Recommended reading: Matrix of Creation: Sacred Geometry in the Realm of the Planets
by Richard Heath
available at Amazon
For those of you who want to follow up and study more about the number 7, I recommend the Matrix of Creation: Sacred Geometry in the Realm of the Planets. A quote from page 101 of that book sums up well what we've been talking about here in Part 5 of this series on Sacred Geometry:
"The reasoning behind ideas such as “the seven days of creation” is that there must be a process for bringing the universe into existence and that this process parallels the law of just seven notes familiar to music---namely do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do, which are the harmonic nodes we call notes. Ancient cosmological knowledge asserts that music is just an inevitable audible manifestation of levels of invisible vibration operating throughout all cosmic processes."
Continuing where we left off in Part 4 with the number 6, we now move on to the number 7, called by the Pythagoreans “the number of numbers”. It's also been referred to as the “fundamental number of manifestation” and the “Virgin” number. A group of 7 is sometimes called a heptad or a hebdomad.
The Pythagoreans said 7 was the sum of 3 and 4---in geometric terms, the triangle added to the square. They explained the triangle as the initial idea of God in three parts, what is thought of as a trinity in many religions: Father-Mother-Son (Christian), Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva (Hindu), Osiris, Isis, Horus (Egyptian), and so on. They explained the square as a symbol of four, which, as we saw in Part 4, was associated with the physical world of matter and volume. Together, 3 and 4 make up the mind plus the body = 7.
I've pictured the triangle plus the square graphically below where they're associated with The Lord's Prayer. (For those who want to follow up on that mystical aspect, I suggest you go to the source website referenced just below the figure.)
(Source: Triangle over Square model of Our Father by Bobby Matherne, copyright 2003 Design suggested by Rudolph Steiner. See http://www.doyletics.com/arj/lordpray.htm.)
While the number 7 is not part of the Fibonacci Series (see Part 3 of AL's Sacred Geometry Corner - The Basics), the first four numbers of the Fibonacci sequence of numbers add up to 7 (1 + 1 + 2 + 3 = 7).
The Many Appearances of Seven in the World
There are lots of interesting facts related to the number 7. I'll list as many as I can think of and as space allows. I'm sure you can add to the list, and I encourage you to do so.
There are 7 solar system bodies in the sky that can be seen with the naked eye: the sun, moon, and five planets.
The 7 days of the week are each named for one of those planets or the ancient gods representing them. For instance, from English, old Germanic, and French:
Monday = Lundi = Moon's day
Tuesday = Tyr's day = Mardi = Mars' day
Wednesday = Woden's day = Mercredi = Mercury's day
Thursday = Thor's day = Jeudi = Jupiter'sday
Friday = Freyja's day = Vendredi = Venus' day
Saturday = Saturn's day
Sunday = Sun's day
There are 7 continents and 7 seas of the Earth.
There are 7 wonders of the world, and Rome has 7 hills.
There are 7 Biblical days of creation, 7 laws of Noah, and in the book of Revelation there are 7 churches of Asia Minor, 7 seals, 7 vials, and 7 trumpets. In fact, both the Old and New Testaments are saturated with the number 7.
There are 7 deadly sins: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride.
There are 7 colors of the rainbow corresponding to 7 human chakras in the Hindu tradition.
There is a tradition of 6 years of work followed by one sabbatical year equaling 7.
There are 7 openings in the human head and 7 endocrine glands in the human body.
A circle cannot be divided into seven equal parts by any known geometric construction.
7 is the starting point of plane and solid geometry. For example, the first plane figure is a triangle. It has 3 vertices, 3 sides, and 1 face. 3 + 3 + 1 = 7. From the triangle, we can produce the first solid figure, the tetrahedron.
And, in a right-angled triangle, side lengths of 3 and 4 (components of 7) produce the right angle.
Seven, the Number of Creation Represented In Music
There are 7 notes in the standard heptatonic scales of Western music. Interestingly, the abbreviated names of the individual notes (some from Latin) correspond to a cosmological/astronomical gradation of size and scale in the physical universe. Starting with the first or lowest note, do, up to the beginning of the next octave's first note, do, we have:
(1st note of first octave) Do = Domino = diety = to do = to cause = infinitesimally small
(2nd note) Re = recurring = cycles = Moon
(3rd note) Mi = middle = in between above and below = Earth
(4th note) Fa = Famuli = family = planets of the solar system
(5th note) Sol = solar = sun
(6th note) La = lactic = milky = galaxy = all suns
(7th note) Ti (Si) = sidereal = starry = all galaxies = universe
(8th note) (1st of next octave) Do = Domino = deity = to do = to cause = infinitely large
The first note do of the next octave is the 8th note of the original octave, hence the use of the term “octave” meaning eight, as illustrated below for the intervals of a C major scale:
Also, the ratio of all whole numbers whose sums equal 7 produce musical harmony:
7 = 3 + 4 (4:3 first-harmony or fourth interval)
7 = 2 + 5 (5:2 fullest power in harmonies)
7 = 1 + 6 (6:1 greatest distance from highest to lowest note)
Geometric Configurations of Seven
The following quotes and diagram are from Assembling 3D Figures With Translation and Rotation by Charles Petzold on a blog dated August 29, 2007. It can be found in its entirety at: http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2007/08/290236.html
"Here's a seven-pointed star with a radius of 1 centered on the origin of a conventional 2D Cartesian coordinate system. Each point of the star is associated with an angle measured counter-clockwise from the positive X axis:
I started with 90° at the top and then just incremented by 51-3/7° (360 ÷ 7) going counter-clockwise."
Each point of the star ends in an irrational fraction whose denominator is 7: 1/7, 2/7, 3/7, 4/7, 5/7, and 6/7. In addition, to complete the sequence, we can consider the 90 degrees as 89 and 7/7. Even though, as I mentioned earlier in this article, a circle cannot be divided into seven equal parts by any known geometric construction, the points of the figure can be calculated. Strictly speaking, the star above is referred to as a septagram, and if we connect all the points along the circle, we would form a septagon.
If we inscribe a circle within a triangle so the circle just touches the sides of the triangle, we get 7 points and 7 lines, providing we call the circle one of the lines:
Also, in forming a relationship between 3 and 7, if we draw three straight lines in a plane that do not all intersect at one point and that are not parallel, we divide the plane into 7 parts:
Where Every Issue is a Green Issue
