Attention & Focus · “You Become What You Hold”
Numerical Contemplation
Take a single number (1 through 10) and gather the attention onto the web of symbolic meanings Westcott collected for it — the Monad as unity and source, the Dyad as division, the Triad as harmony, and so on — holding the number as a contemplative focus until its ‘character’ is vividly present.
Numerical contemplation in brief: Pick one number (start at the Monad, 1). Read Westcott’s short section on it, then distil it to a single felt quality — unity for 1, polarity for 2, harmony for 3, solidity for 4, up to fullness at 10. Hold the bare number in attention, letting its meanings hover, returning whenever the mind drifts. One number per sitting. Carry its quality as a lens, never as an omen.
What it is
Westcott’s Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues is often called the seed-handbook of modern numerology. It is not a how-to of fortune-telling but a résumé — a careful compilation of what the Pythagoreans, Kabbalists, Indian adepts, Chaldeans and mediæval magicians said each number means: the Monad (1) as the source and unity from which all proceeds; the Dyad (2) as division, polarity, the first “other”; the Triad (3) as harmony and completion; the Tetrad (4) as solidity, the Pythagorean tetractys; and so on up to the Decad (10), the return to fullness.
This practice uses that material as contemplative attention-training: pick one number, then gather the whole attention onto the cluster of meanings Westcott assembled for it, holding the number’s “character” steadily until it feels vivid and present rather than blank.
The number becomes a single, rich focal point — a deliberate object for concentrated attention, exactly the way a contemplative might dwell on a word or an image.
The Method
(A faithful contemplative use of Westcott’s compiled material; the full symbolism is in the book.) 1. Choose one number. Begin at the Monad (1) and work upward over days, one number per sitting — or pick the number that draws you.
- Read its chapter slowly. Read Westcott’s short section on that number, letting the gathered meanings register: unity and source for 1; division and polarity for 2; harmony for 3; the fourfold tetractys for 4; and so on.
- Distil it to a felt quality. Set the book down and reduce the number to a single felt character — the oneness of unity, the tension of two, the resolution of three.
- Hold the number as the focus. Bring the bare number to mind and rest attention on it, letting the cluster of meanings hover around it without chasing any one. Whenever attention drifts, return it to the number.
- Let associations arise, then settle. Allow related images Westcott records (a triangle for 3, a square or the tetractys for 4) to surface and inform the felt sense, then let them quiet so only the number’s character remains.
- Close and carry it. End by holding the number once more, simply. Through the day, notice where that quality (unity, polarity, harmony) appears — as a lens of attention, not as an omen. (Sourcing note: Westcott’s book is a compilation of traditional number-lore; this entry presents the contemplative use of that material — sustained, structured attention on one symbol — not a decoding of “occult powers.” Any quoted phrasing is short and attributed.)
Source & Lineage
William Wynn Westcott (1848-1925) — London coroner, Freemason, Supreme Magus of the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, and a founding chief of the Golden Dawn — first published Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues in 1890, expanding it through 1911.
He drew the material together from Pythagorean number-philosophy (numbers as the principles of things; the tetractys), from Kabbalistic gematria, and from Indian, Chaldean and mediæval sources, presenting it as a scholarly résumé.
The book became a standard reference for the symbolic number-correspondences used across the Golden Dawn current and later esoteric numerology. It sits alongside his Sepher Yetzirah translation as his two great acts of compilation-and-transmission.
The Traditions' versions
Concentrating the mind on a single symbol charged with layered meaning is a near-universal contemplative move; Westcott’s distinctive object is the number and its compiled symbolic “virtue.” Compare:
- Tzeruf — letter permutation (Abulafia) — gathers attention into the Hebrew letters by combining and rotating them; Westcott’s complement on the other half of the Sepher Yetzirah’s “letters and numbers.”
- Contemplation of Correspondences (Agrippa) — ascends a chain of linked things to an archetype; Westcott’s numbers are themselves such archetypes.
- Sound and Colour (Paul Foster Case) — attunes via a fixed letter/tone/colour correspondence; the same correspondence-logic applied to sense rather than number.
- Tarot Key meditation (Case) — dwells on a single numbered image-Key.
Common refinements
Collecting facts instead of contemplating. The point is to rest attention on one number’s character, not to memorise a list of its correspondences.
- Reading numbers as omens. Don’t let “this is a 7 day” become guidance for real decisions — that slides from contemplation into superstition. Keep it a lens, not an oracle.
- Rushing the whole decad at once. One number per sitting; let each character become vivid before moving on.
- Straining for imagery. If the triangle or tetractys won’t picture clearly, hold the quality (harmony, solidity) as a felt meaning instead.
- Mistaking the symbol for the territory. The number is a focus for attention; its “virtue” is the contemplative’s, not a property acting in the world.