The Trinity of Kosmos in the Quaternary of Man

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky · Theosophy and Theosophists Series · 14 pages

Fourteen pages, first published in The Theosophist volume I number 9, June 1880, pages 232 to 233, and republished in the Collected Writings volume II simply as "The Number Seven". *It is one of the earliest pieces in this whole section* — from the journal's first year — and it is her case for taking numbers seriously.

A deep significance, she begins, was attached to numbers in hoary antiquity. There was not a people with anything like a philosophy that did not give great prominence to numbers in their application to religious observances, the establishment of festival days, symbols, dogmas — and even, she adds, the geographical distribution of empires. From that follows the historical claim that governs the file: the mysterious numerical system of Pythagoras was nothing novel when it appeared, and it appeared far earlier than 600 years before Christ; the occult meaning of figures and their combinations entered into the meditations of the sages of every people. Her prediction is put in terms of cycles rather than argument, which is characteristic — the day is not far off when, compelled by the eternal cyclic rotation of events, the now sceptical and unbelieving West will have to admit that in the regular periodicity of ever-recurring events there is something more than blind chance; and she notes that Western savants have already begun to notice it. The title states where the essay ends up: the power of the trinity of Kosmos manifesting through the four principles of man — three above and four below, making the seven of the running heading, which calls number seven a causal agency in Kosmos and in man alike.

Read the full text (PDF, 0.7 MB, 14 pages)