The Numbers 37 and 137: Signatures of the Creator

[Michel Leclerc]

To add somebody, pretty well-known internationally – who was quite deeply convinced of the “omnipresence” of the “Tradition” (his term): René Guénon, maybe you are quite well-read in him. The author of short essays, monographies: extraordinary clarity and capacity of synthesis. Familiar with Kabbala, India, China, “the West” – then in the 1930s, went to live in Cairo, became a Muslim, more or less founded a modern-day tariqah, married a young woman, fathered many children, was considered by the Cairenes as a sheikh.

[Dorjezigzag]

What caught my attention was that he took the number in his hospital room as a bad omen. Maybe it was because of the context he was in. I’m going to look into Jung and his relationship with 137, and if anything comes up, I’ll come back and share more thoughts on it.

Humans are fascinating because they are threshold beings, poised between the material and the spiritual.
Pauli and Jung liked the idea that 137 sits at the threshold between order and chaos, an archetype of the liminal, which is a deep occult theme: thresholds, veils, crossings.
Pauli didn’t fear the number itself or see it as bad or cursed. But in the context of finding it as his hospital room number, while gravely ill, made it feel like a doorway to another realm, a crossing over, true to its archetype of the in-between.

[Irminsül]

Posted by Dorjezigzag (here)

What caught my attention was that he took the number in his hospital room as a bad omen. Maybe it was because of the context he was in. I’m going to look into Jung and his relationship with 137, and if anything comes up, I’ll come back and share more thoughts on it.

Humans are fascinating because they are threshold beings, poised between the material and the spiritual.
Pauli and Jung liked the idea that 137 sits at the threshold between order and chaos, an archetype of the liminal, which is a deep occult theme: thresholds, veils, crossings.
Pauli didn’t fear the number itself or see it as bad or cursed. But in the context of finding it as his hospital room number, while gravely ill, made it feel like a doorway to another realm, a crossing over, true to its archetype of the in-between.

Sure, now I understand how he might have interpreted that sign in relation to the number. That's right: we are liminal beings. This reminded me of the topic of the Dweller on the Threshold. Here's a brief explanation for those unfamiliar with it:

What is the Dweller on the Threshold?

The Dweller on the Threshold is a symbolic or archetypal entity representing the sum of the unredeemed aspects of the human soul: selfish desires, unhealed traumas, fears, accumulated karma, and even psychic entities created by the individual throughout their lifetimes.
It is the final great obstacle that the spiritual disciple must face before gaining access to higher planes of consciousness or enlightenment. In modern terms, it is the shadow of the soul.
It appears when someone has advanced spiritually to the point where they are about to cross the threshold between the lower human and the higher divine. There, they come face to face with this Dweller, which acts as a final test: are you ready to leave behind your past, your ego, your fears?

Origin and Main Authors

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the first to use the term "Dweller on the Threshold" in his esoteric novel Zanoni (1842). In it, the protagonist confronts a terrifying entity that symbolizes fear and inner spiritual obstacles.
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, revisited and expanded upon the concept, giving it a more technical occult meaning. In her writings and in Theosophical teachings, the Dweller is an accumulated thought-form that must be dissolved through spiritual work.
Alice A. Bailey, a disciple of Theosophy, also mentions it in her writings, particularly in Initiation, Human and Solar, where she describes it as an energetic projection of the disciple’s unresolved karma.
Rudolf Steiner, in his system of Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy), also refers to the Guardian of the Threshold as an entity the soul encounters on the path to higher self-awareness.

Equivalents and Analogies

In Jungian terms, the Dweller on the Threshold could be equated with the “dark side of the unconscious,” that is, the Shadow.
In shamanic or initiatory traditions, it is the “guardian of the threshold,” which appears when the initiate is about to enter other realms.
In transpersonal psychology, it is seen as a critical phase of inner transformation.

[Irminsül]

Posted by Merkaba360 (here)
Irminsul - Thanks for your kind words and glad you got something from it. I'm quite busy now so not going to respond to what you shared. But i'll quick give you some more to keep you busy lol.

Attachment 55403

You can find this on the website: in2infinity
Great website.

I have to re read their site for their explanation of it. But the pic seems to show that those 3 (musical) frequencies/ratios might correspond to the RGB colors and the superposition of those form the 7 rainbow colors. Although that could be totally wrong, i need time to figure it out.

The 7 points where the wave intersects the axis shows the spacing of the 7 rainbow colors on the spectrum. If i understood them correctly, the website said this is why not all 7 colors have the same range or bandwidth. Orange and yellow are closer together and supposedly have a smaller range of frequencies on the visible light spectrum.

I dont understand music theory but want to study it some day, so i can better understand the connection here between music harmonics , musical scale and this color spectrum/scale. I assume they must be the same thing mathematically, just light scale vs sound scale. As above (light) , so below (sound).

Can we think of the balance point, the black line as the point of perception? Like perception takes place when the wave crosses the center line. hmm

I dont understand how RGB is used in electronics to create all colors. I was trying to figure out if that is what they are trying to show in the diagram as well. 3 frequencies, which combine to create 7. That must be right, but I dont get how say orange would be made at that point. No blue + some green + much red = Orange? lol Not sure what the word "Tone" means with the arrow in the image as well.

I gotta run this through AI , and have it explain the RGB thing too.

Not sure why its Cyan and Blue. I thought it would be ROYGBIV. Indigo? The positions seem to be about right for the chakra positions, just dont know if there is a minor cyan chakra? The indigo third eye chakra would be between blue and violet.

Anyway , gotta run. Maybe you'll see things i didn't. I liked your response and will think over what u said and response another time. Keep up the great work to you and others on this thread.

PS . that website can keep you busy for a long time lol. Beware !! Its full of gems, although I cant understand everything as its not all explained clearly.

I had an AI analyze the chart you sent. From what I can see, you actually understood the concept well—even though it didn’t seem like it to you, haha. It’s true that if we (I mean you and I—someone on the forum probably does know about musical notes and light particle waves) knew the theories and laws behind musical notes and also had knowledge of physics (like how subatomic particles behave, or something along those lines), we could probably draw more conclusions than what we intuitively pick up just by looking at the chart you shared.

Still, it’s already something to be able to recognize that aspects of sound and light can be related. Once again, we see that throughout all of nature (and all of Creation, obviously), there are patterns or sequences everywhere that show there’s an Intelligence behind everything we call life.

Here’s the AI’s explanation:

🔴 Left Side – Light and Frequency (Electromagnetic Waves)
▪ "3 Speed of light / 2 Wavelength / 1 Frequency"
Frequency: the number of cycles (complete waves) per second.

Wavelength: the distance between two consecutive peaks (or troughs).

Speed of light: a universal constant that relates frequency and wavelength:
speed = frequency × wavelength

The image shows that:

If we double the wavelength, to maintain the same speed, the frequency is halved.

▪ "Combined Light Wave"
Here, waves of different colors (wavelengths) are combined, corresponding to different frequencies of visible light:

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Cyan, Blue, Violet — each color represents a different frequency of visible light.

The overlapping of waves creates a composite wave. This is the basis of how we perceive color mixtures, like white light.

"Tone" here refers to a base frequency or “note” of light, as an analogy with music.

🎵 Right Side – Analogy with Musical Intervals
The right side of the diagram applies harmonic musical relationships to waves.

▪ Octave
A wave that has twice the frequency of another (the same pattern but faster).

In music, this is an octave: it sounds like the same note, but higher.

In light, one can think of it as a color with twice the frequency, although perception differs from sound.

▪ Musical 5th
Two waves where one has a frequency 1.5 times the other (a 3:2 ratio).

In music, this creates a stable and pleasant harmony.

In light, combining frequencies in this ratio can generate complementary colors.

▪ Musical 4th
A 4:3 ratio between frequencies.

Also creates a harmonic sensation, though distinct from the fifth.

In light, this is more metaphorical, but can be used to think about color harmony.

🧠 Conclusion
This diagram suggests that light and sound, while physically different, share harmonic principles when it comes to frequencies and waves. Thus:

Colors = Notes (in a vibrational sense)
Color combinations = Chords
Double frequencies = Octaves

[Michel Leclerc]

A few little comments on what is stated about Sumerian above.

One: there are serious reasons for the hypothesis that Sumerian is a Nostratic language. Bomhard “statutorily” considers it as such, and cites many quite striking examples. His approach is typically “open-minded”, listing cognates from languages still awaiting acceptance by a majority of Nostraticists. In the same vein he allows Eskimo-Aleutian in for instance. Dolgopolsky, however, has a “conservative” point of view: he allows only Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Afroasiatic, Dravidian and Kartvelian languages into his concept of Nostratic, i.e. the six language families that are generally considered by Nostraticists as belonging to the “mega family”.

Two: in order to put this in perspective, I would like to raise a point of importance for non-(professional)-linguists. We should understand what it means when we say that English is a Germanic language, or that Greek is an Indo-European language.

English is considered Germanic because the Beowulf (from whose language modern English can be shown to “descend”, through “Middle English” (Chaucer’s English) and “New English” (Shakespeare’s English), is written in Old English, a form of Germanic, as are Old German, Old Norse, Old Frisian and Old Dutch. Additionally, this “Germanic-ness” is more specifically borne out by its grammar, which has features that are typical of Germanic languages. New, (“Shakespeare’s”), English also contains words from other Germanic languages like Old Norse (thanks to the Vikings), – but also non-Germanic “loan”-words, like Celtic (Irish, Welsh, Scotch) words, as well as masses of Romance, to be precise: French words. As English is largely Germanic (Indo-European) and Romance (Indo-European) in its vocabulary, and Germanic (Indo-European) in its grammar, it is called an Indo-European language.

Spanish is a Romance language, which means that is is basically an evolved form of Latin, of which roughly said 90 p.c. of its vocabulary consists, as well as its grammar. However, a sizable part of its vocabulary is evolved Arabic, which not only is not a Romance language, but neither an Indo-European one: Arabic is a Semitic language belonging to the Afro-Asiatic (or as Bomhard would say: Afrasian) language family – a fellow member of the Nostratic group. This means that Spanish has a 90% Indo-European and a 10% non-Indo-European vocabulary . But it does not end there: an admittedly smaller portion of Spanish vocabulary is Basque, and Basque is not “even” a Nostratic language (in other words, as I would say, it is a Vostratic language). As Spanish is largely Romance (Indo-European) in vocabulary and grammar – and although it also contains Afro-Asiatic (Arabic) and “Vostratic” (Basque) – it is called an Indo-European language.

Greek, however, is an interesting counter-example. Who would doubt the European-ness” of Greek? Well, the grammar of Greek is undoubtedly Indo-European, it has very strong similarities with the grammar of Sanskrit, Avestan, old Armenian, Latin, Old Germanic, Church Slavonic (all Indo-European languages)… but its vocabulary is only 50 p.c. Indo-European. (May that sink in.) Where does the other 50 p.c. come from? From Semitic, for instance (Greek not only absorbing the Semitic alphabet but also quite a number of words: wine (Greek oinos), for instance – or Egyptian (both being Afro-Asiatic languages) – or from various non-Nostratic (! cf. the Basque in Spanish) extinct languages maybe.., or even extinct Indo-European languages, maybe.. (maybe: we are already fully advancing “hypothetic hypotheses ”) – Yet we still call Greek Indo-European because of its very strongly “common Indo-European” grammar.

Going back to Sumerian, it appears that quite a number of its words are probable cognates of words in languages belonging to other Nostratic language families (Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic or Afrasian, etc..) (justifying, at least in part, Bomhard’s choice to list it among the Nostratic languages). That its grammar is very unlike Indo-European (i.e. like Greek, Latin, Germanic, Avestan, Sanskrit) may induce us at first to conclude that Sumerian is unrelated to “our” languages —— but that is because we spontaneously reason from the point of view of the inflectional grammatical type of “our”, widespread, languages who happen to be Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic. There is a different grammatical type present among the Nostratic languages, however, which is called the agglutinative type: it is characteristic of the Uralic family (Finnish, Hungarian), the Altaic family (Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese), the Dravidian family (Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada…)
So, Alan Bomhard would say: what we know about Sumerian grammar does not exclude Sumerian’s “Nostraticness” (as it displays one of its grammatical types) – and a sizable part of its vocabulary it shares with Nostratic languages.. Considering that, is it not time to shift our scientific hypotheses from the “Is Sumerian related to Nostratic languages?” question to the “How is Sumerian related to other Nostratic languages?” question?

[Irminsül]

Posted by Michel Leclerc (here)
A few little comments on what is stated about Sumerian above.

One: there are serious reasons for the hypothesis that Sumerian is a Nostratic language. Bomhard “statutorily” considers it as such, and cites many quite striking examples. His approach is typically “open-minded”, listing cognates from languages still awaiting acceptance by a majority of Nostraticists. In the same vein he allows Eskimo-Aleutian in for instance. Dolgopolsky, however, has a “conservative” point of view: he allows only Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Afroasiatic, Dravidian and Kartvelian languages into his concept of Nostratic, i.e. the six language families that are generally considered by Nostraticists as belonging to the “mega family”.

Two: in order to put this in perspective, I would like to raise a point of importance for non-(professional)-linguists. We should understand what it means when we say that English is a Germanic language, or that Greek is an Indo-European language.

English is considered Germanic because the Beowulf (from whose language modern English can be shown to “descend”, through “Middle English” (Chaucer’s English) and “New English” (Shakespeare’s English), is written in Old English, a form of Germanic, as are Old German, Old Norse, Old Frisian and Old Dutch. Additionally, this “Germanic-ness” is more specifically borne out by its grammar, which has features that are typical of Germanic languages. New, (“Shakespeare’s”), English also contains words from other Germanic languages like Old Norse (thanks to the Vikings), – but also non-Germanic “loan”-words, like Celtic (Irish, Welsh, Scotch) words, as well as masses of Romance, to be precise: French words. As English is largely Germanic (Indo-European) and Romance (Indo-European) in its vocabulary, and Germanic (Indo-European) in its grammar, it is called an Indo-European language.

Spanish is a Romance language, which means that is is basically an evolved form of Latin, of which roughly said 90 p.c. of its vocabulary consists, as well as its grammar. However, a sizable part of its vocabulary is evolved Arabic, which not only is not a Romance language, but neither an Indo-European one: Arabic is a Semitic language belonging to the Afro-Asiatic (or as Bomhard would say: Afrasian) language family – a fellow member of the Nostratic group. This means that Spanish has a 90% Indo-European and a 10% non-Indo-European vocabulary . But it does not end there: an admittedly smaller portion of Spanish vocabulary is Basque, and Basque is not “even” a Nostratic language (in other words, as I would say, it is a Vostratic language). As Spanish is largely Romance (Indo-European) in vocabulary and grammar – and although it also contains Afro-Asiatic (Arabic) and “Vostratic” (Basque) – it is called an Indo-European language.

Greek, however, is an interesting counter-example. Who would doubt the European-ness” of Greek? Well, the grammar of Greek is undoubtedly Indo-European, it has very strong similarities with the grammar of Sanskrit, Avestan, old Armenian, Latin, Old Germanic, Church Slavonic (all Indo-European languages)… but its vocabulary is only 50 p.c. Indo-European. (May that sink in.) Where does the other 50 p.c. come from? From Semitic, for instance (Greek not only absorbing the Semitic alphabet but also quite a number of words: wine (Greek oinos), for instance – or Egyptian (both being Afro-Asiatic languages) – or from various non-Nostratic (! cf. the Basque in Spanish) extinct languages maybe.., or even extinct Indo-European languages, maybe.. (maybe: we are already fully advancing “hypothetic hypotheses ”) – Yet we still call Greek Indo-European because of its very strongly “common Indo-European” grammar.

Going back to Sumerian, it appears that quite a number of its words are probable cognates of words in languages belonging to other Nostratic language families (Indo-European, Afro-Asiatic or Afrasian, etc..) (justifying, at least in part, Bomhard’s choice to list it among the Nostratic languages). That its grammar is very unlike Indo-European (i.e. like Greek, Latin, Germanic, Avestan, Sanskrit) may induce us at first to conclude that Sumerian is unrelated to “our” languages —— but that is because we spontaneously reason from the point of view of the inflectional grammatical type of “our”, widespread, languages who happen to be Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic. There is a different grammatical type present among the Nostratic languages, however, which is called the agglutinative type: it is characteristic of the Uralic family (Finnish, Hungarian), the Altaic family (Turkish, Mongolian, Korean, Japanese), the Dravidian family (Tamul, …)
So, Alan Bomhard would say: what we know about Sumerian grammar does not exclude Sumerian’s “Nostraticness” (as it displays one of its grammatical types) – and a sizable part of its vocabulary it shares with Nostratic languages.. Considering that, is it not time to shift our scientific hypotheses from the “Is Sumerian related to Nostratic languages?” question to the “How is Sumerian related to other Nostratic languages?” question?

All of this you're sharing is extremely interesting and captivating. Even though we're drifting a bit off-topic from the thread, haha. But I think that as long as no moderator comes to scold us, we can keep going with these topics.
I study linguistics in a very amateur way, and I had no idea about anything you're presenting. When I read that Nostratic proposes a common origin from which all other languages derived, I can’t help but think of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It feels like there’s some truth to that.
Just as there is undoubtedly some truth in the story of Noah’s Ark, since that myth appears in the traditions of several peoples who had no connection with each other (for example: the Maya and the Hindus).

By the way, I’m sharing some images of the site in question. And the response of an IA about these numbers:

There are some interesting connections between the Sumerians, their mathematical systems, and the numbers 37 and 137, although they are not immediately obvious and are often found more in the realm of esotericism, symbolic numerology, and modern reinterpretations than in explicit Sumerian texts.

1. The Sumerian Sexagesimal System and the Number 37
The Sumerians used a sexagesimal system (base 60), which was one of their major contributions to humanity. In this context:

The number 37 is not particularly significant in the sexagesimal system, but...

60 is divisible by 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 — but not by 37. However, 60 × 37 = 2220, and this number has been considered symbolically interesting by some numerologists (even though this doesn’t come directly from Sumerian sources).

The Sumerian mathematical structure was highly sophisticated, allowing for complex fractions and astronomical calculations, which has led some modern researchers to look for patterns in their tables that might match mathematical or cosmic constants.

2. The Number 137 and Its Modern Symbolism
The number 137 is famous today in physics and esotericism for representing the fine-structure constant, a fundamental constant that governs electromagnetic interaction. Although the Sumerians had no such concept, some hypotheses claim:

Some ancient cultures (such as Egyptian and Mesopotamian) may have had numerical and cosmological intuitions that are reflected today in numbers like 137.

Zecharia Sitchin and other speculative authors have suggested that the Anunnaki (extraterrestrial beings in his hypothesis) possessed advanced knowledge of astronomy and physics, and that certain key numbers might have been symbolically encoded.

In this framework, some associate 137 with forbidden or secret knowledge, and with the transmission of celestial wisdom to humans in antiquity.

3. Numerology, Symbolism, and Retroactive Kabbalistic Associations
In Hebrew, the number 137 is the gematria of קַבָּלָה (Kabbalah), which gives it a mystical aura.

Some see correspondences between Sumerian mythological structures (such as the 7 gates of the underworld or the 7 sages/apkallu) and numerological cycles centered on 137 — although this is more modern esoteric speculation than strict archaeology.

4. The Number 37 and Harmonic Patterns
The number 37 is a prime number that appears in interesting harmonic patterns:

3 × 37 = 111

6 × 37 = 222

9 × 37 = 333

etc.

These patterns are symbolically striking and have been used in mystical contexts. Although there’s no evidence that the Sumerians specifically used the number 37 as such, their fascination with repetitive numerical patterns was indeed present in their culture — for example, in ritual texts and astronomical tablets.

[Michel Leclerc]

Hello Irminsül, thank you for your reading harvest.

Apart from reacting to your statement

When I read that Nostratic proposes a common origin from which all other languages derived, I can’t help but think of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.

with two remarks:

(1) that no, Nostratic does not propose a common origin from which all other languages derived, but only for a limited set of language families: among which the Indo-European, the Afro-Asiatic aka Afrasian, the Uralic, the Dravidian, the Altaic and the Kartvelian; however, for instance the Sinitic languages (Chinese, Burmese, Tibetan), the Amerindian languages (of your American Indian neighbours), the Niger-Congo languages (among which the Bantu languages) and a vast number of other language families are not Nostratic. That is: when we remain within the realm of science (linguistics) – as we should do, at first at least. But we may speculate further, and not without pointing out strange “global” cognates, and then the idea of a common origin for (almost) all may pop up;

(2) that yes, the wording itself of the Bible passage suggests that association; and more: the consecutive Flood very much seems to be identical with the world-wide tsunamis created by the Groenland mereorite(s) about which Graham Hancock and others write. Glottochronology (a statistical tool of historical linguistics, allowing to date the fragmentation of languages in derived languages) suggests that the split-up of Nostratic into the constituent language families was more or less completed by the time of the Groenland catastrophe, which could have been preceded by a swarm of smaller (?) catastrophes and correlative language family fragmentations stretched out over a few millennia;
(2 bis) the French post-Freud and post-Lacan psychoanalyst Marie Balmary who is also a Bible scholar in a way, points out that the one language the Babel builders spoke was the result of their decision, or in other words, the Babel builder-unilingualists’ epoch was preceded by a period of language diversity (which, just like human reproduction and hence diversity, was the Creator’s plan) and His intervention in Noah’s time was meant to reinstate this diversity; writing this in the 80s Balmary prophesied our period, in which the world's civilisations are right now fighting their way out of a Neo-Babel Empire, imposing one type of society – and one language, English;

I agree with your nudge to go back to topic – and, for instance, to the remarkable multiples of 37.