Lucky Number Seven

Why aren’t there eight days of the week? Why aren’t there nine deadly sins?

Seven is said to be a sacred number in all cultures and traditions.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, there are:

● Seven ages of man
● Seven colours of the rainbow,
● Seven wonders of the ancient world
● Seven gates of hell
● Seven primary chakras
● Seven Christian sacraments
● Seven Sisters (the Pleiades)
● Seven dwarfs

And many other magnificent sevens too numerous to list in this post.

The Hebrew word for Seven comes from the root of a word that means complete.
Ancient Egyptians saw the number 7 as a symbol of Eternal Life.

Seven is also said to symbolise the universe. It represents the Collective Mind and Universal Love. It is associated with feelings and instincts.

It is seen as a symbol of spiritual perfection.

Apparently when asked to think of a number between 1 and 10, most people think of the number 7.

Seven Veils of Mystical Experience

Yesterday I wrote about the Seven Veils of Mystical Experience in connection with the Dance of the Seven Veils.

The Seven Veils of Mystical Experience were also known as the Seven Rays by the Merkabah Mystics who are said to have practised the earliest form of Jewish mysticism.

The Seven Rays are Dreams, Reason, Passion, Bliss, Courage, Compassion, and Knowledge.

Merkabah means the ‘throne or chariot of God’ in Hebrew. The aim of Merkabah Mystics was to see God on his throne. To achieve this goal, they had to pass through the Seven Veils of Mystical Experience also known as the Seven Rays.

They had to give the guardian of each Ray (or Celestial Palace) a password or special talisman in order to continue.

In physical terms, this means they had to fast, chant and pray to induce trance states in order that they could make an ascent and reach a spiritual state where they could see the throne of God.

Each Ray was linked to a planet:

● Dreams (or Imagination) was linked to the Moon.
● Reason was linked to Mercury
● Passion to Venus
● Bliss to the Sun
● Courage to Mars
● Compassion to Jupiter
● Knowledge (or Gnosis) was linked to Saturn

Apparently of the four Merkabah Mystics who tried to travel through the Seven Veils of Mystical Experience, only one of them, Rabbi Akiba succeeded.

Of the other three, it is said that one died, the other became mentally ill and the third became agnostic.

Shades of Icarus.

This wasn’t exactly the ending to the story that I was looking for when I started researching this subject.

Oh well.

Salome and the Seven Veils of Illusion

It is strange how myths can be transformed into facts. Or how ancient concepts can reemerge disguised in the modern imagination.

Take the story of Salome.

The opera Salome (and the dance of the Seven Veils) is based on the biblical story of the beheading of John the Baptist.

However Herod’s stepdaughter is not referred to by the name Salome in the bible. Nor is there mention of a Dance of the Seven Veils. Nor did the dance exist in Middle Eastern tradition. It appears to have originated in Western imagination.

The famous image of the belly-dancing minx seems to come from the play by Oscar Wilde written in 1894. He also seems to have dreamed up the concept of the Dance of the Seven Veils.

In Salome, the opera by Richard Strauss, the character Salome performs the Dance of the Seven Veils, removing the veils one at a time until she is completely nude.

The idea of the Dance of the Seven Veils seems to be based on the concept of the Seven Veils of Mystical Experience of the Merkabah Mystics, who were forerunners of the medieval Qabalists.

The Seven Veils of Mystical Experience are Dreams, Reason, Passion, Bliss, Courage, Compassion, and Knowledge.