I read in a Tafsir that in Arabic there are singular, dual and plural number. In ancient Arabic 3 to 7 is plural. After that they start like eight and one more. I don't know whether its applicable to all the sematic languages.
Norse "9" is similar. Every time 9 is used in Norse mythology, it's apparently not meaning a literal 9 things but "many." So the 9 realms means many realms.
it took a long time for me to accept that several doesn't specifically mean "seven or more". i would use "few" to describe 3 to 6 until i was like... 20
Yes, congrats! I am in my 50s and have had a life-long interest in history... and the great thing is that the more you age the more you learn so your best years are ahead of you. 😀.
Esoterica was accomplice to the Pearl High School massacre. He has a video about the Satanic panic where he gaslights his audience about it. Ironically, he was part of a satanic cult alongside the shooter. He’s also not Jewish. He just dresses that way for clout.
I used to watch Esoterica, but I was banned for explaining why some of the content of the videos on that channel was inconsistent with the source materials (specifically that he was repeating the words of people presenting themselves as experts rather than doing his own research). Do yor own research before repeating anything said on that channel
Henry inspired Dr. Sledge to create Esoterica.. Let's just ponder that for a second. For all we know, free and open scholarly education of religious studies would never have been the same without him. He's a true legend.
@@zachery751 really? I had no idea. I’ve been watching a lot of esoterica lately and have been loving Dr. Sledge Work. I need to find a way to weasel into one of his DnD campaigns if he’s still DMing lol
@@Orion225 nah. We're "just" (1) a cultural species, who (2) can talk, (3) are superstitious, (4) are _great_ pattern recognizers, but (5) don't/can't think deeply/specifically about _everything_ (because otherwise, we wouldn't have time to hunt, gather, take care of children, etc).
And of being better than the competition, i mean, if we survived and we are stupid enough to believe hot dogs are sandwiches, i seriously dont want to know what the competition was like.
7 is also a very important number in traditional Cherokee religion and society. Thus the 7-pointed star on the crest and flag of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma territory.
7 days is a moon phase, the people that wrote the Bible used the lunar calendar, as did all ancient people initially because the ease of tracking the moon through its 4 phases of 7 days that we now call weeks of the moonth. This is why 7 comes up as an important number in alot of peoples myths
I can't commit to a Patreon subscription at the moment, but I have so appreciated finding this channel and learning so much from an expert in religious studies. There are so many great educational RU-vid channels, but yours is an underrepresented field. That is a shame, since it is an area where so much of what the average person knows are half-remembered myths. I hope to watch the second instalment of this video when you reach 7,777,777 subscribers!
Theology was my minor. I still study it on my own time and follow you because I know you will give knowledgeable, unbiased overviews. Keep up the great work
@@shanekc3502 of course there is more than black and white, there are gray scales. Rainbow has 7 distictive colors even tho they transition from one another in a gradient. 7 Main musical notes taken as basis, aka chromatic scale. It is reduntant and obvious and my point is that WE like to cathegorize things in groups of 7 ... more examples, 7 days of the week, 7 visible celestial objects in our solar system, 7 archangles, 7 deadly sins, 7 virtues, 7 princes of hell, etc etc
Seven is also interesting from a linguistic perspective or rather it looks suspiciously similar in several Eurasian languages. You have the Indo-European septḿ̥ from which you got septem, saptan in Sanskrit and so on. Looks similar to Akkadian shabat and related Semitic words. There is also Prototurkic *žēti for seven. In Uralic languages, seven is the last "normal" number, while 8 and 9 are (ten-minus-one) and (ten-minus-two).
@@hedgehog3180 Because none of the other numbers are an usually those numbers which are loaned are higher, like 1000 or 10000. Also they border each other, but over a vast geographic area. Maybe they borrowed each other close in the past. If it is connected, then it is a very ancient connection, but it might be none at all too. In any way it seems interesting. After all languages inherit words from ancestors instead of diffusing into each other via geographic proximity.
Semitic is likely not indigenous to Eurasia as all farming-related words seem to be borrowed. Afro-Asiatic is from the Horn of Africa and is more than twice as old as Indo-European is.
7 days is a moon phase, the people that wrote the Bible used the lunar calendar, as did all ancient people initially because the ease of tracking the moon through its 4 phases of 7 days that we now call weeks of the moonth. This is why 7 comes up as an important number in alot of peoples myths.
@@Flozone1 Of course the connection would be ancient, you're literally talking about Indo-European languages that are directly related and thus share a common ancestors. The only other languages you list are all surrounded by Indo-European languages and thus obviously had a ton of influence from them.
Man your channel is one of my favorites on RU-vid. I always feel like I’m learning so much and your voice is very calming. Thanks so much for the great videos!
combine three of the most important things to ancient people: - 7 celestial bodies - 7 stars connected to the North Star - 364 days between solstices or equinoxes, 364 is divided evenly by 7, equaling 52 weeks, and 13 lunar cycles. combine how absolutely important all of those things are to ancient people for everything from religious/cultural identity, to travel, to agriculture, and i think it's a pretty good bet that this is the best explanation for this phenomenon 🤔 but I'm no scholar so obviously I'm wrong 🤷♂️✌️😅
"but I'm no scholar so obviously I'm wrong" Huh? Your first two point where already mentioned in the video as possible explanations brought up by scholars, so why should anyone say that you are wrong on this?! The only thing which is not exactly right is the "364 days between solstices or equinoxes", but it's right to a quite good approximation.
The real reason why 7 is so profound and is considered the number of wholeness and completion is that God the Holy Spirit is actually Seven Spirits combined. In the book of Revelation, it is written that God has 7 Spirits, these seven are the Holy Spirit so God acts according to His nature. And this is why, if you have not noticed, the number 7 is found outside religious texts, like the 7 main colors in the rainbow, or the 7 notes in music etc. So the number 7 is literally ingrained into the fabric of reality. because it represents God's nature.
@@nikokapanen82 It's precisely the other way round: Because 7 had already been considered to be a "holy" number, the author of revelations simply made up the assertion that "God has 7 Spirits". There is no evidence at all that this assertion actually is true. The 7 main colors in the rainbow are just convention, one could also argue for fewer or more colors. This is not even the same number in all cultures! Same goes for the 7 notes in music etc. "So the number 7 is literally ingrained into the fabric of reality." Totally unproven assertion.
@@nikokapanen82 To any thinking person it's that way. Even most religious scholars will agree on that. Only the most fundamentalist, indoctrinated believers will argue otherwise.
When you offered the answer that 7 means "to the max", like "cranking it up to 10," I can't have been the only person who thought of Spinal Tap. So it was delightful to see that possibly, given the sexagesimal number system, 7 *is* 11. Shows that finding answers is a bit of a crap shoot. I also thought of "The magic number 7..." I don't think it's necessarily right to simply dismiss that idea as speculation, provided we stop trying to look for a single cause. Seven is the recurring, para-sacred, number, for whatever reason, and it means "completeness," let's say. If that's true, its use is reinforced by the apparent fact that, on average, a list of 7 items is pretty handy for humans to remember (and hence maybe??? the prevalence of lists of 7: the seven capital sins, the seven deadly virtues, the seven wonders of the world). Full explanations need not just "causes," but maybe causal feedback loops.
I'd say it symbolizes completion, but not just that; achievement. The magic of life. True livelihood, that one thing in life that is the basic unit of good that we cannot define. That simple fulfillment by existing, and the fulfillment of having done what was needed of you in your time on earth.
7 is *not* 11 in a sexagesimal base (base 60). It is 11 in a seximal base (base 6). The mesopotamian sexagesimal base here though is actually not a pure sexagesimal system though. the sub-base was base 10.
Modern people would be confused by this because we don't even look at the natural things in front of our faces. 7 days is a moon phase, the people that wrote the Bible used the lunar calendar, as did all ancient people initially because the ease of tracking the moon through its 4 phases of 7 days that we now call weeks of the moonth. This is why 7 comes up as an important number in alot of peoples myths. The lunar cycle is the most obvious trackable natural calendar system.
Saptrishis (7 Sages), it is said that they mastered 7 different dimensions of Yoga, together they cover all 112 ways or Tantra (techniques) in multiple of 7.
I wonder if the number 7 was important for a similar reason many native american cultures appreciate the number 7 particularly in reference to generations: I might be lucky to meet my great-grandparent in person and they may have met their great-grandparent in person and been able to tell me about it. That's 7 generations, and represents the most number of generations that might be able to directly relate to each other (I can recall my great-grandfather telling me about time he spent with his great-grandfather, that is the extent of a direct connection).
My people in Africa use to count seven gen before marriage, if your sixth great grand dad f cked up, you ain't getting my lil daughter. Remember it's Cain's and Seth descendents that were punished not cain. Cain lived, multiplied and prospered even when he knew he f cked up
Great content, honestly the origins being with either the planet count or the hexa-base number system were both very compelling. The later reminds me about how we say someone or something is a "10" when they are perfect, ie "this pizza is a 10" is "this pizza is the best". It's a shame we lack the context for those early cultures, because for instance in United States I've observed people use "A" as a maximum since letter grades are common, instead of the 10 scale. I believe also that once you get such a powerful cultural snowball rolling, as with all that previous religious work, new writers are compelled to use this inherent association for flavour. If I wrote a book, for no reason other than the sensations it evokes, I'd use things in groups of 3 and 7 like "7 artifacts" or "7 enemies" etc.
I rather like the idea of a fictional culture that loves the number 4, and uses base-4 numbers, puts their metric prefixes at multiples of 1024 (4^5), likes squares and tetrahedrons, offers deals on 4 or 8-packs of goods, and defaults to using powers of four when they need to pick a number, so where we decimal users would pick 100, they'd pick 64 or 256.
I took a screenshot but then realized there is no way (that I can see) to post it in this comment. But, as I watch this video, you have 777k subscribers and this video has 77k views, which is excellent
The Seven Classic Planets connection brings my mind to astro-theology; the theory that the first religion of humanity was the worship of stars, or that theology was a natural development from astrology.
A. Do you think the ancients saw Saturn or Neptune? 🙄 B. Astro theology was not the first religion of humanity, I'd advise you to read 'Rivers of Life' by JGR Forlong for more of a hint that is not as based on modern anachronistic concepts as "Astro theology" 7 days is a moon phase, the people that wrote the Bible used the lunar calendar, as did all ancient people initially because the ease of tracking the moon through its 4 phases of 7 days that we now call weeks of the moonth. This is why 7 comes up as an important number in alot of peoples myths. The lunar cycle is the most obvious trackable natural calendar system.
There's another interesting connection: number 5 is ubiquitous in Chinese philosophy due to the Five Elements, namely Metal, Water, Wood, Fire and Earth. This system originally refers to, respectively, the five planets, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Mars and Saturn. Thus the astronomical explanation works well here too; the Chineses simply don't group Sun and Moon into the rest.
I think this channel is so interesting and important, but I would really love to see captions added. That helps to open up the information to so many groups, including those who are Deaf/hearing impaired, but also people with a whole range of neurodiverse brains, English learners, etc. It would really help and I'd be super happy :)
I found your channel after I saw minutes ago on my phone clock -- 07:07 on this day of 07/07. I wondered and wandered. Thank you for creating this. This gives a wonderful feel and thought to things. Will definitely be back as religion & faith traditions are truly interesting subject matter, to say the least.
It all started with sapt rishis or 7 Sages which started with Jyotisha Shastra calendar in which there were 7 days a week after calculations. One of which is Rishi Kashyap on whose name Caspian sea is named
7 being a shorthand for "to the maximum" reminds me of how we use "turn it up to 11" as a way to go beyond the maximum. Interesting coincidence that 11 is the next prime number after 7 as well 😛
Really enjoyed how this video dives into the mystery of the number seven across different cultures and religions. It's amazing to see how a simple number can hold so much meaning and connect so many beliefs throughout history. The part about the stars and planets making seven a special number was especially cool. It shows how people long ago looked up at the sky and found something sacred that we still talk about today. Thanks for sharing these fascinating insights and reminding us how connected our world is through numbers and stories. Keep up the great work on making complex religious topics easy to understand!
In my country there is a symbolic sentence regarding the number 7. "7 generations their wealth will not run out". Usually this sentence is used to refer to families who have been very rich for generations Sorry for my bad English
@@sarfrazmh31 I don't know. But in past my country had trade relationship with ancient india so maybe this sentence was brought by ancient Indians merchants. I don't know if this sentence also in India and Pakistan
Just a small point but I love how you called it the Chinese correlative cosmology haha, bcs that’s exactly what it is (the interplay of the elements). It’s such an important system in daoist/general Chinese folk cultural thought and to hear it named so precisely was validating.
You've just connected some tangential dots for me. Gustav Holst's "Planet Suite" is pretty clearly an influence on Marty O'Donnell's original soundtrack for Destiny, but O'Donnell wrote pieces for Sol and Luna instead of Uranus and Neptune. Now I have a clue as to why. There are other musical choices related to a sort of classical numerology he makes - the vocal themes for certain sections seem to reference the old "Music of the Spheres" idea that, say, Earth's elliptical orbit corresponds to the variance in pitch between mi and fa in the solfege scale. Thousands of years later, and we're still imparting significance to numbers in attempts to unify the whole.
@@ZETA14.88 that's true, but why say it here? Nobody was asserting that the Arabs were the _first_ to use a base-10 system, just that 9 has special significance in Arabic culture _as a result_ of using a base-10 system.
If you're talking about Arab/Muslim culture, I'm both and I've never heard of 9 representing completeness, but we love to use 7, 70, 7000, etc. If you're talking about the whole base ten positional numeral system - a numeral system doesn't include numbers representing things?
@@ZETA14.88no it doesn't lol Arabs( desert people /tent people, nomadic people) predate base ten...they also next to India and the numbers are actually called Arabic lol
Any modern society accepts a week as 7.days which the 7th day is rest day. The fulfilling of Resting does effect an importance in having great respond.
Maybe it's a combination of factors. The lunar month would have been noticed very early on in human history, then when people started looking at the stars and saw the 7 "planets" or heavenly bodies, then someone started grouping the stars they saw according to what those groups looked like from their perspective and there were a few constellations that had seven stars. Then that Sumerian sexagesimal system and the number 7 being different from 1-6. It's a series of coincidences but I can see how they'd influence culture and religion in the Levant and surrounding areas and why it persists these days.
Do you think ancient people saw Saturn or Neptune? 🙄 7 days is a moon phase, the people that wrote the Bible used the lunar calendar, as did all ancient people initially because the ease of tracking the moon through its 4 phases of 7 days that we now call weeks of the moonth. This is why 7 comes up as an important number in alot of peoples myths. The lunar cycle is the most obvious trackable natural calendar system.
The ancients knew stars more than 99 percent of us now, they knew their geometry vary well but top leaders hid knowledge in order to continue leading. The Greeks even had a computing device for the sky People nowadays assume to know better but we just have microscope and telescope. Most of us will never know the physical world(mother nature ) as they did.
In a lunar cycle, the most reasonable division of time into smaller cycles is to quarter it. That leaves you with 7 days. As a prime, it is then I realistic to divide further, which would make 7 Complete
I think this answer makes a lot of sense. Four 7-day weeks in a month -> 7 is the end of a week -> seven is complete -> seven is special. In fact, since the moon and sun are so visually different than the planets, it almost makes more sense to me that they were added to the other planets in astrology to add up to 7, which was already special.
The problem i have with this is that the lunar cycle is 29.5 days, not 28. Then, with 12 lunar months, thats 354 days, 11 days shorter than 365.25 days in a full year. Nothing about 7 fits with lunar cycles or the calendar Side fun fact, the Islamic calendars uses lunar months, which is why for example, Ramadan occurs 11 days earlier each year, “moving around” the calendar. Additionally, since lunar month is 29.5 days, theres a 50% chance each month will be 29 or 30 days (it averages out through the whole year). Often the determination is based on local moon visibility, which is why certain holidays may be celebrated on different days in different areas
There's a channel, theoria apophasis, where he rediscovered the Pythagorean/geometric basis of seven. Phi, and each of it's powers up to phi cubed and down to phi to the negative three, seven sections, all have metaphysical meanings, and with these seven sections all of reality is represented, and the 36-36-108 golden triangle can demonstrate this as a geometric symbol. The math and metaphysics are solid and you could read all further cultural references to seven as versions of this basic geometrical/metaphysical understanding.
The fact that the Norse seem to have used 9 in a similar capacity does lend some credence to the 7 +/- 2 hypothesis. At the very lease, being odd numbers each with their own mathematical intrigue, I wouldn't be surprised if the true answer is "all of the above". The fact that 7 is vaguely around the limit of ideas you can juggle, the fact it is an early stand out in mathematical operations (especially base 60), and the fact that there were 7 wandering celestial bodies. 5 is half of 10, and the number of fingers on a hand. 9 is one less than 10, and is also 3x3, 3 being itself fairly special as being the first number to qualify as "many". Having spent my life with numbers, either in music, or in physics, or in software, I can attest that different numbers have different feels. 5, 7, and 9 all have a vibe, while numbers like 4 and 8 feel quite dull (being "just" multiples of two). 6 feels a bit special, but in a comfortable way. It's nice because it combines 3 and 2, so you can look forward to a lot more tidy integer division. And 10 of course resets the counter in our base ten system, and has a lot of practical relevance to our interaction with the world.
I would argue 4 can be special if you look for it. 4 cardinal directions, 4 elements, 4 extremities, etc... Honestly, as long as the number is not too big or weird you can pretty much find it everywhere. It just comes to what a culture holds as important.
Norse myth focuses on the 3 and 9 because in their culture, existence itself relates to the number 3 and 9. in their believe reality is woven by 3 women symbolizing the past, the present and the future. 3 goddesses weave 3 threads = 3 x 3 = 9, which stands for reality itself. you can also spot the number 3 in many of their runes.
@@Noqtis Small quibble, but there are more than 3 norns, it's just that only three are named. Those three are referred to as Jotnar, but the sources say that the Nornir came from many backgrounds, specifically including gods, elves, and dwarves.
I should note that the number eight plays a similar role in Japanese culture. For example, the term for all existing gods in Shinto is "yaoyorozu no kami", or "eight million gods". This is just one of many expressions in which this number symbolizes completeness. Sometimes it just means many: "yatsuzaki" means tearing someone apart, or into eight pieces.
"The magical number seven, plus or minus two" turned out to be about the length of the phonological loop vs. the pace at which a language is spoken. It's about 7 for English, but about 9 for Mandarin.
When I was 15 years old, I had an incredible experience one evening whilst camping. It was so uniquely powerful that it can hardly be conveyed through words, but in the months following I learnt that it would be called a 'mystical experience.' The reason I bring this up is because simply put, the overriding insight granted by this experience was that there are 7 layers to existence, all superimposed on one another, descending from the divine One, and while the material realm is only one of these layers, human consciousness can traverse beyond it. At this time in my life, I had a very limited understanding of religion. I had a 'sunday school' level of thought about religion, mainly Christianity, and zero exposure to mysticism, numerology, esotericism etc. Besides knowing that the creation story of Genesis involved 7 days, I had no knowledge of the significance of the number 7 within religious history. The profundity of this experience motivated me to explore religious history in order to find some kind of precedent for what I had experienced, and I must confess that I was almost scared, yet somehow not surprised, at discovering just how completely widespread this notion of 'seven levels of heaven' and similar is throughout religious history. This one experience, in which I was thrown into an altered state of consciousness for perhaps only a few minutes, sent me on a path of discovery that I never would have gone down otherwise. It is ultimately because of this experience that I eventually started watching youtube channels like Religion for Breakfast, Esoterica, Let's Talk Religion and so on. That years later you would make a video on the topic of the spiritual significance of '7' is therefore quite poetic to me, and I thus felt the need to write this comment. In the time since this experience, I have studied neo-Platonism, Merkavah, Gnosticism, Catholic and Orthodox mysticism (Dante, Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart, Seraphim Rose, Pseudo-Dionysius etc), Sufism, Hindu cosmology and spirituality, the Dream of Scipio, the Mithras liturgy and so much more. In reading about these topics I am endlessly blown away by the cross-cultural parallels that exist between my personal mystical experience and the mystical experiences of numerous other individuals across space and time. It's true that my interest in them began with the fact they contain insights that paralleled my own, but that these parallels exist at all is remarkable to me and suggests shared acquaintance with the same spiritual phenomena. For myself, this process of discovery has not really been about 'learning' new religious teachings, but rather about finding external confirmation for what I 'learnt' in this one mystical experience, and I must say that it is remarkable how much external validation there is historically for what at first glance would appear to be quite a bizarre idea. Really, this whole journey, which still continues, has just been a long process of 'working back from' and unpacking the huge amount of spiritual insight I gained in this one overwhelming mystical experience. That I could find such an astonishing number of precedents for these insights (which seemed to come to me out of nowhere) tells me I am certainly not the first one to have had a mystical experience of this specific nature. I cannot explain this experience, and have never experienced anything remotely close to it before or since, yet it truly felt like I was being momentarily granted some insight from the divine. Looking back, it was probably the single most profound experience of my life, and it has been burnt into my brain ever since.
This video was great! There's one theory relating to math / geometry you didn't mention: the radius of a circle wraps its circumference 6 times, then a 7th is needed to complete it, but with extra (taken from Mathieu Pageau).
I have always valued this objective and research focused perspective on religion, something which is normally only covered in extremely emotional and argumentive sermons or hate pieces. Thank you for your dedication to education and knowledge.
The real reason why 7 is so profound and is considered the number of wholeness and completion is that God the Holy Spirit is actually Seven Spirits combined. In the book of Revelation, it is written that God has 7 Spirits, these seven are the Holy Spirit so God acts according to His nature. And this is why, if you have not noticed, the number 7 is found outside religious texts, like the 7 main colors in the rainbow, or the 7 notes in music etc. So the number 7 is literally ingrained into the fabric of reality. because it represents God's nature.
This basically explains the Faith of the Seven in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. I definitely think it's an intentional choice on GRRM's part based on the importance of the number seven in real-world religions.
He's also continuing a romantic literary tradition since his works are inspired by romantic era texts. In romantic literature the numbers 3,7 and 13 often showed up as a direct reference to the bible. A Song of Ice and Fire is both very much inspired by national romantic works like Ivanhoe but also something of a subversion of them so a lot of similar motiffs will show up.
Not only did this video not answer the question in the title, it created more questions than I ever knew I had.... Love the channel, but "lol we aren't sure maybe it's cause of some math" is not a sufficient answer to such a prolific phenomenon
The best explanation I've heard for the number seven being special has to do with the relationship between the radius and circumference of a circle. If you tie a string to a pole and draw a cirlce in the sand, which is how people drew circles back then, you'll notice that the circumference of the drawn circle is bout six times the lenght of the string. That way you can divide the cricle into six equal sections, leaving a smaller, seventh one. This would be the seventh day, which stands for rest, completion, perfection and also the ineffable, since the relationship between this section and the radius is irrational.
"Chunk is the technical term that he uses in the paper, and I think that's great." This is the first time I've heard you express a personal opinion in a video.🤣
The idea of 7 as a number denoting wholeness makes me think of 7 being the final digit in 1/3 on a calculator. Considering The Fibonacci Sequence is one thing that scholars seem to agree upon being baked into the fabric of the universe it's very interesting to me that it starts with 3.1, considering .1 of 3 is 0.3 and all. If I multiplied 1/3 by 3 I'd be turning the last 7 into a 21, every 6 into an 18, and every 3 into a 9. Carrying the 1 of 21 to the whole number 1 we have totality; completion. The 2 of 21 carries to 18 making 20 which carries its 2 over until 9 makes 11 and its 1 carries for every 9 that there is. With 0.999...(repeating) being functionally identical to 1 it could also be said that 0.333...(repeating) would be functionally identical to 1/3. So, 3.1 in reverse could yield (1 * .3) and then we'd be left with 1/3. I have a pet theory that 0.999...(repeating) works because the difference between 0.9 and 1 is 0.1 which so happens to be 0.9 divided by 9. The resonant reason for why 6 and 7 digits appear in 1/3 input into a calculator eludes me... there might be something similar at play with 1/9. I'm going to play with a calculator for a second here... Ok... I haven't figured out a way to see the end of the 0.111...(repeating) because ((1/9(.1) * -9) = -0.1 where ((1/3(.1) * -3)... ohhh I was multiplying them both by the wrong negative. Okay, so, ((1/9(.1) * -1) + 1) = 0.9888...(indefinite repeating) Hmm... Let's do some quick maffs. 9 * 9 = 81, carry the 1 to the whole and carry the 8 to 8 * 9 = 72 making 80, and carry the 8 for every 8 that there is... Is there anything between the 8 and the 1 digits? If there's infinite 8s that makes infinite 9s in 1/9 * 9... Unless there's some multiple of 9 where an addition of an 8 could cause an infinitely recursive overflow of 9. Hmm... This might be a stupid idea but a single instance of 82 following an infinite 81 could do that... This is getting hyperbolic really fast. Well, wait a minute... 80, carry the 8 over to 9 making 17, carry the 1 over to the next 9 making 10, then carry 1 for every 9 there is... but what about the 7 from 17? Where does that carry? That might be the dividing point for 7/9, making 1/9 0.111...(repeating for 7/9ths)
Right... like the 11 in 1/3 * 3 where 1 gets carried and the other 1 gets left behind. This is just a hunch, but it seems like those are landmarks. The 1 that gets left behind could signify being 1/3 of the way through the digits of 1/3.
In my study of Quran, it mention 7 in purpose. For example to illustrate the countless impact of giving alms for society, like a seed which grows seven branch and each grows hundreds (2:261). Seem, with literature study it shows and emphasize the benefits that will produce many benefits in future. After watching this, I think it doesnt only want to show that but to be fully understood for people in Arab that day which have a lot of these previous religion adherents and linkage tradition by generation, and their place is surround by this 7 number usage civilizations.
If it were only one specific thing, people wouldn't have found it significant. But when people see a pattern over and over it makes, or can seem to make, a pattern. So yes, I think it's the 7 planets-seen as 7 deities-which have been associated with the 7 days of the week since the Vedic peoples (that's also from where we get the associations). It's also important that ancient astronomy (which allowed for large scale farming) developed in tandem with mathematics and greater works of architecture. It's what allowed humanity to go from just dealing with the whims of fate to actually shaping one's own fate. Taking the fruits of the earth and forming them into things people could benefit from-and these benefits were rapid and noticeable. So yes, 7 being a sort of mathematical oddity would have been a part of that. But something unmentioned that I think is important is geometry. 6 points for a 3D volume + 1 for temporal displacement. But that's also really 6 points in the first point of time and 6 in the second point in time: 6+6+1. This brings the other sacred number: 13. (It's only in the last century 13 has been seen as unlucky, btw.) Often 7 is represented as complete/whole/maximum in the form 6+1. We also see this with 13: 12+1. It's the larger number coming together and the last one completes the set. An example Westerners can latch onto is the 12 disciples + the 1 who leads them. The extra 1 is that metaphysical something that gives the rest of the bunch significance. It's what takes a nice divisible number like 6 and makes it esoteric. It's not just "completion" but the divine capstone upon the mundane multitude. But, that's all just my opinion. The impression I've gotten from years of reading ancient religious & philosophical works. Nothing from formal papers. I have a lot more to say about it, but this message has gone on too long already.
What a coincidence. My battery is at 7% I just noticed. I would have attached a screenshot of youTube had the feature. Truly mystical. Commenting this right after posting the Cr7 comment.
There's also the fact that six circles perfectly pack around a seventh: ꙮ I can definitely see this being thought as a way of bringing "completeness" in a very visible, and practical way: you run across this a lot when cooking, or packing things, and the seventh on in the middle definitely completes things. And just a note: that symbol is the Unicode version of the "multi ocular o".
