“I’ve been thinking about numbers.” Stuart poked his fork into a pile of pasta in front of him and twirled. 

“Mostly, we think of numbers in terms of mathematics,” he said. “Or arithmetic. All very abstract. But I’m looking at them in terms of the humanities.”

Genevieve had spent the afternoon cooking up a Pasta all’Assassina, something she had just learned from YouTube. It piled up on our plates in small pyramids of spaghetti. 

“You know how there are these sequences of numbers in math? Like 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and so on. Or the Fibonacci Series: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 — you know. Logical sequences that seem to have some meaning outside mere math.”

“You mean like the spiral in a seashell or the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower…”

“Exactly. Well, these patterns, as patterns, are purely mathematical, in other words, they only exist in the Platonic ideal of mathematical thinking. I was looking for a sequence that made sense without arithmetic, that English majors could grasp at a gander.”

“And did you find one?” I asked.

“Absolutely. I considered the mythic or symbolic punch of numbers and came up with a sequence something like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 21, 40, 42 — that’s kind of a ringer in this — 101, 1,001, one million, and finally, ‘billions and billions.’ That last, thanks to Carl Sagan.”

“If I understand you, these numbers carry significant weight in folktales, mythology, religion and popular culture. But don’t all numbers carry some kind of baggage? I mean, you left out eight from your list, but there is the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism.”

“You are right, most numbers have something, but my list considers only the big boys in the number-myth world. The ones that carry the heaviest weight. 

“One, of course, is the unity. It is the prime singularity out of which all else evolves or explodes, like in the Big Bang, or the One-True-God. Two is the duality of yin and yang, of pairs of opposites, of Yoruba twins, of Castor and Pollux, of the Navajo twins Monster-Slayer and Born-of-Water. Or of the salt and pepper shaker or even the right and left hands. Two is big in the Sequentia Stuartii. Yes, that’s what I’m calling it.” 

“Three is a quantum jump, though, I think,” I said. “Three is everywhere, from the Three Little Pigs to the Holy Trinity. Goldilocks and the Three Bears, in Greek mythology, the three Furies, Graces, and in Norse, the three Norns. In joke telling, there is the rule of threes, and in photography, we hear of the rule of thirds. Omni Gallia en tres partes divisi est.”

“Yes, three is big,” said Stuart. “Four is a little smaller in the mix, but still, there are the four seasons and the four directions, the four Classic humors and elements, the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism…”

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Let’s not forget my favorite. But I notice five and six don’t make your list.”

“Again, there are some references, but they thin out with five and six, and thus fly under my significance bar. Five has the pentagram, but most other associations are a bit more arcane, and therefore don’t have the currency of the big-number power. Six has what? Six sides to a die. Or if you want to go really esoteric, the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda has Six Immortal Holy Ones to attend him. I had to look that one up.

“Ah, but seven. Seven is king. It is the big kahuna of numbers. If I make a graph of number significance, seven is off the charts. The home run of numbers. Seven days in a week; seven seas; seven continents; seven hills of Rome; Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.”

“Seven Deadly Sins, again, let’s not forget my favorites.”

“And the Seven Cardinal Virtues,” said Stuart. “Seven planets in the Ptolemaic universe, seven notes in the diatonic scale. The seven liberal arts. Break a mirror and get seven years of bad luck.”

“And the number is so persuasive, someone decided there were seven colors in the rainbow. What is ‘indigo,’ after all, but just another blue. They added it so they could have seven colors.”

“God created the world in seven days. Six plus a day of rest. The Bible is full of sevens. Seven years of fat and seven of lean in the Pharaoh’s dream. Seven days of Passover. Seven year Jubilee cycle. Jericho was conquered on the seventh day after seven priests with seven trumpets marched around the city seven times. King David had seven elder brothers. After Elisha raised the child from the dead, the kid sneezed seven times. There are seven pillars in the House of Wisdom. 

“In the New Testament, seven demons are cast out of Mary Magdalene, seven loaves to feed the multitude in Mark and Matthew, the seven last words of Christ on the Cross. And Revelations is filthy with sevens. Seven golden lampstands, seven stars, seven torches of fire, seven seals, seven angels and their trumpets, seven last plagues, seven golden bowls, seven thunders, horns and eyes, diadems and kings.”

Genevieve had been mostly silent through all this, letting the boys blow their steam, but she joined in. “I was raised Catholic,” she said. “And I was brought up with seven sacraments, the Seven Joys of the Virgin and the Seven Sorrows of the Virgin, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. There were Seven Corporal and Seven Spiritual Acts of Mercy.”

“Sevens out the wazoo,” Stuart said. “And it isn’t just Christianity. There are seven chakras in Hinduism. And seven great saints, seven worlds in the universe and seven gurus. Agni, the fire god, has seven wives, seven mothers and seven sisters and can produce seven flames. The sun god has seven horses to pull his chariot. In the Rig Veda, there are seven parts of the world, seven seasons and seven heavenly fortresses. I could go on.”

And he does. 

“In Islam, there are seven heavens and seven hells. You make seven trips around the Kaaba. A baby is named on the seventh day of life. The seven sins of polytheism. 

“In the Baha’i faith the text is The Seven Valleys the soul traverses. It is the number of islands in Atlantis, the Seven Cities of Gold that the conquistadors searched for.”

“Gandhi had his list of the Seven Blunders of the World that cause violence,” said Genevieve. “Wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, religion without sacrifice, and — “

“I know this one,” said Stuart. “It’s in the news daily: politics without principle.” (And “men without shutting up,” thought Genevieve, but who was too polite to say it out loud.)

 

 “In China, there are the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove,” Stuart went on. “There are the seven lucky gods in Japanese mythology, and the seven-branched sword. The Buddha supposedly took seven steps at his birth. And believe, me, we’ve only scratched the surface of seven.”

“There are seven holes in the human head,” said Genevieve.

“And my favorite,” I said. I have a lot of favorites. “The seven directions. Some American Indian mythologies recognize seven: the four normal ones, plus up and down, and most importantly, the seventh direction — in. The inner world is one of the directions.”

“Let’s not forget The Seven Samurai and Bergman’s Seventh Seal,” I said. “Or Se7en.”

“Or Lina Wertmuller’s Seven Beauties, or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Or the 7 Faces of Dr. Lao.”

“Or The Magnificent Seven,” I said. “Or Seven Years in Tibet or Six Days and Seven Nights. Or The Seven Year Itch.”

It was becoming a contest. 

“Return of the Secaucus Seven,” Stuart added. “And Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Seven Days in May. House of Seven Gables…”

“The Seven Little Foys. The Seven Percent Solution. Seven Up! from Michael Apted’s Up series…”

“Stop it. Stop it now,” Genevieve said. “Boys,” she spit out, as a short summing up of an entire gender. 

“Eight pretty well disappears,” said Stuart, “but nine makes up for it. A stitch in time saves nine. Cloud nine is the ultimate in happiness. A cat has nine lives. Possession is nine points of the law. There are nine muses. The Norse god Odin hanged himself on the World Ash Tree for nine days to gain wisdom. In Christianity, there are nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. The Aztec and Mayan underworlds both had nine levels. Nine justices on the Supreme Court. Nine circles in Dante’s Hell. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth, there are nine rings of power given to nine ring-wraiths. Buddha had nine virtues.”

“There used to be nine planets,” I said. 

“Pregnancy lasts nine months,” said Genevieve.

“Nine players on a baseball team and nine innings in a game,” said Stuart. “And classical composers often had a superstition that their ninth symphony would be their last. Yes, nine is a pretty full number, contrasted with ten — the most bureaucratic of numbers. Yes, there are the Ten Commandments, but the number 10 is the least charismatic of numbers. It is the basis of the decimalization of the world. And you both know how I feel about that. Base 10 — Pfui.”

We both knew the antipathy Stuart harbored for metrification and the inhuman procrustification of the division of things into tens. Everyone familiar with Stuart knew. The next number in his sequence is 12.

“Twelve is a dozen,” he said. “It is 12 signs of the Zodiac, 12 hours of day and 12 of night. There were 12 disciples of Jesus and 12 tribes of Israel. Hercules had 12 labors. There are 12 Olympian Gods, 12 months in a year. Twelve notes in a dodecaphonic tone series. Twelve days of Christmas. Twelve jurors in a panel. Twelve knights of the Round Table. Twelve steps for Alcoholics Anonymous. Paradise Lost is in 12 books.”

“I can think of a bunch of movies with 12 in the titles: 12 Angry Men; Ocean’s  Twelve; 12 Monkeys; The Dirty Dozen; Cheaper by the Dozen; Twelve Years a Slave.”

“And Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night,” said Genevieve.

“Thirteen has plenty of mojo,” said Stuart, “but it is negative. Bad luck. There are at least three numbers with bad magic. Thirteen is one everyone knows. And 666 is the “mark of the beast.” And poor number 17 used to have no juice at all — one of the emptiest numbers, but now has quickly dropped from null to negative with the advent of Q. Nutjobs are going bananas every time they hear a number 17. 

“Then, there is 21, the points of blackjack and the minimum age to enter a casino and play blackjack. In many places, it’s the minimum age for a lot of things. The 21st Amendment ended prohibition, and when it did, you had to be 21 to buy hooch. Which you could do at the 21 Club in New York.”

“There are 21 guns in a 21-gun salute,” I said. “And the TV game show that was rigged, Twenty-One. There have been four movies with that name. Add up the dots on a die and you get 21. It’s the number of shillings in a guinea. Or was. 

“And according to Duncan McDougall in 1907, the human soul weighs 21 grams. I didn’t know they used metric back then.”

“Next is 40,” said Stuart. “It rained for 40 days and 40 nights. Christ spent 40 days in the wilderness. There are 40 Norse Valkyries and ‘Life begins at 40.’ Muhammad was 40 years old when he received his revelation. For Russians, the ghosts of the dead remain at the site of their deaths for 40 days. We listen to ‘Top 40’ radio stations. A short nap is ’40 winks.’ The number of Ali Baba’s thieves. ’40 acres and a mule.’ And the average work week, in hours.”

“I take it that 42 is in your list as a nod to Douglas Adams.”

“Absolutely. It is also Jackie Robinson’s uniform number, the number of lines in a page of the Gutenberg Bible, and the number on the back of the spider who bit Miles Morales, turning him into Spider-Man. It is also the number of the third most famous street in Manhattan (I give primacy to Wall Street and Broadway).

“A hundred is a useful number, but doesn’t carry much mythological weight,” Stuart continued. “But a hundred and one rises in power. It is the college course number of introduction. It is a book title more popular by far than ‘100.’ There are 101 Dalmations and the 101st Airborne Division is ‘the tip of the spear.’ There was a sappy recordings of the 101 Strings. Simon Bond’s 101 Uses for a Dead Cat. The George Orwell’s truly horrifying Room 101.” 

“Doesn’t that mean that 1984 is a number in your sequence?”

“Yes, I guess so. I hadn’t thought of it. My next number is 1,001. From the Thousand and One Nights of Scheherazade.  It is one of the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Buckminster Fuller called it a Scheherazade number in his book, Synergetics, meaning it is palindromic and a factor of any other Scheherazade number. But that is math, and my galoshes get stuck in the mud of math. Don’t ask me about it.” 

The number, million, said Stuart, used to have more meaning, when it was the largest number most people thought in terms of. Being a millionaire meant something back then. 

“But it still has some cache. In popular usage, a million means a lot. ‘You’re one in a million,’ ‘a million-dollar smile,’ ‘not in a million years,’ ‘a million-dollar question.’ And ‘I’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles.’ 

“The million has largely been replaced the the billion, ‘with a B.’ To be rich nowadays requires being a billionaire. Everett Dirksen reportedly observed, ‘A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.’ Although he denied ever saying that, it was quoted in The New York Times in 1938. Also, Carl Sagan never actually said ‘Billions and billions,’ he did use it for the title of his last book. It was actually coined as a catchphrase on the Johnny Carson show. But the concept has now become a  name for a vague but large number, the Sagan. It joins other ‘indefinite hyperbolic numerals’ such as ‘gazillion’ ‘bazillion,’ and ‘umpteen.’ Since it is ‘billions’ plural and ‘billions’ plural, logically that would require that ‘billions and billions’ be at the very least four billion whatevers.”

At this point, Genevieve brought out the Ile Flottante and after we ate it, we sat at the table for a moment and looked at all the empty bowls and dishes. And the wine glasses calling out for refills. 

“We forgot the sequel, Guns of the Magnificent Seven,” said Stuart.