English Version | The token of seven

Wonders and sins, wounds and keys, the colors of the rainbow, even Snow White's dwarfs are seven. What’s so special about the number that’s even dubbed as lucky number seven?

There are also seven days in a week, seven notes on the musical scale, seven lives, those of a feline, and, since we are talking about fortune, seven is a sign of wealth if it appears repeated in a line on a slot machine. Is this the jackpot on why seven is so iconic? Not really, the fact that it is used in casinos and games of chance is probably more a consequence than a cause of its magnetism. In what concerns the number seven being a legendary number, the list of references goes far beyond the universe of bets and random roulettes. Did you know that if you ask someone to guess a number between one and ten, they are more likely to say seven? And did you know that it is also repeatedly listed as the preferred number? At least, this is what corroborates an informal survey carried out by Alex Bellos, a mathematician and columnist for The Guardian who, in 2014, decided to carry out a study on what was the favorite number of his blog’s followers, Adventures in Numberland. The reason, says the author, was that he was constantly asked this (because of his connection to mathematics), which triggered him to ask his followers the same question, more for fun than for science of it. At the time of publication of the results, more than 44,000 people had left their comments on the subject, placing the “7” in top place on the podium of responses and, although it may not have been conducted with all the perks required by the social sciences, the truth is that it was in line with a social trend that ended up seeing, throughout history and societies, the number seven elevated to mythical. In fact, in 2015, the University of Newcastle hosted a Numbers Festival in the United Kingdom, joined by the aegis of this same question: “What is your favorite number?” Of the 442 people who responded, 12.6% named the 7, which was double the percentage of the runner-up.

The first argument for this favoritism has mathematical overtones. According to Bellos, of the numbers that can be counted with the fingers of your hands (1 to 10 are the numbers with which we are most familiar, which is why it’s common to choose within this spectrum), seven is the only one that is not a factor or multiple of none of the remainder: digits from 1 to 5 can be doubled (1x2=2, then 4, 6, 8 and 10 for the remainder); 6, 8 and 10 are divisible by two and 9 is divisible by three. In addition, round numbers, such as 5 or 10, are usually associated with vague references, because they are usually the result of approximations and rounding, as when rounding a bill (“the dinner was 10 euros”, instead of 9.70, for example). Seven, as a prime number, cannot be divisible by any other number except by itself and by one and, in this case, if multiplied by two, exceeds the calculations of this “hand”. It’s this unique side that gives it a special dimension, especially in a culture that seeks identity, prodigy, individuality, differentiation. And the seven, for being so unique and an exception to the rule of the rest, stands out, and that may have earned it the nickname of lucky - we would say, moreover, enigmatic. A characteristic that didn’t escape the great authors and storytellers, who missed not the opportunity to print this mysterious figure in their works, ratifying and exponentiating this appeal that the lucky number seven seems to exude, inadvertently or on purpose, on humanity. In addition to the aforementioned seven dwarfs from Snow White, by the Brothers Grimm, let us not forget that William Shakespeare described the seven phases of man, in The Seven Ages of Men (1864); the sailor Sinbad is the star of seven voyages across the seven seas; and in Homer's poems, seven is recurrent - seven gifts are offered several times, like the seven women and the seven cities that are among Agamemnon's gifts to appease an enraged Achilles, and it is seven years that Ulisses is kept prisoner by the nymph Calypso, among other references. C.S. Lewis wrote seven volumes of his Chronicles of Narnia in the 1950s - and J.K. Rowling has seven books for the Harry Potter saga. Ian Fleming, when it came time to opt for a codename for Bond, James Bond, the author chose not 006, not 008, but 007. In ancient times, seven was also a lucky number: in Sumerian and Akkadian scripture, which even precede Judaism, seven demons are mentioned; in the constellation Pleiades, of Taurus, the seven-star is commonly known as Seven Sisters, because the seven stars symbolize the seven daughters of the titan Atlas and Pleione, daughter of the Ocean, according to Greek mythology; mythology which also lists seven champions who declared war on Thebes. In those times, it was also believed that there were seven planets in the solar system - Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and the Moon -, a planetary group including the target of a poem signed by scholar and classical poet A.E. Housman ("Here are the stars, the planets seven, and all their fiery tail," reads the first two sentences). Even for that time, elevating the Moon to the rank of planet was far-fetched, but symptomatic of the desire to assert this legendary number. An episode analogous to what happened with the rainbow. Come again? Everyone knows that there are seven shades in the rainbow, the result of the refraction of light: red, orange, yellow, blue, dark blue (or indigo) and violet. Isn’t it? maybe not: the reason why indigo (which seems to result from the overlapping of blue and violet) is listed, it is said, is because Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered that scattered white light is composed of this group of Pantones, preferred that the number of shades be seven, since the thinker, in the midst of all his scientific empiricism, nurtured some points of view linked to alchemy, mysticism and the occult. If you think about it, six shades of the rainbow alone make (more) sense: three primary colors (yellow, red-magenta and cyan-blue) and three secondary colors (green, violet and orange), which intersperse in this chromatic spectrum. Seven, therefore, has an almost inexplicable symbolism in human philosophy. We just don’t know, as with the chicken and the egg, which came first: the magic of seven itself or the symbolism attributed to it. Maybe it was a little bit of both. Perhaps seven, because of its mathematical connections - even economic cycles are seven years old, don’t forget - has gained an advantage over many of the other numbers. After all, it is a number closely linked to our memory capacity: in 1956, George Miller, from Harvard University, wrote a dissertation that is today considered one of the classic studies in psychology, in which he demonstrated that most people manage to retain about seven items of information in your short-term memory. That's why phone numbers in many countries have seven digits (not counting the area code), because that's the maximum number of digits an individual will be able to remember (of course, the premise made more sense before the era of smartphones ). Also, we usually memorize about seven objects around us and can distinguish and juggle about seven categories at once. In this sense, our level of attention also fits better and is not too dispersed if information is presented in groups of seven - a 2008 study carried out by Michele Migliore, Gaspare Novara and Domenico Tegolo and published in the National Library of Medicine in the United States recorded that the brain produced the best information when the dendrites (extensions of the neurons that act in the reception of nervous stimuli from the environment or from other neurons and in the transmission of these stimuli) received stimuli in the order of seven. In need of a 7-up to digest all this knowledge? We have more.

Perhaps the token of seven is, in part, seven itself, but societies have used this little fuse to aggressively market their symbolism. And religion, that original influencer of much of history and consequent social groups, is one of the ex-libris of this promotion. Seven deadly sins should be the first 7 of Christianity that comes to the top of mind, but there is more: there were seven loaves multiplied (the miracle of the seven loaves and fishes, Mark 8:1-9 and Matthew 15:32-39 ) in baskets of abundance, there are seven dragon heads (Book of Revelations, 12:3), seven churches, seven seals, seven stars… as well as the seven heavens which contain the different Orders of angels. There were seven demons exorcised from Mary Magdalene (Luke, 8:2) and seven the last words of Jesus on the cross: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke, 23:34); “Truly I tell you today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke, 23:43); “Woman, behold your son. And behold your mother.” (John, 19:26-27); “Eloï, Eloï, lama sabactani?” - “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, in Aramaic - (Matthew, 27:46, Mark, 15:34, Psalms, 22:1); "I am thirsty." (John, 19:28), “It is done.” (John, 19:30); and, finally, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” (Luke, 23:46, Psalms, 31:6). And let's not forget that the world, according to the Old Testament, was created in seven days - or rather, six, and God rested on the seventh day, creating the base concept for the duration of the week. In the New Testament, the number seven symbolizes the unity of the four corners of the Earth with the Holy Trinity (you can do the math) and the three theological virtues - Faith, Hope and Charity - when allied to the four cardinal virtues - Prudence, Temperance, Justice and Fortitude - complete the sacred seven. In Judaism, some references are repeated, such as the seven days (yom) of Creation, culminating in the seventh day or Sabbath (Genesis 1); but also a sevenfold vengeance fell on Cain for killing Abel (Genesis 4:15), seven years of abundance and seven years of famine according to Pharaoh's dream (Genesis 41) and there were seven pairs of animals in Noah's Ark. There are seven branches of the Menorah (Exodus 25), there are seven divisions of weekly readings (aliyah) from the Torah, read by seven Jewish men (over 13) in the Shabbat masses, there are seven blessings recited at a Jewish wedding, seven days of celebrations for the bride and groom and there are seven days of Pesach feasting. Interestingly - particularly for the purpose of this edition-, in the Jewish religion, Gad is the seventh son of Jacob and his name means luck. In the Islamic religion, there are seven gates to Hell, seven Earths and seven Heavens (but there are eight gates to Paradise), seven verses (ayat) in the chapter (surat) al-Fatiha, of the Koran, and pilgrim Muslims walk around Kaaba, in Mecca, seven times. In Hinduism, there are seven enlightened worlds and seven underworlds, seven seas, seven sages (saptarishi) and their seven wives (Sapta Matrka)… there are seven chakras, seven virgins worshiped in temples in Tamil Nadu, India, and seven ancestral deities of mankind. In Khasi mythology, there are seven hills in Tirumala known as the Sevenhills God and seven social sins were listed by Mahatma Gandhi. Within Eastern doctrines, it should be noted that, in Buddhism, the newborn Buddha stands up and takes seven steps; and there are seven gods of good fortune in Japanese mythology, seven sages from the Bamboo Grove in China, and seven minor symbols of Yang in Taoist Yin-Yang philosophy. A handful of references that are drops in an ocean in which the mysticism of seven seems to have a particular role, especially if you delve deeper into the mythological notebook. For example, in Ancient Egypt, the number seven was a symbol of perfection, effectiveness, fullness, and is also referenced in divine stories, such as that of the goddess Isis protected by seven scorpions or that of Osiris, whose body was divided into fourteen - seven parts for each zone, lower and upper Egypt, but not only: the time of Famine lasted seven years and the Nile flooded only seven cubits (Egyptian measurement that translates to about 50 cm per cubit) to solve the hunger problem. The pool symbol, which in Egyptian mythology means water, has seven zigzag lines, and the gold symbol has seven pendants at the base.

It wasn't the only lucky number in Ancient Egypt. The Egyptians also considered numbers like 3 and 5 to be sacred or magical, and even today in eastern cultures such as China, the lucky ones are actually 3, 6, and particularly 8 (its phonetics ba resembles the phonetics of the term “prosperity” and there is a visual similarity between 88 and the Cantonese character for “double joy”; by contrast, in the same logic, the number 4 is unlucky because its phonetics sounds like "death"); in Ancient Greece (and not only), the number 3 also meant fortune (after all, three is the math that God made), and Pythagoras and his disciples revered it as the representative of the beginning, middle and end of everything and was the triptych of virtues justice, fortitude and prudence, the ideal trinity for a successful marriage. Also in China, the phonetics of this number resembles “birth”, so it is one of the numbers of good fortune. Numbers, in fact, have the symbolism we want to attribute to them (or believe they have) and often their significance or luck for each individual derives from personal experiences (something as simple as one’s date of birth). Its meaning varies from culture to culture - as in everything, the context and conditions dictate superstitions - but this variation does not seem to be detrimental, even so, to the magnitude of the number seven which, for all of the above, more or less is established as a consensual reference in disparate contexts. For example, speaking of “lucky number seven”, it is also important to mention that the opposite faces of a dice, symbol of games of chance, add up to seven and, speaking of this world of gambling, it is also believed that randomly shuffling the cards seven times is the ideal formula to ensure that they are well shuffled (eight times, they say, curiously, sorts the deck according to the original sequence). Also, it's Cristiano Ronaldo's shirt number, who’s the best in the world in football. Coincidence? After all of the above, maybe not. 

Even if the relationship between the success of the player (and others sporting the number 7, such as David Beckham and Eric Cantona), and the number they wear on their jerseys is the result of chance, this does not detract from the power of this mystical aura that seven has gained and continues to gain within the community, which still sees it as a harbinger or amulet of good omens. Like all good talismans, it is the belief that increases its strength. So, just in case, believer or not, we did this article with seven paragraphs (in fact, it had six, but, following Newton's example, we found a seventh, just for luck).

Translated from the original on The Good Luck Issue, published march 2023.Full stories and credits on the print issue.