A Rembrandt resemblance?

[Madeleine Maudlin]

"Excuse me for butting in," Diotellevi said, "but if I understood
correctly, when the first seal is opened, the succession of keepers of that
seal doesn't end; it lives on until the breaking of the last seal, when all
the representatives of the order are to be present.  In every century then,
then--or, strictly speaking, every hundred and twenty years--there would
always be six keepers for each place, or thirty-six in all."
"Right."
"Thirty-six knights for each of the six places makes two hundred and
sixteen, the digits of which add up to nine.  And since there are six
centuries, we can multiply two hundred and sixteen by six, which gives us
one thousand two hundred and ninety-six, whose digits add up to eighteen,
or three times six, or 666."
"Splended, Professor. It's a revelation! By the way, did you know that nine
was the number of the knights who founded the Temple in Jerusalem?"
"And the Great Name of God, as expressed in the Tetragrammaton," Diotallevi
said, "has seventy-two letters--and seven plus two makes nine. But that's
not all, if you'll allow me. The Pythagorean tradition, which cabala
preserves--or perhaps inspired--notes that the sum of the odd numbers from
one to seven is sixteen, and the sum of the even numbers from two to eight
is twenty, and twenty plus sixteen makes thirty-six."


On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 11:45 AM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>wrote:

> A Rembrandt resemblance?
> Published by Charles on 15 June, 2012
>
> When I was searching for illustrations for my piece on ancient Sembl
> boards, I was under the impression that Rembrandt had made an
> illustration of some old sage having a vision of a slightly unusual
> form of the Sephirotic Tree of Jewish Kabbalah.
>
> I wasn’t able to find it: what I did find, however, was a different
> but similar Rembrandt etching, showing a wise old man having a
> diagrammatic vision – but not of the variant Sephirotic Tree that I
> recalled seeing…
>
> http://www.sembl.net/2012/06/a-rembrandt-resemblance/
>
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