Pythagoras – Mathematician – World Influencer – Ancient Greek Cult Leader

 

 

If you thought the first hippie communes where the cult followers believed their leaders to be God sprung up in the swinging sixties of flower power; think again.

They existed way back in ancient Greece where one of those godly leaders was none other than Pythagoras; one of the most influential mathematicians of all time!

 Pythagoras (c. 570-495 BC) is mostly remembered as a mathematician, famous for the Pythagorean Theorem (a2 + b2 = c2) and is probably the most influential ancient Greek to have left his mark on western civilization; look up any ‘Great Greeks’ list; Pythagoras is bound to be on it.

 

 

It’s rumoured he was the first man to call himself a philosopher; a lover of wisdom and some will tell you he was the first to state that, not only was the Earth round but went on to divide it into five climatic zones.

 He also concluded that the morning and evening star were one and the same and were actually the planet Venus.

They do say it’s a fine line that separates the genius from the lunatic!

 

The prophetic birth of Pythagoras

and the early years

 

The birth of Pythagoras is as bizarre as his life; his parents Mnesarchus, a wealthy gem trader and his wife, Parthenis, both worshippers of the god Apollo, resided on the Greek island of Samos.

 As was the norm in those days, they regularly visited the Oracle at Delphi, to gain insight and advice for the future.

At Delphi the priestess Pythia, also referred to as the Pythian Oracle, informed the couple that if they followed her instructions they would soon become the proud parents of a son who would change the world.

Having blind trust in the oracle’s prophecy Mnesarchus renamed his wife, Pythia in honour of the priestess and taking heed of her directions, the pair set out for Phoenicia, (Modern day Syria), as that is where the oracle predicted their son would be born.

 

 

 In 582 B.C, at Sidon, the prophecy came to fruition; Mnesarchus and Pythias now had a son who, again in honour of Pythia of Delphi, they named him Pythagoras, the die was cast!

After the birth of their son Mnesarchus took his family back to Samos; here Pythagoras remained until the age of eighteen, when he left to study alongside Thales, a mathematician and astronomer of Miletus (on the coast of modern-day Turkey).

Once he had learnt all he could in Miletus Pythagoras continued on to Memphis, in Egypt, where he studied with Egyptian mystics for more than twenty years.

 

The Pythagoreans: Pythagoras’ sacred people

 Where it all began

 

 

Pythagoras mapped out life into four stages:

Twenty years a boy – 20 years a youth – 20 years a young man – 20 years an old man

Therefore it was not until he hit his sixties that his thoughts turned to putting an end to his travels and put down roots.

Pythagoras dropped anchor in Croton, an ancient Greek community, established around 710 BC, one of the most prosperous cities of Magna Graecia; ‘Greater Greece’, the name given by the Romans to the coastal areas of Southern Italy; regions populated by Greek settlers.

Here in Croton, ‘The divine Pythagoras’, with the charisma and magnetic charm any shaman worth his salt would envy, founded a school, which was so popular that it wasn’t long before the Pythagoreans, became a ‘state within a state’, with more than 2,500 devotees.

 

 

Pythagoras’ followers believed him to be a demigod, the son of a god, usually either Hermes or Apollo.

In Roman times legend had it that Pythagoras was the son of Apollo and allegedly the priest of Apollo had presented Pythagoras with a magic arrow which he used to fly long distances and perform ritual purifications.

Aristotle, the ancient philosopher, tells us Pythagoras had a golden thigh, which he publicly showed off at the Olympic Games as proof of his identity as the ‘Hyperborean Apollo’.

Hyperborea, in Greek mythology, was a remote land, located north of the known world, so remote in fact, it was even said to be beyond the North wind.

Here, a mythical tribe, the Hyperboreans, lived and worshipped the sun god Apollo.

 Hyperborea was paradise on Earth but so inaccessible to ordinary mortals that the Greeks believed only semi-divine heroes, such as Hercules were capable of visiting there.

 

 

Pythagoras who was generally a happy chap but refrained from laughter and indulgences such as jests and idle gossip, preferred to dress in white, wore trousers, which was not the fashion of his day and a golden wreath around his head.

Not much is known of Pythagoras’ personal life but his wife was Theano, from Crete and that they had  two sons Telauges and Arignote and a daughter; Myia, who is said to have taken precedence over all the women members of the cult of the Pythagoreans in Croton.

 

 

A cult is born

 

 Pythagoras accepted anyone, no one was turned away and even encouraged women to join him, unusual and often frowned on in his day when women were meant to be seen and not heard.

His faithful followers, who came to be known as the Pythagoreans, regarded their spiritual leader to have supernatural powers, sent to him from heaven and was capable of taming eagles and bears by stroking them and who could magically write words on the face of the Moon.

The Pythagoreans who were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle were not only all about math and philosophy; they had become a cult; a religion.

Before newcomers to the cult of Pythagoras were allowed to begin their five-year initiation period of absolute silence, before they were even allowed to set eyes on their leader, they were required to swear a secret oath on the Tetractys; a mystical symbol, a triangular figure; the holy triangle, consisting of ten points arranged in four rows.

 

 

The secret oath of the Tetractys:

 

‘By that pure, holy, four lettered name on high,

nature’s eternal fountain and supply,

the parent of all souls that living be,

by him, with faith find oath, I swear to thee.’

 

Pythagoras’ philosophy here was that silence was a way to acquire self-control and remain pure.

 A more likely explanation is that it was a way of making sure they could keep their mouths shut, anyone who disobeyed and spilled the beans, was not only thrown out of the community but would have a tombstone erected in their memory, as if they were dead.

All this cloak and dagger secrecy only added to the cult’s appeal.

 

The Tetractys or Tetrad:

A mystical symbol – The Holy Triangle

 

 

The tetractys (Greek: τετρακτύς), or tetrad, devised by Pythagoras, is an equilateral triangle formed from the sequence of the first ten numbers aligned in four rows, both a mathematical idea and a metaphysical symbol, sacred and mystical, it’s also known as the holy triangle.

 The tetractys symbolizes the four seasons, the organization of space, the universe and music.

‘The harmony of the spheres,’ according to Pythagoras, were the seven muses – the seven planets, singing together (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn)

 

 

Music is math

 

 Pythagoras, who had measured the stars and mapped out an Earth-centered solar system, was convinced that the movements of stars and planets produced a type of musical harmony; a harmony produced from waves in vibrating strings, all of which were exact multiples of one another, a harmony which was beyond the powers of human understanding and inaudible to the human ear, ‘the harmony of the spheres’ – the source of all expression’.

Therefore, music was mathematical.

 

 

The first four numbers of the tetractys symbolize the musica universalis and the Cosmos as:

(1) Unity (Monad)

(2) Dyad – Power – Limit/Unlimited (peras/apeiron)

(3) Harmony (Triad)

(4) Kosmos (Tetrad).

The four rows add up to ten, which was unity of a higher order (The Dekad).

The Tetractys symbolizes the four classical elements—fire, air, water, and earth.

The Tetractys represented the organization of space:

The first row represented zero dimensions (a point)

The second row represented one dimension (a line of two points)

The third row represented two dimensions (a plane defined by a triangle of three points)

The fourth row represented three dimensions (a tetrahedron defined by four points)

A prayer of the Pythagoreans shows the importance of the Tetractys (sometimes called the “Mystic Tetrad”), as the prayer was addressed to it.

 

Prayer to the Mystic Tetrad

 

‘Bless us, divine number, thou who generated gods and men

 O holy, holy Tetractys, thou that containest the root and source of the eternally flowing creation

 For the divine number begins with the profound, pure unity until it comes to the holy four; then it begets the mother of all, the all-comprising, all-bounding, the first-born, the never-swerving, the never-tiring holy ten, the key holder of all’

The German humanist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), compared Pythagoreanism with Christian theology and Jewish Kabbalah, stating that Kabbalah and Pythagoreanism were both inspired by Mosaic tradition and therefore, Pythagoras was a kabbalist.

 Reuchlin related the Pythagorean tetractys to the divine name YHWH, ascribing each of the four letters of the tetragrammaton or Tetragram (τετραγράμματον, meaning consisting of four letters) to the four-letter Hebrew word יהוה‎ (YHWH), the name of the Hebrew god of Israel.

 

 

 

The mathēmatikoi and the akousmatikoi

The learners and the listeners

 

The mathēmatikoi: The Learners

 

Pythagoras’ groupies were divided into two categories; the mathēmatikoi and the akousmatikoi; the learners and the listeners.

The mathematikoi; the learners, (mathematics in Greek: μάθημα, máthēma, meaning knowledge, study, learning), were the top dogs, the ones closest to Pythagoras, his most trusted devotes with whom he had face to face meetings, in which he would reveal to them, the secrets of advanced math, which the rest of the world were never to be privy to.

Nothing is ever free though, is it?

To become a mathematikoi, they were required to forsake meat, women and all personal possessions and from hence forth, their loyalty was to Pythagoras only; a heavy price!

 

The akousmatikoi; (ακουσματικοι): The Listeners

 

The second, lowlier category, the akousmatikoi; (ακουσματικοι), the listeners, who focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of Pythagoras’ teachings, didn’t even have the privilege of seeing Pythagoras’ face, when he did deem to speak to them, and never in any great detail, it was from behind a veil, or curtain.

 

Teachings and beliefs

Numerology, Metempsychosis, Mysticism, esotericism and vegetarianism

 

 

 

 Pythagoras was one of the first Western philosophers to believe in metempsychosis (the transmigration of the soul and its reincarnation after death), he also dabbled in mysticism, esotericism and vegetarianism but above all, he put emphasis on numbers.

For Pythagoras, numbers, which he classed as magical and divine, were the be all and end all; the primary elements of all existence, he believed that their numerical mysticism led to spiritual purification, making it possible to truly understand reality and eventually connecting the souls of individuals with God.

The ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, stated that, to the Pythagoreans, who thought all things were created from numbers; mathematics was of no practical use at all but was for mystical reasons only.

 

 Pythagoras and numerology:

sacred numbers

 

 

 

 To Pythagoras all numbers were sacred; they were the elements which made up the whole of the universe which was controlled by mathematical harmonies that created every part of reality.

For Pythagoras everything was a number and the Pythagoreans bestowed specific numbers with mystical properties.

Number one

The number one (the monad) represented unity and reason; the origin of all things and the number two (the dyad), the number of opinion, represented matter.

Number two

Numbers one and two were not thought of as actual numbers by Pythagoras but were building blocks for all other numbers.

Number three

Pythagoras began counting with the number three, which represented harmony, an ‘ideal number’ because it had a beginning, a middle and an end.

Three was also the least number of points that could be used to define a triangle which he venerated as a symbol of the Greek god Apollo.

 

 

Number four

The number four symbolized justice and retribution and also the four seasons and the four elements.

Odd numbers were regarded as masculine and even numbers were feminine.

Number five

 Number five denoted marriage, because it was the sum of two and three; the union of the masculine and the feminine.

Number Six

The number six symbolized creation.

Number seven

The number seven symbolized wisdom and opportunity, it was especially sacred as it was the number of planets and the number of strings on a lyre, it also happened to be the god Apollo’s birthday which was celebrated on the seventh day of each month in ancient Greece.

Number eight

The number eight represented justice.

Number nine

The Pythagoreans recognized the existence of nine heavenly bodies: Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the so-called Central Fire and so number nine represented these.

Number ten

The Pythagoreans believed there was one more heavenly body; Counter-Earth, hidden forever by the Sun, add this to the previous nine mentioned above, and that gives us ten heavenly bodies; the reason number ten; the tetractys; the number of the universe, was regarded as the perfect number; it defined the path for all mortal things and was the most sacred and worshiped number of all, which the Pythagoreans honored by never gathering in groups larger than ten.

Metempsychosis

 

 

 Another concept which preoccupied Pythagoras was metempsychosis, or ‘transmigration of souls’, the belief that all souls are immortal and after death they pass into a new body.

He went as far as to say he could sense when an old soul had taken up residence in a new body; one anecdote has it, that when he once came upon a man beating a dog, he cried out ‘stop, don’t hurt that dog, it’s the soul of a friend, I recognize its bark’.

 

The four previous lives lived by Pythagoras

 

To anyone who would listen and there were many who did and believed him to boot, Pythagoras claimed to be the son of a god and that before he became the man who stood before them, he had lived not one but four previous lives, all of which he could recall with great clarity.

The fact that he possessed the memory of an elephant, Pythagoras attributed to his first life, that of Aethalides, the son of Hermes, who had offered Pythagoras any gift he wanted, except for immortality.

He chose the ability to remember in detail all that had occurred and all the people he had met in each of his lives.

He returned in his second life as as Euphorbus, a not so important warrior, to whom Homer gave a nod to in the Iliad and who fought in the Trojan Wars beside the hero Achilles.

 Next up, his third transmigration was as the philosopher, Hermotimus, who Pythagoras said, proved he had also lived previous lives, as he  recognized the rusting  shield of Euphorbus (The not so important warrior from life number two), in the temple of Apollo at Branchidae.

His fourth and final incarnation was as Pyrrhus, a simple fisherman from the Greek island of Delos.

It’s even been said, he was once an alluring courtesan, who slept with powerful men!

 

A day in the life of a Pythagorean

 

 

 Life in the Pythagorean commune was not all wine and roses; Pythagoras had extremely strict, harsh and sometimes downright crazy rules for just about everything and if these rules were not adhered to, you were out.

No private possessions were allowed; everything belonged to everybody.

It was up at first light for daily contemplations and meditation, (this was also repeated at the end of the day) after which came morning walks, therapeutic dancing and a spot of athletics.

Meals were light, positively Spartan, no alcohol or meat allowed, in fact, Pythagoras was the first westerner in history to forego meat, to him it was like eating the dead; it poisoned the body.

Until the word vegetarianism was coined in the 1840s vegetarians were referred to in English as ‘Pythagoreans’.

 

 

Weird rules and regulations

 

Pythagoras believed bodily fluids were part of a man’s soul, which, when expelled reduced his strength and so, he taught his followers, to remain celibate whenever possible.

If the urge was just too strong, then at least try to keep your pleasures for winter, or whenever you are prepared to be in a weaker state, never do the dirty deed in summer when your strength is needed for working in the fields.

Other whacky rules included inexplicable practices such as, always put your right shoe on first, never travel on public roads, never touch a white cockerel and any food which drops on the floor and remains there for more than five seconds; don’t eat it!

 

Beans:

a supernatural symbol of death

 

I must mention the bean thing here; one of the most curious and bizarre beliefs of Pythagoras, who considered them a supernatural symbol of death and thought men’s souls, lived inside beans, he taught his follower that eating beans was practically cannibalism; you may be eating your ancestors or your parents even.

 

 

Maybe it’s no coincidence that the ancient Greek word anemos means both wind and soul; think of the consequences of eating beans!

There could be some method in his madness concerning Pythagoras’ strange thoughts on beans; favism, named after the bean, was a genetic disorder common in the Mediterranean, brought on by eating fava beans or even inhaling the pollen from its flowers which caused hemolytic anemia, jaundice, and heart failure.

 Even today, one out of 12 people affected die of favism.

In the end after avoiding beans all his life they may actually have been the death of him!

 

Death

This is the end

 

 

Pythagoras and his followers, had been living in Croton for about twenty years before things started to go wrong.

Cyclon, a top knob around Croton, was desperate to join them but owing to his reputation as a bit of a playboy and a dirty stop out, all things that went against the harmonious life of Pythagoras, he was denied the privilege.

Well, no one refused Cyclon anything, feeling rebuffed, he bad – mouthed the Pythagoreans all over Croton and accompanied by a gang of locals, caught Pythagoras when he was visiting a friend.

In the ensuing scuffle, somehow, the house was set alight.

On fleeing the ruffians, Pythagoras path is blocked by a field of flowering fava beans, refusing to run through a bean field, Pythagoras is caught and killed by the mob.

This is all myth and legends; of course there are other versions of his death; one is that he and his followers clashed with the government and supporters of democracy.

Pythagoras may have escaped to Metapontum, a Greek-Italian city-state and died there.

 

Metapontum: Italy

 

A big thank you to talented photographer, Stella Marinazzo, who brought my attention to ancient Greek remains in Metaponto, (Metapotum) the ancient stomping ground of Pythagoras, rumoured to be the place of his death.

 

 

The Tavole Palatine, the remains of the sanctuary of Hera, at Metaponto, Italy, founded by ancient  Greek settlers, one of the most important commercial, cultural, and political centers of Magna Graecia during the sixth century BC, was originally called the Tomb of Pythagoras.

Photos sent to me by stella.

 

 

Some say Pythagoras fled and took refuge in a cave on the island of Rhodes, others apparently saw him on the island of Delos.

The Pythagorean School, though, lived on for a further three hundred years, spreading as far as the Middle East and influencing many thinkers.

 

The legacies Pythagoras left to the World

 

 

Pythagorean ideas on how to lead a harmonious life, influenced many great minds such as, Plato and Aristotle, who described Pythagoras as a wonder-worker and a supernatural figure.

Plato, his biggest fan, stated that Pythagoras was the founder of a new way of life and who, like Pythagoras, took a mystical approach to the soul and its place in the world, is thought to have partly based his ‘Rebublic’,  along the lines of the  well- organized and tight-knit community of the Pythagoreans at Croton.

 Isaac Newton; who was well known for not giving credit where credit was due attributed the discovery of the Law of Universal Gravitation to Pythagoras.

 Johannes Kepler; himself a Pythagorean, believed it was the Pythagorean doctrine of musica universali, which led to his own discovery of planetary motion.

Albert Einstein believed that a scientist may also be a Platonist or a Pythagorean.

Bertrand Russell said of him; ‘the influence of Pythagoras on Plato and others was so great that he should be considered the most influential philosopher of all time, I do not know of any other man who has been as influential as he was in the school of thought.’.

 

 

During the sixth century BC, Greek sculptors and architects searched to find the mathematical relation (rule) behind aesthetic perfection and working with examples of the mathematics of Pythagoras, the Greek architectural orders were calculated and constructed by mathematical rules.

The oldest known building designed using the calculations and teachings of Pythagoras, is the Porta Maggiore Basilica, an underground basilica, built during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, as a secret place of worship for Pythagoreans.

Hadrian’s Pantheon in Rome was also built using Pythagorean numerology.

 

 

Praise for Pythagoras

 

Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the major English romantic poets, wrote an ode entitled ‘To the Pythagorean Diet’ and Leo Tolstoy himself followed the Pythagorean diet.

The freemasons purposely modeled their society on the community founded by Pythagoras at Croton.

Rosicrucianism, a spiritual and cultural movement which appeared in Europe in the early 17th century, used Pythagorean symbolism as did Robert Fludd, a prominent English physician with both scientific and occult interests, who declared his own musical writings to have been inspired by Pythagoras.

John Dee, an Anglo-Welsh mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist and alchemist, the court astronomer and advisor to Elizabeth I, was much influenced by Pythagorean ideology especially the teaching that all things are made of numbers

 Adam Weishaupt, the founder of the Illuminati, was a big fan of Pythagoras and in his book, Pythagoras, written in 1787, he states that society should be reformed to be more like Pythagoras’s commune at Croton.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart integrated Masonic and Pythagorean symbolism into his opera ‘The Magic Flute’.

Dante Alighieri was enchanted by Pythagorean numerology and based his descriptions of Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven on Pythagorean numbers.

The number eleven and its multiples reoccur throughout the Divine Comedy, each book has thirty-three cantos, except for the Inferno, which has thirty-four, the first of, which only serves as a general introduction anyway.

Dante describes the ninth and tenth bolgias (Circles of eight) in the Eighth Circle of Hell as being twenty-two miles and eleven miles respectively, this correspond to the fraction which was the Pythagorean approximation of pi.

Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven are all circular and Dante compares the wonder of God’s majesty to the mathematical puzzle of squaring the circle.

 

 

As with most ancient Greek stories, passed down by word of mouth, it’s a case of he said she said and if you happened to be hard of hearing, then a completely different story emerged.

Even great historians such as Pliny and Ovid, from where we gather most of our information, lived hundreds of years after the ancient Greeks, they weren’t there at the scene so I haven’t added any references, take the crazier bits, in my mind, the best bits, with a pinch of salt!

 

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