Christine, On 3 + 7, I assume you are referring to this:
Quote:
|
(2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,) divine prescience of Eternity communicating itself by its works, which put in their true number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, = 21 = 12 = 3, together 36, it extends over Men by 1 + 6, 2 + 5, 3 + 4, which [p. 142] gives infinitely correct numbers. 16, 25, 34 = 75, 3 over the intelligences, 75 (2 next to 37, number by which in this spirit the Cabalists do not dare to count, seeing this number thus 1 integer + 37 + 8, and subtracting 1 from the 8, leaves 45 and 3 + 7 = 10.
|
Although it is difficult to make a lot of sense of this, he seems to get 37 by reversing the digits of 73, which is 2 next to 75. Then 3 + 7 = 10 is the summation of the digits--the "numerological reduction" procedure he used in the passage just before this one--which then gives him his desired result, for some reason, 10. Probably 10, which reduces to 1, is a number of God. The 3 and 7 come out of his calculations. If they have any other significance, it is most likely that the 3 is the Trinity and 7 is a powerful number for various reasons, as we can see in the
Theology of Arithmetic's section on the Heptad, or more probably, Philo of Alexandria's
On the Creation. For Etteilla, 7 is most closely associated with the days of creation, of which on the cards (nos. 2-8) he specifies seven.
On the cards he also specifies four elements, by name and number (not the Sefer Yetsirah's three. Card 3 has element 1, water, Card 2 has element 2, Fire. Card 4 has element 3, Air. Card 5 has element 4, earth. It is easy to see why he assigns particular elements to particular cards: just look at the images on these cards. But why the elements get the numbers 1-4 in the way they do is a mystery to me. Maybe he just wanted it to look mysterious, so that people would pay money to go to his school.
