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Pythagoras: ALL
is NUMBER Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics, and felt that everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic cycles. The combination of mathematics and theology began with Pythagoras.
According to Bertrand Russell Pythagoreanism characterized the religious philosophy in Greece, in the Middle ages, and down through Kant. In Plato, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza and Kant there is a blending of religion and reason, of moral aspiration with logical admiration of what is timeless. Mathematics, so honored, became the model for other sciences. Thought became superior to the senses; intuition became superior to observation. Platonism was essentially Pythagorean ism. The whole concept of an eternal world revealed to intellect but not to the senses can be attributed from the teachings of Pythagoras. A 6th-century bce Greek philosopher and mathematician, originally from Samos (an island off the coast of Asia Minor settled by the Greeks), he left home around 530 bce to escape tyranny.
Followers venerated him and they formed a communal religious order which survived for many generations. His influence with the rulers of his city forced him to retire elsewhere when the citizenry revolted. Pythagorean centers sprang up throughout the Greek mainland during the 5th century bce, including in Thebes and Athens, so he certainly influenced Socrates and therefore Plato.
In astronomy, the
Pythagoreans were well aware of the periodic
numerical relations of the planets, moon, and sun.
The celestial spheres of the planets were thought to
produce a harmony called the music of the spheres
(consonants of octaves, fifths, and fourths being
produced by simple ratios in the lengths of the
vibrating strings).These ideas, as well as the ideas
of the perfect solids, would later be used by
Johannes Kepler in his attempt to formulate a model
of the solar system in his work The Harmony of the
Worlds. Pythagoreans also believed that the earth
itself was in motion and that the laws of nature
could be derived from pure mathematics. It is
believed by modern astronomers that Pythagoras
coined the term cosmos, a term implying a universe
with orderly movements and events.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pythagoras/ |
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Sacred Numbers: Spiritual - Theosophy Dictionary on
Seven  |
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| Seven
The fundamental number of manifestation, frequently found in the
different cosmogonies as well as in many religious dogmas and
observances of the different ancient peoples. Although ten was called one of the perfect numbers by the Pythagoreans, seven was unique in their series of numbers because it has all the "perfection of the Unit -- the number of numbers. For as absolute unity is uncreated, and impartite (hence number-less) and no number can produce it, so is the seven: no digit contained within the decade can beget or produce it" (SD 2:582). Seven is the number of the manifested universe, while ten or twelve is the number of the unmanifested universe. Pythagoras taught that seven was composed of the numbers three and four, explaining that "on the plane of the noumenal world, the triangle was, as the first conception of the manifested Deity, its image: 'Father-Mother-Son'; and the Quaternary, the perfect number, was the noumenal, ideal root of all numbers and things on the physical plane" (ibid.). Further, seven was called by the Pythogoreans the vehicle of life for it consisted of body and spirit: the body was held to consist of four principal elements, while the spirit was in manifestation triple, comprising the monad, intellect or essential reason, and mind. There are innumerable instances of sevening -- the seven days of the week, the seven colors of the spectrum, the seven notes of the musical scale -- while special emphasis is placed upon the seven human and cosmic principles; the seven senses (five senses now in manifestation and two more to be attained in the future through evolutionary unfolding); the seven cosmic elements; the seven root-races and seven subraces; the seven kingdoms, human and below; the seven rounds; the seven lokas and talas; the seven manifested globes of the planetary chain; the seven sacred planets; the seven racial buddhas; the seven dhyani-bodhisattvas and -buddhas; the seven Logoi; etc. Man as well as nature is called saptaparna (seven-leaved plant), symbolized by the triangle above the square {illust}. While the senary was applied to man in all ranges from the physical to the spiritual, when completed by the atman, thus making the septenary, the latter signified the entire range of the constitution, whether of man or nature, crowned by the immortal spirit. In Hindu literature the number seven continually appears: the saptarshis (the seven sages), the seven superior and inferior worlds, the seven hosts of deities, the seven holy cities, the seven holy islands, seas, or mountains, the seven deserts, the seven sacred trees, etc. In Greece seven was often connected with the gods and goddesses: Mars had seven attendants, seven was sacred to Pallas Athene and to Phoebus Apollo -- the latter with his seven-stringed lyre playing hymns to septenary nature as well as to the seven-rayed sun; Niobe's seven sons and seven daughters, etc. Apart from mythological considerations, in physical life manifestations of the number seven occur continuously: "if the mysterious Septenary Cycle is a law in nature, and it is one, as proven; if it is found controlling the evolution and involution (or death) in the realms of entomology, ichthyology and ornithology, as in the Kingdoms of the Animal, mammalia and man -- why cannot it be present and acting in Kosmos, in general, in its natural (though occult) divisions of time, races, and mental development?" (SD 2:623n). Seven is indeed the sacred number of life, and with the circle and the cross it forms a triad of primordial symbols of the ancient wisdom. |
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