oO 
MCGEE] MYSTICAL NUMBERS 84 
while 9 and especially 13 are maleficent or ‘‘unlucky” numbers. More- 
over, there is a further mystical intensification in squares of the 
bases (perhaps growing out of mechanical or arithmetical superposi- 
tions on the mystical notions); and the charm seems to be still further 
augmented by coincidences between the several systems. It is partly 
through this mystical accentuation of the always mystical augmentals 
that such numbers as 9, 13, 49, and 61 become conspicuous as factors 
and vestiges of almacabala. 
Nine survives as a mystical number in the Muses of classical mythol- 
ogy, in Anglo-Saxon aphorisms emphasizing the vitality of the cat and 
the effeminacy of the tailor, and as a recurring tale in all of the super- 
abundant Celtic lore such as that currently recorded by Seumas Mac- 
Manus; it even survived in the schoolbooks of the early part of the 
century in the more curious than useful arithmetic process of ‘‘ cast- 
ing out the nines;” and throughout the last decade of the nineteenth 
century the newspaper-writing jugglers with nines found (and dif- 
fused) much mystery-tinged amusement in almacabalic analyses of the 
numbers 1890-1899. 
Glaringly prominent in the mythology of recent centuries is the 
bode clustering about the ill-omened first augmental of ‘‘ lucky ” 7— 
indeed it is probable that nearly half of the enlightened citizens of the 
world’s most intelligent country habitually carry the number 13 in 
their minds as a messenger or harbinger of evil. The almacabalic 
double of 13 (which is at the same time an augumental of 5) has largely 
lost its mystical meaning in Europe and America, apparently through 
friction with practical arithmetic; but it retains no little hold on 
the oriental mind, and finds expression in twenty-five-fold collectives 
in India and China, and in a rather frequent organization of Tibetan 
tribes into 25 septs or formal social units. Eminently conspicuous in 
Europe and America is the mystical number 49, especially when 
expressed as 7X7; for, in the belief of a large element of European 
population, the seventh son of a seventh son needs no training to fit 
himself for medical craft, while scanners of advertising columns of 
American newspapers may daily read anew that the seventh daughter 
of a seventh daughter is a predestined seeress. 
Few of the larger mystical numbers have survived the shock of 
occidental contact; but they abound in the Orient. The coincidental- 
augmental 61 prevails in Tibet, where Sven Hedin found a lama, 1 
out of 61 of co-ordinate rank, who professed survival for sixty-one 
millerniums, through a succession of exoteric deaths and esoteric rein- 
carnations at uniform periods of sixty-one years;' and this odd value 
is explained by the designation of the sixty-first figure in the Mongo- 
lian hexagram—‘ The Right Way” or ‘‘In the Middle” ’—which at 


1Through Asia, by Sven Hedin, 1899, vol. 1, p. 1132. 
2Chincse Philosophy, p. 12. 
19 ETH, PT 2——19 
