The Power of 12

The number 12 is a commonly used secular number, an astrological number, and a sacred number.

For instance, there are 12 inches in a foot (each inch being the size of King Henry I’s thumb, if I remember from my school days); there used to be 12 pence in an English shilling; and there will always be 12 pairs of ribs in a human’s chest and therefore 12 thoracic vertebrae.There are 12 hot-cross buns or whatever in a dozen baked goods, 12 musical notes in a chromatic octave scale, 12 hours from midnight to noon, and 12 hours from noon to midnight.

On an astrological level, there are 12 signs of the zodiac and therefore 12 houses of the sun, 12 dimensions of heaven, and 12 months of the year.

Looking at 12 as a sacred number, it is claimed that there were 12 successors to Muhammad and 12 Greek Gods, Jesus had 12 disciples, Israel had 12 tribes, there is a 12-chakra system that is becoming increasingly better known, and there’s much talk on the internet about humanity’s original 12 strands of DNA.

As far as positive qualities go, there are at least 12: love, light, truth, abundance, power, protection, manifestation, wisdom, patience, joy, peace, and gratitude.

And finally, Plato’s five solids give the number 12 great significance. The five solids are

  • the tetrahedron, based on four triangles coming together as a solid
  • the cube, based on six squares creating a box
  • the octahedron, which is two pyramidal shapes connecting at their floors created out of eight faces
  • the dodecahedron, which is a synthesis between a cube and a sphere, being created of 12 pentagonally shaped faces, and
  • the icosahedron, which has twenty faces, each of them a triangle.

What I find intriguing about the dodecahedron is that some authorities suggest that our universe is the shape of a dodecahedron.

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