My first book, The Seven Laws of Money, was written based on a paper that I had dictated a year and a half earlier. That was some time in the spring of 1973. I gave the paper the title The Seven Laws of Money based on the contents of the paper itself and the fact that I dictated it in the presence of Salli Rasberry who wanted guidance on the money issues that she could use in creating the modern world of homeschooling and in the presence of my longtime college friend Charles Roll who was an expert on sinology. It was Charlie who told me about the seven structure in Chinese literature and poetry. I used that in the construction of The Seven Laws of Money. I also used Rasberry’s illustrations and Charlie’s poetry.
In the late fall of 1973 before the book was to be published in Spring of 1974, Rasberry and I went to the Library of Congress to see if that title has been used before or if a similar book had been previously written. There was one book with the title seven in it, it was a 1900 children’s book about a rabbit.
Now we have Google and no longer need to visit the Library of Congress to get comprehensive access to published material. If you Google the seven laws, my book is number four or five. It is not the original book shown, it is a reprint by Shambhala that is still in print. Along with my version of the original book.
Google presents us with other publications titled the seven laws. Several of the titles were not in the Library of Congress because they were not books.
The other titles are about the seven laws of Noah. While I am a well educated in Jewish history, I did not know this terminology. Or if I knew it it was submerged very deeply in my subconscious.
The seven laws of Noah were created by Maimonides in the 12th century. It is an abbreviation of the 10 Commandments of Moses. Four of the first six have been removed because they concern Jews and the contract between God and the Jews. Two have been added which were needed to believe in an afterlife and rebut false stories about Jews. Maimonides was surrounded by Catholics and Mohammedans for whom an afterlife was very important. Maimonides was forced to add this to the Jewish repertoire for survival reasons.
Was the seven laws of money derived from Chinese literature or the Jewish literature in my subconscious?