The Number 7

The number seven has been revered the world over for thousands of years. It has been called powerful, magical, and sacred. In the late 19^th Century, Russian Ivan Panin, the father of Biblical numerics, examined the original Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1 and discovered a numeric code within the text that could not be explained by chance. The text above consists of seven Hebrew words containing a total of 28 letters. Throughout the Bible the number seven appears repeatedly as a symbol of Divine Perfection – there were 7 days of creation, God rested on the 7^th day, 7 churches, 7 seals, 7 trumpets, etc. In total, Panin discovered thirty separate codes involving the number 7 in this first verse of the Bible. A partial list includes the following:

1. The number of Hebrew words = 7

2. The number of letters equals 28 (7 x 4 = 28)

3. The first three words (read from right to left) translates to “In the beginning God created”, have 14 letters (7 x 2 = 14)

4. The last four words translates to “the heavens and the earth”, also have 14 letters (7 x 2 = 14)

5. The fourth and fifth words have 7 letters

6. The sixth and seveth words have 7 letters

7. The three key words: God, heaven, and earth have 14 letters (7 x 2 = 14)

8. The number of letters in the four remaining words also have 14 letters (7 x 2 = 14)

9. The numeric value of the first, middle, and last letters is 133 (7 x 19 = 133)

The words of the Bible can be translated into numeric code with import that we have only begun to understand over the millennia. According to Grant R. Jeffrey in his book Signature of God, the number seven permeates the totality of Scripture because the number represents God's divine perfection and perfect order. The actual number 7 appears 287 times in the Old Testament (7 x 41 = 287) while the word “seventh” occurs 98 times (7 x 14 = 98). The word seven-fold appears seven times. In addition, the word seventy is used 56 times (7 x 8 = 56).

Then there is the consideration that the number seven is considered the most mystical of all numbers because it is the one number that cannot be divided evenly into a circle:

    Circle Divisor Dividend

    360         1         360

    360         2         180

    360         3         120

    360         4           90

    360         5           72

    360         6           60

    360         7           51.428571

    360         8           45

    360         9           40

Interestingly, the dividend from dividing a circle by 7 is very close to the outer angle of the Great Pyramid at Giza which equals 51 degrees and 51 minutes. The geometry and numerology of the number seven was expressed in countless ways by the Egyptians on the Giza Plateau.

The number 22 is considered symbolic of a complete circle, reflecting the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the 22 keys of the Major Arcana of the Tarot.

When 22 is divided by 7 we get 3.14 which is approximately the constant Pi, which represents the relationship of the circumference of a circle and its diameter.

Seven is clearly mysterious or enigmatic, connected to the Divine in many ways. A look back into antiquity and we find the number seven again and again being a symbolic number in Sumerian, Greek, Altaic, Polynesian, Brahman, Mithral, and Egyptian mythologies. Seven is also akin to natural cycles: There are 7 colors in a rainbow, the body regenerates every 7 years, there are 7 chakras, 7 days in a week, 7 notes in a scale, 7 frequencies in the light spectrum, 7 glands in the human body, 7 moon cycles, 7 seas, 7 heavens, 7 seals, and 7 wonders of the world.

There must be even deeper reasons that the number 7 is so sacred and mystical.