Number 5

the number five does not occur in the classification of natural crystal systems: thus there is no hardening of form at the basis of five. Five loosens, and in a sense it also has something revolutionary in it.

Hamaker-Zondag establishes five as the number of structural non-fixity and revolutionary dynamism, grounded in the empirical absence of fivefold symmetry in natural crystals, and identifies it with the human pentagram and with Eros-Lilith energy in the Tarot Minor Arcana.

Hamaker-Zondag, Karen, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Five represents the unity of four, the quinta essentia. This is something we absolutely must bear in mind, because this pattern is the op

Jung, reading Cardanus, defines five as the philosophical quinta essentia — the centering principle that unifies the quaternary structure — distinguishing this from the pentagram and insisting on its cardinal metaphysical importance.

Jung, C.G., Dream Interpretation Ancient and Modern: Notes from the Seminar Given in 1936-1941, 2014thesis

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

the number five has always traditionally been associated with both man and with Mercury, the significator of mind… five divided into the circle of three hundred and sixty degrees yields the quintile aspect of seventy-two degrees, one which is associated with skill and the possession of an unusual mental capacity.

Greene situates five within astrological symbolism as the number of Mercury and the human mind, correlating the pentagram with the quintile aspect and with androgynous mental capacity.

Liz Greene, Saturn: A New Look at an Old Devil, 1976supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Five can transmute into a very cheerful dynamism… Eros, or true union, and Lilith, the attributes of the night and of irrationality, are still big problems in our own century.

Hamaker-Zondag elaborates on the transformative potential latent in fiveness, framing its current difficult manifestation in the Minor Arcana as a culturally conditioned suppression of Eros and Lilith rather than an essential quality of the number.

Hamaker-Zondag, Karen, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

he created the four corners of the world… Finally he scattered a female being over the whole earth, and that is the fifth! By female being is meant stones

Von Franz’s mythological survey of Aztec and Winnebago cosmogonies shows five arising as the feminine fifth that completes and stabilizes an unstable four-cornered creation, paralleling the quinta essentia motif in Western alchemy.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995supporting

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

There is something peculiar, one might even say mysterious, about numbers. They have never been entirely robbed of their numinous aura.

Von Franz, quoting Jung, frames the numinosity of natural numbers — including five — as the psychological ground for their persistent use in divination and their irreducibility to mere counting units.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Creation Myths, 1995aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →

Jung’s idea was that one should study the individuality of these numbers — be interested in what each has that the others have not, rather than what they have in common.

Von Franz recounts Jung’s unfinished project of articulating the unique archetypal qualities of each integer, implicitly situating five among numbers whose individuality carries specific psychological meaning.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Psyche and Matter, 2014aside

Dig deeper with Sebastian →