The Golden Verses of Pythagoras — with commentary (1917)
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of lights ; it was believed that this creative Unity, inaccessible to the understanding even, produced by emanation a diffusion of light which, proceeding from the centre to the circumference, losing insensibly its splendour and its purity in proportion as it receded from its source, ended by being absorbed in the confines of darkness ; so that its divergent rays, becoming less and less spiritual and, moreover, repulsed by the darkness, were condensed in commingling with it, and, taking a material shape, formed all the kinds of beings that the world contains.
Thus was admitted, between the Supreme Being and man, an incalculable chain of intermediary beings whose perfections decreased proportionably with their alienation from the Creative Principle. All the philosophers and all the sectarians who admired this spiritual hierarchy considered, under the relations peculiar to them, the different beings of which it was composed.
The Persian magians who saw there genii, more or less perfect, gave them names relative to their perfections, and later made use of these same names to evoke them: from this came the Persian magic, which the Jews, having received by tradition during their captivity in Babylon, called Kabbala.
This magic became mixed with astrology among the Chaldeans, who regarded the stars as animated beings belonging to the universal chain of divine emanations; in Egypt, it became linked with the mysteries of Nature, and was enclosed in the sanctuaries, where it was taught by the priests under the safeguard of symbols and hieroglyphics.
Pythagoras, in conceiving this spiritual hierarchy as a geometrical progression, considered the beings which compose it under harmonious relations, and based, by analogy, the laws of the universe upon those of music. He called the movement of the celestial spheres, harmony, and made use of numbers to express the faculties of different beings, their relations and their influences. Hierocles men-
" The word Sap signifies, in Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldean, that which is anterior, that which one receives from the ancients by tradition.
Examinations of the Golden Verses 137
tions a sacred book attributed to this philosopher, in which he called the divinity, the Number of numbers." Plato, who, some centuries later, regarded these same beings as ideas and types, sought to penetrate their nature and to subjugate them by dialectics and the force of thought. Synesius, who united the doctrine of Pythagoras to that of Plato, sometimes called God, the Number of numbers, and sometimes the Idea of ideas.* The gnostics gave to the intermediary beings the name of Eons.' This name, which signifies, in Egyptian, a principle of the will, being developed by an inherent, plastic faculty, is applied in Greek to a term of infinite duration."^ One finds in Hermes Trismegistus the origin of this change of meaning. This ancient sage remarks that the two faculties, the two virtues of God, are the understanding and the soul, and that the two virtues of the Eon are perpetuity and immortality. The essence of God, he said again, is the good and the beautiful, beatitude and wisdom; the essence of Eon, is being always the same.' But, not content with assimilating beings of the celestial hierarchy to ideas, to numbers, or to the plastic principle of the will, there were philosophers who preferred to designate them by the name of Words. Plutarch said on one occasion that words, ideas, and divine emanations reside in heaven and in the stars.-'^ Philo gives in more than one instance the name of word to angels ; and Clement of Alexandria relates that the Valentinians
" Aurea Carm., v. 48.
* Synes, Hymn., iii., v. 174; Hymn., iv., v. 68.
<^ Beausobre, Hist, du Manich., t. i., p. 572.
^ The word Eon, in Greek kliiv, is derived from the Egyptian or Phoenician '« (oil), a principle of will, a central point of development, and ^T {ion), the generative faculty. This last word has signified, in a restricted sense, a dove, and has been the symbol of Venus. It is the famous Yoni of the Indians and even the Yn of the Chinese: that is to say, the plastic nature of the Universe. From there, >he name of Ionia, given to Greece.
« Herm. Trism^g., c. 11.
/ Plutar. cit6 par le pfere Petau. Notes in Synes, p. 42.
138 The Golden Verses of Pythagoras often called their Eons thus." According to Beausobre, the philosophers and theologians, seeking for terms in which to express incorporal substances, designated them by some one of their attributes or by some one of their operations, naming them Spirits, on account of the subtlety of their substance; Intelligences, on account of the thought; Words, on account of the reason ; Angels, on account of their services ; Eons, on account of their manner of subsisting, always equal, without change and without alteration.* Pythagoras called them Gods, Heroes, Demons,' relative to their respective elevation and the harmonious position of the three worlds which they inhabit. This cosmogonic ternary joined with Creative Unity, constitutes the famous Quaternary, or Sacred Tetrad, the subject of which will be taken up further on.
Purification
4. Be a good son, just brother, spouse tender, and good father.
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