期刊名称：Eye of the Heart : A Journal of Traditional Wisdom
印刷版ISSN：1835-4416
出版年度：2008
卷号：2008
期号：2
出版社：La Trobe University
摘要：The metaphysical and mystical significance of numbers is a well
recognised phenomenon throughout the world’s religious traditions. In
the West, for example, Plato is said to have recognised numerology as
the highest of the sciences.1 The esoteric traditions of the three
Abrahamic religions are all marked by number symbolism. In the
Hebrew tradition, where letters also serve as numbers, this type of
symbolism is of the highest order with the very Name of God
intimately associated with certain numbers. These associations are far
from arbitrary. The Shemhamphorasch, or the 72 lettered name of God,
is not simply called this because it has 72 letters, but because of the
nature of the number 72. Annemarie Schimmel sees 72 as universally
expressing the concept of “plenitude.”2 The number 72 occurs across
many religious traditions where marked similarities in its use suggest a
coherent symbolic underpinning. This should be seen in light of René
Guénon’s remark that ‘there are symbols which are common to the
most diverse and widely separated traditional forms, not as a result of
“borrowings,” which in many cases would be quite impossible, but
because in reality they pertain to the Primordial Tradition from which
these forms have issued either directly or indirectly.’3 Guénon’s
reference to “the Primordial Tradition” has proven controversial with
some arguing for a single “people” from whom all civilization is
descended; for our part it may be simpler to say that what is at issue is a
set of immutable metaphysical and cosmological principles constituting the philosophia perennis. The symbolism of 72 reveals definite features
throughout the world’s traditions because of the metaphysical integrity
of the number 72. As Plotinus says, ‘Numbers exist before objects
described by them. The variety of sense objects merely recalls to the
soul the notion of number.’4 Questions of shared transmission,
dependence, or influence are entirely secondary, which is not to deny
the value of these types of enquiry, nor to deny that these type of
“borrowings” do in fact occur, which quite obviously they do.
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