Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.

Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.

All that has by nature, with systematic method, been arranged in the universe, seems both in part and as a whole to have been determined and ordered in accordance with number, by the forethought and the mind of him that created all things; for the pattern was fixed, like a preliminary sketch, by the domination of number preëxistent in the mind of the world-creating God, number conceptual only and immaterial in every way, but at the same time the true and the eternal essence, so that with reference to it, as to an artistic plan, should be created all these things: time, motion, the heavens, the stars, all sorts of revolutions.

It is number which regulates everything and it is measure which establishes universal order.... A quiet peace, an inviolable order, an inflexible security amidst all change and turmoil characterize the world which mathematics discloses and whose depths it unlocks.

Number, as it were, lies behind the psychic realm as a dynamic ordering principle, the primal element of which Jung called spirit. As an archetype, number becomes not only a psychic factor, but more generally, a world-structuring factor. In other words, numbers point to a background reality in which psyche and matter are no longer distinguishable.

Pythagoras says that number is the origin of all things, and certainly the law of number is the key that unlocks the secrets of the universe. But the law of number possesses an immanent order, which is at first sight mystifying, but on a more intimate acquaintance we easily understand it to be intrinsically necessary; and this law of number explains the wondrous consistency of the laws of nature.

Number is limited multitude or a combination of units or a flow of quantity made up of units; and the first division of number is even and odd.

To sum up: numbers appear to represent both an attribute of matter and the unconscious foundation of our mental process. For this reason, number forms, according to Jung, that particular element that unites the realms of matter and psyche. It is “real” in a double sense, as an archetypal image and as a qualitative manifestation in the realm of outer-world experience.

Number is that property of a group of distinct things which remains unchanged during any change to which the group may be subjected which does not destroy the distinctness of the individual things.

The pretence that numbers are not the humble creation of man, but are the exacting language of the Universe and therefore possess the secret of all things, is comforting, terrifying and mesmeric.

[Number is] the commanding and self-begotten container of the eternal duration of mundane concerns.

The second Definition. Number is that which expresseth the quantitie of each thing.

How can you own [...] numbers? Numbers belong to the world.

Number was born in superstition and reared in mystery,... numbers were once made the foundation of religion and philosophy, and the tricks of figures have had a marvellous effect on a credulous people.