Of The Number Three And Scale

CHAP. XVIII.

OF THE NUMBER THREE AND SCALE.

THE number Three, is an uncompounded number, a holy number, a number of perfection, a most powerful number:--for there are three persons in God; there are three theological virtues in religion. Hence it is that this number conduceth to the ceremonies of God and religion, that by the solemnity of which, prayers and sacrifices are thrice repeated; for corporeal and spiritual things consist of three things, viz. beginning, middle, and end. By three, as Trismegistus saith, the world is perfected--harmony, necessity, and order, i. e. concurrence of causes (which many call fate), and the execution of them to the fruit, or increase, or a due distribution of the increase. The whole measure of time is concluded in three, viz. past, present, and to come;--all magnitude is contained in three--line, superfices, and body;--

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every body consists of three intervals,--length, breadth, and thickness. Harmony contains three consents in time--diapason, hemiolion, diatesseron. There are also three kinds of souls--vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual. And as such, saith the Prophet, God orders the world by number, weight, and measure; and the number three is deputed to the ideal forms thereof, as the number two is the procreating matter, and unity to God the maker of it.--Magicians do constitute three Princes of the world--Oromasis, Mithris, Araminis; i. e. God, the mind, and the spirit. By the three-square or solid, the three numbers of nine, of things produced, are distributed, viz. of the supercelestial into nine orders of intelligences; of celestial, into nine orbs; of inferiors, into nine kinds of generable and corruptible things. Lastly, into this eternal orb, viz. twenty-seven, all musical proportions are included., as Plato and Proclus do at large discourse; and the number three hath, in a harmony of five, the grace of the first voice. Also, in intelligences, there are three hierarchies of angelical spirits. There are three powers of intellectual creatures--memory, mind, and will. There are three orders of the blessed, viz. martyrs, confessors, and innocents. There are three quaternions of celestial signs, viz. of fixed, moveable, and common; as also of houses, viz. centres, succeeding, and falling. There are, also, three faces and heads in every sign, and three Lords of each triplicity. There are three fortunes amongst the planets. In the infernal crew, three judges, three furies, three-headed Cerberus: we read, also, of a thrice-double Hecate. Three months of the Virgin Diana. Three persons in the super-substantial Divinity. Three times--of nature, law, and grace. Three theological virtues--faith, hope, and charity. Jonah was three days in the whale's belly; and so many was Christ in the grave.

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THE SCALE OF THE NUMBER THREE.