alighted on my arm. (She knew that I had been counting without having been told). We sat on the log and she offered me some honeysuckle flowers, from which we sipped the sweet, fragrant nectar--and during which time she reminded me of the seven spellings of fairy: faerie, fairy, fae, farey, faery, faerey and sidhe.We then played little fairy number games of guessing. One of the games involved any two numbers, either of which is the sum of the aliquots of the other, for example, 220 and 284. The aliquots of 220 are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, 20,22, 44, 55 and 110--the sum of which is 284; and the aliquots of 284 are 1, 2, 4, 71 and 142--the sum of which is 220. After several more rounds, which she always won, she bade me good-by with a fairy hug, and was gone before I could blink.
But, in this world, numbers that have to do with seven are even more interesting. Seven is considered a mystic or sacred number. It is composed of four and three, which among the Pythagorean Faeries are considered lucky numbers. The Babylonian and Egyptian Faeries noted seven planets, and the Hebrew Faerie's verb to swear (although it is uaually the Spriggans who do this) means literally to come under the influence of seven things.
There are seven days in creation, seven days in a week, seven virtues, seven divisions in the Lord's Prayer, seven ages in the life of man, and the seventh son of a seventh son has always been held notable.
Among the Hebrew, every seventh year was Sabbatical and seven times seven years was the Jubilee. The three great Jewish feasts lasted seven days and between the first and second were seven weeks.
In the Apocalypse there are seven churches of Asia, seven candlesticks, seven stars, seven trumpets, seven spirits, seven vials, seven plagues and a seven-headed monster!
