Properties of 17

It is mainly in the Chi'ism (and, because of its influence, in the Turkish epico-religious literature in Anatolia) that a quasi-magical importance is given to the number 17... From the ancient times, the Chi'ist mystics had venerated the number 17; this veneration has its origins in the ancient Pythagorean speculations lying on the letters in the Greek alphabet... 17 represented the number of those who would rise from the dead and each one of those people was to receive one of the 17 letters of the alphabet, making up the highest name of God, which is certainly related to the blade of the Star, arcanum 17 in the Tarot game whose symbolism evokes mutation, rebirth, and which Dr Allendy considers to be Karmic Liberation (alln, 364). Moreover, according to The Book of the Balance by Gâbir ibn Hayyân, an alchemist and a soufi, the shape (sura) of every thing in the world is 17; 17 is the very basis of the theory of the Balance and must be regarded as the canon of the equilibrium of every thing.

The number 17 has a particular importance in the tradition of the trade guilds which acknowledge 17 journey men initiated by Alî, 17 patrons of those who founded the muslim guilds initiated by Selmân-i Fârsî, and 17 main guilds (meln, 455 s.).

To the ancient Greeks, 17 represents the number of consonants in the alphabet, with 9 silent consonants and 8 semi-vowels or semi-consonants. These numbers were also tightly linked with musical theory and the harmony of the spheres.

We previously wrote that 17 was 9+8 and 72 was 9×8; furthermore when adding the digits of these numbers, we get 8 for 17, and 9 for 72. The 9:8 ratio is endlessly recurrent in the ancient Greeks' arithmological speculations, whether in grammar, music (the 9:8 ratio being represented by the middle strings of the lyre), metric theory or cosmology.

This number may have been regarded as ill-fated in Roman Ancient Times because its figures XVII are the same as VIXI, meaning "I lived".

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