THE NUMEROLOGY BEHIND THE GRIMMS' TALES AUTHOR: ROBERTO SOLINO - JUNE/2013 Something outstanding in the Grimms' tales

is the use of numbers. Searching for terms like one, two, three and so on until twenty, we come to discover that there are seven numbers that show up as the most used: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7 and 12. The other numbers appear no more than six times. One can suppose a religious motivation behind these numbers. The number one, for example, could be a reference to God, the pairs could point to the divine/human duality of Christ, the triples, to the Trinity. We don't think so. Maybe these references may be true, but we think they come from the before Christ era, from ancient Greek philosophy. Most of the Grimms' tales were collected from European oral tradition, so it's valid to believe that they can have a BCE origin. Such numeric citations resemble a reference to Pythagorean and Platonic numerology. The pythagoreans had as a doctrinal central point a figure formed by piling the first four numbers to form a triangle, and triangles were also basic in Plato's cosmology. Seven and twelve can point respectively to the number of heavenly bodies known in Antiquity and the signs of zodiac. One can point that there were eight heavenly bodies, including the Sphere of the Fixed Stars, but in the Grimms' tales there is also an eighth character to complete the number, as in The Wolf and the Seven Kids or even the man that blows the seven windmills. We think the reason why this numerology is present in the tales is that ancient folks believed that exposing people to these numbers would put them under their magical influence. Not only the content of the tales would be worth learning, but the mere listening would bring good luck to the listener. Kind of an aesthetic soteriology, where being exposed to sacred symbols and rituals can bring salvation. Works cited: The central point defended in my essay comes from Metaphysics classes I've taken from Prof. Glenn W. Erickson, Ph.D (http://www.cchla.ufrn.br/erickson/). Philosophical references here cannot be pointed to any specific source. (Essay written for the online course Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World coursera.org)