Pythagoras: His Life and Teaching, a Compendium of Classical Sources

by Wasserman, James

  —Deum domus alta [the high house of the gods]

  Number, emanating from the divinity by degrees, declines to the figure of creatures; instead of the Tetractys, a Tetragon. In each of its angles a point, for so many units, the unit at the top, which now begins to have position, elevated as much as is possible. Thus the former sides elevated will be four triangles, built upon their quadrangular latitude, and carried on to one high point. This is the Pyramid itself, the species of fire, of which a Pyramid having four bases and equal angles is compounded.982 It is the most immovable and penetrant form, without matter essential separate light, next to God sempiternal life.

  The work of the Mind is life; the work of God is immortality, eternal life. God himself is not this created light, but the Author of all light, whereof in the divine Trinity He contains a most absolute Pyramid, which implies the vigor of Fire. Whence the Chaldeans and Hebrews affirm that God is Fire. But the Pyramid which this divine Tetractys produces is the fiery light of the immaterial world, of separate intelligences, beyond the visible Heaven, termed , age, eternity, aether.

  Having overcome these things (says Pythagoras), thou shalt know , the cohabitation, of the immortal gods, and mortal men. †983 In which words are implied three properties of this middle world: Condition, Chorus, and Order. (Pythagoras terms the middle world “free Aether”; free, as being separated from the power of matter; Aether, as receiving ardor from God and heating all inferiors by an insensible motion.)

  Condition: It is replenished with forms, simple, immaterial, separate, both universal and individual, containing all ideations of genus and species. The exemplars are imitated in lesser copies, their original being in the Divine Mind. Thus the world of the Deity is the absolute exemplar: in the intelligible world the abstract example; and in the sensible world, not example but contraction of exemplars, as seal, figure, and sealed wax.

  Chorus: It is the infinite joy of the blessed spirits, their immutable delight, styled by Homer , inextinguishable laughter.† For what greater pleasure, than to behold the serene aspect of God; and next Him, the ideas and forms of all things, more purely and transparently, than secondarily in created beings? And to communicate these visions to inferiors, the office of the gods called , from speculation and vision. These are the Angels communicating their visions to others, not that we imagine them equal to the Supreme God who is ineffable. No Daemons, how good soever, are admitted into this chorus: so says Plotinus (the most exact follower of the Pythagorean Mysteries, as Porphyry and Longinus attest). The gods we conceive to be void of passion.984 But to Daemons we adjoin passions, saying they are sempiternal in the next degree after the gods. It is better to call none in the intelligible world Daemon; rather, if a Daemon be placed there, to esteem him a god.

  Order: It is thus explained by Pythagoras. If thou live according to right reason, grieving for what is ill done, and rejoicing in what is well done, and prayest the gods to perfect thy work:

  Then stript of flesh, up to free Aether soar,

  A deathless god, divine, mortal no more. 985

  This is the order in the acquisition of man's beatitude. The incorporeal Heaven of the middle world—the invisible Olympus of the blessed—admits nothing impure. Therefore vices are to be shunned and virtues to be embraced. The preservation of men is by the mercies of God. Therefore the Divinity is to be worshipped, and the superior powers to be invoked, that they would perfect our work. Lastly, nothing material, corporeal, or mixed is received there. Therefore we must die, and wholly put off the body, before we can be admitted to the society of the gods.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE SENSIBLE WORLD

  We now come down to the sensible World.986 Its exemplar is the world of the Deity; its example the intelligible world of Ideas, the , subsistence of exemplars in itself. As One is the beginning of the intelligible world, so is Two of the corporeal. It would not be corporeal if it did not consist of these four: point, line, superfices, solidity—after the pattern of the Cube, made by one, two, three, four.

  One, fixed by position, creates a point. A line, being protracted from one point to another, is made of the number two. A superfices arises from three lines. A solid contains four positions: before, behind, upwards, downwards. Two multiplied in itself produces four; retorted into itself (by saying twice two twice) makes the first Cube. Next five (the Tetragonical Pyramid, principle of the Intelligible World) is the cube of eight with six sides, architect of the Sensible World. Amongst principles, the Heptad has no place, being virgin, producing nothing, and therefore named Pallas.

  This first cube is a fertile number, the ground of multitude and variety, constituted of two and of four. Zaratas termed two “the Mother”; we call the cube that proceedes from it “Matter,” the bottom and foundation of all natural beings, the seat of substantial forms. Timaeus says: from the Tetragon is generated the Cube, the most settled body, steadfast every way, having six sides, eight angles.987 The form immersed in this solid receptacle is not received loosely, but fixedly and singly. It becomes individual and incommunicable, confined to time and place, losing its liberty in the servitude of Matter. Thus the two principles of temporal things: the Pyramid and Cube, Form and Matter, flow from one fountain, the Tetragon, whose Idea is the Tetractys, the divine exemplar.

  Now there is requisite some third thing to unite these two, Matter and Form. For they flow not into one another spontaneously or casually; the matter of one thing does not contingently receive the form of another. When the soul departs out of man, the body becomes not brass or iron, neither is wool made of a stone. There must then be a third thing to unite them. (Not privation: privation and power act nothing substantively. Nor motion: an accident cannot be the principle of a substance.) God is the uniter, as Socrates and Plato acknowledge.988 They say there are three principles of things: God, Idea, and Matter—symbolized before by Pythagoras in these three secret marks: Infinite, One and Two. By Infinite, designing God; by Unity, Form; by Diversity, Matter. Infinite, in the Supreme world; One, or Identity, in the Intellectual; Two, or Diversity, in the Sensible, for Matter is the mother of Alteration.

  The Tetragonal bases of these figures, joined together, make a Dodecahedron, the symbol of the Universe. Alcinous says God used the Dodecahedron in making the Universe this world. 989 If upon an octangle Cube we erect a Pyramid, by four equal-sided triangles, it makes a Dodecahedron, wherein the Cube is, as it were, mother, and the Pyramid, father. Thus Timaeus: Form has the nature of male and father; Matter of female and mother; the compositions are their offspring.990

  Of these are produced all things in this world by their seminal faculties; which things appear in a wonderful variety by reason of the various commensuration of forms to their matter, and the admixture of innumerable accidents—by excess and defect, discord and amity, motion and rest, impetuosity and tranquility, rarity and density. Hence arise the Spheres, the Stars, the four Elements: out of which come forth hot, moist, cold, dry, and all the objects of sense, the transmutation of forms, and variety of colors in several things.

  The gods are natural, the gods of gods supernatural. Those inhabit the inferior world, these the superior. The gods of gods are most simple and pure, as being nowhere. They are supercelestial as being everywhere. They are with us here strangers, there natives; never in our world, but when sent: Angels, messengers from heaven, appearing in what form they please, kind and beneficial to us. The inferior spirits never ascend to the super celestial, but are sent sometimes on embassy to us, whence termed Angels as the others.

  God himself inhabits the lowest, the highest, and the middlemost intimately; so that there is no being without God. Moreover, the gods of this world are more excellent than the souls of men—though those assist, these inform bodies. Between them are placed Daemons and Heroes—Daemons next the gods, Heroes next souls—mentioned by Pythagoras in his Golden Verses, who assigns to each a peculiar worship.

  Croesus (561-546 B.C.), the Lydian king so rich that his name became proverb
ial for wealth, issued this gold stater which shows the confronted foreparts of a lion and a bull. The reverse bears the impressions of two square punches of unequal size.

  Photo courtesy of Numismatica Ars Classica

  CHAPTER 6

  THE STATE OF THE SOUL AFTER DEATH

  Rational man is more noble than other creatures.991 He is more divine. He is not content solely with one operation (as all other things drawn along by nature, which always act after the same manner), but imbued with various gifts, which he uses according to his free will. In respect of which liberty:

  —Men are of heavenly race,

  Taught by diviner Nature what t'embrace. 992

  By “diviner Nature” is meant the Intellectual soul. As to intellect, man approaches nigh to God; as to inferior senses, he recedes from God. Reason teaching us what to embrace, when it converts itself to the mind, renders us blessed. When perverted by the senses, wretched. For men often straying from the rule of right reason precipitate themselves into misery, , in Pythagoras's word, incurring ills voluntarily.†

  Thus is man placed between Virtue and Vice, like the stalk between the two branches in the Pythagorean Y,† or young Hercules described by Prodicus. As therefore none can be called happy before his death (as Solon said to Croesus993), so none is to be esteemed unhappy while he is in this life. We must expect the last day of a man. If when he has put off his body, he remains burdened with vices, then begins he to be truly miserable. This misery after death Pythagoras divides into two kinds. The unhappy are either near Beatitude, which though at the present they enjoy not, yet are they not oppressed with extreme misery, being hereafter to be delivered from their punishment. Or wholly distant from Beatitude, in endless infinite pains. Thus there are two mansions in the Inferi: the Elysium, possesed by those that are to ascend into blessedness; and Tartarus, by those who endure infinite torments -. From these torments, Plato, imitating Pythagoras, says they never come out.† But when a man who has lived justly dies, his soul ascends to the pure Aether and lives in the happy realm of Eternity with the blessed, as a god with the gods.

  Man is the image of the world. He, in many things, metaphorically receives the names of the world.994 The mind of man (as the Supreme mind) is termed God by participation. The rational soul, if directed by the mind it incline the will to virtue, is termed the good Daemon or Genius; if by phantasie and ill affections it draws the will to vices, the evil Daemon. Whence Pythagoras desires of God to keep us from ill, and to show everyone the Daemon he ought to use.995 Leaving the body, the soul if defiled with vices becomes an evil Daemon. Its life, , infelicity; but if having forsaken vice it retain a solicitous affection to the good exercises and virtues which it practiced in this life, it shall become a good Daemon. And in the amenity of that world live happily, reflecting with joy upon the good actions it has done, and retaining the same willingness to the right doing of them. This life is , felicity, of which Virgil says:996

  —the same care

  Which heretofore, breathing this vital air,

  Of Chariots, Arms, and sleek-skin'd Steeds they

  Pursues them now in earth's cold bosom laid.

  These souls the Ancients termed Lemures. Of these, that which lives in and takes care of any particular house is Lar familiaris. That which, for its demerits in this life, wanders up and down in the air, a terror, vain to good men, but to the bad hurtful is Larva. Those which are not certainly known to be Larvae or Lares, are called Dii manes: Dii, out of reverence, who having performed the course of their lives prudently and justly, died holy.

  CHAPTER 7

  OF THE PYTHAGOREAN TRANSMIGRATION

  It is commonly averred that Pythagoras held the opinion that the souls of men after death informed the bodies of beasts. We cannot imagine this of so knowing a person. The suspicion of this Transanimation seems rather to have been raised by such as were partly ignorant and partly envious of the Pythagorean mysteries. These included Timon, Xenophanes, Cratinus, Aristophon, Herippus, and others who have ascribed many things to Pythagoras which he never said nor wrote, and have perverted what he did say.997

  Pythagoras held that the substantive unity of one number is not the unity of another number. That the Monads in the Duad are not connected to those in the Triad. That the participate essence of everything is One, which will not occupy the essence of another thing.

  No animal (then) can transmigrate into the life of a different animal. But it must continue under the Law of its own nature in its proper office, , species not being coincident with species. One seal may make many impressions upon several pieces of wax, but one piece of wax cannot bear the form of many seals.

  The seal of human form (the image of God) is not permitted to set an impression upon inferior nature—implied by Pythagoras in this Symbol, We must not wear the image of God in a Seal-ring.998 The image of God (man's soul) cannot seal or form the other natures that are near it. So Hermes Trismegistus, “Of man, one part is simple, which we call the form of divine similitude.” And again, “There are two images of God, the World and Man.”

  This is the meaning of Pythagoras concerning the transmigration of souls after death and their descent into life. Others thought that the soul is drawn forth out of the power of Matter; Pythagoras asserted it is infused by God into the body, and therefore before it, not in time but in purity and dignity. This infusion he termed, “The descent of the soul.” This is not be be understood as its situation or its motion from the intellectual world, as interpreted by several who heard the elementary idea such as Proclus; but of the natural series or form—the rational soul being the ultimate perfection of the human body.

  That Pythagoras said he was in times past Euphorbus, the meaning is this.999 The Ancients called the inclinations and wills of men their Minds; whence such as are of one study, intention, inclination, motion, and sense are termed Unanimous. Thus the ancient Philosophers call the motive and sensitive faculty, the Soul. An animate differs from an inanimate (says Aristotle) chiefly in two things: Motion and Sense. Whosoever therefore are alike affected and moved by the same object are said to have the same Soul. The Metempsychosis then is nothing else but equal care, motion, and study of some dead person appearing in some living person. Thus Pythagoras might arrogate the soul of Euphorbus, Callicles, Hermotimus, Pyrrhus, Pyrander, Calidona, and Alce as having an inclination to the several excellencies that were in those persons.

  Again, in saying he was Euphorbus, Pythagoras enigmatically taught not the transmigration of souls, but the transmutation of bodies out of first matter.1000 It is not only susceptible, but covetous of all forms, continually desiring, never satiated with any. It is as if a comedy (to use the comparison of Aristotle) should say, “I was first a tragedy,” because both tragedy and comedy are formed of the same letters and elements.1001 Thus Apollonius, demanding of the Indian Brahmans what their opinion was concerning the Soul, Iarchus answered, “According as Pythagoras delivered to you, we to the Egyptians.” Apollonius replies, “Will you then affirm you were one of the Trojan captains, as Pythagoras said he was Euphorbus?” Thespasion warily asks, whom he thought the most worthy of them? “Achilles,” saith Apollonius, “if we believe Homer.” Then Iarchis said, “Look on him as my progenitor, or , progeniting body;† for such Pythagoras esteemed Euphorbus.”1002

  Or if he meant it historically, , that is the soul, separate from the body, may by the power of God be brought again the same into the same body. The body in which Pythagoras was so often revived, though called by several names, was one and the same—not in quantity, but substance. As the sea is one and homogeneous in itself, yet is here called Aegean, there Ionian, elsewhere Myrtaean and Colsaean—so one man often reborn is named Aethalides, Euphorbus, Hermotimus, Pyrrhus, and lastly Pythagoras. These generations he ascribes not to the power of Nature but to the God Mercury. None can revive but by the Divine power of God, whom he acknowledges, , Animation of all things. He infuses soul into all men, and being infused takes it away—and being take
n away, restores it, when and as often as he pleases.

  GLOSSARY

  Antichthon: The Pythagorean concept of an unseen counter earth, whose motion always keeps it at 180° from the earth, hidden from view by the sun.

  Callicia: According to Pliny, Pythagoras ascribed to this plant the power of turning water into ice. (See Coriacesia.)

  Ceraunian Stone: Refers to Ceraunite, “Thunder-stone,” a meteorite mineral from which, it is said, Thunderbolts (such as that of Jupiter) were fashioned.

  Choenix: A Greek dry measure, almost equal to a quart.

  Chromatic: In Greek music, the name given to one of three kinds of tetrachords, the two others being Enharmonic and Diatonic. A scale which proceeds by semitones.

  Chyles: Lymph that is milky from emulsified fat, most apparent during intestinal absorption of fats. Also, more broadly, the fluid in the intestines prior to absorption.

  Cledon: An ancient Greek term for the phenomena in which unsuspecting people are used by the gods to convey messages to the inquirer. Stanley defines Cledons as, “observations of occurrent speeches, collecting from what is accidentally said upon some other occasion, the effect of what is sought.” See page 235. From the Greek : rumor, report, fame; unknown. An omen or augury, particularly taken from a sound or word.