SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBER 5
booklet compiled by Lalitha Venkat for Anita Ratnam (Artistic Director, Arangham Dance Theatre)
Source: Internet
SIGNIFICANCE OF NUMBERS AND NUMEROLOGY
Humanity has had a love-hate relationship with numbers from the
earliest times. The ancient Babylonians observed the movements of the
planets, recorded them as numbers, and used them to predict eclipses and
other astronomical phenomena. The priesthood of ancient Egypt used
numbers to predict the flooding of the Nile.
Pythagoreanism, a cult of ancient Greece, believed that numbers were the
basis of the entire universe, which ran on numerical harmony. The
Pythagoreans’ ideas were a mixture of prescience (the numerical features
of musical sounds) and mysticism (3 is male, 4 is female, and 10 is the
most perfect number).
Numbers were associated with names for magical purposes: the biblical
“number of the beast,” 666, is probably an example of this practice.
More recently, cranks have sought the secrets of the universe in the
dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza, an aberration so common that it
even has a name - pyramidology.
Millions of otherwise rational people are terrified of the number 13, to
the extent that hotels omit it from their floors, airplanes do not have
a row 13, and the numbers for Formula 1 racing cars skip from 12 to 14.
Learned tomes are written about the significance of such stalwarts as
the golden number (1.618034), which does occur in flowering plants and
modern architecture but does not occur in the shell of the nautilus and
ancient Greek architecture, despite endless myths to the contrary.
Many religions have their sacred numbers, as do organizations such as
Freemasonry; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s music, notably the Magic Flute
(1791), includes many intentional references to Masonic numerology.
Mathematics is the study of numbers, shapes, and related structures.
Number mysticism belongs elsewhere and is generally categorized as
numerology.
Numerology sheds light on the innermost workings of the human mind but
very little on the rest of the universe. Mathematics, meanwhile, sheds
light on much of the universe but, as yet, very little on human
psychology.
Between the two lies fruitful scientific ground, yet to be cultivated extensively.
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