Showing posts with label number mysticism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label number mysticism. Show all posts

22 Feb 2017

Post 777: Three Sevens Clash

Party flag of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB)


For those who believe numbers carry symbolic weight and magical significance, the number 777 is loaded with cultural, religious and political symbolism. 

Kabbalists, for example, consider three and seven as perfect numbers, thus three sevens side-by-side suggests a form of hyperperfection, which, surely, must be a way to describe God. Christian mystics develop this idea with their insistence that 777 represents the threefold nature of the Holy Trinity. Either way, it's seen as a divine number that counters and eventually triumphs over the Number of the Beast (666).

The esoteric traditions of the East also get excited whenever the number seven appears, as they believe it's the fundamental number underlying (and holding together) the entire universe; thus they babble on about the seven heavens, the seven planes of creation, and the seven sacred openings of the body - 777.

Of course, Aleister Crowley couldn't resist subscribing to this mystical nonsense and absorbing it into his Golden Dawn inspired teachings on the Law of Thelema; a collection of his papers, edited by Israel Regardie, was given the title 777 (first published anonymously in 1909).

Even today, in this modern secular age, 777 is thought to be lucky and signifies a jackpot on many fruit machines. Some readers, however, may recall it being used in a far more sinister context by the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement; the black numbers arranged on their party flag in a menacing triskelion design so as to resemble a swastika and set on a pure white disk against a blood-red background. 

It's always interesting to note, is it not, how occult mumbo-jumbo and dubious theology invariably sustain a reactionary and authoritarian form of politics ...