Christmas, the throne of God and the number 24
24 elders around the throne, four creatures with six wings each, the magic circle, the Advent wreath, St John's Day and the Ægishjálmur. The number 24 in mysticism and religion.
A reminder of what number theory says about 24 (see The number 24): the primes are arranged as twins in the rhythm of six. Up to the highly composite number 24, every twin position is occupied. There are exactly four rhythms of six. From 25 on, five destroys this order step by step. In the geometry of space, too, in sphere packings and their symmetries, 24 is of great importance, and again through the interplay of four and six.
This can be read as a parable: up to 24, paradise is in order. With 25 begins the fall, the fall into matter. Five counts as the number of the human being. According to tradition Jesus was born in the night before 25 December. The 24th is Christmas Eve, the 25th Christmas Day. God (7) comes as a human being (5) into matter (10), and through matter the ennobling of the human being takes place, the great alchemical work.
Four rhythms of six up to 24, every twin position occupied. 25 is the first empty place.
The throne of God in Revelation
In the fourth chapter of the Revelation of John, the seer is called up into heaven and sees a throne with one seated on it, surrounded by a rainbow. Around the throne stand 24 further thrones with 24 elders in white robes with golden crowns. From the throne come lightning and thunder. Before it burn seven torches, the seven spirits of God. Before the throne lies a sea like crystal, and around it stand four living creatures: like a lion, like an ox, with a human face, and like a flying eagle. Each has six wings, and they cry “Holy” without ceasing. The 24 elders fall down and lay their crowns before the throne.
Several numbers of the rhythm of six reappear here:
- Seven: up to 24 exactly seven primes lie in the rhythm of six (5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23), matching the seven spirits of God. The one within the rhythm of six stands for the creator: six days of creation, and on the seventh he rested. Add 1, 2 and 3, and you have ten.
- 24: the 24 elders correspond to the order of primes up to 24.
- 4 × 6: the four creatures with six wings each point to the four rhythms of six up to 24. The four creatures have the same meaning as the four elements fire, air, water and earth, that is, as the tetractys, as mystics understood it from antiquity into the modern age.
- The rainbow around the throne points to the octaves of electromagnetic waves, a subject still awaiting elaboration.
Coincidence? Or did the seer glimpse truths that correspond to number theory and geometry? Did an early Christian philosophy of religion rest on knowledge of the Gnostics that has been lost to us? These questions are open for discussion.
Twelve disciples, 24 elders
The twelve disciples around Jesus, God in the world, and the 24 elders around the throne relate like even and odd numbers. The very words “disciples” (the young) and “elders” suggest as much. Even and odd numbers are traditionally assigned the polarity of feminine and masculine, and the Gnostics, like the Eastern teachings, sought to overcome this polarity. That the twelve disciples symbolise the twelve signs of the zodiac is hardly open to doubt. The twelve signs in turn divide into the four elements, that is, into the four creatures with their six wings.
The Egyptians already had the 24-hour day, twelve hours of day and twelve of night, another polarity. Pythagoras is said to have studied long in Egypt. But it is also true that whoever invents a division of time will, for practical reasons, choose an even, highly composite number to avoid fractions. 24 would be a favourite even without deeper reasons. Yet 16 or 32 would also have been possible.
The magic circle
Particularly interesting is the magic circle as handed down in grimoires such as the Clavicula Salomonis (Key of Solomon). The description of the throne is mirrored in it with astonishing precision, and it contains the star polygons indispensable for the tetractys. The magician draws the circle as protection, stands at its centre, invokes the four elements and begins his work in trance. The symbolism is thus meant to act on the unconscious.
The structure of a magic circle, schematically: a square with four crosses, four hexagrams attached, four pentagrams outside the circle, twelve fields around the edge.
At the centre stands a square with four cross-shaped projections. Because the crosses attach directly to the square, there are 4 × 3 points, twelve in all. Each group of three points to a hexagram, four six-pointed stars in all: the four creatures with their six wings, and the four rhythms of six up to 24. Around the edge lie the twelve signs of the zodiac. Outside the circle, however, stand four pentagrams.
Four quantities can be assigned to the four start figures: triangle = 3 = energy, pentagram = 5 = time, hexagram = 6 = space, double pentagram = 10 = matter. The message of the magic circle would then be: to connect with the macrocosm, time and matter must stay outside. And indeed the disorder of the primes begins after 24, with 25 = 5 × 5. Number-theoretically the pentagram is 2.5.
The Advent wreath
The coming of Christ is awaited on four Sundays of Advent. From 1 to 24 there are exactly four rhythms of six. After that the disorder begins. Do the magic circle and the Advent wreath with its four candles have the same meaning? Is the Advent wreath a symbol of the magic circle of the best-known magician of the West? Behind such questions lurks an uncomfortable one: what came first, the intention to create a symbol or the person of Jesus? One can also ponder what the star polygons have to do with the star of Bethlehem.
The Merkabah
In exactly the same sense as the magic circle, as a link to the macrocosm, stands Jewish Merkabah mysticism. The Merkabah is the throne-chariot of God in the vision of Ezekiel, borne by the same four creatures as in Revelation. The Talmud describes beholding it as mortally dangerous: only one who is pure of heart and of mature age survives it unharmed. In this context the meaning of the pentagram as a protective amulet becomes clear, as do the four pentagrams around the magic circle.
The Merkabah is represented as the stella octangula, a three-dimensional hexagram of two interpenetrating tetrahedra with exactly 24 faces. It has two important views: a sixfold and a fourfold one. Join its outer vertices and you get a cube that contains a 24-faced solid within it. Here lies a parallel to the Masonic symbolism of working the rough stone into a cubic stone.
The stella octangula with its enclosing cube: 24 triangular faces, eight vertices.
Lévi’s drawing of the cherub with four heads and six wings, which he calls the “pentacle of Pythagoras” (see Éliphas Lévi), shows an eightfold symmetry in its square view, like the Merkabah seen along an axis of the cube.
The 24-inch gauge and St John’s Day
Freemasonry descends from the stonemasons’ guilds of the cathedral builders, who supposedly traced their knowledge back to ancient Egypt. An important symbol in the ritual is the 24-inch gauge, a reminder to divide one’s time carefully. The ritual work symbolically takes place “from high noon to high midnight”, again 2 × 12.
On 24 June 1717 four existing London lodges joined to form the first Grand Lodge, 4 × 6 = 24. Since then Freemasons worldwide have celebrated 24 June, St John’s Day. But the feast of the birth of John the Baptist at the summer solstice existed long before, as the counterpart to Christmas at the winter solstice (by the Julian calendar then in use). Its occasion was the Baptist’s saying about Christ: he must increase, but I must decrease. John and Jesus thus stand for the longest and the shortest day, Christ as a solar symbol. In Christian Freemasonry the Worshipful Master, who sits in the east where the sun rises, embodies the person of Jesus.
In front of the temple of the United Grand Lodge of England there is an inlay with a hexagon and a star of 2 × 12 = 24 rays. This theme of 24 contains the tetractys: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 and 1 × 2 × 3 × 4 = 24.
I Ching and Ægishjálmur
Order and rule are also symbolised by two systems from quite different cultures that are strikingly similar: the Chinese I Ching with its eight trigrams, and the Icelandic Ægishjálmur, the “helm of awe” from the Galdrabók, a book of spells with runes, signs, protective charms and lists of unlucky days. Both have eight axes with three elements each: 8 × 3 = 24.
The Ægishjálmur, as an original construction: eight arms with three cross-bars each, 24 in all.
In the Nordic countries the Ægishjálmur was considered the most important amulet. It was meant to help its bearer create order out of chaos and complete every task, and was held to be such powerful protection that it was banned after Christianisation. Who copied from whom cannot be told. Whether it is coincidence, inspiration or the application of mathematical knowledge remains more open in this example than in the Christian ones.