Hmm.
Freakin' Church numerals, man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_encoding

It seems to be straightforward to translate these to Python.

I think they can be directly implemented in the Circle Language.

I still don't believe, although I'm staring right at it, that you don't
actually need the function objects themselves, /the patterns are enough./

W. T. F.  that's neat and cool (and deeply deeply weird.)