Three... the Magic Number?
- Laura Condon
- Apr 27, 2017
- 2 min read
Somewhere in the ancient, mystic trinity You get three as a magic number” – Schoolhouse Rock (1973).
For many the number three has an unspoken connection with magic. Although the reason why it does remains elusive. Even Bob Dorough, the composer behind the well-known song, admits he doesn’t know exactly why - “I just knew that it was, and my meager research bore me out, and the song after that just wrote itself.”[1]
Throughout history and mythology there are countless occurrences of the number three. The Holy Trinity in Christianity, the Wiccan Triple Goddess, the Trimurti in Hinduism. The shape of the pyramids, Plato dividing the Utopian city into three peoples, three languages on the Rosetta Stone. Octopuses have three hearts. Camels have three eyelids. In 2004, a man in Beijing paid $215,000 for the lucky phone number of 133-3333-3333. You could list examples forever.
For ‘Set In Stone’ three appears in the form of the Tres Matres (Three Mothers), an unclear blend of Roman and local religions. Fertility personified in three seated women.[2] While the Three Mothers are a depiction unique to Roman Britain and Gaul, the Romans did have their own triplicates too. Most well-known being perhaps the Three Fates, who are Greek in origin. In fact on two altars from Roman Britain Matres is linked with the Fates (RIB 951 and RIB 881). The Romans also worshipped the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.
The question still remains though, why? There are no references that I know of from primary sources of the period indicating any special reason behind the use of triads. A simple, albeit very ‘unmagical’ possible answer, is that three is aesthetically pleasing. Take for example the fragment of a Three Mothers altar found in Halton Chesters (Object Number: 1960. 33) which you can see in our exhibition. On it, the middle ‘mother’ is seated higher than her companions (one of whom sadly does not survive). She acts as the ‘point’ in the triangle. This allows the artist to create a rather nice architectural setting for their piece.
Could it be as simple as that? The perhaps unsatisfying answer is that we’ll never really know. Well unless some handy Romano-British texts pop up! But isn’t speculating half the fun of it anyway? Three, magic or not, is interesting in its ubiquity and it is ubiquitous to Roman Britain in the stone form of the Three Mothers. Whatever the Romans and the locals saw exactly in the triad is lost to us but the stones remain as testament to their belief.
[1] Andy Newman, ‘Blessed In Triplicate’, The New York Times (October 12, 2008).
[2] Although full disclosure there is a surviving altar from London depicting them as a set of four – way to ruin it! The vast majority of surviving examples show a triad.
Image Source: https://ohmy.disney.com/news/2013/10/22/fates-whats-the-matter-with-everything/
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