GoldenxChild1
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2021
- Messages
- 1,576
Pythagoras – Fragments and Teachings (all references are found from a book cited at the bottom of the post)
Pythagoras and the Pythagorean knowledge are mostly lost, save for the fragments of what others have had to say concerning their identity, function, and, most interestingly, their religious affiliation. Without divulging into the life of Pythagoras himself, we will focus on what he and his religious and scientific brethren have had to supposedly say about things of occult nature by analyzing the fragments that exist written by Heraclitus, Herodotus, and Porphyrius, to name but a few. To save time and keep things concise, the following fragments and commentary will be arranged by topic of discussion. Enjoy.
Establishing Pythagorean Community
Little as we know of Pythagoras himself, of his immediate followers we know even less. There can be no doubt that Pythagoras founded in Croton a sort of religious fraternity or order;…
Following this, concerning a description of Pythagoras from Porphyrius, who is to be believed to be quoting Empedocles:
263 Empedocles too bears witness to this, writing of him: 'And there was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom; for whensoever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are, in ten, yea, twenty lifetimes of men. 1 (Empedocles trans. Burnet)
The Pythagoreans seemed to be concerned with secrecy and silence, as mentioned by Porphyrius:
265 After this his fame grew great, and he won many followers from the city itself (not only men but women also, one of whom, Theano, became very well known too) and many princes and chieftains from the barbarian territory around. What he said to his associates, nobody can say for certain; for silence with them was of no ordinary kind.
There seem to have been two motives for silence: first (see Iambi. V.P. 94), to insure that initiates could 'hold their peace' (e^sni/deiv) ; and second (see Diog. L. vui, 15), to discourage 'the utterance of all things to all men'.
4 Hence arose, presumably, the favourite Pythagorean expression ocOTog 9a, 'he himself said so'; see Diog. L. vm, 46.
The Mystical Side of Pythagoras Teaching
(1) Transmigration of Souls
268 Diogenes Laertius vm, 36 ( = Xenophanes fr. 7)
On the subject of reincarnation Xenophanes bears witness in an elegy which begins: 'Now I will turn to another tale and show the way.' What he says about Pythagoras runs thus: ' Once they say that he was passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said: "Stop, do not beat it; for it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard it giving tongue."
As the authors note, this does not attest to humans being reincarnated in the bodies of animals outside their species, but rather that the quality of a man’s soul can be reduced to animalism.
269 Diogenes Laertius i, 12 0 ( = Ion fr. 4)
Ion of Chios says about him (Pherecydes) : * Thus did he excel in manhood and honour, and now that he is dead he has a delightful existence for his soul if indeed Pythagoras the wise learned and knew true opinions above all men. 9
As we of the JOS know, the soul is lighter when the deeds of life are weighed against death to be qualitative.
It is no doubt that Pythagoras was an ascended master who had knowledge over himself, among other things:
That Pythagoras himself did indeed believe in the transmigration of souls is anyhow pretty conclusively proved by 268. He is even said by Diogenes Laertius (vm, 4-5, DK 14, 8) to have claimed to remember his own four previous incarnations.
(2)Kinship of all living things
1 It was presumably in connexion with the cycle of reincarnation that the Pythagoreans held the remaining doctrine here attributed to them, that of the periodic recurrence of events. The most reliable statement of this belief is in the following fragment of Eudemus: 272 Eudemus ap. Simplic. Phys. 732, 30 (DK.58B34)
If one were to believe the Pythagoreans, that events recur in an arithmetical cycle, and that I shall be talking to you again sitting as you are now, with this pointer in my hand, and that everything else will be just as it is now, then it is plausible to suppose that the time too will be the same time as now. 22
Now, to reveal something of particular interest to the SS:
A passage in the Theologumena Arithmeticae (p. 52, 8 de Falco ; DK 1 4, 8) tells us that certain later Pythagoreans, working on the basis of the intervals between Pythagoras' own earlier incarnations, believed that the human soul was reincarnated every 216 years the precise number 216 being characteristically chosen as the cube of 6.
For those unfamiliar with the significance of the number 216 and 6, please refer to Korpi’s post: https://ancient-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=81856
(3)Rules of abstinence and other prohibitions
This chapter raises some skepticism, but I will share the main fragment written by lamblichus (I highlighted what seems true):
275 Let the rules to be pondered be these:
1. When you are going out to a temple, worship fast, and on your way neither say nor do anything else connected with your daily life.
2. On a journey neither enter a temple nor worship at all, not even if you are passing the very doors.
3. Sacrifice and worship without shoes on.
4. Turn aside from highways and walk by foot paths. . ..
6. Follow the gods and restrain your tongue above all else. . . .
8. Stir not the Fire with iron. ...
10. Help a man who is loading freight, but not one who is unloading.
11. Putting on your shoes, start with the right foot; washing your feet, with the left.
12. Speak not of Pythagorean matters without light.
13. Never step over a cross-bar.
14. When you are out from home, look not back, for the Furies come after you
27. Rear a cock, but do not sacrifice it; for it is dedicated to Moon and Sun.
18. Do not sit on a quart measure
21. Let not a swallow nest under your roof.
22. Do not wear a ring. . . .
24. Do not look in a mirror beside a lamp.
25. Disbelieve nothing strange about the gods or about religious beliefs.
26. Be not possessed by irrepressible mirth.
2f. Cut not your finger-nails at a sacrifice ___ .
29. When you rise from bed roll the bed-clothes together and smooth out the place where you lay.
30. Eat not the heart. . . .
32. Spit upon the trimmings of your hair and finger-nails ....
34. Leave not the mark of the pot in the ashes. . . .
37. Abstain from beans ----
39. Abstain from living things.
The Pythagorean Reconciliation of Science and Spirit
… that Pythagoras was interested in science as well as in the fate of the soul. Clearly too religion and science were, to Pythagoras, not two separate departments between which there was no contact, but rather the two inseparable factors in a single way of life.
The central notions, which held together the two strands that were later to fall apart, seem to have been those of Gecopfoc (contemplation),* KOCJIJIOS (an orderliness found in the arrangement of the universe) 3 and xaOapais (purification). 4 By contemplating the principle of order revealed in the universe and especially in the regular movements of the heavenly bodies and by assimilating himself to that orderliness, man himself was progressively purified until he eventually escaped from the cycle of birth and attained immortality.
Music and the Spheres
279 The Pythagoreans, according to Aristoxenus, practised the purification of the body by medicine, that of the soul by music.
To my analyses, the Pythagoreans were using vibration (chanting) to heal the soul, as we do today use the knowledge the JOS provides.
280 Aetius i, 3, 8 (DK-58BI5)
Ten is the very nature of number. All Greeks and all barbarians alike count up to ten, and having reached ten revert again to the unit. And again, Pythagoras maintains, the power of the number ten lies in the number four, the tetrad. This is the reason: if one starts at the unit and adds the successive numbers up to four, one will make up the number ten; and if one exceeds the tetrad, one will exceed ten too. If, that is, one takes the unit, two, then three and then four, one will make up the number ten. So that number by the unit resides in the number ten, but potentially in the number four. And so the Pythagoreans used to invoke the tetrad as their most binding oath: ' Nay, by him that gave to our generation the tetractys, which contains the fount and root of eternal nature*
Conclusion and Admittance
Clearly, this is not an exhaustive post, and a plethora of knowledge probably exists out there, but I hope you find this as stimulating as I did. Also, I did not adhere to perfect citation because I am still learning APA and am more concerned on the content produced to the JOS. Lastly, any Greek words are not normal because of the copy and paste function, and whenever you see a number in front of an italic text, it is a fragment cited by the author.
References:
Kirk, S., & Raven, J. (1957). THE PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS A CRITICAL HISTORY WITH A SELECTION OF TEXTS. CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
https://www.hrstud.unizg.hr/_download/repository/Kirk_Raven,_The_Presocratic_Philosophers.pdf
Pythagoras and the Pythagorean knowledge are mostly lost, save for the fragments of what others have had to say concerning their identity, function, and, most interestingly, their religious affiliation. Without divulging into the life of Pythagoras himself, we will focus on what he and his religious and scientific brethren have had to supposedly say about things of occult nature by analyzing the fragments that exist written by Heraclitus, Herodotus, and Porphyrius, to name but a few. To save time and keep things concise, the following fragments and commentary will be arranged by topic of discussion. Enjoy.
Establishing Pythagorean Community
Little as we know of Pythagoras himself, of his immediate followers we know even less. There can be no doubt that Pythagoras founded in Croton a sort of religious fraternity or order;…
Following this, concerning a description of Pythagoras from Porphyrius, who is to be believed to be quoting Empedocles:
263 Empedocles too bears witness to this, writing of him: 'And there was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom; for whensoever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are, in ten, yea, twenty lifetimes of men. 1 (Empedocles trans. Burnet)
The Pythagoreans seemed to be concerned with secrecy and silence, as mentioned by Porphyrius:
265 After this his fame grew great, and he won many followers from the city itself (not only men but women also, one of whom, Theano, became very well known too) and many princes and chieftains from the barbarian territory around. What he said to his associates, nobody can say for certain; for silence with them was of no ordinary kind.
There seem to have been two motives for silence: first (see Iambi. V.P. 94), to insure that initiates could 'hold their peace' (e^sni/deiv) ; and second (see Diog. L. vui, 15), to discourage 'the utterance of all things to all men'.
4 Hence arose, presumably, the favourite Pythagorean expression ocOTog 9a, 'he himself said so'; see Diog. L. vm, 46.
The Mystical Side of Pythagoras Teaching
(1) Transmigration of Souls
268 Diogenes Laertius vm, 36 ( = Xenophanes fr. 7)
On the subject of reincarnation Xenophanes bears witness in an elegy which begins: 'Now I will turn to another tale and show the way.' What he says about Pythagoras runs thus: ' Once they say that he was passing by when a puppy was being whipped, and he took pity and said: "Stop, do not beat it; for it is the soul of a friend that I recognized when I heard it giving tongue."
As the authors note, this does not attest to humans being reincarnated in the bodies of animals outside their species, but rather that the quality of a man’s soul can be reduced to animalism.
269 Diogenes Laertius i, 12 0 ( = Ion fr. 4)
Ion of Chios says about him (Pherecydes) : * Thus did he excel in manhood and honour, and now that he is dead he has a delightful existence for his soul if indeed Pythagoras the wise learned and knew true opinions above all men. 9
As we of the JOS know, the soul is lighter when the deeds of life are weighed against death to be qualitative.
It is no doubt that Pythagoras was an ascended master who had knowledge over himself, among other things:
That Pythagoras himself did indeed believe in the transmigration of souls is anyhow pretty conclusively proved by 268. He is even said by Diogenes Laertius (vm, 4-5, DK 14, 8) to have claimed to remember his own four previous incarnations.
(2)Kinship of all living things
1 It was presumably in connexion with the cycle of reincarnation that the Pythagoreans held the remaining doctrine here attributed to them, that of the periodic recurrence of events. The most reliable statement of this belief is in the following fragment of Eudemus: 272 Eudemus ap. Simplic. Phys. 732, 30 (DK.58B34)
If one were to believe the Pythagoreans, that events recur in an arithmetical cycle, and that I shall be talking to you again sitting as you are now, with this pointer in my hand, and that everything else will be just as it is now, then it is plausible to suppose that the time too will be the same time as now. 22
Now, to reveal something of particular interest to the SS:
A passage in the Theologumena Arithmeticae (p. 52, 8 de Falco ; DK 1 4, 8) tells us that certain later Pythagoreans, working on the basis of the intervals between Pythagoras' own earlier incarnations, believed that the human soul was reincarnated every 216 years the precise number 216 being characteristically chosen as the cube of 6.
For those unfamiliar with the significance of the number 216 and 6, please refer to Korpi’s post: https://ancient-forums.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=81856
(3)Rules of abstinence and other prohibitions
This chapter raises some skepticism, but I will share the main fragment written by lamblichus (I highlighted what seems true):
275 Let the rules to be pondered be these:
1. When you are going out to a temple, worship fast, and on your way neither say nor do anything else connected with your daily life.
2. On a journey neither enter a temple nor worship at all, not even if you are passing the very doors.
3. Sacrifice and worship without shoes on.
4. Turn aside from highways and walk by foot paths. . ..
6. Follow the gods and restrain your tongue above all else. . . .
8. Stir not the Fire with iron. ...
10. Help a man who is loading freight, but not one who is unloading.
11. Putting on your shoes, start with the right foot; washing your feet, with the left.
12. Speak not of Pythagorean matters without light.
13. Never step over a cross-bar.
14. When you are out from home, look not back, for the Furies come after you
27. Rear a cock, but do not sacrifice it; for it is dedicated to Moon and Sun.
18. Do not sit on a quart measure
21. Let not a swallow nest under your roof.
22. Do not wear a ring. . . .
24. Do not look in a mirror beside a lamp.
25. Disbelieve nothing strange about the gods or about religious beliefs.
26. Be not possessed by irrepressible mirth.
2f. Cut not your finger-nails at a sacrifice ___ .
29. When you rise from bed roll the bed-clothes together and smooth out the place where you lay.
30. Eat not the heart. . . .
32. Spit upon the trimmings of your hair and finger-nails ....
34. Leave not the mark of the pot in the ashes. . . .
37. Abstain from beans ----
39. Abstain from living things.
The Pythagorean Reconciliation of Science and Spirit
… that Pythagoras was interested in science as well as in the fate of the soul. Clearly too religion and science were, to Pythagoras, not two separate departments between which there was no contact, but rather the two inseparable factors in a single way of life.
The central notions, which held together the two strands that were later to fall apart, seem to have been those of Gecopfoc (contemplation),* KOCJIJIOS (an orderliness found in the arrangement of the universe) 3 and xaOapais (purification). 4 By contemplating the principle of order revealed in the universe and especially in the regular movements of the heavenly bodies and by assimilating himself to that orderliness, man himself was progressively purified until he eventually escaped from the cycle of birth and attained immortality.
Music and the Spheres
279 The Pythagoreans, according to Aristoxenus, practised the purification of the body by medicine, that of the soul by music.
To my analyses, the Pythagoreans were using vibration (chanting) to heal the soul, as we do today use the knowledge the JOS provides.
280 Aetius i, 3, 8 (DK-58BI5)
Ten is the very nature of number. All Greeks and all barbarians alike count up to ten, and having reached ten revert again to the unit. And again, Pythagoras maintains, the power of the number ten lies in the number four, the tetrad. This is the reason: if one starts at the unit and adds the successive numbers up to four, one will make up the number ten; and if one exceeds the tetrad, one will exceed ten too. If, that is, one takes the unit, two, then three and then four, one will make up the number ten. So that number by the unit resides in the number ten, but potentially in the number four. And so the Pythagoreans used to invoke the tetrad as their most binding oath: ' Nay, by him that gave to our generation the tetractys, which contains the fount and root of eternal nature*
Conclusion and Admittance
Clearly, this is not an exhaustive post, and a plethora of knowledge probably exists out there, but I hope you find this as stimulating as I did. Also, I did not adhere to perfect citation because I am still learning APA and am more concerned on the content produced to the JOS. Lastly, any Greek words are not normal because of the copy and paste function, and whenever you see a number in front of an italic text, it is a fragment cited by the author.
References:
Kirk, S., & Raven, J. (1957). THE PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS A CRITICAL HISTORY WITH A SELECTION OF TEXTS. CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
https://www.hrstud.unizg.hr/_download/repository/Kirk_Raven,_The_Presocratic_Philosophers.pdf
