What is it you mortals don’t understand about the number nine ? I hear you summon it in your stumbling modern speech — with your nine lives, your cloud nine, the whole nine yards, dressed to the nines. .. yet you still fail to grasp the essential essence of nine.

Try it yourself. Pick a number, any two digit number will do. Add the two digits together and then subtract the total from the original number. The result will always be a multiple of nine, so adding the digits of your answer will always result in the number nine.

Throughout your history you have almost realised the significance of nine, let me refresh your ailing memories.

The trinity is a common spiritual number and nine, composed of three trinities, represents the principles of the sacred Triad. The Egyptians had a concept of ninefold cosmic levels. Nine was a significant number to the Etruscans, the early people of north west Italy who worshipped nine gods.

Nine was also a holy number in Rome where the goddess Nundina was honoured by holding a purification ceremony for male infants on their ninth day of life. The Greeks called nine “the horizon”, the imaginary line at the edge of the sky and at the same time the Muses were honoured, all nine of them, as they presided over daily life.

Christianity has nine orders of angelic choirs in nine circles of heaven and nine orders of devils within nine rings of hell. The gates of hell are numbered nine, three of brass, three of iron, and three of adamantine rock.

Up in the Hebrides a favourite folk cure for jaundice still consists in wearing a shirt previously dipped in water taken from the tops of nine waves, and in which nine stones have been boiled. Vestiges of numerical lore followed the emigrating Scots and I have heard, from my cave, what was once a preparatory chant to high magic but is now merely a rhyme to charm away warts… “nine times nine times….”

An early English medical prescription demonstrates the peculiar virtues of the number nine.:

For flying venom and every venomous swelling, on a Friday churn butter which has been milked from a neat or hind all of one colour, and let it not be mingled with water. Sing over it nine times a litany and nine times the Paternoster, and nine times this incantation.

In ancient China, where humans once had some sense, the number one represented the starting point and the number nine represented the extremity. As the odd numbers are seen as male-yang, the number nine is the ultimate masculine. The ninth day of the ninth month has long been a very important festival known as the Double Yang Festival, a time for wine and poetry inspired by the beautiful autumn scenery.

In the past, Chinese scholars would climb nearby mountains and look into the distance and think of their faraway friends. And that’s a festival I wish you would find worthy of keeping up — no matter what value you place nowadays on the number nine.