Yes – it’s one of my favorite memes, the math lady / confused lady featuring Brazilian actress Renata Sorrah playing Nazare Tedesco in a scene from Senhora do Destino
(6) ARITHMANCY
Lucky numbers and sacred geometry!
Also Pythagoras – whom I used to think of as a grounded philosopher and mathematician from his theorem at school, because schools don’t teach how much of a mystical kook he was as well. Mind you, the same goes for Greek philosophers in general, as E.R. Dodds propounded in The Greeks and the Irrational.
And yes – apparently numerology was known as arithmancy prior to the 20th century, and frankly still should be rather than coopting a name more appropriate to a science to itself, similarly to astrology. Also – numeromancy was sitting right there!
In fairness, similarly to astrology contributing to astronomy, numerology may have contributed to science, albeit more numerology in the broader sense of numeric patterns – as per British mathematician I. J. Good, “there have been a few examples of numerology that have led to theories that transformed society…It would be fair enough to say that numerology was the origin of the theories of electromagnetism, quantum mechanics, gravitation….”
Arithmancy or divinatory numerology essentially involves “a belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events” – or that certain numbers have certain mystical or symbolic properties. Or in short – lucky (and unlucky) numbers. The same concept can also be applied to the mathematical properties of geometry – hence sacred geometry.
As for the numbers themselves, they may come from some process of random selection (not unlike modern lotteries) or from assigning numeric values to other things, such as an alphanumeric system for letters in words or names (overlapping with my previous special mention for nomancy or onomancy).
That last is also known as gematria, a practice dating back to ancient history and (in)famously appearing in the Bible as 666 or the Number of the Beast in the Book of Apocalypse – or as I like to quip, that sixy beast – for which the scholarly consensus is that it is an alphanumeric key to the Roman Emperor Nero. (It’s a little more messy than that – I understand it wasn’t the actual Nero, but some sort of projected supercharged revenant Nero back from the dead, and could also be rendered alternatively as 616, as it was in some versions).
The strength of arithmancy or numerology as both method of divination and school of magic lies in the elegance and explanatory power of mathematics to explain the fundamental properties of our reality – something which is ever more so in modern science, where whole swathes of reality only seem explicable entirely as increasingly arcane mathematical formulae.
To the point that our physical reality often seems a coalescence or crystallization of mathematics or numbers – it is not so much that everything has a true name but a true number.
I can’t resist closing with two of my favorite incarnations of arithmancy in science fiction.
The first is the basic arithmantic principles underlying the Laundry series by Charles Stross – where the magic is essentially arithmancy or mathematics (and where the growing computing power of humanity and its machines will reach a threshold drawing the attention of hostile Lovecraftian entities).
The second is my favorite version of arithmancy in a charming (and characteristically horny) short story by Fritz Leiber – in which the number seven assumes a sexy female personification. Hot damn – that would have made maths classes more interesting at school!
RATING: 4 STARS****
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