founder of naked leader

Uniting and Unleashing the forces for good in our world

Naked Leader Week – 154 (w/c Monday 1 May 2006)

Uniting and Unleashing the forces for good in our world

 Leadership from a different perspective – Seven!

When I wrote The Naked Leader I had a chapter called “The Six Conspiracies of Success.” One of my early proof-readers told me in no uncertain terms that I “should” make it seven – after all, where a number is involved in business and development books, it seems to be seven!

From Seven Habits of Highly effective People to Change your Life in Seven Days, the bookshelves screamed out seven to me.

Why?

I decided to research (Google) this question.

So, if you ever wondered the reason the number seven has such a power in our lives – here are the top twenty reasons, apparently:

Aside from the obvious Seven Wonders of the World, seven days of the week etc. it appears that early scriptures have something to do with the number seven being considered powerful.  Also, earlier than that, the seven visible ancient planets, and the stars of the Seven Sisters probably play the largest reason that the number seven is considered magical and powerful.

EXAMPLES:

 

  1. There were seven ancient planets (“the sun was the greatest planet Of the ancient seven and next to the sun, the moon, changing in all its splendour every seventh day. Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn”)
  1. Seven holy temples in Arabia.
  2. Persian mysteries: seven caverns through which an aspirant must pass.
  3. Romans and Goths had seven entities, our days of the week have variants of their names.
  1. Dice: total of all directly opposite sides equals seven
  2. Scottish Mason’s apron: seven tassels on each side
  3. Pythagorean: seven is the perfect number, the sum of the sides of a square and a rectangle
  1. Revelation 1:16 – “and He had in His right hand seven stars,”
  2. Revelation – seven seals, seven trumpets, seven vials
  3. Masonic – “King Solomon was seven years building the Temple. It was dedicated to the glory of God in the seventh month and the festival lasted seven days.”
  1. Masonic: Masons require “seven Brethren to make a Lodge perfect and we have our seven steps on the winding staircase.”
  1. Seven liberal arts and sciences
  2. The seven dwarfs
  3. The seven deadly sins (avarice, envy, gluttony, lust, pride, sloth and wrath)
  4. The seven orders of architecture
  5. The seven seas
  6. The Seven Sisters
  7. “seventh son of a seventh son is supposed to be born gifted”
  8. The seven years of famine, the seven years of plenty.
  9. Christian belief God created world in seven days.

The overall message is that if you want to connect with your readers, and some kind of power in numbers, seven is a powerful number to use. Other numbers will hold a power of their own, of course, and I could be accused here of merely pandering to normality, so may be I should have stuck with six conspiracies!

With love always

David

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