Number Symbolism

Six is a so-called 'perfect' number. A perfect number is one the sum of whose divisors equals itself, i.e. the divisors of 6 [excluding itself] are 1+2+3 = 6.

Six is connected to the concept of the 'cosmos', not only because the creation of the 'world', 'cosmos' or 'universe' was completed on the sixth day, but also through Gematria, 'cosmos' in Greek = 600 = 6;
also 6 is the baseline of the number 21, in tarot the number of the card 'il mundo', also of YHV or IAO, the name by which God 'sealed' space [according to the Sefer Yetzira and Christian Gnostic sources].

A throw of six in dice is called 'the venus throw' and Venus is attributed to the Number 6 in Agrippa. The attribution of Venus brings in the association of 'love', and the geometric figure associated with 6, the hexagram, is also connected with love, a symbol of the communion of bride and bridegroom, that is not only between man and wife, but in mystical language of the sacred marriage or mystical union of man [male and female - who was created on the sixth day] and YHV [21 - the sum of the numbers 1-6].

Placing the numbered Marseille tarot trumps in a 3x7 scheme gives us a 6th triadic column of the cards VI the Lover, XIII Death and XX Judgment:

The Lover [or Love] - Death - Judgement

"Verily, love is death, and death is life to come." Aleister Crowley "The Book of Lies", Chapter 18 'Dewdrops'.

Love and death, Eros and Thanatos, is a common thematic pairing. A quote from Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance by Edgar Wind:

"....why was it an amorous adventure of Jupiter was chosen to decorate a tomb. He could not fail to notice that the loves of the gods appeared on sarcophagi with remarkable frequency. The love of Bacchus for Ariadne, of Mars for Rhea, of Zeus for Ganymede, of Diana for Endymion- all these variations of the same theme; the love of a god for a mortal. To die was to be loved by a god, and partake through him of eternal bliss.

'As there are many kinds of death,' a Renaissance humanist writes*, 'this one is the most highly approved and commended both by the sages of antiquity and by the authority of the Bible: when those... yearning for God and desiring to be conjoined with him (which cannot be achieved in this prison of flesh) are carried away to heaven and freed from the body by a death which is the profoundest sleep; in which manner Paul desired to die when he said: I long to be dissolved and be with Christ. This kind of death was named the kiss by the symbolic theologians [the mors osculi of the Cabbalists...], of which Solomon also appears to have spoken when he said in the Song of Songs: Osculetur me osculo oris sui.

"Pico in a long excursus on the morte del bacio in his Commento III,viii writes: 'Through the first death, which is only a detachment of the soul from the body... the lover may see the beloved celestial Venus...and by reflecting on her divine image, nourish his purified eyes with joy; but if he would possess her more closely...he must die the second death by which he is completely severed from the body...and observe that the most perfect and intimate union the lover can have with the celestial beloved is called the union of the kiss...and because the learned Cabbalists declare that many of the ancient fathers died in such a spiritual rapture, you will find that, according to them, they died... the death of the kiss: which they say of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Elijah, and several others..."

*Valeriano: Hieroglyphica.

Death and Resurrection [Judgement] another obvious thematic pairing, one also connected with the number 6 [as in this our 6th triad]: Quote from the Zohar, Vol 2 of I. Tishby translation:

"This snake will in the future give birth to these bodies before its time. This is the meaning of 'Before it travailed it gave birth'. The period of gestation for a snake is seven years, and in this case it is six - which is not its usual time. And at the same time it gives birth to them it will die - from the act of giving birth, as it is written 'He will swallow up death for ever' (Isaiah 25:8) and it is written 'Your dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise (Isaiah 26:19" (Zohar II, 219b-220a).

Of which Tishby's note of commentary and explanation state:

153 When a man dies, the Shekinah takes the soul, and the 'other side', i.e. death, takes the body.

154 When the dead are resurrected they are taken out of the snake's (i.e. death's) jurisdiction. This is depicted here as a snake giving birth, which will happen during the sixth millennium. This is an 'untimely' birth, because the snake usually gives birth seven years after conception.

155 'the other side' will perish at the end of days, and its death will occur as a result of giving birth to the bodies of the dead at the resurrection. p.740 Vol. II of Zohar by Tishby & Lachower, tr. David Goldstein.

Love and Judgment:

In Augustinian theology salvation and our resurrection is dependent upon the love, grace or caritas of God. The notion of 'Judgement' is not related to any idea of the 'harshness' of God', but upon his grace, love and mercy that we are able of salvation at all and deserve anything other than hell. God's judgement therefore, in Augustinian theology, is the ultimate exemplar of God's mercy and love and forgiveness [caritas].

In the English Hermetic tradition the card ‘Judgement’ is associated with the Hebrew letter Shin:

"Grace is deceptive,
Beauty is illusory;
It is for her fear of the Lord
That a woman is to be praised."

Proverbs 31.30.

Proverbs 31 ends the book of proverbs and the last 22 verses are an acrostic, each verse starting with a word beginning with a letter of the alphabet, aleph to tau. The above paragraph is the letter Shin paragraph, the verse beginning with the word ShQR meaning 'deceitful'. Positing an alphabet sequence starting aleph-fool the letter Shin corresponds to the card 'Judgement'. Some words beginning with Shin which relate to the Judgement card are:

ShVFR - trumpet
ShVF - to blow
ShVFT - judge, judgement

So the words for Trumpet, to Blow and Judgement all share the same three initial consonants shin - vau - pei [Ph or F], which are also the first three letters in ShVFRA, which means 'Grace'.

The root of both ShVFRA [grace] and SHVFR [trumpet] is ShFR - to cleanse, make pleasing, to beautify; conciliate, harmonize. As in Sotah 11b [Talmud]where it says :"The Lord sent an angel from on high who cleansed them and made them beautiful, like a midwife that cleanses a child." So we may say the blow of the trumpet not only awakens, but is simultaneously an act of Grace that like a wind cleanses away the dust of the earth, the stain ofour sins; like a midwife that cleanses the newly [re]born; and makes us beautiful before G-d.

A word for dust, ShChQ, also means heaven, sky, cloud:

Drop down, ye heavens from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it.

So we may perhaps see a parallel between the clouds as ShChQ in the upper world in which the Angel (ShNAN) appears and man the sleeping corpses (ShKDA) awakened by the call of the Angel in the cloud (ShChQ) above from the dust (ShChQ) of the earth below. There are a couple of words beginning with Shin that refer to the underworld or the grave:

ShAVL – the underworld, grave, pit:

The LORD killeth, and maketh alive: he bringeth down to the grave, and bringeth up. 1 sam. 2:6

ShQT – pit, grave:

Then he is gracious unto him, and saith, Deliver him from going down to the pit: I have found a ransom.
He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.
To bring back his soul from the pit, to be enlightened with the light of the living.
Job 33:24 / 28 / 30.

The name of the letter ShYN itself is the root of the word ShYNH - second coming, and of ShYNA – sleep, ShYNAN angel.

ShAVL [and /or ShChVThA] - netherworld, pit, grave [pit, grave];
ShKDA - asleep, corpse;
ShVLL - Naked;
ShV - change, reverse, something bewildering;
ShY - repeat, do a second time; ShYNH - second coming;
ShMYA – heavens;
ShChQ – sky, heaven, cloud, dust;
ShYNAN – Angel;
ShVFR – trumpet;
ShVSThG - a piece of cloth (the flag);
ShShR - Painted red;
ShVF – to blow;
ShVFT – judgement;
ShVFRA – Grace (divine love whereby we are reborn).

*Although Shofar in Hebrew refers specifically to a ram's horn, in the Greek Septuagint, Latin vulgate and vernacular languages it was translated simply as trumpet; and in many pictorial example of the last judgement is shown as a trumpet.

Venus was attributed to the number 6 {Agrippa, Capella}, the highest throw of 6 in dice was known as the Venus throw*. The correspondence of Venus-VI seems an appropriate correspondence with 'The Lover' [TdM], both in subject [love] and the presence of Cupid/Eros. Given the correspondence with Venus perhaps it is possible to interpret the two women of the Tarot 'Love' card as the two aspects of Venus.

According to the interpretation of neo-platonic love in the renaissance, Love is the Desire for the Beautiful [which ultimately is the 'good', which is 'god']. The love of the beautiful 'object' [as represented by the girl with the crown of flowers in some Marseille decks, the earthly Venus, on his left, the side of the relatively imperfect and mutable] is converted by reason [represented by the girl with a crown of laurels or flames, the celestial Venus, on his right, the side of the relatively perfect and immutable] to the love of the beauty inherent in all things, and from thence to its return to the 'invisible' and thus 'unseen' source and ultimate object and source of love, God.

This neo-platonic triadic process of emanation, conversion and return was related the three graces, who were neo-platonic symbols of the 'unfolding' of the triadic union 'infolded' in Venus. These three aspects or graces one could also relate to the three ranks of seven cards, the first seven to emanation, the second to conversion and third to the return.

Six is the baseline of the triangular number 21 [1+2+3+4+5+6=21] in which we can see the triumph of the celestial Venus [the Cosmos comes from the Greek for order and beauty] revealed [nakedness being a symbol of revelation]. The celestial Venus and the earthly Venus can also be taken as being represented by card II, the Papesse and card III, the Empress. The lover as card I, the 'bateleur' [the number 1 is attributed to Eros].

"Why is love called a magician?" asked Ficino. Because it unites the lower with the higher, the terrestrial with the celestial, man with the divine. So we have I+II+III=VI. According to Agrippathe Pythagorean name for One is Cupid/Eros. In regards to which what Diotina saysto Socrates in regard to Love being the child of Poverty and Reason [Zeus] may be relevant:

"And as his parentage is, so also are his fortunes. In the first place he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair, as the many imagine him; and he is rough and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven, in-the streets, or at the doors of houses, taking his rest; and like his mother he is always in distress.

"Like his father too, whom he also partly resembles, he is always plotting against the fair and good; he is bold, enterprising, strong, a mighty hunter, always weaving some intrigue or other, keen in the pursuit of wisdom, fertile in resources; a philosopher at all times, terrible as an magician, wizard, sophist. He is by nature neither mortal nor immortal, but alive and flourishing at one moment when he is in plenty, and dead at another moment, and again alive by reason of his father's nature. But that which is always flowing in is always flowing out, and so he is never in want and never in wealth; and, further, he is in a mean between ignorance and knowledge." end quote from Symposium by Plato.

We may see an allusion I think to both the fool/madman and to the magician. 'Poverty' represents the soul as lover, always in need, wanting and seeking for the beauty and goodness of the beloved' and in relation to the fool or madman we may see him as representing the soul as a pilgrim of love. 'Why is Love called a Magus?’ asked Ficino, "Because" he replied, "all the power of magic consists in love." And what is this magician `love'? The mediating power uniting heaven and earth, gods and men. Or as Diotima replied to Socrates question [in Plato's Symposium]:

"And what is he [love]?”: "He is a great spirit, and like all spirits he is intermediate between the divine and the mortal." "And what is his power?" asked Socrates. "He interprets," she replied, "between gods and men, conveying and taking across to the gods the prayers and sacrifices of men, and to men the commands and replies of the gods; he is the mediator who spans the chasm which divides them, and therefore in him all is bound together, and through him the arts of the prophet and the priest, their sacrifices and mysteries and charms, and all, prophecy and incantation, find their way. For God mingles not with man; but through Love."