The Sorcerer's Companion: A Guide to the Magical World of Harry Potter (11 page)

FOUR
:
Like a table that rests solidly on four legs, four indicates stability and firmness. Fours enjoy hard work. They are practical, reliable, and down to earth; they prefer logic and reason to flights of fancy. They are good at organization and getting things done. Like the cycle of the four seasons, they are also predictable. They can be stubborn, suspicious, overly practical, and prone to angry outbursts. The conflicts possible with “two” are doubled in four.

FIVE
:
Five is the number of instability and imbalance, indicating change and uncertainty. Fives are drawn to many things at once but commit to none. They are adventurous, energetic, and willing to take risks. They enjoy travel and meeting new people but may not stay in one place very long. Fives can be conceited, irresponsible, quick-tempered, and impatient.

SIX
:
Six represents harmony, friendship, and family life. Sixes are loyal, reliable, and loving. They adapt easily. They do well in teaching and the arts, but are often unsuccessful in business. They are sometimes prone to gossip and complacency. The Pythagoreans regarded six as the perfect number because it was divisible by both two and three, and was the sum as well as the product of the first three digits (1 + 2 + 3 = 6, 1 × 2 × 3 = 6).

SEVEN
:
Perceptive, understanding, and bright, sevens enjoy hard work and challenges. They are often serious, scholarly, and interested in all things mysterious. Originality and imagination are more important than money and material possessions. Sevens can also be pessimistic, sarcastic, and insecure. Seven is sometimes considered a mystical or magical number because of its associations with the biblical seven days of creation, and the seven heavenly bodies of ancient astronomy (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter).

EIGHT
:
Eight indicates the possibility of great success in business, finance, and politics. Eights are practical, ambitious, committed, and hardworking. They can also be jealous, greedy, domineering, and power hungry. Eight is said to be the most unpredictable of numbers and can indicate the pinnacle of success or the depths of failure; the potential to go either way is present from the beginning.

NINE
:
Nine represents completion and achievement to the fullest degree, as it is the “complete” number, three, expressed three times (3 × 3 = 9). Nines dedicate themselves to the service of others, often as teachers, scientists, and humanitarians. Strongly determined, they work tirelessly and are an inspiration to others. However, they can also be arrogant and conceited when things don’t go their way.

According to these interpretations, we can now say that Nicholas Flamel (4, 4, 9) is a hardworking, down-to-earth person. He takes a practical approach to solving problems. He is emotionally stable, but may have some inner anger and suspicions; however, the face he shows to the world is that of a kind and generous humanitarian. Finally, we can add a few finishing touches to this portrait by returning to the original array of numbers, to see if any digits occur more frequently than others. In this case the numbers 3 and 1 occur most often, indicating that, in addition to what we already know, Flamel is someone who seeks perfection, has the ability to make money easily, and goes about things with single-minded focus. Most of this, amazingly, seems to be true of the famous alchemist (see
Nicholas Flamel
for details about his life and personality). As with most systems of divination, however, the more you know about the subject beforehand, the easier it is to pick the best of many possible interpretations. The real challenge is to create a portrait of an individual without benefit of hindsight.

Like
astrology
, arithmancy also claims to be a system for determining lucky and unlucky days. As a general rule, favorable days are those that correspond to an individual’s character number. An “eight” personality, for example, would be advised to schedule important events like starting a business or getting married so that they occur on the 8th, 17th, or 26th of the month (each of which reduces to 8). Since any name or word can be converted to a number, arithmancy is also used to reveal “hidden kinships” among people, places, and things—the theory being that words and names that share the same numerical value are related and naturally go together. Thus a six will be best off driving a brand of car that reduces to 6, such as a Honda or a Toyota, whereas a seven would be happier driving a Ford. A two will be most romantically compatible with another two. Fives should consider living in a city that reduces to 5 (such as Tokyo or Pittsburgh), and so forth. Although we don’t recommend it, virtually all of life’s decisions can be made “according to the numbers,” from the friends one associates with to the foods on the breakfast table (eggs = 2, toast = 3, corn flakes = 4).

hen the
centaurs
of the
Forbidden Forest
comment on the brightness of the planet Mars, they’re doing more than making a casual comment about the beauty of the evening sky. Their words are a veiled prediction of something ominous to come, involving anger, violence, and perhaps bloodshed and revenge. These centaurs practice astrology and can read the future in the stars.

Astrology should not be confused with astronomy, although both share the same Greek root,
astron
, which means “star.” Astronomy is the scientific study of the heavenly bodies, such as stars, planets, moons, comets, and meteors; astrology is a more fanciful pursuit that seeks to explain and interpret the influence of the heavenly bodies on earthly life. Both disciplines emerged in ancient Babylonia (modern-day Iraq) more than 7,000 years ago when sky watchers first began to keep accurate records of the movements of the sun, moon, and stars. One of their earliest observations was that although most of the stars remained in the same positions relative to one another, a handful did not. Along with the sun and the moon, these so-called “wandering stars,” which the ancients thought to be the homes of gods, traveled across a narrow band of sky known as the zodiac. Today we know that these wanderers are not actually stars but planets (“planet” means “wanderer” in Greek).

The Babylonian sky watchers were the first to keep good records of all of the celestial events they observed. They drew the first star maps around 1800 B.C.
(
photo credit 3.1
)

In time, the Babylonians assigned meanings and resident deities to the planets based on their appearance. For example, Mars, which has a distinct reddish glow, was considered fiery and bloody and became identified with the god of war (Nergal for the Babylonians, Ares for the Greeks, and Mars to the Romans); Venus, which outshines every star in the sky but can disappear for six weeks at a time, was the bringer of love, faithful or fickle; and Saturn, which appears to roll across the sky more slowly than the other visible planets because it is the most distant, was associated with evil, old age, despondency, and death. Only the five planets visible to the naked eye (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) were known, and all were thought, along with the sun and moon, to revolve around the Earth, which was then believed to be the center of the universe.

In addition to observing the shifting patterns of the cosmos, Babylonian sky watchers tried to correlate what they saw with events on Earth, such as earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters. Their reasoning was simple: They believed that everything in the universe was interconnected and that events in heaven must therefore reflect, or even foretell, events on Earth. For instance, the appearance of a comet, the most unpredictable of all celestial events, might forebode a major occurrence, such as the death of a king. More common events—such as full moons, eclipses, the appearance of a halo around the moon, or the convergence of two or more planets—were less ominous but could still herald news of a famine, storm, flood, epidemic, or other disaster.

Thus astrology, even in its most basic form, was an important tool of
divination
. Its practitioners searched the sky for omens and recurring patterns and made predictions. But unlike astrologers today, who work for many individual clients, ancient astrologers restricted their attention to the king and the society as a whole.

This changed in the fifth century
B.C.
, when the concept of the zodiac as a set of twelve constellations became fixed and astrologers began to cast personal
horoscopes
for individuals. The Greeks and Egyptians became interested in astrology in the third century
B.C.
and added many new and complex procedures to the field, linking it to medicine and
magic
. Not only were the positions of the stars and planets thought to forecast events, but it was widely believed that the stars affected the physical nature of everyone and everything on Earth. Each sign of the zodiac was said to influence a different part of the human body, and every flower, herb, and medicinal plant was said to be ruled by a different planet. Even minerals and gems absorbed influences from the stars. A physician, therefore, needed to understand the principles of astrology in order to diagnose and treat his patients. Similarly,
magicians
who wished to conduct experiments, cast spells, or make
talismans
needed to understand astrology to determine the planetary influences and discover the most favorable time to carry out their activities. A love
spell
, for example, would best be timed to coincide with the influence of Venus rather than Saturn.

From Greece and Egypt, astrology spread to Rome, where it was widely accepted as a wonderful new addition to the many systems of divination already in use. A number of influential thinkers railed against astrology as a worthless superstition, and practitioners were repeatedly banished from the city, but public demand kept bringing them back. After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fourth century, astrology ceased to be an important factor in European life until the twelfth century, when knowledge of the subject was reintroduced from Arabic sources.