Wonther x gOOOders - Number Necklace selection
Your identity is your sense of self. It's the storyline of you, the memories, and the expectations. It's the people who surround you. Each initial and number carry personal meaning for each one of us. Choose yours.
Unity. The One. God. The Great Spirit. Mirror of wonders. The still eternity. Permanence. There are countless names for it. According to one perspective, one cannot actually speak of the One, because to speak of it is to make an object of it, implying separation from it, so misrepresenting the essence of Oneness from the start, a mysterious conundrum. The One is the limit of all.
There are two sides to every coin, and the other side is where the Dyad lives. Two is the otherworldly shadow, opposite, polarised, and objectified. It is there, other, that not this, and essential as a basis for comparison, the method by which our minds know things. There are countless names for the divine pair. To the Pythagoreans, two was the first sexed number, even and female. To develop their appreciation of twoness, they contemplated pairs of pure opposites, such as limited-unlimited, odd-even, one-many, right-left, male-female, resting-moving, and straight-curved. We might also think of the in-and-out of our breathing, positive and negative charges in electromagnetism, and real and imaginary numbers.
Male in some cultures, female in others, three, like a tree, bridges heaven and earth. The Triad relates opposites as their commixture, solution, or mediator. It is the synthesis or return to unity after the division of two and traditionally the first odd number.
Beyond three we enter the realm of manifestation. Four is the first born thing, the first product of procreation, two twos. The Tetrad is thus the first square number other than one, and a symbol of the Earth and the natural world.
The quality of five is magical. Children instinctively draw fivefold stars, and we all sense its phizzy, energic quality. Five marries male and female - as two and three in some cultures, or three and two in others - and so is the universal number of reproduction and biological life. A Fibonacci number, it is also the number of water, every molecule of which is a corner of a pentagon. Water itself is an amazing liquid crystal lattice of flexing icosahedra, these being one of the five Platonic solids, five triangles meeting at each point.
The Hexad like its graceful herald the snowflake, brings perfection, structure, and order. The marriage by multiplication of two and three, even and odd, six is also the number of creation, with a cosmos made in six days a common theme in scripture.
Seven is the Virgin, standing quite alone and having little to do with any of the other simple numbers. In music, a scale of seven tones (the white keys on a piano) emerges as naturally as its sister five-tone scale, and there are also seven related classical modes. Like all numbers, seven embodies the number preceding it; spatially its functions are the spiritual center of six, as six directions emanate from a point in space, and six working circles surround a seventh restful one in a plane.
Eight is two times two times two, and as such is the first cubic number after one. As the number of vertices of a cube or faces of its dual, the octahedron, eight is complete. At the molecular level, this is displayed by atoms, which long to have a full octave of eight electrons in their outermost shell. A sulphur atom has six electrons in its outermost shell, so eight atoms get together to share electrons, forming an octagonal sulphur ring. Eight is also the next Fibonacci number after five.
Nine is the triad of triads, the first odd square number, and with it something extraordinary occurs, for the first nine numbers can be arranged in a magic square where every line of three in any direction has the same total (opposite center). This ancient number pattern was first spotted four millennia ago on the shell of a divine turtle emerging from the river Lo in China.
