Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. III — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

With this compare the "Chaldsean Oracle" (cap. Psellus, 19): " Do not soil the spirit, nor turn the plane into the solid " — /AJ; Trvevjma iu.o\vvfl$ /U.*JT€ /BaOuvfl? TO evriTreSov (ed. Cory, Or. clii., p. 270); where the four stages correspond to the point, line, plane, and solid. It is also to be remembered that since #° = 1, 2°=land3°=l.

That these are the boundary numbers of the soul, according to Pythagoreo-Platonic tradition, is of interest, but how this can in any way be made to agree with the ordering of the soul-spaces in our treatise is a puzzle. That by adding these numbers together (1 + 2 + 3 + 4+8 + 9 + 27) we get 54, and by farther adding the numbers of the World-Soul proper (1 + 2 + 3) we get 6, and so total out the whole sum of the phases to 60, savours somewhat of " fudging," as we used to call it at school. It is by no means convincing, for we are here combining particulars with universals as though they were of equal dignity; still the ancients frequently resort to such combinations.

That, however, there is something more than learned trifling in these numbers of Plato may be seen by the brilliant study of Adam on the " nuptial number " of Plato,1 which was based upon the properties of the

1 Rep., viii. 545C-547A. See Adam (J.), The Nuptial Number of Plato : Its Solution and Significance (London, 1891).

" Pythagorean triangle," a right-angled triangle to the containing sides of which the values of 3 and 4 were given, the value of its hypothenuse being consequently 5; and 3x4x5 = 60. The numbers 3, 4, 5, together with the series 1, 2, 4, 8, and 1, 3, 9, 27, were the numerical sequences which supplied those u canons of proportion " with which the Pythagoreans and Platonists chiefly busied themselves.

Still, as far as I can see, this does not throw any clear light on the ordering of the soul spaces as given in our treatise, and we are therefore tempted to connect it with the tradition of the mysterious 60's of Cleombrotus. But what that choral dance was which ordered the subordinate cosmoi into 60's, and whether they proceeded by stages which might correspond to 3's and 4's and 5's, we have, as far as I am aware, no data on which to base an argument. It may, however, have been connected with Babylonian ideas ; the 3 may have been regarded as " falling into " 4, so making 12, and this stage in its turn have been regarded as " falling into " 5, and so .making 60.

THE MYSTERIOUS CYLINDER

It is to be noticed, however, that before the souls revolted, the Demiurge "appointed for them limits and reservations 1 in the height of Upper Nature, that they might keep the cylinder a-whirl in proper order and economy" (11).

They were, then, confined to certain orderings and spaces. But what is the mysterious " cylinder " which they were to keep revolving ?

So far I have come across nothing that throws any

1 Which may have been regarded as the prototypes of the direct light on the subject. However, Proclus1 says that Porphyry stated that among the Egyptians the letter ^, surrounded by a circle, symbolized the mundane soul.

It is curious that Porphyry should have referred this idea to the Egyptians, when he must have known that Plato, to whom Porphyry looked as the corypheus of all philosophy, had treated of the significance of the symbol X (in Greek x) in perhaps the most discussed passage of the Timceus (36B).2 This letter symbolized the mutual relation of the axes and equators of the sphere of the "same" (the "fixed stars") and the sphere of the " other " (the " seven planetary spheres "). Porphyry, however, may have believed that Plato, or Pythagoras, got the idea in the first place from Egypt — the common persuasion of his school.

This enigma of Plato is described as follows by Jowett in his Introduction to the Timceus 3 :

" The universe revolves round a centre once in twentyfour hours, but the orbits of the fixed stars take a different direction from that of the planets. The outer and the inner sphere cross one another and meet again at a point opposite to that of their first contact; the first moving in a circle from left to right along the side of a paralljlogram which is supposed to be inscribed in it, the second also moving in a circle along the diagonal of the same parallelogram from right to left4; or, in

1 Comment, in Plat. Tim., 216c ; ed. C. E. C. Schneider (Vratislaviae, 1847), p. 250.