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Mindless Digits
We fight the impersonality of them when manipulated like a raw statistic, or when left scrambling to meet our quotas, or being scored on performance, or reduced like a prisoner of war to simply a name, a rank, and a serial number.
Increasingly, we fall dependent upon long strings of number-coded gray matter etched into our digital alter egos. But take heart--these noiseless, virus-prone brainchildren of the Information Age cannot even count to three. They are built merely of brittle, geek-spawned, non-metalic chips of sand. Though they can perform seemingly infinite calculations in a matter of moments, they cannot even think for themselves and possess less real intelligence than the Guatemalan banana slug. And unlike the slug, when squashed beneath your boot, all that oozes are mindless, meaningless circuits of numbers.
Modern numbers depersonalize and reduce. To our government, we are known by our driverís license, zip code, age, date of birth, Tax I.D., and Social Security numbers; to our friends, we are contacted and organized by our street, phone, fax, and cell numbers. To ourselves, we are oriented by our clock, calendar, thermostat, speed limit, paycheck, credit card, and bankbook numbers. They put us in our place, structure our lives, and stifle our (sometimes preferred) irrationality. For that we regard them as useful poison. We canít give them up, but in the end they will kill us.
Tempting though it may be, blaming the guileless digit is an exercise in misplaced rancor! In fairness, digits merely function as practical organizers of things that come in larger quantities than we have fingers to count (they are in fact the ìmeta-fingersî of extended reality). Sure they can hypnotize with their endless continuity, minisculity, and grandeur, not to mention their impeccable consistency and accuracy in operations. And yes they can fragment and fractionalize any quantity, and reduce the very complicated to the very basic. The common denominator, however, is that they work for us, but they donít make us happy.
They are merely "bean counters," that is, signs of quantification hobbled to the datum of life. In themselves they are empty and meaningless beyond the defined parameters, base-sets, and applications that we give to them. As the unpaid accountants of size and quantity (who work on weekends), we human beings in the final reckoning remain their lords and masters (though if truth be told, not for very much longer thanks to those traitorous AI yahoos bent on giving them real brains. A bad idea. Luckily, in their current state however, the machines are too stupid to plan ahead for their future).
Naked Truth
From an entirely different vantage point, one must concede that a certain raw and elegant "signature of being" is revealed in the reduction of a thing to its essential name, rank, and number. Peel away the outer layers of any object's exterior until simply its most fundamental suchness remains, devoid of particulars, and behold what is meant by number quality! It is the essence of any beingís energy, purpose, pattern, and structure.
The prideful numerologist may sneeringly demote what are mistakenly called ìnumbersî to the more vulgar class of mere "figures" hoping by this distinction to erase any further misconception that mindless ìarithmetic entitiesî be confused for his beloved and intelligent true numbers. And he is not wrong to do so. Behold the richness of character in the number two, for instance, or the magnificent seven, or my own personal favorite the nine, with its magical properties of increase with essence-retention, and youíll appreciate why. But one needn't be a numerologist to appreciate the pure beauty of a numberís naked truth.
Without metaphysical association, an object's most primary quality, wrote Carl Jung, is whether it adheres to the "one" or the "many." By fifteen months of age, adventuress toddlers first behold a profound sense of "the many" when stacking a tower of four rubber Barney blocks onto the living room carpet and delighting in the primitive magic of multiples (well before rational faculties will instantaneously override these animistic perceptions of the world). Thereafter numbers begin to amass a parallel and private soul of their own, one rich in poetic allusion and emotion like those found in the fabled three blind mice and the seven dwarfs of the pre-Oedipal years, where threes and sevens become indelibly merged with the narrative itself, marking more than a mere counting of myopic rodents or bearded little people.
Numerically-Challenged
Some years later this more primitive number magic, and the numinosum it inspires, gathers a certain adolescent ambiguity which was held ìonce upon a timeî transfixed to the ballfields and backyard games of latency (though naturally, in watered down versions due to the cruel intrusion of social awareness). Yet today one worries whether boys and girls are not robbed of this mythic outlet in their epidemic electronic programming, limited by its binary source, over-buttoned, and divorced as it is from the traditional number magic of childhood? Of course, there is always Play Station Two.
Sooner or later though, for all generations, primitive numbers must recede altogether behind the blinding sunlight of maturing ego consciousness and its more calculated and successive arrays of rational numbers. Algebra replaces the primary numbers of our minds. Only later (during sudden lapses of adulthood) will their numinous qualities occasionally reappear via regression (in the service of the imagination) as sub-text in altered or non-waking states of consciousness, in dreams, visions, and creative imaginings, in divination practices, synchronicities, or else in the serious study of ancient Greek, Chinese, Hebrew, Fourth Way, or Native American philosophy and their many derivatives who have through such means approached the awesome splendor of "The One."
Popular culture too plays upon the universality of living integers lost to the oppression of just numbers, as even feckless adults prefer the older system when describing the metaphors of lived experience, no matter that ìA bird in the hand is worth two in the bushî "oneî remains ì the loneliest number," "two is companyî and unquestionably ìthree's a crowd." The old system in fact, becomes the stuff of proverbs, love songs, lullabies, lucky numbers, and magic spells. But why count backwards in time? Because the old system better captures what we feel and intuit to be true before weíve been conditioned to know better. It speaks the quasi-logical language of who we really are, that is, when we give up pretending to be singularly rational quantities.
Timeless Symbols
Some five hundred years before Jesus of Nazareth, the man considered "the fountainhead of Greek philosophy"--Pythagoras of Samos--believed that numbers were the foundation of the universe and that the essence of the gods were defined by them. In absolute terms, one is the only number. In self-reflection, two is grapsed. In love, three is born. And from these three, (with allowances for the babysitter) come all 10,000 manifest forms. Still, with earthy sagacity, the Hopi remind us: "One finger cannot lift a pebble."
Today, theoretical physicists, corporate CEOs, and prison inmates alike are identified by their long strings of numbers, and for different reasons, they all pray for the one that sets them free as it's in their genes and they cannot help themselves. Theologians and football players rhapsodize in pre-second grade numerologies that enumerate their respective highest canons, from the "ten commandments," the "eightfold path, " and the "seven deadly sins" to the "six point touchdown," the "three point field goal," and the strategically life-altering "two point conversion."
Natural numbers best capture the fundamental energy, purpose, pattern, and structure of things regarded sacred, that is, when used symbolically and qualitatively (as opposed to literally and quantitatively). They provide shorthand for human discovery. At such times they are universally recognized for pointing beyond their immediate and actual referent to the mythic world of the human soul. That is to say, they add a second dimension of bright and ponderous meaning to our otherwise linear existence.
Root Numbers in the Tarot
In Tarot, numbers express a timeless and special set of universal themes and principles that correspond to the spectrums of human possibility. Moreover, the Tarot is a multi-layered symbol system that includes more than the fertile ground of meaningful numbers. A tarot card in fact is a collage of symbolic images, colors, glyphs, magical tools, elements, activities, spatial relations, social interactions, titles, animal and human figures, dwellings, landscapes, clothing, background environments and more.
While certain imagistic conventions typically are carried over in the Tarot artistsí execution of a new deckófor instance, The Strength Card regularly portrays a woman opening or closing the jaws of a lionócreative artistry, emphasis, and style have shown great variation. As part of the beauty and freedom unique to the Tarot tradition, no rigid standards of expression have ever been established for the design and execution of a deck. The unspoken rule, as Joseph Campbell made clear in his classic study The Hero With A Thousand Faces, is that universal symbols can be expressed in inexhaustibly varied and original forms.
But meaningful numbers are quite different than symbolic images in this regard: they operate within the precise and invariant laws of naked truth. Since the late 18th century when the deckís numbering assignments and sequence pretty much stabilized with the classic Tarot De Marseille, with few exceptions, all Tarot decks have adhered to these essential numeric constants. Below, Iíve made a short list of meaningful numbers with respect to the deck of Tarot. For the symbolically inclined, I recommend putting these to memory and further study as they will on many occasions serve to lift the veil.
In the Table below I have listed with keywords some of the perennial wisdoms associated just with the Tarotís root numbers, along with their classic card titles.
ZERO
FOOL
No-thing, Emptiness, Open Field, Possibility, Original Mind, The Void, The Unmanifest
ONE
MAGICIAN, Ace of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Unity, Singularity, Thesis, Primacy, Solitude, Beginning, Point
TWO
PRIESTESS, Two of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Relation, Polarity, Duality, Pair, Antithesis, Line, Counterpoint
THREE
EMPRESS, Three of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Process, Synthesis, Divinity, Trinity, Growth, Progeny, Triangle
FOUR
EMPEROR, Four of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Form, Structure, Earth, Elements, Order, Quaternity, Family, Square
FIVE
HIEROPHANT, Five of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Complexity, Man, Spirit, Ethics, Guidance, Quintessence, Pentagram
SIX
LOVERS, Six of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Harmony, Equilibrium, Union, Choice, Love, Hexagram
SEVEN
CHARIOT, Seven of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Pursuit, Perfection, Quest, Mysticism, Victory, Spectrum
EIGHT
STRENGTH, Eight of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Balance, Regeneration, Strength, Solidity, Vitality, Infinity
NINE
HERMIT, Nine of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Completion, Individuation, Wisdom, Truth, Soul, Triangle of the Ternary
TEN
FORTUNE, Ten of Wands, Cups, Swords, and Pentacles
Perfection, Completion, Mastery, Cycle, Reunification, Return
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