Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/236

Of the Number Ten, and the Scale thereof. The number ten is called every number, or an universall number, compleat, signifying the full course of life: for beyond that we cannot number, but by replication; and it either implies all numbers within it self, or explains them by it self, and its own, by multiplying them: wherefore it is accounted to be of a manifold Religion, and power, and is applyed to the purging of souls. Hence the Ancients called Ceremonies Denary, because they that were to be expiated, and to offer sacrifices, were to abstain from some certain things for ten dayes. Whence amongst the Egyptians it was the custome for him that would sacrifice to Io, to fast ten dayes before, which Apuleius testifies of himself, saying, It was commanded that I should for the space of ten dayes refrain all meat, and be fasting. There are ten sanguine parts of man, the Menstrues, the Sperm, the Plasmatick spirit, the Mass, the Humours, the Organicall body, the vegetative part the sensitive part, reason, and the mind. There are also ten simple integrall parts constituting man, the bone, cartilage, nerve, fibre, ligament, artery, vein, membrane, flesh, skin. There are also ten parts of which a man consists intrinsecally; The spirit, the brain, the lungs, the heart, the liver, the gall, the spleen, the kidnies, the testicles, the Matrix. There were ten Curtains in the Temple, ten strings in the Psaltery; ten musicall instruments with which Psalms were sang, the names whereof were, Neza, on which their Odes were sang, Nablum, the same as Organs, Mizmor, on which the Psalms, Sir, on which the Canticles; Tehila, on which Orations, Beracha, on which Benedictions, Halel, on which