The Enneads

Ennead

Posted on 2013-04-05 by Logres

Iamblichus has taken us on a metaphysical tour of the Numbers; is it too much to claim that any metaphysics or religion worthy of the name ought to be measured by the yardstick he has provided? I do not think so. That is, if a supposed “philosophy of Life” or doctrine cannot provide a legitimate and profound account of how it accounts for and accomodates the spiritual value of Number which is revealed in his meditations (which are the sum of centuries of thought upon such in Greece), then it is inherently suspect, and ought to be condemned. The condemnation would rest on the fact that it does not partake of Logos, Measure, or Number. The Logos is the structure of manifested reality, the pattern of higher things: as the Scripture puts it, it is the “evidence of things not seen”. By faith, guided by Reason, we see that the Numbers are actually markers or seeds and guidelines which reflect the unmanifested One above, as well as the manifested but higher planes of existence which are not so obvious to the the untutored. A great and valid religion should be able to explain its exoteric dogmas in terms of Number(s), so that it demonstrates a correspondence with actual Creation, rather than wish-fulfillment and delusion. The same would hold true for such ad hoc philosophies as neo-paganism or Nietzsche’s philosophy of the hammer. Where, in most modern worldviews, is there any effort to harmonize with the Logos? Most often, we only see expressed the virulent hatred for other points of view, even if justifiably so in terms of pure intellect. The same would hold for a certain kind of Traditionalism that restricts itself merely to the rejection of what is Modern, thus (in a weird way), acknowledging its opponent to be an anti-Monad which it is rejecting in a Dyadic rebellion.
Corrollaries to this are obvious. Obviously, the Stoical tradition is superior (for instance) to the Epicurean philosophy (a fact acknowledged in the epistles of Saint Paul, who doesn’t mind quoting certain philosophers as against others). In our own day, a similar form of sifting might occur with the many Thoughts we encounter in the “Marketplace of Ideas”. That is, some men are more sane, balanced, and normative than others, and can be taken as sound guides on certain subjects. Isn’t this what Gornahoor has undertaken?

In regards to the Ennead, it is so short, that I simply recommend readers to peruse it. Iamblichus makes the point that Nine is the last of the numbers, since Ten is simply a Monad once Nine is taken away, and so on and so forth. Nine is the cube of 3 (in the sense of 3+3+3), and so is a kind of natural completion, or ending point, which Iamblichus again compares to a goal post that is raced up to and turned around to head home. Even its name is a play on words resembling Henad (Hen means One, so a Monad). It is Oceanus, or “horizon”: moderns might say, Event Horizon. It is also called Hyperion, because it is the supremely last manifested Number before the repetition begins (strictly speaking) with the Decad. It also contains all harmonic ratios, as 4+3+2 = 9 (sesquialter, double, and sesquitertian).

But the chapter is very short, and if you are going to read a chapter of this work, this is a good place to dive in.

I hope it is not necessary to point out that Plotinus wrote The Enneads, to readers of Gornahoor.

Octad/Ogdoad

Octad

Posted on 2013-03-29 by Logres

The Octad is a short chapter.
Iamblichus continues his march through numbers noting that all men, without exception, count 1-10. The empiricist says this is because they have 10 fingers, and the Hermeticist says “why do you suppose that is?”. In any case, it is not impossible to conceive attempts to circumvent divine order, such as the reordering of week days during the French Revolution, so their argument holds little water (which they know – most of the Anglos don’t use metric).

Eight is perfect, in that it is 1+7, neither number which is engendered, as Seven is a “second” Monad, in this meditation. The first two odd numbers (3 and 5) also produce it, making it relate to the process of the Cube (Claims Iamblichus, although he doesn’t specifiy how this is so).

The pattern four is in the ecliptics of the Zodiac, and the “circles” (tropics and polar), as well as finding expression in Harmonic divisions and even the teeth and skulls (presumably four big plates) of human beings. For instance, birds usually have four claws, and if an insect has more than eight legs, it is usually not exact.

Philolaus teaches that after mathematical magnitude has become three dimensional thanks to the tetrad, there is the quality and ‘color’ of visible Nature in the pentad, and the ensoulment in the hexad, and intelligence and health and what he calls ‘Light’  in the hebdomad, and then next, with the ogdoad, things come by love and friendship and wisdom and creative thought.

So we are looking more now at what is normally understood as “manifestation” or “Creation”. It is safety and foundation, because its root is in 2, and 2 is the leader of Manifestation in the sense of “daring” or “courage” (warrior-qualities).

There is a long section on harmonic relationships which is very involved with terms like sesquitertian, sesquioctave, etc., but I will recommend it to musicians, only noting for the Layman that what he needs to know is that the sesqui interval works as follows. 12 is the sesquialter of 8 (it succeeds 8 by an interval of half, so the “change” is related to the “substance” by law), and the sesquitertian of 9 (it succeeds 9 by an interval of one-third).

There is, of course, the Indian method of examining the birthday, name, and age of the person in order to use Pythagorean reduction to basic numerals to arrive at spiritual meaning. But these are more personal methods, and less metaphysical, than those which Iamblichus deploys.

8 resembles the infinity symbol, turned at a right angle. Does this mean that it is Infinity, set on its ear? In other words, Infinity set towards a downfall? Iamblichus does seem to indicate that “manifestation” in terms of Bios begins to break forth in 8, interweaving design and matter in actual genesis. We might think of the TV programs we were all indoctrinated on, which always start with some image of algae or lava or star dust, coalescing and shimmering and out-breaking, in order to appreciate the power of 8. The affinities are revealed: sex, division, mutual interdependence, etc.

Just for fun I looked up some modern numerology; Ellis Taylor seems to think that our Arabic numbers (in contradistinction to Latin ones, which are more pure) have been used to program us for failure. Although this sounds like the typical modern conspiracy theory, it may have something of interest, considering that even the Solfeggio scale has been reset in the modern Era. All changes of this sort ought to be more self-consciously investigated.

Our modern day musical scale is slightly out of sync from the original Solfeggio frequencies and is, consequently, more dissonant as it is based upon what is termed the “Twelve-Tone Equal Temperament.” In ancient times, the musical scale was called “Just Intonation.” And also, our modern music falls within the A 440 hz frequency, which was changed from A 417 hz, around 1914. In addition, a 7th note was added in the form of a “SI,” or a “TI,” as in the “DO, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA, TI” vocal scale, while the original Solfeggio scale was composed of only six notes: “UT, RE, MI, FA, SO, LA.”

I am not a literal conspiracist, but certainly there was a reason the musical scale was altered: Traditionalists who are mathematicians or musicians ought to look into these things. We recall that Gornahoor has taught that there is an invisible war on a higher pattern, and that changes are never random, even if no discernible pattern can be found.

Hebdomad

Seven is called the Virgin, Guardian, Message, Critical Time, Athena, Chance & Acropolis. It is a mean between the second Monad (ie., the Hexad, issuing into material Creation, since Dyad and Triad belong more properly to the One) and the Decad. It is perfect: it is 3 from 4 and 3 from 10. It is the balance between the end and the beginning, if we are speaking of the confluence of Being issuing in Creation.
Throughout, Iamblichus has drawn on Nicomachus‘ lost Theology of Arithmetic. In considering the Heptad, he has a long section on gestation and the ages of men, which are divided by sevens. This is interesting, but we will focus instead on another idea, suggested by Iamblichus, that there are three layers of the soul (rational, spirited, appetitive) and four virtues (wisdom, justice, fortitude, and moderation).
For anyone familiar with the Liberal Arts, one should immediately think of the Trivium and the Quadrivium (also note, that these were considered preparatory to the study of philosophy and theology). So, there were seven planets, and seven “subjects”/”modes” to master before one could come in the light of the Sun. There are seven progressions of musical notes in the infra-scale of music. Here again, once subject of the Quadrivium is Harmony, or Music, and this is not accidental: the roots of the sadly degraded liberal arts lie in the greater and lesser mysteries, and not the study of “relevance” or “contemporary” dialogues between modern political factions.

He who attained to Seven, by necessity was graduating to the last grade – it is a mark of completion and mastery to have entered the final grade. Those familiar with the Ur-Group writings will recognize that some of the essays deal with the evocation of the celestial guardians, which are seven in number.
Seven is perfect also, because it cannot be divided by anything except itself (it’s only factors are 1 and 7) – in this sense, it is like 2 and 3, as well as 5.

In Revelation, we are told that there are 7 spirits or archons/angels, represented in the temple candlesticks, which pour out various events upon the earth. Of course, seven is also the number of days in the week, which is not an accident – neither is it accidental that the phases of the moon can be divided into seven week quarters (Iamblichus draws heavily on the phases of moon when discussing seven, and this is proper, because the Moon represents a “fetal Earth in gestation”, whose boundaries mark the limits of the lower powers of the air that govern the soul cages and impose General Law upon mortals – to “jump over the Moon” is to master the astral worlds and to transcend the power of the Lower Guardians: please refer to Boris Mouravieff’s work in this regard).

So we see that Seven is actually, properly, a very lucky number.

To return to the Liberal Arts, the number of Seven was critical – 3 portions to match the various layers of man’s soul (grammar, logic, rhetoric), and 4 virtues or actual “knowledge bodies” that were mastered (Arithmetic, Number, Harmony, and Celestial Proportion). So it can be seen that the Trivium matches the first three numbers, and constitutes a reflection of the higher waters and Divine Essence, while the Quadrivium matches the last four numbers, and is the issuing forth of Being into Creation as manifested virtues and concrete knowledge. In a future essay we will assay more closely how the Liberal Arts are patterned on the mysteries.

Hexad

Posted on 2013-02-08 by Logres

The Hexad is the first perfect number: it arises, by multiplication (rather than addition) from the Dyad and the Triad, and is hence termed “marriage” (whereas the Pentad is androgynous). That is, the Hexad unifies Male-Female through “blending” and harmony, rather than sticking them together through addition in the Pentad, in which case (because the Pentad is 2:3), one or the other prevails; with the Hexad, there is a perfect mixing.

There are six directions: back and forth, up and down, left and right; so Reality’s spatial structure reflects the Hexad. Furthermore, if one divides all number series into Triads, they reflect (in one way or another) the Hexad. 1+2+3=6, 4+5+6 = 15, and 1+5 = 6 again (not to mention that the Hexad is a second Triad), 7+8+9= 24 and 2+4=6, etc. (Readers who are familiar with traditional astrology will recognize the summing of the individual digits of sums to reduce the number to a simple one).

6 is the sum of it’s multiplicative factors, which are all prime (1x2x3=6).

Here are some of its titles: Resembling Justice The Thunder-Stone, Amphitrite (Poseidon’s wife; a verbal pun: on both sides [amphis] three [trias]), Male-Female Marriage, Finest of All In Two Measures, Form of Forms, Peace, Far-Shooting (name of Apollo) Thaleia Kosmos, Possessing Wholeness, Cure-All (panacea), Perfection, Three-Fold Health, Reconciling.
The Pythagorean theory of musical harmonies (which is really, as Iamblichus states, no “theory” at all, but rather “the way things actually are”) is fairly complex and is also related to Number.

The Pentad is the beginning of Life on the lower planes, but it is through the Hexad that actual re-integration occurs. In searching for other insights to this piece, I came across St. Nicholas of Flue, whose had a vision of “Two Trinities” : one was of the “old gods” of the West, and one was the newer, Christian perichoretic Trinity. Tomberg gives the key to interpreting some of this, when he notes that the two triangles of the key of Solomon symbolize the movement of lower Creation upward and the the movement of Spirit downward, integrated through the mediation of the regenerated man. Thus, we can see that the “old gods of the West” are not to be seen as “un-Christian”, but are rather, to be baptized and lifted up, through a process of cultural acclimation, in which Western Man is re-integrated into the prime Tradition through participation in Logos. This would (obviously) occur at both an individual and a corporate level, and beautifully illustrates how Christendom was designed to “give the pattern” or archetype to “men of the West”.

Nicholas of Flue, incidentally, is also credited with preserving peace between the Catholic and Protestant cantons of Switzerland through his sanctity, and of being the father of the “state” of Switzerland. The reader can see through this how Iamblichus’ “Numbers” are not mere arithmetic or private meditation only, but are indeed true understandings of how the entire Cosmos functions, at both lower levels and higher ones, physical or spiritual, and by implication, everything in between as well.

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This entry was posted in Tradition and tagged Hexad, Iamblichus, Nicholas of Flue by Logres.Bookmark the permalink.

The Pentad

Pentad

Posted on 2013-02-02 by Logres

It is worth while reminding the reader that Iamblichus was not merely a mathematician and a philosopher, in the idealistic fashion: he was of a princely line, and well-educated, and his caste seems to have been that of Brahmin.

Iamblichus wrote a life of Pythagoras, an autobiography of his great master and teacher.
For those who claim the Unity, experience the double oath of Heaven to Earth in the Dyad, reaffirm that Unity in the Three, and move into the realm of Creative affects with the Tetrad, they find the Pentad ready to aid their Will.

Venus traces a Pentagram in the sky with her motion through the celestial heavens. The Pentagram is the sign of the Satanists, but then, they only pay attention to one symbol, and ignore the rest, for the Pentagram is integrally related to the Monad and all that comes prior to it. Unlike the Dyad, whose movement is Divinely Feminine (another Monad) but also ambivalent (in that it duplicates the One : for what purpose? – one asks at first), the Pentad is half of the Decad, and is equivalent to the final Completion. The Pentad is 2+3, the first even number (Female) added to the first male number (Male: odd). As such, it is emblematic of Life itself, the pattern of symbiosis and resulting energies from the union of 2 and 3 (which are also, in Christian tradition, the Son and the Spirit, in the Father). 5 mediates the interplay of Life.

5 follows Creation (4), and manifests Justice, which always splits things into an equal and unequal portion (one side 2, one side 3) in order to determine which side requires re-balance. Life results when the rational side of our nature (the smaller, or 2) is given priority or balance as against the appetitive side of our nature (represented in 3). Life is the restoration of balance, or the Circle, in which no value exceeds its place or any other value. Instead of Equality in the modern sense, perhaps modern men should study the Justice and Balance of the Number 5, whose inequality is manifested precisely in order to redress Balance and indicate which is lower, which is higher.

The five pointed star is also (and I add this) quite obviously a picture of man, who has 2 legs, 2 arms, and a head which decides the balance between them as what to do. The proportions of the pentad are based on the Divine Ratio, and generate the number PHI. (I should mention here that there is some additional symbolism related to man as having an extra appendage, and being symbolized in 666: Man has to seek his polar angel and find salvation in his “lady”, the one who represents the Divine Feminine to him, and mediates Life, since the particular feminine for him is more complete).

The pentad’s symbolism can be directly related to the Divine Proportion. And the regeneration of the pentad is related to the value of phi (?). The image of the pentad is found in nature in leaves and flowers. The Greeks believed each point of the pentad to represent an element: water, earth, air, fire, and idea. Early Christians used the pentad to represent the five wounds of Christ. The symbol, when the point is directed downwards, was later used as a sign for Satan and the Devil.

We will see that the Pentad is in some sense a total completion, as the perfect number (Decad) is simply a repetition of Pentad, just as the Dyad is a repetition of the Monad. 1:2::5:10. Also, 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9= 45, divided by 9 = 5. 5×5=25, x5 again = 125. The third square encompasses itself. It also encompasses two previous squares: 16+9=25. The Pentad is a mediator and balance : it is abundant Life, the Star upon the Cross.

So many esotericisms degenerate into chaos because they ignore the Tetrakys, the sequence of all Ten Numbers, 1 through 10, and their inter-relationships. Some emphasize the Monad at the expense of the Upper Waters, Sophia, and the Divine Feminine or the birth of the Logos. Others situate themselves within the Dyad, and ignore how the Dyad can only exist because of primal Unity. The Satanists, as noted, delight in inverting the power of Life in the Pentagram. On the contrary, the true initiate is aware of All Things and All Number, simply because they are fully aware. They do not fixate on one manifestation, but penetrate to the Divine Principles which animate created matter.

For example, the medievals noted that there are five ordinary senses and five wits. The ancients knew that there were five perfect 3-D shapes: 4 elements, and one called the aether, which was the “air within the air” (and all the other elements). Could one say that elemental Light is the aether? That the Middle Ages strove to embody the Light of Dionysius in their cathedrals, to begin the ascent from real matter up into the higher worlds?

“The Pentad is alteration, light, lack of strife; alteration because it changes three dimensionality into the sameness of the sphere, by moving cyclically and engendering light – hence it is light too; and it is lack of strife because it combines everything which was formerly discordant and brings together and reconciles the two kinds of number.” – Megillus

The Tetrad

Posted on 2013-01-16 by Logres

As we have journeyed through each Number, they appear to us like different states of consciousness: in the 1, I see Unity, in 2, I behold the difference between Being and Non-Being, and with 3, I see the deeper harmony of the One-and-the-Many. Of course, neither Unity, Being, nor Harmony is lacking in any of the Numbers: it is just that each Number is a key with a different dominant tone. One contains all Numbers, Two is another Monad (as well as Privation), and Three reconciles mystery with mystery.
When we reach Tetrad, we find more of the same, but differently. Are these new states of Being, or just changes in Consciousness?

1+2+3+4=10, so the Tetrad is complete: it contains the Pyramid, the four elements, and the four causes of Aristotle, and the Quadrivium – arithemetic apprehends quantity in general, music apprehends relative quantity, geometry takes in size in general (static), and astronomy apprehends size in motion in the stars. Iamblichus thinks the Quadrivium’s use of Number to apprehend Truth is less liable to error (one supposes, than religion?). He doesn’t seem to have a division between sacred/profane science – there is only Truth. He relates each science of Quadrivium to a number: Arithmetic (Monad), Harmony/Music (Dyad), Geometry (Triad), and Astronomy (Tetrad). The first and simplest three dimensional figure is the sphere, composed of center, diameter, area, circumference.

Creation proper begins with the Tetrad, as fire is symbolized by the pyramid (4 bases, 4 angles), there are 4 elements, 4 seasons, etc. Iamblichus’ use of 4 orderings in Nature is a long one. “Accretion of discrete things cannot be seen without the Tetrad, although plurality appears with the Triad”. Those who have died in virtue are not “thrice-blessed”, but “four times blessed”: they have gone beyond alteration and change.
Squares symbolize stability, and Hermes and Herakles are associated with them. Tlao means endure, so we may call it the Tetlad, for a neologism. Since its perimeter and square are equal, it is called Justice. 4 is associated with the ensoulment of Body, thanks to the various harmonic ratios established by the 1,2,3,4 sequence; so 4 (again) represents emergence out of possibility into actual existence.

In the Western tradition, we would say that the number 4 establishes the outflowing of the seminal Ideas of God into the material universe: Four is the entrance of the Triad’s energies into the actual harmonies of physical creation. In Platonic terms, matter would now be Over-Souled or given an Anima, so that the world-Soul now exists, and is a living thing. The seeds of Creation or rationes seminales (associated with Logos Spermatikos) proceed to actually unify Matter and Form into substance, shape, form, & principle. So actual things come into existence, and do not merely exist in conception as Ideas in God’s mind only.

Hebdomads, Pentagrams & the Eternal Word

Posted on 2012-12-15 by Logres at Gornahoor Forum

For handy reference, here is a simplistic table that is good to start with.
This is Iamblichus on the Hepdomad (7):

The reason for the seventh number being an object of reverence is as follows: the providence of the Creator God wrought all things by basing on the first-born One the source and root of the creation of the universe, which comes to be an impression and representation of the highest good, and he located the perfection and fulfillment of completion in the Decad itself, and the Creator God necessarily considered that the Hebdomad was an instrument and His most authoritative limb and has gained the power of creativity. For by nature, and not by our own devices, the Hebdomad is a mean between the monad and the decad, and the means between extremes are in a sense more authoritative that the extremes themselves, because the terms on either side incline towards the means…7 is the arithmetic mean between the tetrad and the decad (ie, in a sense between two decads, one potential, the other actual, since is half of the sum of both).

This excerpt should give a feel for what the Greek Platonists were doing – they believed that the symmetry and harmony of number was directly revelatory, through Reason (intellectual intuition, which we would term the noetic faculty), of the Logos.
In this case, Iamblichus’ short essays are worth reading – pick one of them & read the entire argument, mathematics & all, to get the feel for how they thought. Next week, I will present a summary of each of the numbers, although the above list will give you an idea of what it will look like.
For instance, the number Five represents Life: specifically vegetative Life (Six represents animal Life, and Seven, the living Soul of man). It also incarnates and mediates Justice – the proper balance. One immediately thinks of the “star” of Justice, the shire-reeve’s badge, five-pointed pentagram.
Here is Mouravieff in Gnosis III-

Below is the extract from Boris Mouravieff’s Gnosis III, pg 98,99 —As we have already indicated, the first of the three symbols that can be obtained from the Circle and the polygons is the Pentagram, or five-branched triple star. The study of this symbol-in-movement requires precise indication of the order in which  the student’s attention and his pen-point should pass from one to the other of the branch-points of the three stars through the intersections of  the lines that form them. This is how our numbered Pentagram is drawn (fig. 8): The Pentagram numbered in this way was revealed by the author during the lectures he gave at the Faculty of Letters in the University of Geneva. It was also published in the Summary of these lectures. We have already said that this symbol, taken as a whole, reflects the real positions of the elements and forces that form the Third Cosmic Octave. The student should apply the meanings of the Major Numbers to the corresponding figures and study them from this point of view. Here, he will come across the first difficulty: that of interpreting the terms characterizing each of the Major Numbers. In order  to interpret them, he must specially train himself to think ‘in harmony’ and not ‘in melody’, if we may put it this way. In other words, instead of a chain of reasoning he should form a bundle of ideas, of which each section should present a harmonious  chord. Then, and only then – keeping the meaning of the whole continually present in his mind – the succession of the figures as it is shown will enable him to make his thought and attention progress according to a precise order and so reach the desired goal. Except in a few rare cases, as long as the student’s mind has not attained the degree of training needed to enable him to pursue his research in an independent manner, this will require outside help. This is one reason why esoteric  teaching has always included an oral Tradition that vivifies the Letter of the written Doctrine.

The Numbers, properly contemplated, or truly contemplated at all, will lead us to God.

This entry was posted in Boris Mouravieff, Christianity, Metaphysics, Middle Ages, Tradition and tagged Iamblichus, Logos by Logres.Bookmark the permalink.Edit