Within the depth-psychology corpus, Six emerges as a numerological symbol of unusual density, drawing together traditions as disparate as Pythagorean mathematics, Tarot hermeneutics, I Ching line-commentary, and Tibetan Buddhist cosmology. The most theoretically developed treatments appear in Hamaker-Zondag and Nichols, both working in a Jungian frame: Nichols identifies Six as the ‘first perfect number’ after Pythagoras — its aliquot parts (1, 2, 3) summing to itself — and connects this self-sufficiency to the archetype of wholeness, the Lover, and the six-pointed star as a union of opposing triangles. Hamaker-Zondag similarly notes Six’s arithmetical peculiarity as foundational to its symbolic meaning. In the I Ching literature, ‘six’ operates as a technical term designating yin lines within hexagrams, and the canonical phrase ‘Six in the [nth] place’ is the primary vehicle through which line-by-line oracular commentary is delivered across all major translations (Wilhelm, Huang, Ritsema/Karcher). Here Six is structural rather than symbolic, naming the yielding, receptive principle embedded in positional logic. In the Tibetan Buddhist corpus, Six organizes cosmological categories: six realms of rebirth, six dissonant mental states, six bone ornaments, six intermediate states. A minor but distinct thread concerns the ‘Six Step’ word-of-mouth program historically antecedent to AA’s Twelve Steps. Across all traditions, Six carries valences of completion, receptivity, and structured articulation of multiplicity.
Pythagoras called it the first perfect number because its aliquot parts (one, two, and three) add up to itself. Six is also the number of completion. In the Genesis account, the Lord created the world in six days.
Nichols establishes Six as the archetypally perfect number in Jungian-Pythagorean terms, linking it to wholeness, the Lover archetype, and the cosmogonic act of creation, rendering it the number of achieved totality.
, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980thesis
SIX IS OFTEN TREATED as 2 x 3, but has several remarkable characteristics of its own. If you add the divisors of six (1, 2, and 3) you get six again. There is hardly another number where that happens.
Hamaker-Zondag grounds the symbolic distinctiveness of Six in its arithmetical self-referentiality, arguing that this property gives it independent numerological significance beyond mere factorization.
, Tarot as a Way of Life: A Jungian Approach to the Tarot, 1997thesis
Six Dissonant Mental States… Six [Emanational] Sages… Six Intermediate States… Six Kinds of Bone Ornament… Six Lineages
The Tibetan Buddhist glossary deploys Six as a primary cosmological organizing number, structuring realms of rebirth, dissonant mental states, intermediate states, and ritual ornaments into systematic hexadic categories.
, The Tibetan Book of the Dead (Penguin Classics), 2005thesis
Water in the north has sprung from the one of heaven, which is complemented by the six of earth.
In the I Ching cosmological map (Ho T’u), Six is assigned to earth as the complement of the heavenly One, establishing it as the foundational yin numerical counterpart in the five-stages-of-change schema.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
Water in the north has sprung from the one of heaven, which is complemented by the six of earth.
Baynes’s translation of Wilhelm confirms Six as the earth-paired, yin complement to heaven’s One within the Yellow River Map’s numerological cosmology.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
his mention of a Six Step program first saw the light of day more than a full decade after the Twelve Steps were written and that these lists of Six Steps were never presented in any kind of consistent or definitive way.
Schaberg identifies the ‘Six Step program’ as a retrospective literary construction by Bill Wilson, not a historically documented precursor to the Twelve Steps.
, Writing the Big Book The Creation of A A , 2019supporting
Bill’s revision of the 1948 story of writing the Twelve Steps based on his own experiences into one where the Steps were the result of breaking up the Six Step word-of-mouth program… serves exactly the same purpose.
Schaberg argues that Wilson’s retrospective framing of the Twelve Steps as an expansion of a prior Six Step program was mythologizing self-effacement rather than historical record.
, Writing the Big Book The Creation of A A , 2019supporting
Six in the fifth place means: If only the superior man can deliver himself, It brings good fortune.
As a standard I Ching line-designation, ‘Six in the fifth place’ indexes a yin line at the ruling position of a hexagram, here counseling inward resolve for genuine deliverance.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
The ruler of the hexagram is the six in the second place. The hexagram of AFTER COMPLETION means that at first good fortune prevails and in the end disorder.
Six in the second place is identified as the ruling line of the hexagram After Completion, illustrating how the yin line’s centrality governs the broader trajectory from order to dissolution.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950supporting
When the six stages of the hexagram have passed, the new era dawns. That which is a man’s own cannot be permanently lost.
Six here denotes the total number of hexagram stages, their completion signaling cyclical renewal and the restoration of what is authentically one’s own.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950aside
consists of six subscales assessing various aspects of hallucinogen effects (intensity, somaesthesia, affect, perception, cognition, and volition).
Six appears here as a purely methodological enumeration — the number of subscales in a hallucinogen-effects questionnaire — without symbolic import.