example, in the Mythraic mythology, the ladder from earth to heaven has seven metals. Budha dreamt of a ladder of seven colors from earth to the skies. All these mean that the spiritual ascension is of divine character and is infinite. When the spirit appeared to Saint John in the Apocalypsis and asked him to spread the message to the seven churches, what he meant was the spreading of it to whatever beliefs in space and time there were, that is, it was supposed to be an universal message. To me, it doesn’t make any sense to try to figure out whether these churches were the one in Ephesus or everywhere else. We talk about seven virtues and seven capital sins. I think this only means that virtues and sins are infinite. God created the world and rested all this in seven days. So it means that Creation is continuous, it is not some single event, it is an evergoing process. The same goes with the seven spheres of the old Greek astronomy. The most important shakras are seven in number.
Finally, why is it that 7 appears in many myths around the world and through history always with this meaning I propose? If we observe deeply, it has been so always. It certainly is a kind of archetype, in the Jungean sense. I see no other explanation.
7 is divine.
