Mystic Figures Redux

Number Six Resurgent

Owning to the tenacious erudition of an anonymous correspondent, I cannot resist the temptation to proffer yet a few more fascinating metaphysical tidbits concerning the number six, a topic briefly treated in one of my prior posts. Readers who recoil at anything redolent of math, numerology, or the more academically respectable discipline of arithmology may want to sign out now, although loyal devotees of the late Martin Gardner’s alter ego Dr. Matrix will probably find a hard time closing their browsers. With respect to how my colleagues and I regard the following information, let me simply assert that we who proudly bear the moniker of Lucky Six Farms never mistake intellectual curiosity for credulousness. As duly noted in my previous blog entry, the ostensibly anomalous juxtaposition of the adjective “lucky” with the number “six” has justifiably prompted many inquiries and inspired much historical research.

Number Six Is The Redoubtable Hexad

Sometime in the middle of the 4th Century CE the renowned Neoplatonist Iamblichus penned his Theology of Arithmetic, purporting to express, albeit in sharply succinct terms, key Pythagorean concepts pertaining to the sacred Tetraktys, i.e. the first ten numbers. In this document, the number six - termed the Hexad - comes in for extraordinary attention. In particular, he observes that six is the very first perfect number: its factors (1, 2 & 3) can be added to yield six again. In addition, every one of those factors is also a prime number, divisible only by unity and itself. Serious mathematicians have since found the investigation of co-relative prime and perfect numbers to be an enormously fertile field for advanced study that remains quite far from exhaustion even today.

Further, Iamblichus points out that the number six occupies the central position of a completed Platonic Lambda, the legendary geometric/arithmetic construction first described by Plato in his Timaeus. With these august sages, too, we can fully appreciate that the familiar cube symmetrically apportions two sides to each of our three spatial dimensions - height, width, and depth - thereby displaying exactly six sides in a wonderfully solidified token of aesthetic perfection.

Six Is The Number Of Health

The foregoing observations, however, pale into insignificance when contrasted with Iamblichus’ ultimate conclusions about the number six. Thus, he notes six may alternately be called “health” or even “panacea,” since it creates the most fundamental triangles. Stated another way: if perpendiculars are appropriately dropped from the sides of any triangle, six subsidiary triangles may be formed. And we may confidently name six “Thaleia” because it harmonizes so many different things, plus it is allotted the first portion among all numbers in the generation of soul! In light of such matters, then, our title of Lucky Six Farms is no mystery but actually a humble understatement. Certainly, my colleagues and I strive daily to produce White Sage products which live up to that ideal.

By Alan Beck