Lords of the Seven Planets. Seven is, of course, the perfect number, the mystic number, even as three; and all must be done by odd numbers. The woman in Vergil who tries to call back her estranged lover Daphnis by potent incantations cries: _numero deus impare gaudet_. (Heaven loves unequal numbers.) Eclogue viii. 75 (_Pharmaceutria_). S. Augustine, S. Ambrose, and Theodoret consider that when Balaam on the first occasion withdrew hastily saying “Peradventure the Lord will come to meet me,” he expected to meet a demon, his familiar. But “God met Balaam.” The very precipitation and disorder seem to point to the design of the sorcerer, for as in the Divine Liturgy all is done with due dignity, grace, and comeliness, so in the functions of black magic all is hurried, ugly, and terrible. One of the most striking episodes in the Old Testament is concerned with necromancy, the appearance of Samuel in the cave or hut at Endor. Saul, on the eve of a tremendous battle with the Philistines, is much dismayed and almost gives away to a complete nervous collapse as he sees the overwhelming forces of the ruthless foe. To add to his panic, when he consulted the Divine Oracles, no answer was returned, “neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets.” And although he had in the earlier years of his reign shown himself a determined represser of Witchcraft, in his dire extremity he catches at any straw, and bids his servants seek out some woman “that hath a familiar spirit,” and his servants said to him, “Behold there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at Endor,” which is a miserable hamlet on the northern slope of a hill, lying something south of Mount Tabor.