I'll add three more threes (=nine) of threes for you... I have been spending a lot of time on the Perseus myth lately. It is interesting that it takes place in three regions (Argos, Seriphos, and Ethiopia); it is Hermes (the "thrice-greatest") and Athena (the "thrice born") who support him in his questing; that together with Perseus they make three children of Zeus; that he encounters three old women, three nymphs, three Gorgons; that he receives three magic items from the nymphs; and that, at the end, Perseus restores balance to the warring Argolid (Argos is the west, Tiruns in the east) by building and fortifying a third city (Mukenai).
I've spent a lot of time on fours in the past (Fire/Air/Water/Earth, Osiris/Set/Isis/Nephthys, the One/the Intellect/Soul/Nature, etc.) but I'm starting to have to push myself to think in threes... one of these days I'm going to have to dig up and translate the fragments that we still have of Pythagoras's number-lore.
Edited (can't be misspelling god-names now can I) 2025-03-14 17:40 (UTC)
Ha! I saw that, in your most recent post...you and I seem to be walking similar roads.
Out in left field, but the complexity theorist, Geoffrey West, found that a number of scaling "laws" in nature seem to come up with 4. So, perhaps there's something with the 3/4 dynamic...
Hm... so, when speaking of nature, one gets lots of fours, and when speaking of ideas, one gets lots of threes? I smell a tetractys here... that's worth following up on.
Maybe...? But it's an interesting dynamic to consider, perhaps. Something between the intelligible and the sensible.
I think of Papus and the triangle, three points that imply the space within the triangle as a fourth possibility. I think, also, of Sallustius's division of the 12 into four sets of three: the makers, the animators, the harmonizers, and the protectors. I think of 3 + 4 and 7, which, for me, at least, recall the seven spirits who stand before the throne of the Most High (Rev. 1:4).
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I've spent a lot of time on fours in the past (Fire/Air/Water/Earth, Osiris/Set/Isis/Nephthys, the One/the Intellect/Soul/Nature, etc.) but I'm starting to have to push myself to think in threes... one of these days I'm going to have to dig up and translate the fragments that we still have of Pythagoras's number-lore.
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Out in left field, but the complexity theorist, Geoffrey West, found that a number of scaling "laws" in nature seem to come up with 4. So, perhaps there's something with the 3/4 dynamic...
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I think of Papus and the triangle, three points that imply the space within the triangle as a fourth possibility. I think, also, of Sallustius's division of the 12 into four sets of three: the makers, the animators, the harmonizers, and the protectors. I think of 3 + 4 and 7, which, for me, at least, recall the seven spirits who stand before the throne of the Most High (Rev. 1:4).
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