(Essay) Nine Worlds I Knew by Hearth Moon Rising

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

Our exploration of numbers concludes with seven, eight, and nine.

Seven

If you have even a rudimentary understanding of spellcasting, you know that the number seven is important. If you go into an occult shop or a botanica with a problem, you will often be sold a “seven-day candle” in the appropriate color. If your problem is really thorny, the saleswoman will push a multicolored “Seven African Powers” candle, perhaps with a special prayer. What is so magical about the number seven?

To begin with, seven is another prime number. Split unevenly down the middle, it is four plus three. This is interpreted as the four directions plus the triple goddess, the four seasons plus the maiden-mother-crone, or any other magical representation of four and three. This is expressed visually by the square with a triangle inscribed.

It is believed that the prominence of the number seven is calendrical in nature, corresponding to cycles of the moon and of the star system Pleiades. The moon completes a cycle every 29½ days, and our seven-day week is a moon cycle divided into four parts. It was probably divided into four parts rather than three to chart the two half-moons as well as the full and the dark moon phase. The Pleiades seven-star system can be seen around the world during at least part of the year, and it features prominently in world mythology. The presence and position of this star system has been used from earliest times to orient the yearly calendar. Although there are many stars in the Pleiades system, only seven are visible to the naked eye (and many people can only see six).

There are many correspondences to the number seven, too many to list here, but some that come immediately to mind are the seven-note musical scale, the seven color categories, the seven “personal planets” in astrology, and the Seven Wonders of the World. Clusters of seven, so common in Western cultures, usually follow from the preeminence of this number rather than from any intrinsic components of the particular category. Why don’t we have five primary colors or nine? The musical scale does not need to have seven notes, nor does it in every culture.

Eight

In the earlier tarot decks, those created before the Rider-Smith-Waite and similar twentieth century occult decks, the number eight in the major arcana corresponds to the “justice” card.

A bit of background about tarot numerology. The symbolic picture cards numbered 1 to 21, plus the unnumbered “fool” (labeled zero in twentieth century decks) are referred to as the “major arcana,” while the numbered and court cards in the four suits are called the “minor arcana.” The major and minor arcana probably evolved separately. There is a record of a deck painted for Charles VI of France in 1397 (unfortunately no longer extant), so the major arcana dates somewhat earlier than this. It seems to have been a teaching tool for a breakaway Christian sect—the Cathars and the Waldenses have both been proposed—and it conveys conventional Christian symbolism of the time along with the teachings of a sect that incorporated occult beliefs. The origin of the minor arcana is even more obscure, probably originating in an Arabic game brought home by Crusaders. This game may also have originated as a spiritual teaching tool, and there are similarities to Hindu cards that were undoubtedly painted for this purpose. The tarot is often cited as an authority for pagan philosophy of numbers, but the murky history that is undoubtedly rooted in Christian dogma means it should be approached cautiously as a number theory.

Eight as a number of judgment puts four on either side of the scale. Remember that four is a number of stability and a number of foundation. While we think of judges as powerful people, judges themselves see their role as circumspect, a mandate to interpret given law with an eye to tradition. This is not a creative number, but one for maintaining existing tradition.

It is also a number tied less to the individual and more to higher authorities, a byproduct of its double-four nature. For this reason, eight is the number of the administrator, not just the administrator of justice but any manager obeisant to regulations and material realities.

The mineral fluorite often takes the structure of the eightsided octahedron. Holding a fluorite crystal in your hand, you may be able to feel the stimulation in the frontal lobes of your brain, which is the section that separates intellect from instinct and attempts to view a situation rationally. Again, the mirrored pyramidal facets of the octahedron suggest balance, in this case perhaps the balancing of left and right hemispheres of the brain. Katrina Raphaell says of fluorite, “It is the stone that manifests the highest aspect of the mind—the mind that is attuned to spirit. From that exalted state of consciousness comes the intellectual understanding of truth, of cosmic concepts of reality and of the laws that govern the universe.”

The symbol 8 comes from the shape of the eight-legged spider. The spider is an accomplished builder, the master of one of the most durable structures on earth. She spends part of each day repairing her web from the vicissitudes of wind, rain, and other creatures, understanding and accepting that a valuable possession requires maintenance. Like the spider establishing structure through her web, the textile weaver gives fabric its structure. This is a number that accepts and utilizes limitations. It is often pointed out that the symbol 8 lying on its side is the symbol for infinity, and this infinity symbol is pictured in the number eight card (strength) in the Rider-Smith-Waite tarot. But 8 the number is finite, not lying on its side. It is proudly upright, limited but all the stronger for it.

Eight received its reputation as a bad luck number for its role in miscarriage, not miscarriage of justice, but miscarriage of pregnancy. The eighth month of gestation is a stressful time, with premature birth always a possibility. Eight became the number for well-laid plans going awry, since babies born at the eight-month mark have a reduced chance of surviving past infancy.

Nine

With this number we come full term. It would be illuminating to continue on past nine, perhaps examining the symbolism in the number twelve, walking through fears around the number thirteen, swinging with the twin primes of seventeen and nineteen, or meditating on the “master number” twenty-two. We do have to stop somewhere, however, because numbers go on forever, and the chance of your encountering more than nine animals in the wild who stand still while you count them is low.

Nine is the harmonious square of three: 3 x 3 = 9. It takes the highly unstable yet creative prime number and harnesses it in a way that can be expressed coherently. We think of the creative process as intrinsically unstable, but it takes a modicum of stability to come up with a product.

Nine is, of course, the number of pregnancy. In the early days of creation, the plant daughters of the Mesopotamian goddess Ninhursaga gave birth at a rapidly increased pace, nine days instead of nine months. The absolute amount of time for biological processes is apparently not critical but the number nine is. When the Germanic god Odin receives the runes he must be reborn by hanging upside down (birth position) from the world tree for nine days and nights. There are thus two ways of looking at the number nine: the perspective of the mother and the perspective of the child.

The number nine is the Triple Goddess times three, often portrayed as nine daughters or priestesses. The sea goddess Ran has nine mermaid daughters. In Cornwall a set of nine prehistoric standing stones is known as the Nine Maidens. An early Neolithic rock painting in the Catalonia province of Spain, the Dancers of Cogul, depicts a group of nine black or red feminine figures along with a few animals. There are Nine Muses—not originally tied to the god Apollo, though they may well have had a solar connection.

The association of nine with Goddess is found all over the world. The Hindu Mother Durga has nine manifestations, and the Suseong-dang seaside shrine in Buan, South Korea was originally called the Nine Maidens Shrine. The ocean is often seen as Nine-fold Mother Goddess due to the saline waters surrounding the fetus in the womb. In China, Korea, and Japan there is folklore about the Nine-Tailed Fox, who shapeshifts into a woman.

Numbers are among the first things taught in primary school, and names for numbers are one of the first things taught in foreign language study. Understanding numbers is a basic part of priestess training. Numbers are literally in the blood, because mathematical systems grew out of a need to anticipate menstruation, control fertility, and chart the course of pregnancy. Yet even though women gave birth to math, numbers should not be considered intrinsically masculine or feminine, with the exception of the number one as all-that-is, which by its parthenogenetic nature is always female. Meditating on numbers—not just your personal associations and the associations you’ve learned but the core qualities of numbers themselves—will bring your divinatory powers to a new level.