Posted on Sunday 15 February 2004 to Visions and Illusions

It seems like I'm really into circular images at the moment...

The Table of the Seven Deadly Sins, Hieronymus Bosch 1504 (Prado Museum, Madrid).
P.O.V. of God looking down at the sinful world including depictions of the Seven Deadly Sins: (starting from the bottom and proceeding anti-clockwise) Anger, Pride, Lust, Sloth, Gluttony, Avarice and Envy. In the centre appears the risen Christ and the inscription in latin ?Beware, Beware, God Sees you". In the corners Bosch depicts the four stages of man: Death, Judgement, Hell and Heaven.

...what about the magical number seven? What about the seven wonders of the world, the seven seas, the seven deadly sins, the seven daughters of Atlas in the Pleiades, the seven ages of man, the seven levels of hell, the seven primary colors, the seven notes of the musical scale, and the seven days of the week? What about the seven-point rating scale, the seven categories for absolute judgment, the seven objects in the span of attention, and the seven digits in the span of immediate memory?

Update: Globetrotting blogger PF (who is now living in Istanbul after a lengthy stay in Siberia) says that the Bosch picture above reminded him of The Wheel of Samsara which illustrates the essense of Buddhist teachings. It enumerates the six worlds of Buddhist cosmology, the worlds of gods, men, animals, Hungry ghosts, warring titans and Hell (which comes in both hot and cold varieties). Not a seven in sight however.

The text in the linked article gives a good rundown of the Wheel but the images are unfortunately fairly poor so he has also provided links to this exquisite gallery of Himalayan Art which has many high resolution, zoomable versions of the Wheel.