ruben stelzner

„We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on.“

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

„We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on.“

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

The Meaning of Number 5: The Individual and Consciousness

While the 4 is generally understood as the number of our existing world (see The Meaning of Number 4), the number 5 in the philosophy of numbers stands for what develops out of it. That’s why it’s also very often understood as the number of the human being. The human being, who breaks away as a subject from the stable order of the 4 (matter, nature). The subject steps into opposition to the world it came from. This gives rise to new qualities that define the symbolism of the 5: the subject can perceive its surroundings and also act on them. Consciousness arises with the number 5. It’s the subject’s awareness that there is an “I.” A separation between environment and individual, between object and subject. The latter is no longer just an unconscious part of nature, but a subject that recognizes itself: no longer just part of nature, but an observer, a questioner, an interpreter.
Humankind and the Principle of Vision: A Symbol for the 5
The number 5 also symbolizes the human fate of being separated from the perfection of nature. Among the universal principles, it’s the one that stands for humankind. In myths and fairy tales, it’s the hero’s task to deal with this flaw of incompleteness, this dilemma. They have to learn to understand their otherness as something special and to put it to use in the world’s service. Then they move from being a helpless subject who seems to have fallen out of the world, to a conscious individual (literally “the undivided one”), who can shape their own world (see Numbers in Fairy Tales, Myths, and Literature). The 5 therefore also stands for enlightenment.

The geometric symbol for the number 5 is the pentagram (pentagon). As a symbol for the human journey and human enlightenment, it appears across countless fields that describe what it means to be human: from fairy tales and myths, to Freemasonry, to numerous national flags. The pentagram is also the geometric shape that contains one of the world’s best-known proportions: the golden ratio. The number phi, which describes it, shows up in almost all the growth patterns of sentient living beings. More on this in the post The Philosophy of Nature, which takes a closer look at numbers in nature.

Synonyms for the Principle of the Number 5:

Enlightenment, consciousness, perception.
Symbols often associated with it include: the human being, the eye (enlightenment), the pentagram (pentagon, or “Drudenfuss,” the witch’s foot), and the golden ratio.

Question:

Hemoglobin and chlorophyll are molecules that are about as fundamental to life as it gets. Did you know both share a similar structure, built on a fivefold pattern?

Quotes on the Meaning of Number 5:

„Five is the soul of man: for even as man is mingled up of good and evil, so the five is the first number that’s made up of even and odd.“
(Friedrich Schiller, in Piccolomini)
„For C. G. Jung, five is the number of the natural man, …“
(Franz Carl Endres, Annemarie Schimmel)
„Five things do not bring forth a fifth, …“
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poem “Five Things”)
„With the 5, perception and awareness beyond the material develop: the view onto nature and our world as a whole.“
(Ruben Stelzner)

Related Topics:

For the meaning of the other numbers, see: The Principle of Numbers.
Hier zur Symbolik der anderen Zahlen -> Prinzip der Zahlen.

Image credit: iStock.com/LagartoFilm (numbers on a green background)
iStock.com/Naveed Anjum, edited by Ulf Jenninger Grafikdesign, Leipzig (head profile)