THE number Three, is an uncompounded number, a holy number, a number of perfection, a most powerful number:--for there are three persons in God; there are three theological virtues in religion. Hence it is that this number conduceth to the ceremonies of God and religion, that by the solemnity of which, prayers and sacrifices are thrice repeated; for corporeal and spiritual things consist of three things, viz. beginning, middle, and end. By three, as Trismegistus saith, the world is perfected--harmony, necessity, and order, i. e. concurrence of causes (which many call fate), and the execution of them to the fruit, or increase, or a due distribution of the increase. The whole measure of time is concluded in three, viz. past, present, and to come;--all magnitude is contained in three--line, superfices, and body;--
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In the Original World, |
The Father, |
Adai, The Son, |
The Holy Ghost; |
The Name of God with three Letters |
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In the Intellectual World, |
Supreme Innocents, |
Middle Martyrs, |
Lowest of all Confessors; |
Three hierarchies of Angels. |
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In the Celestial World, |
Moveable, Corners, Of the Day, |
Fixed, Succeeding, Nocturnal, |
Common; Falling; Partaking; |
Three quaternions of Signs. |
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In the Elementary World, |
Simple, |
Compounded, |
Thrice compounded; |
Three degrees of elements. |
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In the Lesser World, |
The head, in which the intellect grows, answering to the intellectual world, |
The breast, where is the heart, the seat of life, answering to the celestial world, |
The belly, where the faculty of generation is, and the genital members, answering the elemental world; |
Three parts, answering to the threefold world. |
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In the Infernal World, |
Alecto, Minos, Wicked, |
Megera, Acacus, Apostates, |
Ctesiphone; Rhadamantus; Infidels; |
Three infernal Furies. |
