Theurgy and Numbers

Book excerpt: ''As a writer I thought that magical arts were language driven. I mean, we call them 'spells.' We have 'Words of Power, ' mantras, chants, and invocations. But with mathematics we have something else entirely. If I write down I saw three bluebonnets blooming today, you know exactly how many (even if you don't have the pleasure of knowing that it is the state flower of Texas). In fact, you can know the number even if you do not know English. In fact, you can know the number even if every single human perishes and you are some visiting alien from Tau Ceti. This would be true as your ability to grasp the Fundamental Theorem of the Calculus or the quadratic formula or )amusingly enough) Goedel's Incompleteness Theorems. Mathematics is where the mind can grasp the stuff of the Cosmos. We need only think of the terrible flash seen on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, or the beauties of the Mandelbrot set, or watch children play at cutting a Moebius, to understand that math is at he secret heat of the physical world. And that math is the key to 'wonderworking'.'' -- Don We