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'Misinformation in the Internet multiplies seven times.' - Gilgamesh

When I was 4 I confused the concepts of "seven" and "several", so it would make sense to 4 year old me that seven meant a lot.

Your channel, as well as Esoterica and Let's Talk Religion, were what got me to change my major to History. I graduated in December with my BA.

Patterns like these remind me that we are the continuation of thousands of years of thought and belief.

You're still that floppy haired grad student to most of us - thanks for all you do!

Never heard the word seven so many times. The echo lives on in my head

Love how you posted this while you have 777k subscribers.

7 is also a very important number in traditional Cherokee religion and society. Thus the 7-pointed star on the crest and flag of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma territory.

This was uploaded 7 hours ago. Awesome.

Congratulations on 777,000 subscribers! I love your content.

In Damascus we still have a saying that someone has a tongue with seven tips about a cheeky or sharp-tongued person.

I can't commit to a Patreon subscription at the moment, but I have so appreciated finding this channel and learning so much from an expert in religious studies. There are so many great educational KZfaq channels, but yours is an underrepresented field. That is a shame, since it is an area where so much of what the average person knows are half-remembered myths. I hope to watch the second instalment of this video when you reach 7,777,777 subscribers!

7 Chakras, 7 Colors, 7 Musical notes.... it goes on and on

Saptrishis (7 Sages), it is said that they mastered 7 different dimensions of Yoga, together they cover all 112 ways or Tantra (techniques) in multiple of 7.

Seven is also interesting from a linguistic perspective or rather it looks suspiciously similar in several Eurasian languages. You have the Indo-European septḿ̥ from which you got septem, saptan in Sanskrit and so on. Looks similar to Akkadian shabat and related Semitic words. There is also Prototurkic *žēti for seven. In Uralic languages, seven is the last "normal" number, while 8 and 9 are (ten-minus-one) and (ten-minus-two).

I enjoy watching religionforbreakfast because, paradoxically, it is so extremely scientific. Tidy and concise.

Theology was my minor. I still study it on my own time and follow you because I know you will give knowledgeable, unbiased overviews. Keep up the great work

This is one of my favorite channels. Congrats on the 777k subscribers and keep up the great work!

As usual, quality content! 7/7!

When you offered the answer that 7 means "to the max", like "cranking it up to 10," I can't have been the only person who thought of Spinal Tap. So it was delightful to see that possibly, given the sexagesimal number system, 7 *is* 11. Shows that finding answers is a bit of a crap shoot. I also thought of "The magic number 7..." I don't think it's necessarily right to simply dismiss that idea as speculation, provided we stop trying to look for a single cause. Seven is the recurring, para-sacred, number, for whatever reason, and it means "completeness," let's say. If that's true, its use is reinforced by the apparent fact that, on average, a list of 7 items is pretty handy for humans to remember (and hence maybe??? the prevalence of lists of 7: the seven capital sins, the seven deadly virtues, the seven wonders of the world). Full explanations need not just "causes," but maybe causal feedback loops.

I wonder if the number 7 was important for a similar reason many native american cultures appreciate the number 7 particularly in reference to generations: I might be lucky to meet my great-grandparent in person and they may have met their great-grandparent in person and been able to tell me about it. That's 7 generations, and represents the most number of generations that might be able to directly relate to each other (I can recall my great-grandfather telling me about time he spent with his great-grandfather, that is the extent of a direct connection).

combine three of the most important things to ancient people: - 7 celestial bodies - 7 stars connected to the North Star - 364 days between solstices or equinoxes, 364 is divided evenly by 7, equaling 52 weeks, and 13 lunar cycles. combine how absolutely important all of those things are to ancient people for everything from religious/cultural identity, to travel, to agriculture, and i think it's a pretty good bet that this is the best explanation for this phenomenon 🤔 but I'm no scholar so obviously I'm wrong 🤷‍♂️✌️😅

Man your channel is one of my favorites on KZfaq. I always feel like I’m learning so much and your voice is very calming. Thanks so much for the great videos!

Man, you're one of the best channels out there, I could not be more happy to hear you say you'll double down on it.

Nice timing: this appeared just in time for our 7th wedding anniversary :D

I liked this video 7 times. Great work as usual!

This same subject popped up on NPR this last week. Seven was the “It” number for a lot of people. Love this deeper dive!

Thank you for what you do, and I hope the support continues to grow.

My phone is at 77% as I am watching this. Thanks for the video, sir :)

The Seven Classic Planets connection brings my mind to astro-theology; the theory that the first religion of humanity was the worship of stars, or that theology was a natural development from astrology.

I took a screenshot but then realized there is no way (that I can see) to post it in this comment. But, as I watch this video, you have 777k subscribers and this video has 77k views, which is excellent

Great content, honestly the origins being with either the planet count or the hexa-base number system were both very compelling. The later reminds me about how we say someone or something is a "10" when they are perfect, ie "this pizza is a 10" is "this pizza is the best". It's a shame we lack the context for those early cultures, because for instance in United States I've observed people use "A" as a maximum since letter grades are common, instead of the 10 scale. I believe also that once you get such a powerful cultural snowball rolling, as with all that previous religious work, new writers are compelled to use this inherent association for flavour. If I wrote a book, for no reason other than the sensations it evokes, I'd use things in groups of 3 and 7 like "7 artifacts" or "7 enemies" etc.

I found your channel after I saw minutes ago on my phone clock -- 07:07 on this day of 07/07. I wondered and wandered. Thank you for creating this. This gives a wonderful feel and thought to things. Will definitely be back as religion & faith traditions are truly interesting subject matter, to say the least.

Thank you for teaching Religionforbreakfast!! :D

I really like your content and will adhere to your Patreon.

Maybe it's a combination of factors. The lunar month would have been noticed very early on in human history, then when people started looking at the stars and saw the 7 "planets" or heavenly bodies, then someone started grouping the stars they saw according to what those groups looked like from their perspective and there were a few constellations that had seven stars. Then that Sumerian sexagesimal system and the number 7 being different from 1-6. It's a series of coincidences but I can see how they'd influence culture and religion in the Levant and surrounding areas and why it persists these days.

i can’t wait for you to get 1 million! you deserve all the support!

Congratulations! 🎉 You're content is Awesome! Thank you, and your Team, for sharing with us. Great Work! 🙂

You inspired me to pursue a minor in relgious studies, keep up the great work!

I don’t know if this adds to anything but I learned in psych class that we generally can only remember 7 unrelated things for short term memory

Congrats! And thank you so much. I have learned much from you and look forward to more.

Glad to have been here for the least two and a half years of it, great content as always 🎉

7 being a shorthand for "to the maximum" reminds me of how we use "turn it up to 11" as a way to go beyond the maximum. Interesting coincidence that 11 is the next prime number after 7 as well 😛

In my country there is a symbolic sentence regarding the number 7. "7 generations their wealth will not run out". Usually this sentence is used to refer to families who have been very rich for generations Sorry for my bad English

I think this channel is so interesting and important, but I would really love to see captions added. That helps to open up the information to so many groups, including those who are Deaf/hearing impaired, but also people with a whole range of neurodiverse brains, English learners, etc. It would really help and I'd be super happy :)

Thanks for educating me, I really enjoyed this one.

You've just connected some tangential dots for me. Gustav Holst's "Planet Suite" is pretty clearly an influence on Marty O'Donnell's original soundtrack for Destiny, but O'Donnell wrote pieces for Sol and Luna instead of Uranus and Neptune. Now I have a clue as to why. There are other musical choices related to a sort of classical numerology he makes - the vocal themes for certain sections seem to reference the old "Music of the Spheres" idea that, say, Earth's elliptical orbit corresponds to the variance in pitch between mi and fa in the solfege scale. Thousands of years later, and we're still imparting significance to numbers in attempts to unify the whole.

Thank you! May the seven be with you! 👏✨💐👍💗🌞🙏

Love this channel and your fascinating content

congrats on the auspicious number of subscribers!

"Chunk" is a technical term in computing to refer to quantifiable collection of data.

In the Arabic numeral system, 9 represents completeness, as it's the largest single number

Great channel with useful information.

I have always valued this objective and research focused perspective on religion, something which is normally only covered in extremely emotional and argumentive sermons or hate pieces. Thank you for your dedication to education and knowledge.

To be honest this channel is on my top 10 list , my KZfaq preferences have changed over the years but I always check any new video you upload .

The lunar calendar feels like the biggest reason, given it’s importance in many cultures

You’re the best. Keep going mate. Awesome content. Thanks.

Thank you so much for what you do!!! I love your videos.

The video is 12 minutes and 47 seconds long… 1+2+4 = 7… factor that with the additional 7 on the end and this cannot be considered a coincidence

There's a channel, theoria apophasis, where he rediscovered the Pythagorean/geometric basis of seven. Phi, and each of it's powers up to phi cubed and down to phi to the negative three, seven sections, all have metaphysical meanings, and with these seven sections all of reality is represented, and the 36-36-108 golden triangle can demonstrate this as a geometric symbol. The math and metaphysics are solid and you could read all further cultural references to seven as versions of this basic geometrical/metaphysical understanding.

Any modern society accepts a week as 7.days which the 7th day is rest day. The fulfilling of Resting does effect an importance in having great respond.

This video was great! There's one theory relating to math / geometry you didn't mention: the radius of a circle wraps its circumference 6 times, then a 7th is needed to complete it, but with extra (taken from Mathieu Pageau).

Really enjoyed how this video dives into the mystery of the number seven across different cultures and religions. It's amazing to see how a simple number can hold so much meaning and connect so many beliefs throughout history. The part about the stars and planets making seven a special number was especially cool. It shows how people long ago looked up at the sky and found something sacred that we still talk about today. Thanks for sharing these fascinating insights and reminding us how connected our world is through numbers and stories. Keep up the great work on making complex religious topics easy to understand!

Glad to support your work. Just joined your Patreon. ❤

This channel is great!

"The magical number seven, plus or minus two" turned out to be about the length of the phonological loop vs. the pace at which a language is spoken. It's about 7 for English, but about 9 for Mandarin.

Congrats on your sacred number of subs! Your content remains high-quality educational material that also entertains - which is so rare... :)

Why does the number 7 appear everywhere in religion? Because 7 8 9, duh

Great stuff, as usual!

That was fantastic, and that's why i watch this channel ❤

You forgot about the seven layers of heaven and earth in Islam.

Thala for a reason

Longtime viewer, first time commenter, can we get a video about the acts of Thomas? I just rewatched your videos on the subject because I went back and have read the Gospel of Thomas about 6 times now and just started the acts and was hoping you’d cover the subject sometime! Keep doing all you do, your channel has been a well of knowledge for me and all I share it with.

Much better thumbnail. good work

The fact that the Norse seem to have used 9 in a similar capacity does lend some credence to the 7 +/- 2 hypothesis. At the very lease, being odd numbers each with their own mathematical intrigue, I wouldn't be surprised if the true answer is "all of the above". The fact that 7 is vaguely around the limit of ideas you can juggle, the fact it is an early stand out in mathematical operations (especially base 60), and the fact that there were 7 wandering celestial bodies. 5 is half of 10, and the number of fingers on a hand. 9 is one less than 10, and is also 3x3, 3 being itself fairly special as being the first number to qualify as "many". Having spent my life with numbers, either in music, or in physics, or in software, I can attest that different numbers have different feels. 5, 7, and 9 all have a vibe, while numbers like 4 and 8 feel quite dull (being "just" multiples of two). 6 feels a bit special, but in a comfortable way. It's nice because it combines 3 and 2, so you can look forward to a lot more tidy integer division. And 10 of course resets the counter in our base ten system, and has a lot of practical relevance to our interaction with the world.

In a lunar cycle, the most reasonable division of time into smaller cycles is to quarter it. That leaves you with 7 days. As a prime, it is then I realistic to divide further, which would make 7 Complete

I scrolled down, and I watched this 7 hours after publication. WooOoOo.

a 7 day week is one phase of the moon. Also in many languages the days of the week are named after the 7 planets.

This basically explains the Faith of the Seven in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire. I definitely think it's an intentional choice on GRRM's part based on the importance of the number seven in real-world religions.

It all started with sapt rishis or 7 Sages which started with Jyotisha Shastra calendar in which there were 7 days a week after calculations. One of which is Rishi Kashyap on whose name Caspian sea is named

7 is the largest prime number you can count to using both hands (without using any hand multiple times).

Bro is leaning in to his craft when others would pull out... What a Chad

When I was 15 years old, I had an incredible experience one evening whilst camping. It was so uniquely powerful that it can hardly be conveyed through words, but in the months following I learnt that it would be called a 'mystical experience.' The reason I bring this up is because simply put, the overriding insight granted by this experience was that there are 7 layers to existence, all superimposed on one another, descending from the divine One, and while the material realm is only one of these layers, human consciousness can traverse beyond it. At this time in my life, I had a very limited understanding of religion. I had a 'sunday school' level of thought about religion, mainly Christianity, and zero exposure to mysticism, numerology, esotericism etc. Besides knowing that the creation story of Genesis involved 7 days, I had no knowledge of the significance of the number 7 within religious history. The profundity of this experience motivated me to explore religious history in order to find some kind of precedent for what I had experienced, and I must confess that I was almost scared, yet somehow not surprised, at discovering just how completely widespread this notion of 'seven levels of heaven' and similar is throughout religious history. This one experience, in which I was thrown into an altered state of consciousness for perhaps only a few minutes, sent me on a path of discovery that I never would have gone down otherwise. It is ultimately because of this experience that I eventually started watching youtube channels like Religion for Breakfast, Esoterica, Let's Talk Religion and so on. That years later you would make a video on the topic of the spiritual significance of '7' is therefore quite poetic to me, and I thus felt the need to write this comment. In the time since this experience, I have studied neo-Platonism, Merkavah, Gnosticism, Catholic and Orthodox mysticism (Dante, Teresa of Ávila, Meister Eckhart, Seraphim Rose, Pseudo-Dionysius etc), Sufism, Hindu cosmology and spirituality, the Dream of Scipio, the Mithras liturgy and so much more. In reading about these topics I am endlessly blown away by the cross-cultural parallels that exist between my personal mystical experience and the mystical experiences of numerous other individuals across space and time. It's true that my interest in them began with the fact they contain insights that paralleled my own, but that these parallels exist at all is remarkable to me and suggests shared acquaintance with the same spiritual phenomena. For myself, this process of discovery has not really been about 'learning' new religious teachings, but rather about finding external confirmation for what I 'learnt' in this one mystical experience, and I must say that it is remarkable how much external validation there is historically for what at first glance would appear to be quite a bizarre idea. Really, this whole journey, which still continues, has just been a long process of 'working back from' and unpacking the huge amount of spiritual insight I gained in this one overwhelming mystical experience. That I could find such an astonishing number of precedents for these insights (which seemed to come to me out of nowhere) tells me I am certainly not the first one to have had a mystical experience of this specific nature. I cannot explain this experience, and have never experienced anything remotely close to it before or since, yet it truly felt like I was being momentarily granted some insight from the divine. Looking back, it was probably the single most profound experience of my life, and it has been burnt into my brain ever since.

Congratulations! In Japan, this is the year of the Seven Gods of Fortune, shichifukujin, which is another fun association to your milestone.

And I'm watching the video 7 days after it was posted.

7 thala for a reason

I just wanted to drop a few words of encouragement. Been watching for years and never miss an episode. What you do is amazing; personally, I've learned so much from your work here.

Just a small point but I love how you called it the Chinese correlative cosmology haha, bcs that’s exactly what it is (the interplay of the elements). It’s such an important system in daoist/general Chinese folk cultural thought and to hear it named so precisely was validating.

Love the channel

in eastern Native American philosophy 7 is also kinda a big deal. it represents all space (north , south, east, west, up, down, and center.

5:45 “just to name 7” gave me a laugh I’ll admit

great video man it felt like a movies

The number 7 has always fascinated me. I was born on the 7th day of the 7th month

1 indivisible 2 union 3 totality 4 corners of the earth 5 imbalances 6 imperfect without good will 7 perfect only when five senses third eye mind and good will Etc with spiritual meanings

Thanks much for this video.

When the shop clerk looks at my ID they ALWAYS say :You have a lot of sevens.....like...EVERY time. Or the remember: They guy with 'the sevens"

Thank you Andrew, as always, great content.

The best explanation I've heard for the number seven being special has to do with the relationship between the radius and circumference of a circle. If you tie a string to a pole and draw a cirlce in the sand, which is how people drew circles back then, you'll notice that the circumference of the drawn circle is bout six times the lenght of the string. That way you can divide the cricle into six equal sections, leaving a smaller, seventh one. This would be the seventh day, which stands for rest, completion, perfection and also the ineffable, since the relationship between this section and the radius is irrational.

If it were only one specific thing, people wouldn't have found it significant. But when people see a pattern over and over it makes, or can seem to make, a pattern. So yes, I think it's the 7 planets-seen as 7 deities-which have been associated with the 7 days of the week since the Vedic peoples (that's also from where we get the associations). It's also important that ancient astronomy (which allowed for large scale farming) developed in tandem with mathematics and greater works of architecture. It's what allowed humanity to go from just dealing with the whims of fate to actually shaping one's own fate. Taking the fruits of the earth and forming them into things people could benefit from-and these benefits were rapid and noticeable. So yes, 7 being a sort of mathematical oddity would have been a part of that. But something unmentioned that I think is important is geometry. 6 points for a 3D volume + 1 for temporal displacement. But that's also really 6 points in the first point of time and 6 in the second point in time: 6+6+1. This brings the other sacred number: 13. (It's only in the last century 13 has been seen as unlucky, btw.) Often 7 is represented as complete/whole/maximum in the form 6+1. We also see this with 13: 12+1. It's the larger number coming together and the last one completes the set. An example Westerners can latch onto is the 12 disciples + the 1 who leads them. The extra 1 is that metaphysical something that gives the rest of the bunch significance. It's what takes a nice divisible number like 6 and makes it esoteric. It's not just "completion" but the divine capstone upon the mundane multitude. But, that's all just my opinion. The impression I've gotten from years of reading ancient religious & philosophical works. Nothing from formal papers. I have a lot more to say about it, but this message has gone on too long already.