Properties of the number 2

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Symbolism

• Number of the God-Son (the Verb) within Trinity, in the Christian symbolic.

• If 1 is the essence, 2 is the existence.

• Symbol of the duality, the opposition, the separation, the antagonism.

• The 2 is the first number to be deviated from the unit, said Hugues of Saint Victor, and because of that it symbolizes the sin. It is also the first number which admits the division, symbolizing the corruptible things.

• Symbolize the love, the charity, since there is necessarily duality between which gives and which receives.

• Symbol of sexuality since 2 represents also the division of the unit in male and female.

• The principle of the duality can be represented in the form of couple or pair, and would imply the idea of direct and reciprocal reports of simple complementary relations. According to Eckarthausen, "2 is the Number by which one is united to the other and by what only all parts of the world make one."

• The second term of a duality is often considered as a negation or a limitation of the first: the Devil, "telling always no", and the Evil which it personifies, have the number 2 for symbol. According to Claude of saint Martin, "2 is the opposition to the Unit, of its production; 2 comes out of 1 only by violence, because nothing from 1 is removed; it is to make pass the entire to the quality of half; it is the origin of the Evil". Madrolle tells that 2 is a false number, ugly, weak, sterile and unhappy. The original sin has consisted to steal to the tree of the garden of Eden (symbol of the unit) the fruit of the knowledge of the good and the evil (symbol of the dualism).

• A favorable number as a symbol of the facility.

• The 2, which defines the line after the point, represents the entry in the time after the indivisible and incorruptible unit.

Bible

• The two great divisions of the Bible: the Old and the New Testament.

• By group of two Jesus-Christ sent his apostles to preach the Gospel. (Mk 6,7)

• The two turtledoves and the two doves of the purification. (Lk 2,24)

• The two witnesses of the Revelation. (Rv 11,3-4)

• The two fishes of the multiplication of breads. (Mt 14,19)

• The two swords of Peter. (Lk 22,38)

• The two thiefs. (Mt 27,38)

• The two kinds of baptism: water and spirit. (Jn 3,5)

• The two angels of the tomb. (Jn 20,12)

• The two angels of the Ascension. (Act 1,10)

• The two sons of Abraham. (Ga 4,22)

• The two coins of money given by the widow. (Mk 12,42)

• The two coins of money that the hotel keeper receives. (Lk 10,35)

• The two silver trumpets that God asked Moses to forge. (Nb 10,1)

• The two olive-trees situated on both side of the golden lamp, in the vision of Zechariah. (Zc 4,3)

• The two marriages of Jacob. (Gn 29,15-30)

• The two stone tables on which were registered the Ten Commandments of God given to Moses on the Mount Sinai. (Ex 31,18)

• The two cherubs of the ark. (Ex 25,18)

• The two expiatory goats.

• The two sons of Rebekah. (Gn 25,23-24)

• The two kingdoms of Juda and Israel. (1 K 12,19)

• The two golden calves of Rehoboam. (1 K 12,28)

• The two angels of Heliodorus. (2 M 3,26)

• The two columns in front of the Hall of the Temple of Solomon: Jachin and Boaz. (1 K 7, 15-22)

General

• Twice in her life the Blessed Virgin was deeply disturbed in herself: when to the temple the great priest wanted to give her in marriage and during the Annunciation.

• The two Twin Son (Gold and Silver Ray) resulting from God whcih express the Verb.

• "At the time when you were One, you have made the two" tells the Gospel of Thomas.

• The soul is attached to the body by two silver cords: one behind the head linked to the center of the thought of the brain, and the other linked to the astral body near of the solar plexus.

• The two snakes of the Hermes caduceus, coiled around a golden stick, looking on both sides of the stick in the superior part.

• In the man, the mechanism of the thought operates by dichotomy. The man cannot get any idea in himself of an absolute manner, but he recognizes the relationship between two ideas. "It is necessary that the Intelligence, when thinking, is double", tells Plotin. "All notion is clear and perfect, tells Lacuria, only when it becomes complicated by two opposite terms. (...) All idea has its negation by which it is clear and distinct".

• The number 2 is the first plural number and all plural is a ratio of N/1. There exists then a relationship between an unspecified reality N and the abstract concept of a singularity 1.

• According to the Cabal, all what exists, all what has been formed by the Ancient, subsistes by a male and by a female.

• In Hebrew, the number 2 is designated by a word that, according to Fabre of Olivet, means etymologically: "product of a relative duration, mutation, transition, diversity, variation".

• The key of any duality consists in the antithesis. Only the nothingness would escape this law.

• In Hebrew, the number 2 is represented by the letter Beth, which means a ray of light on two horizons, or the house of God and the man between the two columns of the temple of the nature. According to the Cabal, God made this letter the foundation of the world.

• The number two incarnates all oppositions: the two sexes, the day and the night, the two great lights (the sun and the moon), the life and the death, the soul and the body, the left and the right, the chosen and the reprobate, the north pole and the south pole, the good and the evil...

• Anniversary of marriage: cotton's wedding.

Occurrence

• The number 2 is used 1065 times in the Bible.

• In the Bible, 76 numbers are used twice. Among them, there are the following numbers: 34, 36, 48, 49, 55, 66, 74, 85, 95, 96, 153 and 360.

• The number 2 is used 141 times in the Koran.

• The words wave (Ws 5,10 and 10,18) and infinity (Si 37,25; Ep 3,10) are used twice in the Bible.

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Last modification: December 19, 1998

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