A MATHEMATICAL THEORY
1/3 is 0.333.. repeating.
2/3 is 0.666.. repeating.
3/3 is 0.999.. repeating.
You might say (1 + 1 + 1 = 3), but you can not say that 3/3 = 1. No other numbers behave this way; All other numbers can be divided by themselves to equal one.
Google will tell you that 3/3 equals 1, as if to say we must not look too long here. Even modern mathematicians will say that eventually the series of 9’s stop, but I have long felt we’re missing something overwhelmingly mysterious and crucial in our eagerness for simplification.
What if 3 requires a new definition? I see the number as a map.
Hidden in plain sight within 3, is the divine, mathematical force underlying all of creation. A chorus line of 9’s infinitely repeating.
3 is not whole. Rather, it is forever approaching wholeness. 3 is in motion. 3 is a container holding the perpetual cycles of living matter, exponentially unfurling from their smallest fractal template.
Neolithic Celtic peoples marked their birthing sites with the triskelion symbol- 3 unfurling spirals emanating from a single source. The symbol signifies holy trinities of life, death, and rebirth as well as the mind, body, and spirit required to form new life.
Recently, researchers at MIT photographed an egg at the moment of fertilization. They saw that “waves produced by billions of activated proteins surge through the egg’s membrane, signaling the egg to start dividing, folding, and dividing again, to form the first cellular seeds of an organism.”1.
Quarks, the smallest known quantum matter, mirror this pattern. Three quarks form a single atom- each with ionic charges of 1/3 (0.333 repeating) or 2/3 (0.666 repeating).
In these ways, 3 is Kali- the one who presides over Time as the sacred medium of creation and destruction.
As the mysteries of physical matter reveal themselves in threes, I think of our beginnings. A place before 3. A place where there is only 0, 1, and 2. A place preceding time and physical space- where nothing ripens and nothing rots, where everything is and is not. A point. A plane. A source. A seed.
AN ORIGIN STORY
In the beginning, there was nothing (0) and something (1).
The something stared into the nothing and the nothing stared back.
In the act of gazing at the nothing, the something realized its something-ness.
Something was something.
I am something, said something.
And thus it was so.
Let there be self.
This was the first act of making love. (0 + 1).
-
The something wondered if something could exist maybe something else could too.
And with that thought, something turned its head in a new direction and saw that there was something else.
The something else saw the something.
And thus it was so.
Let there be me and you.
This was the second act of making love. (1 + 1).
-
The something and the something else danced in a glorious dream for many eons. One day, something else said to something, “could there be another thing?”.
Curious, the lovers searched, but only found darkness. So they asked Time if she would help them create another something.
And Time in her great madness, filled her arms with heat and tension and love. And looked at them and said:
‘Because you longed for it,
I will build you a world,
with tide pools,
twice mended quilts,
night blooming cacti,
ice cream that drips,
rotting decay,
stagnant regret,
and unbothered laughter.
Because you longed for it,
I will build you a world forever becoming.’
And thus it was so.
Let there be change.
This was the third act of making love. (1 + 1 + Time), never to be divided again.
Thanks for reading w/in space :)
MIT study: “The growth of an organism rides on a pattern of waves” [https://news.mit.edu/2020/growth-organism-waves-0323]; 2020.