Divine Number Twelve
Starting out life as an immensely useful number for counting and dividing things, the number 12 became a number revered by mathematicians and early astronomers.
So the skies were divided into 12 portions as were the months of year, reflecting the annual movement of heavenly bodies. Superstitions and religious beliefs were piled on top of respect for the number 12 and was adopted by multiple early civilisations. The sky, divided into 12, has each portion ruled by a personification, a god, a divine being, a teacher, a prophet or a son of the sun. Odin, or Norse mythology, sat on a chair that overlooked all of creation, and had 12 sons. The Babylonians had the longest lasting influence upon our calendars, times, mathematics and religions, all of which emphasize the number 12.
Pseudoscientific enterprises such as astrology have the number 12 at its core. The ancient Zoroastrians had twelve commanders on the side of light (light being a symbol for the sun), and in Judaism and the Hebrew Scripture there are many references to the 12 tribes of Israel, and later on the Greeks imagined 12 Gods on mount Olympus. Mithraists, and then Christians believed that their saviour had 12 disciples. Shi’a Muslims list 12 ruling Imams following Muhammad. Such holy persons are depicted with a bright solar light around their heads such as occurs when any object approaches from the sun and now stands infront of it. Although many ancient religions such as the Gnostics understood things like the twelve disciples of Mithras to be symbolic of the stages of the waning and waxing sun throughout the year, later religions took it literally and believed in an actual 12 disciples - and some still do.
Now we understand what stars, planets and stellar objects are, it makes no sense to retain the mystical, nonsensical connotations of the ‘holy’, ‘perfect’, ‘divine’ or ‘special’ number 12. If the number is employed in a practical sense to divide time, measurements, or angles, then the chances are it makes awesome mathematical sense to utilize such a factorable number as the number twelve. But if you see it used in a superstitious, religious, magical, paranormal, holy or weird way, then watch out, because you have entered the world of flat-earth delusion. It is, after all, only a number.
- The Mathematics
The number 12 is a highly respected and practical number. It has many factors for such a low number, so it is one of the lowest easily-divisible numbers. Number 11 is not divisible, number 10 only has two factors (2 and 5) meaning that if you measure anything in tens, you can only divide it into either halves or pairs. Number 9 only divides into 3, number 8 only into 2 and 4, number 7 is a prime number with no factors, number 6 only breaks down into half or thirds, number 5 is a prime, you can only halve number 4 or 2, and 3 and 1 don’t divide and are so small you wouldn’t want to measure things in them, anyway. Number 12, however, divides into 6, 4, 3 and 2, giving it a large number of practical uses where things have to be divided up into whole numbers, from calendars to clocks. As a result of all these factors, mathematicians get excited about the number 12 and apparently, they always have done! For example, Pythagoras, the classical mathematics genius, teacher, and leader of a pagan religious movement, taught that the number 12 had divine, profound mystical meaning.
We will see from this usefulness and roundness has arisen first respect, then awe, and finally superstitions based on the number 12. It all starts with telling the time and star-gazing.
- The Zodiac
2.1. Dividing the Stars and Heavens Into 12 Constellations (3000BCE)
The oldest preserved zodiac dates from 3000BCE when the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed their Zodiac based on twelve heavenly bodies they could see, such as planets. Sumerian government always composed of twelve people. The Babylonians, with their numbering system of 60, found the number 12 to be practical and useful for calendars and times. The author of “Science: A Four Thousand Year History”, Patricia Fara, says “the Babylonians split the heavens into twelve equal sections, one for each lunar month and carrying the name of a prominent constellation. Translated into Latin, these now exist as the twelve signs of the zodiac familiar from newspaper horoscopes, such as Aries the Ram and Taurus the Bull”. This idea was passed on from culture to culture:
“The notion of the zodiac is very ancient, with roots in the early cultures of Mesopotamia. The first 12-sign zodiacs were named after the gods of these cultures. The Greeks adopted astrology from the Babylonians, and the Romans, in turn, adopted astrology from the Greeks. These peoples renamed the signs of the Mesopotamian zodiac in terms of their own mythologies, which is why the familiar zodiac of the contemporary West bears names from Mediterranean mythology.” Lewis in “Encyclopedia of New Religions”
Further East, the Chinese zodiac also had twelve divisions; although they were different to the common ones that Western culture adopted from the Sumerians.
2.2. The 12 Heavenly Gods
Frequently there were also twelve superior gods. The ancient Zoroastrian holy book, the Menok i Xrat, says that the “twelve Signs of the Zodiac, as the Religion says, are the twelve commanders on the side of light”. These commanders fight against evil in a battle for the fate of the world. The star-gazers and sun-worshippers of the ancient world would be proud that they were followed by a long series of cultures that imagined a collection of twelve gods:
“Among all the gods worshipped by the Greeks, the twelve deities who dwelt on Mt Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece, formed a special category of their own. The gods of Olympus were usually taken to be Zeus, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Apollo, Artemis, Demeter, Hermes, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus and Hestia. In certain local variations, positions among the ‘twelve’ were occupied by Pluto, Dionysus, Heracles or other local cult heroes.” “Greek Mythology and Religion” by Maria Mavromataki (1997)
Some Gods had twelve sons, and some sun gods had 12 disciples to spread the message across the world that the sun wasn’t dead; it was rising again in the sky in spring, after being defeated in autumn.
2.3. The 12 Stations of Life in Buddhism
As the division of the divine realm into 12 areas was based on the original stellar usefulness of the number, non-godly religions also developed mystical systems that divided existence into 12 parts. Buddhists hold that life is composed of 12 stages, which together keep the wheel of life turning, ensnaring all life in a samsaric (cyclic) form of existence from which it is hard to escape.
“The Buddhist teaching on samsaric existence is […] depicted in the Wheel of Becoming. […] The rim of the wheel is divided into twelve segments and scenes. These show how beings pass from one realm to another, and are call the nidanas. […] These scenes depict Buddhist teaching on Dependent Origination: the causal chain which ensures that the Wheel of Samara keeps revolving.” “Buddhism” by Clive Erricker (1995)
- The 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Disciples of God
3.1. Judaism and Christianity
As the stars are divided into twelve, it is only natural to presume that Human communities can be divided into twelve geographical locations, and each one administered by a different personification of the Sun. The Babylonians had the longest lasting influence upon our calendars, times, mathematics and religions, all of which emphasize the number 12, and it just so happens that organized Judaism arose from Hebrews who lived in Babylon and picked up the skills of literacy there. Thusly, Judaism inherited the importance of the number 12 from the Babylonians (and from wider Sumerian culture). The Signs of the Zodiac became Leaders; it was thought their influence over the lives of individual people could be worked out through a mixture of planet-watching and confused mysticism. The legacy that such lunacy left us was a deep-rooted religious tradition that the affairs of mankind are rightfully led by twelve leaders. As in (the heavens) heaven, so on Earth. But the original source of this mysticism in sun worship and star gazing has never been completely lost: the representatives of the sun are still given an aurora behind their heads, representing the power and glory of the sun.
See: Book of Judges (Shofetim): 1. Were There Twelve Judges?
So in Judaism, Jacob had 12 sons, who went on to procreate the twelve tribes of Israel, god’s chosen people (God being the sun, with twelve divisions). Early folk-lore-born stories of the founding of Judah and Israel were written and edited by later Hebrew scribes into a story of the twelve Judges: the story is told in the Biblical Book of Judges.
Next, as Christianity arose out of Judaism, it too inherited the reverence of the number 12. Jesus had 12 disciples. Early Gnostic Christians accepted this as a symbolic and figurative account, but later Pauline Christians took it all literally.
“Jesus surrounds himself with 12 disciples. This is usually taken to be symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel. This notion of 12 tribes, however, is itself a symbolic reference to the 12 signs of the zodiac in Babylonian astrology, which the Jews adopted whilst in exile in Babylon. The zodiac was an extremely important symbol in the Pagan world. Osiris-Dionysis is symbolically represented as the still spiritual center of the turning wheel of change represented by the 12 signs. […][In] the Mysteries of Mithras 12 disciples surrounded the godman, just as the 12 disciples surrounded Jesus. The Mithraic disciples were dressed up to represent the 12 signs of the zodiac and circled the initiate, who represented Mithras himself.” “The Jesus Mysteries” Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy (1999) [Book Review]
Other religious scholars such as “Robertson, Niemojewski, Volney and others” also hold that “as son-god Jesus had twelve apostles representing the twelve houses of the zodiac”. Nowhere in the New Testament does it say why there were twelve disciples. But clearly, the solar son of the sun must have 12 disciples, because what happens when Judas fails them? In the first chapter of the Book of Acts, they immediately elect a replacement for Judas (Acts 1:21–26). The very fact that there are 12 apostles, and most of them are rarely mentioned at all in the New Testament, has made many think that most of the stories surrounding the apostles are merely re-written myths, rather than historical accounts. Such is the lure of the number 12.
3.2. The 12 Sibylline Oracles 11
Voltaire exclaimed (with his usual mixture of ridicule and sarcasm) that the Sibylline Oracles of ancient Greece were 12 in number because this was a sacred number and that God had no other way of communicating, and that these prophets “had certainly predicted all the events in the world. […] Who can deny the fulfilment of their prophecies? Has not Virgil himself quoted the predictions of the sibyls?” However it transpires that this was the result of forgery - the original Sibylline Books were lost to history - destroyed - and it was later Christian clerics who concocted the idea of 12 Oracles, and used the respected name of the Sibylline Books to promulgate a number of prophecies which made it seem like the ancients had predicted Christianity.
3.3. Islam
Islam became another Abrahamic religion to accept the traditional division of the land and power into 12 areas. Qur’an 5:12 says God appointed twelve leaders to the people of Israel. Qur’an 2:60 and 7:160 tell a slightly odd story which states that God and the angels divided Israel into 12 distinct tribes. The people asked for water, so, Moses was told to strike a rock with his staff. This piece of magic resulted in 12 rivers springing from the rock, and each tribe “knew where to get its own water”. This odd radial division of land and people is purely mythical; nowhere are there 12 rivers stemming from one rocky source, and, never have the Hebrews been divided into 12 tribes each with its own source of water. This story clearly has astrological and mythological meaning rather than literal meaning.
- Horoscopes
In the largest study ever undertaken of horoscopes, David Voas looked at over ten million married couples:
“Even the smallest tendency for Virgos to fancy Capricorns or for Libras to like Leos would be apparent in the statistics. If only one pair in a thousand is influenced by the stars, we would see ten thousand more couples than expected with certain combinations of signs. In fact, the numbers are just what we’d predict based on chance.” Prof. David Voas (2008)13
People’s astrological signs do not predict success in marriage. But this complete lack of correlation does beg one more question: If people believe in astrology, it seems at first that a certain effect should be apparent. If all Virgos thought they had a better chance with a Taurus and married accordingly, it should show up. How come this sociological effect is not even apparent in the statistics? The reason is that horoscope advice is random. With so many columns giving so many contradictory opinions, choices made by them are as good as random choices. So not only are the predictions random in nature, leading to random choices that people merely think are meaningful, but, the results of unions are completely unrelated to astrological signs.
Why do some people come to conclude that such random advice means anything? Social psychologists have been studying questions such as this for some time.
“Certain beliefs or suppositions imply a similarity between two entities: A child should look like his or her parents, identical twins should behave alike, or a personality description ought to resemble the person it describes. However if the two entities are sufficiently complex, then mapping one onto the other will almost certainly produce a number of points of overlap, and the expectation will appear to be confirmed. […]
The Barnum effect refers to the tendency for people to accept as uncannily descriptive of themselves the same generally worded assessment, as long as they believe it was written specifically for them on the basis of some “diagnostic” instrument such as a horoscope or personality inventory.” “How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life” by Thomas Gilovich (1991)
The critical thinker Carl Sagan did not have access to a database of ten million marriages, but he did conclude from two other lines of reasoning that the planets do not influence our lives: “1. The contradictory entries in newspapers, and 2. Twins often have different fates and lives.”
Just a thought …
