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The Beads of the Rosary

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The Beads of the Rosary

Fifty-nine is prime and reduces to fourteen and then five. Its one concrete traditional use is Catholic: the standard five-decade rosary carries fifty-nine beads, fifty-three small beads for the Hail Marys and six larger ones for the Our Fathers, strung on the loop and pendant that guide the prayer. The number also has a lunar echo, since two synodic months run to about fifty-nine days, so a pair of months alternating twenty-nine and thirty days totals fifty-nine, the basis of the paired-month reckoning in lunar calendars.

Fifty-nine falls outside Cheiro's original 1926 compound-number scheme, which runs only from ten to fifty-two, so this atlas reports no reading attributed to his book; Balliett's 1908 chart reduces it instead to five, by way of fourteen, change, freedom and the senses in the standard modern keyword list, a reading with no bearing on the rosary's fifty-nine beads or on the number's incidental fit to a pair of lunar months, both already described above. In chemistry, fifty-nine is the atomic number of praseodymium, a rare earth element whose name comes from the Greek for leek-green, describing the colour of its salts, and which is used today to tint certain welding-goggle glass and ceramic glazes a protective green.

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