(Essay) Hex to Perfection by Hearth Moon Rising

The following is an excerpt from Divining with Animal Guides: Answers from the World at Hand by Hearth Moon Rising, recently published by Moon Books. It is available online in paperback or ebook and at your bookstore. An earlier essay covered numbers one through three.

We now continue our numerical journey with the numbers four, five, and six.

Four
Three is a more stable number than two, but it’s still an unstable number. The three-legged stool and the three-legged cauldron work, but there’s a reason chairs usually have four legs and buildings four sides. I have come to believe that all numbers are intrinsically unstable, even the number one, but four is a relatively stable number, providing a foundation for traditions as well as houses. Four is an even number—the first even non-prime number. Even numbers provide more stability because they can be divided into equal parts; they are not lopsided.

The number two added to itself and multiplied by itself is the same number, four. No other positive integer does this trick. Four objects can be divided into equal rows and columns, which is the characteristic of all integers with whole square roots. 2² = 4, or two rows with two columns. When even numbers are squared, they can be divided into an even number of equal rows and columns, while odd numbers squared produce an equal number of odd rows and columns. 6² = 36, six rows with six columns; 3² = 9, three rows with three columns. Remember, for numbers greater than two, odd numbers are less stable than even.

The square brings us out of the flat world, allowing movement in three dimensions. A triangle is always a face on a single plane. We associate pyramids with their triangular faces, but they must have at least four sides. People also associate triangles with the ancient Egyptians, because of the pyramids, but the numerical focus of Egypt was actually the number four. This is somewhat surprising, since orientation to the four cardinal points of the year would not be as obvious in such a warm climate, but Egyptians did have to keep careful track of time to schedule activities around the annual inundation of the Nile. Timekeeping was probably the root of the cult that arose around sun worship. Core beliefs about the sun are usually expressed in multiples of four, in Egypt and elsewhere. (Greece is an exception, as we will get to.)

Egyptian deity relations were usually expressed as four deities or two pairs. The most well-known of these deity groupings are the siblings Isis, Osiris, Nephthys, and Seth. As the Greeks thought in threes, the Egyptians thought in fours. In mummification four internal organs were taken out of the body and preserved in four jars, each guarded by a different deity.

The number four also corresponds to directional points (east, south, west, north), which are delineated by sunrise/sunset and by the magnetic poles. Four is the number of grandparents (the two parents of your own two parents or 2² = 4), which would associate this number with tradition even if it were not already a highly stable number.

Not all aspects of the number four are intrinsic. Some are cultural. I once did graphic design for a man from Hong Kong who had a business in California that was expanding rapidly. He kept ordering more and more phone lines, and he had long arguments with the phone company telling them he did not want any fours in his phone numbers. Apparently the word four in English sounds like the word for death in Cantonese. The phone company insisted they had no control over phone numbers and could not honor his request, but this probably was not true, because somebody started giving him numbers with lots of fours just to yank his chain. This is an example of why you would not want to take the numeric symbology of one culture and apply it to another without reflection. Unless you are bilingual in English and Cantonese, the number four is not going to have these associations.

Five

While the number four is matching, even, balanced, and complementary, the number five introduces disequilibrium back into the system. It is perceived as an unfortunate number in the tarot because it comes on the heels of the highly stable four. The number five brings change. Witches use the pentagram (the fivearmed star drawn with a continuous line) because five is such a dynamic number, helpful in effecting transformation. The pentagram is usually pointed upward to invoke heavenly power, but it can be pointed downward to draw power from earth. The upward pentagram also represents the individual—head, arms, and feet. It is often used to represent the physical human body, well represented by the number five since it is in a constant state of change. In alchemy the number five corresponds to the element of ether, which contains the other four elements of air, water, earth, and fire. It is called the quintessence (the essence of five) because it is the essence of all things.

The five-sided object in the center of the pentagram, the pentagon, has an angle of 108 degrees. If you have taken any yoga, chances are you have been instructed to do certain exercises 108 times, since this is an important number in Vedic philosophy. Regardless of your belief system, 108 is still an interesting number, because it is equal to one times two squared times three cubed, 1¹ x 2² x 3³ or 1 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3 = 108.

Five is a prime number, which means that it is irreducible and cannot be broken into factors except one and itself. The first three prime numbers are two, three, and five, so if you like to hunt threes, there you are. In the practice of addition, five is the sum of the beginning prime numbers two and three. Prime numbers in metaphysics represent fundamental truths, since they cannot be divided into any whole numbers except one. Five is a worthy number for study among alchemists and witches, because it is a prime among primes.

Six
Six is called a “perfect number,” which means that by adding or multiplying its factors you get the same number. What does that mean? It’s easier to show than to tell: 1 x 2 x 3 = 6 and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. Perfect numbers are relatively rare—28 is the next after six— although in the paradox intrinsic to mathematics it is conjectured that there are probably an infinite number of them. Like true love, they are difficult to find.

The building unit of three-dimensional space, the cube, has six faces. Thus, while the number four forms the foundation, multiples of the number six are the actual building blocks.

The six-pointed hexagram, two interlacing equilateral triangles—one pointed up, the other down—illustrates in a beautiful way the principle of “as above, so below.” Six is associated with the goddess Aphrodite, probably because her sacred bees make hexagonal cells out of wax. The number six corresponds to the Lovers in the tarot, which is appropriate, since the Latin word for six is sex.

The words “hexagram” and “hexagon” are derived from the Greek hex, meaning “six.” These shapes are used as protection against evil spells. In the common parlance “hexing” means to cause harm through magic, but in Appalachian folklore and among the Pennsylvania Dutch “hex-work” is healing by magic, and “hex signs” are any signs, not necessarily hexagrams, created to ward off trouble. The meaning of “hex” in this context comes from hexe, the German word for “witch.” If you were going to cause harm with magic, you certainly wouldn’t use the number six. It’s a perfect number, not permitting the possibility of corruption. Six is the number for love, beauty, protection, and healing. It is no accident that quartz crystals, which have become so important in energetic healing work, are six-sided. Again, six is a perfect number.

Meet Mago Contributor Hearth Moon Rising.