The Elders and the Hours

Twenty-four is twice twelve, and it inherits twelve's association with the ordered cosmos while doubling it. Revelation seats twenty-four elders around the throne of God, a number usually read as the twelve tribes of Israel joined to the twelve apostles, the old covenant and the new. The day is divided into twenty-four hours, a scheme inherited from Egypt, where twelve hours of night and twelve of day were counted by the rising of decan stars. The Greek alphabet has twenty-four letters, and by that count the Iliad and the Odyssey were each divided by later editors into twenty-four books, a lettering that became the standard division. The doubled twelve thus organises time, text and the heavenly court alike.

Balliett's 1908 chart reduces twenty-four to six, home, responsibility and harmony in the standard modern keyword list; Cheiro's 1926 Book of Numbers develops no separate compound reading for twenty-four distinct from that of its lower relatives, so Florence Campbell's 1931 book and Juno Jordan's 1965 systematisation both simply carried the six-root reading forward, making twenty-four one of the numbers in the American chart the four successive writers treated with the least individual elaboration.