Book of Formation - Sefer Yetzirah

Chapter IV

Mishnah 3, part 3

Mishnah * IV.3.3.   (The seven doublets as a foundation . . . continued from IV.3.1.)

and he formed from them:

seven planets in the world,

seven days [of the week] in a year,

seven gates of the soul;

seven and seven.

Companion - World

Mishnah IV.3.2.  []  seven planets - The "wandering stars" – the five that we call planets – and the Sun and the Moon.  The visible planets are a) Saturn, b) Jupiter, c) Mars, (the Sun), d) Venus, e) Mercury, (and the Moon).  The first group (a, b, c) are farther from the Sun than the Earth, in order from farther to nearer.  The second group are the inner planets bracketed by the Sun and the Moon.

The doublet letters each have a binary identity.  The celestial bodies, for example, also have binary identities – seen or not seen from Earth. We can't see them from Earth when they are "behind" the sun.

Other binary states and identities in the world are on/off, up/down, left/right, clockwise/counterclockwise, and so on.

Ra'avad the first (1120?-1198) * Rabbi Abraham son of Dior. p. 475 in Seder HaDorot. vol. 2. by Rabbi Yechiel Heilpren, judge in Minsk. (Jerusalem: Yarid HaSefarim, 2003). Ra'avad the first. Kantor, 1126. R. Avraham ibn Daud.

Companion - Time / Sequencing / Ordering

seven days [of the week] - which repeat their order week by week during every week.  The Patriarch Abraham taught the principle of counting seven days for a week.  The days of a week correspond to the names of the planets in some European languages (based on pagan ideas about their gods):

1. Sun - Sunday
2. Moon - Monday
3. Mars - Tuesday (Tiu - the Teutonic and Norse god of war)
4. Mercury - Wednesday (Woden's - the Teutonic chief god)
5. Jupiter - Thursday (Zeus Pater [father] in Latin; Thor – the god of thunder in Old Norse)
6. Venus - Friday (goddess of love and beauty in Latin mythology; Frigg - goddess of love, and wife of [W]Odin in Old Norse mythology)
7. Saturn - Saturday

Also, each group of seven hours of a day correspond to these seven planets.  The order of a group of seven hours is as above:  a) Saturn, b) Jupiter, c) Mars, (the Sun), d) Venus, e) Mercury, (and the Moon).  This grouping repeats itself despite how the twenty-four hours of a day are not divisible by seven.  The cycle of seven hours returns the same place every seven days, though.  For example, the hour 6 PM to 7 PM on Friday evening every week corresponds to the planet Mars.  Later, the hour 6 AM to 7 AM on Saturday morning every week corresponds to the planet Saturn.  From this we have inherited the habit of calling these daylight hours Satur(n)day.

All these times are local, according to the local average noon.  The planetary hours are equal hours of sixty minutes.  Divine Providence relates to every place according to its location on the planet and in the universe.  The time on our clocks is based on an arbitrary decision to coordinate the first second of each hour with the first second of each hour in one single location on the globe – the Greenwich observatory in Britain.  The time there is called "Greenwich Mean Time."  Humanity has outlined bands around the planet for numbering local hours according to local daylight hours (or night hours, if you wish).  When I set my clock to noon, people who live at a distance adjacent to the east of me call the local moment 1PM.  People to the adjacent west of me at a distance call the same instant 11AM.

Planetary time has not changed over the millennia.  Planets are not obliged to pay attention to an arbitrary human decision – an accident of history, so to speak.

At some time after Abraham, some people became confused or misled.  They began to dedicate each day to worshiping each planet instead of the Creator of the planets.

The number seven also has a binary identity – both seven hours within a day and seven days within a week, corresponding to the seven planets.

Weeks repeat in their cycle of seven days despite how the 365 or 366 days of a year are not divisible by seven (just like twenty-four hours are not divisible by groups of seven hours).  We use the sun to mark the year, a cycle of weather and seasons.  And we use the moon for the cycle of months.  Each cycle repeats itself independently of the other.  We are aware of this independence since the year can't be measured in whole lunar months, and months not in weeks.

Societies devise calendars to keep track of time.  Societies use different strategies to coordinate the three cycles – seven-day weeks, lunar months, and solar years.  (Actually, some societies do not have seven day units.)  Many societies coordinate the lunar month with the solar year by counting a thirteenth month every several years.  Abraham taught this method by adding seven lunar months during each cycle of nineteen lunar years.  This strategy was used before Abraham's time, but he publicized it and taught it to his students.  Some of Abraham's descendants have used this calendar ever since.  This is the Jewish year even now, and it remains in sync with the solar year every nineteen years.

The Greek cycle of Olympic games every four years was for maintaining a unified counting of years for the different city-states.  The length of four years alternated between forty-nine and fifty months.  The length of eight years was ninety-nine month.  In other words, Greeks added three lunar months every eight years to bring their lunar calendar into sync with the solar year.  By attending these official games every fourth year in one place, the Greeks maintained a standard calendar for all their city-states.  This Greek strategy is not as precise as Abraham's.  Eight cycles of nineteen years is 152 years.  During that century and a half or so, Jews add fifty-six lunar months to the total of twelve months per year – 7 months, eight times.  This 152 years is nineteen Greek cycles of eight years.  So Greeks, on the other hand, would add fifty-seven lunar months – 19 x 3 = 57.  However, after several generations of observing the seasons and the constellations, Greek astronomers would advise the elders to call for the next set of Olympic games one month earlier, one month short in the conventional schedule.

Both the Greek system and the Hebrew system coordinate the months of the year with the seasons, on average.

Both Egyptians and Romans abandoned the idea of counting months from one new moon to the next.  Both these societies continued to live with the idea of a month, though.  For both these societies, the monthly cycle remained close to the length of a lunar cycle, though.

A binary quality in measuring years is how some years have more months than others.

Notes (continued)

seven gates of the soul - Two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and one mouth.

seven and seven - Seven and not six;  seven and not eight.  I am suggesting an analogy to part 2 of Mishnah 3 in Chapter I – "Ten and not nine;  ten and not eleven." (I.3.2.)

Sichos 5747; pp. 45, 54

* Definitions and Pronunciation