Properties of the number 5

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Symbolism

• It is the number of the harmony and the balance. It is also the number of the divine grace.

• The number 5 is a characteristic of the man. First, according to the Cabal, it is the number of the perfect Man (got rid from his animal side). According to the Bible, it is the symbol of the Man-God by the five wounds of the Christ on cross (for this reason, it is also considered as the number of the grace). But it is also associated to the man in general (2 + 3) having an unstable character of duality, 2, in spite of his divinity, 3. The 5 is also found on the human body: the five fingers of the hand and feet, the five senses (touch, taste, sense of smell, hearing and the sight), the five members (two arms, two legs and the head, the bust being the center), the five bones forming the metacarpus, the metatarse and the brain-pan, etc.

• Considerated as the mediator between God and the universe, the five is regarded as a symbol of the universe.

• Symbol of the will's divine.

• Symbol of the perfection in the Mayas.

• Symbol of the incarnated conscience - 4, Matter, + 1, Spirit.

• Symbolize the force and the limits of the man in his control on the Universe.

• According to Thibaut Of Langres, the number 5 is attributed to the world for some reasons. First because the world is moved following a circular movement, just as the 5 when we multiply it by itself or by the other odd ones returns periodically. Also it is called in this sense "periodical". Five years make a lustre, from "lustrare" which means "to make the turn". On the other hand, 5 is attributed to the world due to the fact that it is composed of the first even and odd, 2 and 3. The world indeed, that is to say the whole of things, increases by the male and the female - even is female and odd male.

• In China, it is the number of the Center in addition to be considered as a male number amulet.

• Number of the life and the nature, according to Aeppli.

• Being the sum or rather the union of the first female number and the first male number, it is the symbol of creative life and erotic love according to Jung. But this one interprets also this number as that of the revolt.

• A nuptial number for the Etruscans and Romans because it is the first number resulting from the addition the first female number and the first male number. For the same reason, C. Agrippa calls it the number of the marriage.

• For H.- P. Blavatsky, "5 is the spirit of life and human love."

Bible

• The five wounds of Jesus on the cross.

• The five parts of the clothing remaining of Jesus during his crucifixion after the soldiers had made four parts of his dress, plus his tunic which they did not tear. (Jn 19,23)

• Saint Paul declares that by five times he received the 39 lashes from the Jews. (2 Co 11,24)

• The five mad and wise virgins of the parable of Jesus. (Mt 25,1)

• The five porticos of the pool of Bethesda. (Jn 5,2)

• The five pebbles which made it possible to small king David to kill the giant Goliath.

• The five kinds of animals that God asked Abraham to present to him to conclude with him an alliance: a heifer of three years old, a goat of three years old, a ram of three years old, a turtledove and a young dove. (Gn 12, 5-18)

• The five books of the Torah (the Law) according to the Judaism that corresponds to the number of the first books of the Bible. The book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah contains also five chapters.

General

• The five wounds of Egypt sent by God by the intermediary of Moses, according to the Koran: the flood, grasshoppers, lice, frogs and blood.

• The five paths leaving from the Calvary and directing to the whole world, according to visions' of Ann-Catherine Emmerick.

• In the visions of Maria Valtorta, Jesus classifies the kinds of love in five categories, each one of different power and which are in the order: the love of God, the paternal or maternal love, the conjugal love, the love of the neighbor, the love of the science and the work. The three firsts are of higher power, while the last three are of lower power. But these six divisions are reduced to five because the love of the neighbor and the conjugal love are of identical nature even if they have not the same force, the conjugal love being indeed only a particular case of the love of the neighbor.

• In the revelations received by Don Stefano Gobbi, of the Marian Movement of Priests, it is question of the five famous mountains climbed by Jesus: it is on the mountain that he promulgated the evangelical law of Beatitudes; it is on the Thabor mount that he lived the ecstasy of his transfiguration; it is to Jerusalem, city located on the mountain, that he gathered one's people for the Last Supper and that he passed painful hours of his internal agony; it is on the mountain of the Calvary that he consumed his sacrifice, on the mount of Olives that happened his definitive detachment of one's people by his glorious ascension to the heaven.

• A rosary of the Virgin Mary has five mysteries meditated.

• The practice of the five first Saturdays of the month, asked initially by the Virgin Mary to Lucy of Fatima on October 10, 1925.

• In Italy, in Lanciano, exists a reliquary, since the 13th century, where is found a miraculous devoted host. While celebrating the mass, a priest came to doubt the real presence of Jesus-Christ in the Eucharist; and, under his eyes, the devoted host becomes a slice of flesh, and the wine, blood which coagulated in five clots. The analyses, undertaken between November 18, 1970 and March 4, 1971, by professors Limoli and Bertelli, from the Faculty of Medicine of Siena, in Italy, concluded, after examination of the host and the blood preserved since the 13th century, that they had no modification! The flesh is a slice of human cardiac muscle, resulting from the myocardium. The blood corresponds to the blood of which it would have been taken out of a human being the same day of the examination. And the five clots of blood, of unequal size, weigh all the same weight each one separately; and all together, put in the same plate of the balance, the weight remains identical without variation.

• The five commandments of Buddha Gautama: You will not kill; You will not steal; You will not be impudic; You will not lie; You will not drink intoxicating liquors. Buddhism distinguishes also five great evils: the ignorance, the anger, the desire, the malevolence and the envy.

• In the mythology of "Dogons" we find some themes which seem to remind some beliefs of others religions. For example, the bad angel Ogo revolts over Lucifer after having killed his twin sister as Cain had killed his brother Abel. The good angel Nomo, twin brother of Ogo, is crucified to save men from sin, but he resuscitates five days later, period as sacred as the week of Easter for Christians, and became the week of five days which is still practiced nowadays by the "Dogons".

• The five couples of Adam and Eve that they would have had there simultaneously and this, in five different places on the planet, on the five continents, like prototypes of five different races, according to Edgar Cayce. However, according to the mythology of "Dogons", it is rather four amphibious couples men and women that the god Ama would have created and placed on Earth. Those first humans were immortal, but their descendants became mortals because of their sins.

• According to visions of Ann-Catherine Emmerich, the forbidden fruits of the Tree of the Knowledge of the good and the evil of the Garden in Eden hung by five bunches.

• In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus mentions that there are "five trees in the paradise that do not move neither Summer nor winter and their leaves do not fall. Those who will know them won't die." (log 19.7-11)

• The five fundamental virtues: wisdom, love, truth, goodness and justice.

• The five commandments of the Church: to sanctify the feastdays, to assist the mass on Sunday and the feastdays, to confess his sins at least once a year, to receive the communion at least during Easter, and to pay the tithe to the Church - instead of that, others versions speak about the respect of the obligatory fastdays. The Church recommends also five acts to believers before the Communion: the act of faith, love, humility, desire and hope.

• The visions of the saints are classified according to five categories: beatific or intuitive vision, "abstract" vision, intellectual vision, imaginary vision and the corporal vision.

• The trip of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, for the birth of Jesus, lasted five days. They arrived on a Saturday, around four o'clock in the evening, according to visions of Mary Agreda.

• The five pillars of the Islam: profession of faith, CHAHADA; ritual prayer, SALAT; legal alms, ZAKAT; fast of the Ramadan, SAWM; and the pilgrimage to Mecca, HADJDJ.

• The Greeks philosophers admitted five principles in the man: body, animal soul, psyche, intelligence and divine spirit.

• The five cycles of the Chinese lunar calendar of twelve lunar years each.

• The five elements of the Chinese theory: water, fire, wood, metal, ground.

• For the Tibetans, the five elements connected to five geometrical forms: the cube to the the ground, the sphere to the water, the cone to the fire, the half-circle to the air, and the flame to the ether.

• The five "takbirs" or formula of prayer, in the Islamic religion. The Moslems insist that the prayer is done five times every day. Let us mention that Mahomet was five years old when his Abdallah father died.

• The five suns or eras at the Aztecs.

• In Hebrew, the number 5 means "seizure, contraction like the five fingers". It is, told Fabre D'Oliver, the matter seized by the most material of the five senses.

• There is in Quebec 5 archbishoprics.

• The spacial representation of the number 5 is the pyramid (5 summits with 5 faces) and also the pentagram (5 sides) so the man would be included there.

• The five Zener cards used for some tests of parapsychology. The graphics of each cards corresponds to the first five numbers.

• The five lines of the stave in music.

• The five reigns: elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal and human.

• The five oceans (Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Arctic and Antarctic) with the five parts of the geographical world: Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Oceania.

• In the continuation of fundamental numbers of 1 to 9, 5 is in the center, as it is in the center of the magic square using the first 9 numbers.

• Anniversary of marriage: wood's wedding.

Gematria

• Numerical value of the Hebrew letter He (the Not-Me) representing the passive principle by excellence. This letter represents, according to Charrot, "a solar ray pouring on the earth its beneficial rain of life" and it symbolizes the universal life, the breath of the man, the air, the spirit, the soul, all what is stimulating and vivifying. For the cabalist Eleazar of Worm, the letter "He" symbolizes "the breath" .

Occurrence

• The number 5 is used 253 times in the Bible.

• In the Bible, 12 numbers are used 5 times. There are the numbers 28, 35, 38, 41, 62, 90, 110, 148, 700, 800, 80000 and 185000.

• The number 5 is used three times in the Koran. (Koran XVIII, 21; LVIII,8 and LXXXI, 15)

• The words: pagan, Christian, Pentecost and the name of Eve are used 5 times in the Bible. By five times in NT we see Jesus pronouncing himself his own name (Jn 17,3; Act 9,5 and 22,8 and 26,15; Rv 22,16). Curiously the Antichrist is not written in the Revelation, where he plays nevertheless a so great role. This word appears in the Bible only 5 times in epistles of saint John.

• John-Mary Matthew, in his book "The Name of Glory", désIris, 1992, enumerates five personages of the Bible who have carried the name of Jesus: Jesus the Christ, Son of Mary; Joshua which entered in Canaan at the head of Hebrews. In the Hebraic language the name of Joshua, "Yehoshoua", is a derivative of "Yeshoua", that is to say Jesus (Nb 13,16; Act 7,45); Jesus, son of Eliezer, mentioned in the genealogy of the Gospel of Luke. This Jesus would be a descendant of the king David and related to the family of the Virgin Mary (Lk 3,29); Jesus, called Justus, was a Jewish converted to the Christ and collaborator of Paul of Tarse (Col 4,11); And finally, the brigand Jesus Barabbas, mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew. In some translation, we can read: "Pilate said them, 'Whom do you want me to release for you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called Christ?". (Mt 27,16-17)

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Last modification: December 19, 1998

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