The Second Book Of Occult Philosophy, or Magic
by Henry Cornelius Agrippa
Annotated by Donald Tyson
Chapter VI
Of The Number Of Three, And The Scale Thereof.
The number of three is an incompunded number,1 a holy number,2 a number of perfection, a most powerful number. For there are three persons in God, there are three theological virtues3 in religion. Hence it is that this number conduceth to the ceremonies of God, and religion, thatby the solemnity of which, prayers, and sacrifices are thrice repeated. Whence Virgil sings:4
Odd numbers to the god delightful are.
And the Pythagoreans use it in their significations, and purifications, whence in Virgil:5
The same did cleanse, and wash with water pure
Thrice his companions-
And it is most fit in bindings, or ligations, hence that of Virgil:6
-I walk around
First with these threads, which three, and several are,
'Bout the altar thrice I shall thy image bear.
And a little after:7
Knots, Amaryllis, tie of colours three,
Then say, these bonds I knit, for Venus be.
And we read of Madea:8
She spake three words, which caused sweet sleep at will,
The troubled sea, the raging waves stand still.
And in Pliny it was the custom in every medicine to spit9 with three deprecations, and hence to be cured.
The number of three is perfected with three augmentations,10 long, broad, and deep, beyond which there is no progression of dimension, whence the first number11 is called square. Hence it is said that to a body that hath three measure, and to a square number, nothing can be added. Wherefore Aristotle12 in the beginning of his speeches concerning heaven, calls it as it were a law, according to which all things are disposed. For corporeal, and spiritual things consist of three things, viz. beginning, middle, and end. By three (as Trismegistus saith)13 the world is perfected: harmony, necessity, and order i.e. concurrence of causes, which many call fate, and the execution of them to the fruit, or increase, and a due distribution of the increase.
The whole measure of time is concluded in three, viz. past, present, to come; all magnitude is contained in three, line, superficies,14 and body; every body consists of three intervals, length, breadth, thickness. Harmony contains three consents in time, diapason,15 hemiolion,16 diatessaron.17 There are three kinds of souls, vegetative, sensitive, and intellectual. And as saith the prophet,18 God orders the world by number, weight, and measure, and the number of three is deputed to the ideal forms thereof, as the number two is to the procreating matter, and unity to God the maker of it.
Magicians do constitute three princes of the world, Oromasis,19 Mitris,20 Araminis,21 i.e. God, the Mind, and the Spirit. By the three square or solid22 the three numbers of nine of things produced are distributed, viz. of the supercelestial into nine orders of intelligences: of celestial into nine orbs: of inferiors into nine kinds of generable, and corruptible things. Lastly in this ternal orb,23 viz. twenty-seven, all musical proportions are included, as Plato,24 and Proclus, do at large discourse. And the number of three hath in harmony of five, the grace of the first voice.25
Also in intelligences there are three hierarchies26 of angelical spirits. There are three powers of intellectual creatures, memory, mind, and will. There are three orders of the blessed, viz. of martyrs, Confessors, and Innocents. There are thee quarternions of celestial signs,27 viz. of Fixed, Moveable, and Common, as also of houses,28 viz. Centers, Succeeding and Falling. There are also three faces and heads29 in every sign, and three lords of each triplicity.30
There are three Fortunes31 amongst the planets. Three Graces32 amongst the goddesses. Three Ladies of Destiny33 amongst the infernal crew. Three Judges.34 Three Furies.35 Three headed Cerberus.36 We read also of a thrice-double Hecate.37 Three mouths of the virgin Diana. Three persons in the supersubstantial divinity. Three times, of nature, law, and grace. Three theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity. Jonas was three days in the whale's belly;38 and so many was Christ in the grave.39
The Scale Of The Number Of Three
| In the Original World | The Father | שדי Shaddai The Son | The Holy Ghost | The name of God with three Letters |
| In the Intellectual World | Supreme | Middle | Lowest of all | Three Hierarchies of Angels |
| Innocents | Martyrs | Confessors | Three Degrees of the Blessed | |
| In the Celestial World | Movable | Fixed | Common | Three Quarternions of Signs |
| Corners | Succeeding | Falling | Three Quarternions of Houses | |
| Of the Day | Noctournal | Partaking | Three Lords of the Triplicities | |
| In the Elemental World | Simple | Compounded | Thrice-Compounded | Three Degrees of Elements |
| In the Lesser World | The head, in which the intellect grows, answering to the Intellectual World | The breast, where is the heart, the seat of life, answering to the Celestial World | The belly, where the faculty of generation is, and the genital members, answering the Elemental World | Three Parts, answering the Three-fold World |
| In the Infernal World | Alecto | Megera | Ctesiphone | Three Infernal Furies |
| Minos | Aeacus | Rhadamancus | Three Infernal Judges | |
| Wicked | Apostates | Infidels | Three Degrees of the Damned |
Notes - Chapter VI
1. incompounded number - Prime number. See note 1, ch. V bk. II.
2. holy number - "This is the third time; I hope good luke lies in odd numbers. ... They say there is divinity in odd numbes, either in nativity, chance or death" (Shakespeare Merry Wives of Windsor act 5, sc. 1, lines 2-5).
3. theological virtues - I Corinthians 13:13.
4. Virgil sings - See note 3, ch. LXXIII, bk I.
5. whence in Virgil - "He [aeneas] too thrice bore to his comrades all around clear water, sprinkling them with light dew from the branch of a fruitful olive, and purified the warriors, and spoke the farewell words" (Virgil Aeneid 6, c. line 230 [Lonsdale and lee, 164]).
6. that of Virgil - See note 3, ch. LXXIII, bk. I.
7. a little after - Ibid.
8. read of Madea -
After he has sprinkled him [the dragon] with herbs of Lethaean juice, and has thrice repeated words that cause placid slumbers, which would even calm the boisterous ocean, and which would stop the rapid rivers, sleep creeps upon the eyes that were strangers to it, and the hero, the son of Aeson, gains the gold ..." (Ovid Metamoorphoses 7.1, c. line 152 [Riley, 227-8)
As can be seen from the quotation, it is Jason who speaks thrice and puts the dragon to sleep, not Medea. Agrippa has confused this quote with the description of the same scene in the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius, bk. 4, c. line 156, where it is indeed Medea who charms the dragon.
9. to spit -
We ask pardon of the gods, for spitting in the lap, for entertaining some too presumptuous hope or expectation. On the same principle, it is the practice in all cases where medicine is employed, to spit three times on the ground, and to conjure the malady as often; the object being to aid the operation of the remedy employed. It is usual, too, to mark a boil, when it first makes it appearance, three times with fasting spittle. (Pliny 28.7 [Bostock and Riley, 5:289])
The salvia of someone who fasted was considered more potent.
10. augmentations - Three dimensions of space: length, breadth and height.
11. first number - The Pythagoreans considered three the first true number:
The all-perfect multitude of forms, therefore, they obscurely signified through the duad; but they indicated the first formal principles by the monad and the duad, as not being numbers; and also by the first triad and tetrad, as being the first numbers, the one being odd and the other even ... (Thomas Taylor, Theoretic Arithmetic, as quoted by him in his translation of Iamblichus' Life of Pythagoras, 219
12. Wherefore Aristotle -
A magnitude if divisible one way is a line if two ways a surface, and if three a body. Beyond these there is no other magnitude, because the three dimensions are all that there are, and that which is divisible in three directions is divisble in all. For, as the Pythagoreans say, the world and all that is in it is determined by the number three, since beginning and middle and end give the number of an "all," and the number they give is the triad. And so, having taken these three from nature as (so to speak) laws of it, we make further use of the number three in the worship of the Gods. Further, we use the terms in practice in this way. Of two things, or men, we say "both," but not "all:" three is the first number to which the term "all" has been appropriated. And in this, as we have said, we do but follow the lead which nature gives. (Aristotle De caelo [On the heavens] 1.1.268a [McKeon, 398])