Properties of the number 1

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Symbolism

• Symbol of the essence, it represents the figure of the God-Father, within the Trinity, in the Christian symbolic. It is also the symbol of the perfect Unity of the Holy Trinity.

• Symbol of the Unique, the Universal and the Transcendent, the first principle and the power creator.

• According to Aggripa, "the number 1 refers to the supreme God, which being one and innumerable, creates however numerable things and contains them in Himself". Saint Augustin affirms similarly telling that the Unit refers "to the supreme, God, Principle of all things".

• Symbol of the Whole expressed in its unit, constituting the base, the perfection.

• Symbol of the man upright: only alive being enjoying this faculty.

• Express the notion of chief, the first in a hierarchy of authority or of power.

• Figure of the Master of the Word and the Word itself, for Bambaras.

• The unit is the starting point, the beginning, the symbol of the absolute origin and the outcome. The 1 is therefore the precursor, the pioneer, the initiator, the new, the original, the nine, the germ and at the same time the root, the birth of all that lives. It is the immanent spontaneity.

• Symbolized mathematically by the point.

General

• The man is composed of only one soul, according to the Christianity.

• Age of the Child Jesus during the visit of the Three Magi, and the escape in Egypt of the Holy Family, according to visions of Maria Valtorta.

• The primitive unit, that the androgyne or the Adam man-and-woman, will be reconstituted at the end of times.

• "Many first will be the last and they will be One" says the Gospel of Thomas.

• According to Pascal, "all the universe is contented in the Unit". The ancient Greeks alchemists told that "the Universe is One".

• Malebranche says "that there is nothing great by itself and without comparison to other thing, otherwise the Infinity and the Unity".

• According to Etchegoyen, the properties of the Unit are: the infinite absolute, the equality, the eternity, the immutability and the universality. By these properties, the Unit is opposed to the plurality which has the opposite attributes.

• Heraclite said that "the multiplicity of things comes One, and from One the multiplicity".

• In Hebrew, the word that means the Unit is translated by "point, summit, prevented division". This number is written by using the letter Aleph, representative "a man raising a hand towards the sky, lowering the other towards the earth, realizing the unit in the universe", according to Charrot.

• Jehovah is One, tells the Cabal, and its name is One. Saint Athanase affirms similarly telling that "the God of Christians is the God-One".

• The hieroglyph of the sun is a point inside the circle, and H.P. Blavatsky sees in the etymological root of the word sun the expression of the Unit (Deus solus).

• The 1 is the only figure which is written in the same manner in all languages, and has the symbol of the line.

• The 1 is the atomic number of hydrogen, the most widespread element of the universe, one of constituents of the water, source of all life.

• In mathematics, zero multiplied by the infinite equalizes 1.

• Anniversary of marriage: paper's wedding.

Gematria

• The number 1 is written in Hebrew aleph, heth, daleth and its numerical value is thirteen: 1+8+4=13.

Occurrence

• The number 1 is employed 1292 time in the Bible.

• In the Bible, 175 numbers are used only once.

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Last modification: December 19, 1998

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