SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBER 5
booklet compiled by Lalitha Venkat for Anita Ratnam (Artistic Director, Arangham Dance Theatre)
Source: Internet
CHRISTIANITY
* The five wounds of Jesus on the cross.
* The five parts of Jesus’ clothing remaining during his
crucifixion after the soldiers had made four parts of his dress, plus
his tunic which they did not tear.
* Saint Paul declares that by five times he received 39 lashes from the Jews.
* The five mad and wise virgins of the parable of Jesus.
* The five porticos of the pool of Bethesda.
* The five pebbles which made it possible for small king David to kill the giant Goliath.
* The five kinds of animals that God asked Abraham to present to
him to conclude with him an alliance: a heifer of three years old, a
goat of three years old, a ram of three years old, a turtledove and a
young dove.
* The five books of the Torah (the Law) according to Judaism that
corresponds to the number of first books of the Bible. The Book of
Lamentations of Jeremiah also contains five chapters.
* Five depicts human beings after the Fall in the Garden of Eden. There are five senses; five points to the cross.
* The number 5 is used 253 times in the Bible.
In the Bible, 12 numbers are used 5 times - 28, 35, 38, 41, 62, 90, 110, 148, 700, 800, 80000 and 185000.
* The visions of the saints are classified according to five
categories: beatific or intuitive vision, “abstract” vision,
intellectual vision, imaginary vision and the corporal vision.
* The Book of Psalms is arranged into five books, paralleling the Five Books of Moses.
* The first books in the Bible: Genesis (Bereisheet), Exodus
(Shemot), Leviticus (Vayikra), Numbers (Bemidbar), and Deuteronomy
(Devarim) also known as the Pentateuch.
* In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus mentions that there are “five
trees in paradise that do not move neither summer nor winter and their
leaves do not fall. Those who will know them won't die.”
* Emperor Constantine I used the pentagram, along with the chi-rho (a symbolic form of cross) in his seal and amulet.
* According to visions of Ann-Catherine Emmerich, the forbidden
fruits of the Tree of Knowledge, of the good and the evil in the Garden
of Eden hung in five bunches.
* In the visions of Maria Valtorta, Jesus classifies the kinds of
love in five categories, each one of different power and which are in
the order: the love of God, the paternal or maternal love, the conjugal
love, the love of the neighbor, the love of the science and the work.
The three firsts are of higher power, while the last three are of lower
power. But these six divisions are reduced to five because the love of
the neighbor and the conjugal love are of identical nature.
* In the revelations received by Roman Catholic priest Don Stefano
Gobbi, of the Marian Movement of Priests, it is a question of the five
famous mountains climbed by Jesus: it is on the mountain that he
promulgated the evangelical law of Beatitudes; it is on Mount Thabor
that he lived the ecstasy of his transfiguration; it is to Jerusalem,
city located on the mountain, that he gathered one's people for the Last
Supper and that he passed painful hours of his internal agony; the
crucifixion of Christ on Calvary was on a hill outside Jerusalem; the
ascension of Jesus happened on Mount Olivet, the location where a final
battle would occur between the Jewish Messiah and their opponents.
* In Greek Orthodox Christian mysticism, the number 5 symbolizes
the Holy Spirit as the bearer of all life. In the monastic tradition of
Mount Athos there exists a "hymn" to the Holy Spirit composed entirely
and solely of repetitions of the word "pente" (Greek for "five").
* The annual church feast of Epiphany that celebrates the visit of
the three Magi to the infant Jesus, had the pentagram as its symbol. It
is now changed to a regular 5 point star in reaction to neo-pagan use
of the pentagram.
* The healers of those days took advantage of herbs brought from
the East, as did murderers who wished to gain power. The church
condemned as evil, all who used the pentagram, and condemned the symbol
itself. Pagan horned gods such as Pan became equated with the
devil and the pentagram, which then was called The Witch's Foot.
* The use of pentagram in modern neo-paganism as a group symbol is
as important as the cross has been in the history of Christianity.
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