I’ve been thinking about the number three lately. Not unusual if you consider how much three pops-up in our collective psyche: three cheers; red, yellow, green; the Holy Trinity; birth, life, death; three primary colors. Three expresses the tripartite wholeness of our universe. We instinctively recognize it. Three is a group. Less is nothing much really and more than three is excessive or redundant.

I started looking for three in Moroccan design. There is only one pattern I can think of that is clearly triangular. I call it water because it flows. I’m not sure what the formal name of the pattern is. I tried creating it a few times and realized I need a triangle grid, not square, to get the motion right. It makes use of a six-point star; two triangles, Seal of Solomon.

In Sumerian language, numbers were called man, woman, many. In Greek culture, the monad (one) and dyad (two) were considered parents of all other numbers. Like numbers, descriptions for colors also vary across time and from culture to culture. But all cultures have words for at least black, white and red. This limited vocabulary expresses that there is color, absence of color, and then infinite color. Three is the threshold to many. Three introduces infinity and infinite possibility.

There is no number like three. It is the only number of infinite many that is the sum of all numbers that precede it.

The first shape to emerge from the vesica pisces is the triangle. It is the first shape born of space (circles) and nonspace (point). It resolves the duality of two circles and lets surface forms emerge. Triangles are the surface of our universe. The pattern goes on forever. We ourselves are three parts, head, body, limbs. We recognize three within ourselves and within our world. It ties us, mysteriously, to the whole. Somehow, three becomes one.

I wrote an article about the story of two and the archway that is so common in Morocco and how it is formed by the vesica pisces. But two has no harmony. Two is a tension, and expression of polarity, a reflection of opposites. Two is the black and white; the yes-and-no world. There must be a third to resolve the tension of two and create harmony. The archway is nothing without the keystone. Two coming together make three. Like two chemicals introduced to each other, if there is any reaction both are changed and emerge as a third.

I look for three in Moroccan patterns. I mentioned one where it is evident. The other patterns don’t seem to pay the number three specific tribute. But three is in every pattern; the 12-point star, the underlying grids, the surface of our world. Anything that expresses the infinite or the interconnectedness of our universe and our lives makes use of the number three.