Five is a sacred number to the followers of Pythagoras. Two is woman and three is man, thus five is marriage. The number four, defining a triangle-based pyramid which is the simplest of three-dimensional shapes, is their way of denoting space, but add to four a single unit—the One that is the beginning of everything—and you get five. Space and divinity: five is their great mystery, because it denotes hieros gamos, the combination of godhead and matter, whose product is mortality and the flow of time. Five is also the number of secret places of the Pentemychos, in which it is well known, in this syncretic empire of Rome in Africa, that Jupiter Ahura Mazda concealed the seeds of a new creation, in case Angra Mainyu should destroy what is. There are five books in the Torah, five fingers on the Hand of Miriam; there are five elements and five Wounds of Christ from which flow the five rivers in the kingdom of Hades, and five bad angels that watch over them until at last they run into the lower ocean and rise again to the beginning. The Goddess slew five demons and wove their skins to make a cloak that turned all blades. Five becoming one: rivers becoming seas, time becoming God. What lies beneath the lower ocean? Perhaps the upper. Perhaps the world wraps around the world like the serpent Ouroboros.