Many believe that there is something extraordinary associated with the number seven. Indeed: the seven is the most common figure in folklore (“seven do not wait for one,” “seven Fridays in a week,” “measure seven times …” and so on), Rome and Moscow are built on seven hills, and even Buddha was sitting under a fig tree on which seven fruits swayed.
Why did this figure become literally mystical? Let's try to find the answer.
Sacred number
The number seven is directly related to the basic tenets of all major religions. For example, in the Old Testament there are seven days of creation. Christians have seven virtues and seven deadly sins. In Islam, there are seven heavenly gates and seven heavens, and during the pilgrimage to Mecca, worshipers make seven circles around the Kaaba stone.
This number was recognized as sacred even in ancient times - and by different, unrelated peoples. The Egyptians had seven primordial supreme gods (the number 7 itself was a symbol of eternal life and belonged to Osiris), the Phoenicians had seven cabirs, the Persians had seven sacred horses of Mithra (the sun god), the Parsis had seven angels opposing seven demons, and seven heavenly abodes, corresponding to the seven lower spheres.
The Egyptian doctrine of transmigration of souls spoke of the existence of seven states of purification and successive improvement. One could get into the ancient underground kingdom of the dead by breaking through seven guarded gates. The hierarchy of priests of many Eastern peoples was subdivided into seven degrees.
In the temples of almost all countries, seven steps lead to the altars. The supreme synclite of the Babylonians consisted of seven gods. In India, the seven stages of the embodied soul are allegorically displayed in the seven tiers of the classical pagoda, which gradually decrease towards the top. However, let's stop …
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It is clear that there must be something in common between all these customs and phenomena. That which could be seen or felt by all peoples, regardless of conditions and place of residence.
And they could only have the sky above their heads in common! And on it are the seven brightest luminaries: the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter.
Ancient people were almost entirely dependent on the elements that determined the future harvest. The blessed rains were perceived as happiness that fell from heaven, and a long drought was perceived as punishment for committed misdeeds. The largest and brightest luminaries looked like the most important of divine powers. Over time, they began to be spoken of as the seven gods.
Harmony and perfection
And then the meaning of the divine number gradually spread in everyday life.
Hebrew treatises tell of the commandments, the fulfillment of which contributed to the annual rest of the soil from agricultural work. In every seventh year the fields were not cultivated, and since there was no new harvest, it was forbidden to demand debts that year.
In ancient Greece, soldiers who covered themselves with shame were supposed to stay out of sight for seven days. There, according to myths, the lyre with seven strings was invented, originally belonging to Apollo, who was born on the seventh day of the month.
Scientific observations made it possible to establish that the luminaries visible to the naked eye (that is, the already listed Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter) are always at the same distance from each other and rotate in the same orbit.
Thus, seven began to be perceived as the number of harmony and perfection.
Scientists from different countries have calculated that the Sun is 49 times larger than the Earth (that is, seven times seven), and noted seven basic metals in nature (gold, silver, iron, mercury, tin, copper and lead). There were seven famous treasuries and seven gold-rich cities.
But the most surprising were the discoveries associated with the human body. Judge for yourself. The duration of pregnancy in women is 280 days (40 times seven). Most babies have their first teeth in the seventh month. At about 21 years old (three times seven), a person stops growing.
It is even more surprising that the period of incubation of chicks or pregnancy in the animal kingdom is often also a multiple of seven! Mice reproduce after about 21 (three times seven) days, hares and rats after 28 (four times seven), and the incubation period in chickens lasts 21 days.
Ancient scientists believed that the human body is renewed every seven years, and all diseases develop in accordance with a seven-day cycle.
Seventh day to rest
The special attention that has been paid to this figure since ancient times is primarily associated with the brightest of the night luminaries - the Moon. As you know, the lunar cycle consists of four phases, each of which lasts seven days.
Already the ancient Sumerians, in accordance with the phases of the moon, drew up a calendar, where each month consisted of four weeks of seven days.
In Babylon, every seventh day, marking the end of the lunar cycle, was dedicated to the moon god Sin. This day was considered dangerous - and in order to avoid possible misfortunes, it was intended only for rest.
In the works of Ptolemy Claudius (a Greek astronomer who lived in the II century), it is indicated that the Moon, as the closest celestial body, affects everything: the ebb and flow, the rise or fall of the water level in rivers, the growth and behavior of people and plants. Each new moon leads to a renewal of nature and a surge of strength in people.
Thus, the number seven was perceived as central to the management of such cycles and rhythms as birth, development, aging and death.
The significance of the lunar cycle has already been confirmed today by studies of some fossilized algae species that lived on Earth hundreds of millions of years ago - even before the appearance of higher life forms. It turned out that their existence was based on a seven-day rhythm.
The Lost Colosseum
True, it was far from always possible for our ancestors, as well as their followers, to bring any classification to seven (or a multiple of it).
For example, there were clearly more great works of architecture - and in this regard, different philosophers included different objects in the list of the classic seven wonders of the world. Sometimes the Colossus of Rhodes disappeared from the list, sometimes the Lighthouse of Alexandria or the Colosseum.
When studying the laws of versification, it turned out that even the longest poetic meter (hexameter) has only six stressed syllables. And all attempts to introduce one more stress lead to the collapse of the poetic line.
The seventh stress is also critical for a musical phrase - it ceases to be perceived as pleasant to the ear.
Much later, Newton, who discovered the light spectrum, was accused of his excessive enthusiasm. It turned out that the human eye is simply not able to see the blue and orange colors in their pure form. But the scientist was under the magical influence of the number seven and therefore introduced two additional colors.
Do not put the eighth at the table
Modern research shows that the number seven is capable of creating riddles in the age of computer progress.
Scientists from the Institute of Nonlinear Science in California have come to the conclusion that the seven is a kind of equivalent to the maximum volume of the brain's random access memory. This is evidenced by the simplest test: ask a person to make a list of 10 words - and then restore it from memory. In the vast majority of cases, he will remember no more than seven of them.
Roughly the same thing happens if a few pebbles are poured in front of the subject and asked at first glance to determine their number. As long as there are five or even six pebbles, there are almost no mistakes, but with the appearance of the seventh, their number increases. With more stones, mistakes are inevitable. The brain's working memory is full - and new information simply displaces old information.
Polish researcher Alexander Matejko, who studied the conditions of creative work, came to the conclusion that the optimal size of the discussion group in a research team is seven people. The famous Kuban grain grower Vladimir Pervitsky, who in the 1960s regularly achieved a triple harvest, named the number of members of the team - seven among the secrets of his success.
Sociologists note that no more than seven people can communicate with each other at the table - with an increase in their number, the team breaks up into interest groups.
Do you understand why in the films "The Magnificent Seven", "Seven Brave" or "Seven Samurai" the number of heroes is limited to a lucky number? After all, you can still keep track of so many, remember their names and characters - and if there were more heroes, one of them would simply fall out of the viewer's memory. The filmmakers hardly read scientific treatises on this subject, but they intuitively felt the situation and believed in the magical properties of the figure of harmony and perfection.
Nikolay MIKHAILOV