The Many Lives And Tricks of 9

By Pico Iyer

It passes through our minds, it tumbles off our fingers every day. Regardless almost of our race or tongue, it is as close to us as the date of our birth, the number of our telephone, the house in which we live. Yet how often do we ever think of 9? In numbers, Pythagoras and Plotinus and other worthies have believed, lie the secrets of the universe; God and nature move in 40-day rotations, 28-day cycles, passages of 9 months. And in 9 alone is a universe -- maybe even a paradise -- if only we would stop and look.

Every number has its character, its own distinctive coloring: 5, for instance, is the gray accountant, the user-friendly solid citizen, the John Major, if you like, of integers; 6 has the springtime bounce of a perky cheerleader, though taken too far, it leads straight to hell (666 is the number of the Beast). And 7 is everybody's lucky number -- we base our lives around 7 seas, 7 heavens and 7 graces (as well, inevitably, as their shadow side, the 7 deadlies). But what of 9? It is, we all know, an odd number (very odd), and an early square. It is a 6 on its head, a circle and a line, the highest digit and the last, with something of the darkness that attaches to last things. Yet it has strange magic in it. Multiply any number by 9, and the sum of the digits will also come to 9 (7X9=63; 6+3=9). Reverse the digits, and the number you get (36) will also be a multiple of 9. Take any number you choose (4,321) and divide it by 9. The remainder you get (1) will be the same as the remainder you get when you add the digits (4+3+2+1) and divide by 9. That is why mathematicians check their calculations by "casting out nines."

Thus 9 is the source of magic squares, pool-table pyramids, and various patterns that reproduce themselves indefinitely. Most of us, however, know it on less formal terms: as a friend to decision making (9 judges on the Supreme Court) and the key to the heavens (9 planets and 9 Muses). Statisticians covet it -- since if all 9 members of a baseball team have 9 at bats (in any number of 9-inning games), their batting averages can be computed instantaneously (2 for 9 is .222, 3 for 9 is .333, 4 for 9 is .444, and so on, through the order). And 9 is a priceless aid to shopkeepers, who will keep on charging $9.99 or $49.95 till the end of time. In binary terms, 9 is 1001 -- the number of adventure and romance; in England you dial 999 for emergencies (to reverse, perhaps, the diabolic effect of 666). Yet 9 also has an edge to it, the menace that comes from lying along a fault line: it is the number just before the boxer is counted out, the cat runs out of lives, the lover slams the door.

Every number, of course, is only what we make of it, and one man's anguished 10-1 is another's rosy 2+3+4. In fact, 4 was the divine tetraktys for Pythagoras, and we comfort ourselves still with 4 seasons, 4 directions and 4 elements. Yet in China there are 5 of each -- not least, perhaps, because the character for 4 is a homonym of the character for death (and even now, in many Far Eastern hotels, a fourth floor is as rare as a 13th).

Nine is equally two-faced. Christ died at the 9th hour, and Macbeth's Weird Sisters chant eerily, "Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine/ And thrice again, to make up nine." Yet the Egyptians were devoted to the Enneads (a triple triad). The legends of northern Europe revolve around 9 bards, 9 dragons, 9 stones in a circle. We all know of Dante's 9 circles of Hell, but few, perhaps, remember that they were merely the inversion of the 9 he associated with Heaven. In the Middle Ages, indeed, 9 was "first and foremost the angelic number." Milton divided his Nativity ode into 3 sections of 9 stanzas * each; one 16th century church in Venice has, quite consciously, a nave 9 paces wide and 27 paces long.

All this, you may say, is mere antique superstition. Yet many lives, even today, still hang in the balance of numbers. The bustling contemporary city of Kyoto, in Japan, is divided into 9 auspicious sections. In Beijing, within an old man's memory, the Emperor would ascend the Altar of Heaven -- a perfect circle inside a perfect square -- and, his 9 grades of mandarins performing a 9-fold bowing before him, survey a world of 9s. "From the center of the topmost tier nine rings of paving-stones radiated out in concentric multiples of nine," explains author Colin Thubron, "and fanned down into the lower terraces, nine rows to each, in ever-expanding manifolds of nine." To this day, the 37 million citizens of Burma are ruled not only by the shadow dictator Ne Win, but by his favorite number, 9. A devotee of golf (no coincidence), Win governs his life by 9s -- he took 45 people with him on a trip to America; he overthrew an upstart civilian government on the 18th day of the 9th month; he gave his party the 9th, 18th and 27th slots on electoral ballots. Yet he finally overstepped the mark when, four years ago, he decided on a whim to replace all 25-, 35- and 75-kyat bank notes with 45- and 90-kyat notes -- thus, at a stroke, rendering half the currency in Burma worthless and many Burmese citizens, who kept their savings at home, penniless. "The number nine is not just lucky," a Western diplomat told the New Yorker. "It is a powerful number, which has to be conquered. Otherwise, it's a danger to you."

Does any of this have any bearing on us? Even Goethe might not too readily say, "Nein." For this, let us remember, is a palindromic year, the first since 1881; and those still alive 11 years from now will be the first for a millennium -- since 1001, in fact -- to experience two palindromic years. Anyone who doubts the power of the number 9 need only talk to someone who was 39, or 49, last night, and is 40, or 50, today. In short, 9 is no 9-day wonder; it is, for many, "the number of heaven itself." So this week, as we go about noting the date 9/9, let us spare a thought for the number that will be keeping us close company for 9 more years at least. And ponder the reverberations of Emerson's pregnant epigraph to nature, "The rounded world is fair to see/ Nine times folded in mystery."