When studying multiple examples of numerological applications in twentieth-century music, some scholars establish a direct link between numerology and music. An intermediary in this connection, the cosmological myth, has remained outside the main focus of such studies, although numerology as such originally pertained to cosmological myths and associated rituals. Numerology is a part of cosmology.

Numbers’ Role in Cosmology

Numbers used in creation myths establish the order of creation and hierarchical systems of relationships. For example, the classification of nine great gods in ancient Egyptian mythology worked through this progression: 1-2-2-4 (= 9).

In ancient Chinese mythology, the main elements of the cosmological picture each bear an associated number: the sky, 1; the earth, 2; the human being, 3; and so on. Number 5 was a canonic model to categorize the main elements of both macro- and microcosmos, such as the five elements of nature, the five senses, five classes of animals, five parts of the human body, and five emotional states.

Many archaic texts, such as The Elder Edda or the Rig-Veda, treat numbers as venerated and potent entities because of their role in creation—for example, the three stages of creation described in the Rig- Veda. Toporov refers to a group of archaic folk texts unfolding sacred operations with numbers, the operations intending to establish order out of chaos and to segment the continuity of time. Some of these texts are magic spells, in which the undesirable elements are asked to leave the world one by one (“from nine eight, from eight seven,” and so on.)

Some simple folk texts preserve the cosmological myths with their numerical components. Such a text is a Russian folk puzzle describing the year and the World Tree: