FORM NUMBER ccs au COLOR aU ROR Sed POETRY CHRISTOPHER BAMFO Homage to Pythagoras —- ARTHUR JONC REDISCOVERING SACRED SCIENCEWhat i Sacred in Arehitectre2" and “The Platonic Traiton on the Nature of Pro- portion’ by Keith Critchlow and “Ancient Tempe Architeture” by Robert Lawlor Irete previously pals in Lindixfome Leer I Grin and Ancicture. Copyright © The Lindisfarne Awoeiation, 1580, “Tyee Criteria for Sacred Architecture” by Keith Critdiow was previously pubs lished in Landis Latin 12: The Lindisfarne Chapel Copyright© The Lindisfarne Association, 181, reduction: H sage to Pythagoras” by Christopher Bamford: "Pythagorean Number a Form, Colon and Light by Robert Laon, “the Teo Lights” by Arthur Zajone;"Apoll The Pythagorean Definition of God" by Anne Macaulay: and “Blake, ‘ents and Pythagoras” by Kathlen Raine were previoty published in. indore La ras Copyright © The Lindisfarne Asocaton, 1982 Published by Lindisfarne Books 2801 Route 9, Hudson, NV. 12534 swomalindistarme-org LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING:IN-PUBLIGNTION DATA, Homage to Pythagoras relscoering sicred science / eited by Christopher Bamford. Incudes bibliographical references. {Contents Introtuction / by Christopher Bamford — The platonic tration on the law — What steed in arehitectre? by ith Critchlow — timber a8 frm, ne— Apolo / on by Keith Ci Twelve eneria lor steed arcitecte / by ‘by Robert Lawlor — Pyhagorea ight / by Robert Lawlor — The twa lights / by Acthue Macaulay — Blake, Yeats and Pythagoras / by Kalen Rai 02624600 (pbk) Lindisfarne Asocation, Pythagoras and Pythagorean school Q Architecture aid eeligion, 4 Somholism in arehitecre, 3, Symbol of [-Banord, Christopher BL SGHOG 14 ‘4098 make cw The drawing for “Pythagorean Number as Form, Colo, andl Light” and for “Apollo The Pythagorean Definition of God” were made by Rachel Fether: Front cover art Pythagoras, Royal Portal, Chars Cathedral (from Aw Musto Monograph of Chartins Caudal, Eserne Housed) Wwos7esase jok may be reproduced or used in any manner Allrghts reserved. No pat ofthis er except ine se of bre! quotations ‘sthout the writen pertision a the publi ‘bodied in eical reviews and article, Ne United States of America CONTENTS 1, Introduction: Homage to Pythagoras, Christopher Bamford 2 Ancient Temple Architecture Robert Lavwlor. 3. The Platonic Tradition on the Nature of Proportion Keith Critchlow. 4. What is Sacred in Architecture? Keith Critehlon. Twelve Criteria for Sacred Architecture Keith Critehtow 6. Pythagorean Number as Form, Color, and Light Robert Lawlor 7. The Two Lights Arthur Zajonc 8, Apollo: The Anne Macaulay ythagorean Definition of God 9. Blake, Yeats and Pythago Kathleen Raine. Notes on the Contributors. u 133 169 173 187 213 301But ater his father Mnesarchus haul returned from Syria to Samos, with great sonalth, nihich he had collect from prosperous navigation, he built a temple to Apollo, withthe inscription of Pythius: and took care to have his son nourished ‘vith various and the best disciplines, atone time by Creophilus, at another by Phereydes the Syrian, and a another by admost all those who resid exer sacred concerns, towhom he earnesth recommended Pythagoras, that he might be as much ‘as possible sujfcientty instructed in dina concerns, He, however, 8as educated in such a manner, as tobe fortunately the wost beautiful and godlike ofa hove that have been celebrated in the annals of Ristory. On the death of his father, tke tse, though he was sil bul a yout, is aspect was most venerable and his habits ‘most temperate, so that he was even reverenced and honored by elderly men; and canverted the attention of all who saw and heard him speak, om himself, and ap- peared to be an admirable person lo every one who beheld him, Hence it was reasonably asserted by man, that he was de son of God. But he being corrbo- rated Uy renown of tis hind, by the edawation which he had received from his infancy, and by his natural deform appearance, in stil greater degree evinced ‘that he deserved his present prerogatives. He was also adorned by piety and disc lines, by mode of tnving transcondentl good by firmness of soul, anit hy body in due subject to the mandates of reason, Ln all his worlds and actions, his disco ‘rela inimitable quite and serenity, not ing subdued at any time by anger, oF laughter, or emulation, or contention, or any other perturbation or precipitation of conduc; but he deel at Samos like some beneficent daemon. TAMBLICHUS, Life of Puhagoras 1 Introduction Homage to Pythagoras Christopher Bamjord (Ob! Friend, we come too late, True the godt iv, But above our heads, up there in another world, Endlessly they at there, and seem to care litle Whether we five, that much the heavenly ones spare us. For a weak vessel is not always able to retain them, And only oceasionally it man able to bear the heavenly fullness A dream of them is life after that, But wandering helps, And slumber, and need and night make us strong, LUnuit heroes enough in the brizen cradle have grown Hearts strong as the heavenly ones’, ike before Thundering they come then, Meanwhile, it often seems to me Better to sleep than to be so without friends So to wait; andl what to do or say meanwhile T do not knows and what are poets for ina destitute ime? But they are, you say, like de holy priests ofthe winegod, ‘Who tacee from country to eouony ie holy gh! TF” \cestston oF croton, who lived in the old age of tagoras himself, said that “men die bi Py ‘ cause they cannot join their Besinning and their end” les sherefore extremely anspicious, fel hat we have come together to consider BK vl ‘ 3 eae come iogeter cone haga, ho iso nay vay Bec seni of our culture and the originator of so many of neiples. Indeed, a good case may be made not only tha cern ay be made not only that 's which we consider of value derives from the enigmatic spirit Bie ident fi a hs tne of Hoenn “read and Win” asa ep Vaecited seiner raph ene roe Roe asa response tomy talk, He ws quite ight, and there relude I here, Christopher Bamford 1 AL\we are here to invoke but also that in fact the entire epoch or evolution- ary moment whose end we are now witnessing began with the birth of Pythagoras and represents but a continuing metamorphosis of the teaching whose seeds he was called upon to plant. Lam overstating the cas as Simone Weil for one made very clear that Pythagor nal mystery of Greek civilizati and recurs everywhere, impregn: ophy, music, architecture, not to 1 ways are still those of today. And not only Greece: since then cal moment in the development of our civilization has witnessed a revival, a deepening even in some way, and certainly a metamorphosis, of principles related to this Pythagoras who at each instant—at the time of Christ, in the twelfth century, during the Renaissance, in the Roman- tic period and now today—is invoked by name. When we come to consider him, then, we have in many ways to consider the destiny of our culture, that culture, for better or worse, whose vessels of transformation wwe have chosen to be. In other words, to render homage to Pythagoras is to ask who we are, where we have come from and where we ate going. Itis to seek the meaning of our culture, and hence an answer to Joseph. Needham’s question, put so forcefully in his Science and Givitization in China, namely: “Why did modern technological science develop only in the West?” Not for nothing therefore was Pythagoras assimilated to Apollo, whose injunction “Know Thyself” he taught to the fullest degree. Let me interject here a personal note. My first guide in these matters was probably Charles Olson, who taught the need and possibility of thinking the whole earth and its history. By the old principle—actually, iagorean—that “a one is only if it produces a one,” he sizable, single and our duce a whole, nevertheless it is certai thought is the sen 1galmost all religion, poetry, philos- sition the ‘sciences’ which in many of course, Py showed that the world, the earth, wasa knowabl thing. If the universe isa whole, that is it must p and we are it—imago mundi, anima mundi—which means that we can know it, Myth thus became for Olson history in the sense of a finding out for one- self, as the way man, estranged from that with which he is most familiar, ely himself, could return to himself, Following Olson, Bateson gave way of thinking about these me a more philosophical, epistemologi things, about the universe, that is, viewed from the side of the primacy of mind, or rather viewed as mind. He taaght me about the dynamic, recur siye, selforganizing pattern-nature of the mental world of relations, the world we live, calling his path or approach Pythagorean and giving ita lineage: Pythagoras, the Gnostics, Alchemists, Goethe, Blake, Lamarck, Samuel Butler—and made it very clear that if' we did not derstand and fully achieve this way of thinking the consequences would. 12 | HOMAGE To PYTHAGORAS bye appalling. I therefore began to study deeply inthis tradition he had proposed anid at the same time, having learned the valuable lesson that Epistemologies or worldviews were not irrevocable, I found mysel ted both to the school of Guénon, Schon and the other ‘traditionalists’, and t scholars and teachers like Corbin, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Barfield, Steiner, de Lubicz and many others, some of whom are gathered here Ail these showed me that this so-called Pythagorean thinking which Bate- ‘son was trying to recover, in its epistemology at least, was common to all the spiritual traditions of the world. In other words, it was in the very ture of things, which led me to the study of nature and of Christianity Tsay all this both to excuse in advance the mixture of languages I shall be using and to confess that what in all this has remained most elusive for me is the actual mission, meaning, contribution of Pythagoras hi self, That is, though pythagoreanism, as it were with a sina ‘p and in the broadest possible sense, isan easily graspable notion—we know what it is and can talk about music, number, pattern, form, relationship, ge- fomelty, etc., as primary and invoke the great traditions of Egypt, Vedic India, Islam, as well as find apparent echoes among such contemporar- ies as Heisenberg, Wheeler, Eigen, Spencer-Brown, etc., who seem to inquire after pattern rather than after substance—what Pythagoreanism ‘with a capital ‘P” is, what he stands for, what I have suggested is the very mystery of our culture, is much more obscure. In fact the loser one examines the Western lineage of pattern-seekers, from the ‘early Neo-Pythagoreans and NeoPlatonists on through, the harder it is to grasp the archetype. One traces the evolution of an ecology of ideas, but the central idea continually evades one. Today, I am going to sug- Best this is because Pythagoreanism, though revolutionary, is not Original. Just as its history shows evidence of metamorphosis, a continu- fous change of form or understanding—a changing framework of application of the principles if you will—so Pythagoras himself insti- uted just such a change. As we are the seeds generated from the plant Which sprung from the seed which was Pythagoras, so Pythagoras, to, Seed, sprang from another plant. To discover, then, what itis that we are destined to carry forth into the fature—should we have a future, by which Alemaeon would mean, Gan we join our beginning and our end, our seed and our fruit—we lust exatmnine the past. The problem here is that the so-called past is ob- eure forgotien, confused, misatt Ferg i, misatsibuted. In a word, itis dificalt to real To help us do so, as in this conference, abwise procedure is necessary. By circling around the point Akind of cr = Christopher Bamford | 13of oblivion, now turning this way, now that, by connotation, not deno- tation, by waiting, as Heidegger would say, not pointing, the point will perhaps come to meet ws Now, for the ancients, though Pythago much of God, nature and humanity in Egypt, Babylon, Crete (and per- haps even India, whence he would have acquired the designation Pitta Guru), from the Greek point of view what he taught and practiced was a form of Orphism. Indeed, from quite early on a number of Orphie texts were even attributed to him, both confirming his Orphism and. suggesting the nature of Orpheus to be an angelic, initiatic state per- haps similar to that of Hermes Trismegistus. Thus to understand the riddle of Pythagoras we must confront the prior riddle of Orpheus, from. whom tradition asserts that Pythagoras derived most of what we ate with the idea of Pythagoreanism, including the Numbers. Witness esto learn what were the sources whence these men derived so much piety, it must be said that a perspic- uous paradigm of Pythagoric theology according to Numbers is in a certain respect to be found in the writings of Orpheus. Nor is it to be doubted that Pythagoras, receiving auxiliaries from Orpheus, composed. his Treatise Concerning the Gods... [which] contains the flower of the ‘most mystical place in Orpheus.” Indeed, according to this sacred dis- course it was Orpheus who, learning ftom his mother on Mount had travelled and learned Iamblichus, who writes: “Ifanyone wi Pangaeum, said that the eternal essence of number is the most provie dential principle of the universe, of heaven and earth, and the intermediate nature, In other words, as Syrianus says: “The Pythagore- ans received from the theology of Orpheus the principles of intelligible and intellectual numbers, assigning them an abundant progression and. extending their dominion as far as sensibles themselves.” And not only framework of their study numbers, of course, but the entire religio was Orphic from the Greek point of view. That is, we can find the whole of Pythagorean number theory in Orpheus, but embodied in mytholog- ical, symbolic, religious language Indeed, we must never forget that, from many points of view, Pythag~ coras was primarily a ‘religious’ teacher. Aristoxenus, a pupil of Aristotle and friend of the Pythagoreans of his day, wrote of them: “Every distine- tion they lay down as to what should be done and not done aims at conformity with the divine. This is their starting-point: their whole life is ordered with a view to following God, and it is the governing principle of their philosophy.” Note here the identity of philosophy with following God, Pythagoras, who was traditionally the first to call himself a philosopher, clearly something different by it than we. Men come to life, he said, as oa festival: most come to buy and sell and compete in the many compe- fiuions that are offered, but some come simply to observe, revere and Contemplate the order, beauty and purpose of what is occurring, the {olden unifying thread of essential wisdom that holds, binds ll gether ‘As Heidegger suggests, the philosopher is thus one who loves—pihilein— this wisdom—sephia. Love here having the connotation of amity, har- mony, correspondence—Platonic friendship almost—rather than the siriving yearning which is eras or the purely spiritual identity which is ‘agape, Though these three loves are all one Love, the Greek can distin- guish without separating, and I think that philen definitely has. friendlly feeling of cooperation and community, of familial affection between equals andl codependents. The philosopher is the friend, the intimate, of ‘wisclom—holds amicable discourse with her. We may recall Philolaus’ definition of harmony as the common thought of separate thinkers or the agreement of disagreeing elements, the reciprocal unity or third in which two things are brought together. The philosopher, then, is one whose thinking is in accord or harmony with wisdom, and whose prac- tice of philosophy is devotion and dedication to it. This is why Heidegger says that philein here means homolegein, to speak in accor- dance with the wistom which for Pythagoras, since only like can know Iike, is itself a harmony and a philia—in other words with the wisdom which is the Kosmos, that divine, true and beautiful order held together harmoniously by bonds of amity, reciprocity and affection or sympathy The Pythagorean philosopher thus strove to align his being, unite his thinking—though these are one, not two—with the thinking and being Sources of the Kosmos, ¢., the Gods, Numbers or Archetypes. Assimilae tion to the divine, then, imitation of it, by the practice of a way of ife— Philosophy word meaning in its beginning a right relationship with the Universe and with God—the famous “Pythagorean way of life,” was what Prthugoras taught. Pythagoras’ teaching is thereby ‘religious’ rather ’an scientific or philosophical, though these three of course are one for him, perhaps distinguishable—though this is not clear—but ce tainly not divisible. By the same token all three are quite different irom what we usually consider them. Indeed, his bringing of these together, a new way, with a social and artistic vision also, is what from ancient times accorded hi One blessed with 1 the status, quite specifically, of a religious geaius, religious revelation or mission. “A greater good never tohier Not ever will come to mankind,” wrote Tamblichus, “than that ‘was imparted by the Gods through this Pythagoras." And what he im mind was not that Pythagoras inaugurated a new approach to Christopher Bamford V5nature or to mind, though he would have agreed these were important if he had had the language to articulate them. What Iamblichus means is a liule different. Just before making this statement he has said that Pythagoras was associated by many with Apollo—Pythian and Hyper- borean. And just afer ithe invokes Aristotle to the effect that one of the principal arcana of Pythagorean philosophy was the division of beings into three kinds: Gods, humansand such as Pythagoras. In other words, Pythagoras was felt to augura new kind of being, the possibility of a new kind of being, Or rather that consciousness manifested a new religious or redemptive possibility in Pythagoras And it is this religious aspect, at once Orphic and Apolline, that I want to look at frst A tree rose up. O pure over (© Orpheus sings! O high tree in the ear! And all was quiet, Yet even in that quiet came forth a new beginning, sign and transformation. Animals of stillness pushed from the clear, opened wood of lair and nest and it happened that not from cunning and not from fear were they s0 quiet, but from listening. Bellow, cry, roar seemed small in their hearts, And where hardly even a hut had been to receive this, shelter from darkest desire, ‘with an entty, whose posts shake— there, in hearing, you made a temple for them, ce, The Sonnets to Orpheus, First Series, 1 ‘Trans. C, Bamford.) Rilke clearly realized the mystery ad the magic, the dream, the pres: cence and the premonition whieh is Orpheus, sensing in him more than myth and history, something akin perhaps to consciousness itself: For Goethe, too, this was the case, and Orpheus, and Orphic ‘Archetypal Words'—Unworte—came to stand for the very archetypes of organic be- ing. Thus, for the Renaissance, Orpheus was of the ‘prisci theologi’— the Greek representative of ‘ancient theology’, the peer of Moses, Zoro- aster, Hermes Trismegistus, And this was the view of the Greeks themselves for whom, as Proclus said all theology—Homer, Hesiod, 16 | HOMAGE To PYTHAGORAS Pythagoras, Plato—was the “child of Orphic mystagogy.” Yet Orpheus is Lnyatery, and in many ways has always been so, from the beginning, that jt from the time of Pythagoras and Plato, who while tacitly proclaiming. Themselves Orphies changed Orphism so much that a hiatus—vw Bachelard would call “an epistemological rupture’—was placed be- and their founder that we, Pythagoreans and Platonists, eded in overcoming. There, indeed, is our task and was twofold. Firstly, the Orphic teaching ythological, symbolic, connotative, concrete and synthetic was tween them whichis incompatible and increasingly incomprehensible to the rising analytic, denotative andl abstract self-conscious mentality. Secondly, his history was odd, No one knew anymore where Orpheus had come from. AS a sperson’ he was dated sometime between 1500-1200 BO, for he had ;pt, with Jason on the Argo, eleven -arch of the Golden Fleece, The supposedly sailed, after a generations before the Trojan War, in search for the Fleece, of course, suggests an alchemical or Hermetic as sociation, while the visi to Egypt, ifat that time, brings Orpheus and the Orphic impulse tantalizingly into association with Akhenaton (c. 1377), the creator of a radical, solar theism that rejected not only the subtle theology of Amun-Ra-Prah but also the ancient canons of proportion and measure, substituting for them a kind of naturalism, in which “Akhenaton and his family were portrayed in ‘androgynous’ form. This Is interesting because esorerically Akhenaton is considered a premoni- tion of the coming Solar Age— mediating between the passing Osi The relevance here lies in the fact that Osiris and Horus, according to Plutarch, were Dionysusand Apollo of the Greeks, between whom, as we shall sce, Orpheus is precisely the mediator. The historical ma mixed, androgynous. principle and the rising Horian emphases. ifestation of Orphism, however, does not occur un HL about half a millennium after this, when Orpheus appears as a Prophet or priest of Dionysus, a reformer of the ancient mysteries, who ¥ fame time paradoxically isan initiate of Apollo and a proclimer Ha solar monotheism. And it is this Orphism which, while clearly con- BLS # movement of religious renewal or reform, is actually more of "olution, For what Orphism seemed to have proclaimed was the Or- Phic way of tite, Effort, toxethe, the possibility of any individual attaining by his own with the action of grace, a transcendent - ee. oe ranscendent purity synony ith divinity. The revolutionary aspect lay both in the fact thatthe Finn 45 Pee foal and so universalized the Mystery and hicratie ions of the 1g the one from determination by sae O94 geography and the other from determination by caste and Temple Past epoch, relea Christopher Bamford | 17and also in that, as far as one ¢ or promise of resurrection: the idea ofa transcendent, unfallen aspe gather, Orphism taught the possibility of the soul, whieh we may call the Daimen. Who then was this founder? Looking more closely at the myth we dis- cover the following. Orpheus was the son of the Muse Calliope—that is, the Muse of Poetn, the Leader of the Muses—either by Apollo, their chief, or by Ocagrus, A Dionysian River Water-Wine God. In any event, then, his grandmother would have been Mnemosyne, Memory, the mother of the Muses, and Zeus himself would have been his grandfa- ther. It was Apollo on the other hand who gave him his lyre, which had. originally belonged to Hermes who had exchanged it for the Caduceus Apollo and Hermes (and so Orpheus} are brought into the closest con- tion, as are the Caduceus and the Lyre; and we may therefore associate Orpheus with the Hermetic tradition, thats, with the science, cosmology (alchemy) and perfection of the intermediate or human realm, the realm mediating between Heaven and Earth, Orpheus then, taught to play on his lyre by the Muses—and so too we may imagine by Mnemosyne and Apollo—created or introduced the arts of prophetic poetry (under which head we may include theology, my- thology, hymns), song and dance, so excelling at these that by the beauty of his harmonies all nature—trees, stones and animals—joined together: 1m peace and joy. His science, in other words, was a magical one which. brought all nature to some kind of bessed consummation. And in the same spirit other sciences and inventions, medicine, agriculture, ritual, athematies were all attributed to Orpheus. astrology, architect ‘This is the figure, then, whom we must see married to the fateful Bue rydice who, bitten by a snake, was taken down to Hades. Orpheus, descending after her, implored Pluto to permit her return, This was granted him, of course, on condition that he not look back upon her un til she stood in the full sunlight, Later versions say that Orpheus failed; earlier versions have him completely successful. Here we may note, with out comment for the moment, that according to Heraclitus Hades and Dionysus are one and the same; we may further note the similarity ofthis story and the gnostic one of Christ and Sophia—a similarity borne out by the more timid medieval mind’s interpretation of the story in terms of spirit and soul. This last interpretation is supported by the most re- cent etymological findings concerning the Greek word nous or spitit/ mind as derived from a whole cluster of words having to do with the re- turn to life and light from death and darkness. Finally, itis told of Orpheus that he rose Mount Pangaeum, calling Helios whom he named Apollo the greatest lily to greet the sun on 18. | HOMAGE To PYTHAGORAS of the Gods, for which the Maenads, followers of Dionysus, dism ered him, casting his head into the River Hebros, whence it floated out, fo sea, coming to land on Lesbos where it long continued to prophesy “Alternatively itis said that Orpheus, having introduced the rites of Di- sreece, had to suffer the death of his God. As Rilke wrote: Finally they tore you, impelled by vengeance ‘while your sound still lingered in rock and Lions, in tree i 1g there now id birds. You si (© you lost Godt You endless trace! ‘Only because in the end hate divided you are we now nature’s mouth and listeners, (Rilke, The Sonnets to Orphens: First Series, 26. Trans. C, Bamford.) But before getting into that, and to the question ofthe relations be- Tween Apollo and Dionysus, and to the mythology, we mus. firs onsider something else Namely, that there is an echo in this Oxphic story of something ex- tremely archaic, of an almost primordial tradition and time. Tt comes at Us from almost every aspect, and if we had to give ita name we would fall it “Shamanic.” And certainly Orpheus is that, as Eliade poins out, ot only in his descent into Hades, but in his healing, his love of music, Tis charms, his powers of divination, Indeed from that point of view, as Gio “Shamanism is not primitive at all but be- Jones, a all our civilizations do, to Of some almost unbelievable near io de Santillana c vast company of ungrateful heits astern ancestor who first dared to Understand the world as created according to number, measure and Weight.” And that is true, but I think it confuses the issue. In a sense the Key word here is music, for though Orpheus was the “divine musician” Bsc primarily and primordially was prophetic, divinely inspired ng; that is, poet. Orpheus harks back to an ancient time when words Sra ings were not yet separate! but were united ina kind of melodic Gait, Nening, singing, was identical with creation, wth making reality Free het i naming, the Gods spoke trough the name. To sing was Jeni she Gods, for only the God, the Archetype had a mame. In this ont ofthe propheepretsartan, bry wate one ot Be Gods, Asitsaysin the Vedis:“The gods created the hymns frst then Christopher Bamford 119,the fire, then the burnt offering. .. 7 The essence of this view, which Owen Barfield has termed “original participation,” is that there stands behind phenomena, on the other side of them from us, something which is of the same nature as humanity. Of this vision, music is the pr ileged model, both as to cosmology and as to communication, OF this turkultur of poetry, prophecy, theology and inspired knowledge Nora Chadwick writes: “Everywhere the gift of poet eparable from dis vine inspiration. Everywhere this inspiration carries with it knowledge. . Always this knowledge is uttered in poetry which is accompanied by tusic.... Music is everywhere the medium of communication with spit- its” In other words, behind every sensible phenomenon there lies a reality of an animistic, super-sensible order, and just as one can make an open string vibrate by sounding its own note ona nearby instrument, $0 one may conjure up and communicate with a spirit by providing it with a song or tone. The universe, which is body, is song from this point of view, and Orpheus is the child of what he t “Song is being,” says Rilke. Marius Schneider writes in The New Oxford History of Music: “To produce a sound, effort must be made, The bowstring has to be stretched, and the breath must impinge on a sharp resisting edge. The ground must be stamped down. All life arises solely from stamping, from the tension of wo opposing factors, which have to sacrifice their strength, if need be their life, for the birth of new life...” This isa fun- damental Orphic notion as we shall see—enacted typically in the polarity of Aether and Chaos, Apollo and Dionysus—that in creation a sacrifice has been made, a debt must be paid. Life isa gift, imposing cer tain duties and obligations, behind which as Cause and Origin Ties a sacrifice that must be atoned, harmonized. che cosmic, universal primordl ‘This is what Plato refers to when he says that we are prisoners of the Gods—an idea which seen in Orphic perspective and with Christian hindsight is clearly not primitive at al ‘With all this in mind, then, let us consider the Orphic theology or cos mogeny, from which Pythagoras reputedly derived his philosophy and. nnscendent, symbolic imaginal philosophy may to which, in fact, allt trace its roots. ‘We begin with an ineffable First Principle or Principle of Principles, Chronos, conceived under the aspect of Infinite Time. Proclus describes Dnce-Beyond’ itis in fact irreducible, indescribable, incompre- Why under the aspect of Time? This is very difficult. 1 will 1s this is « dynamic cosmogeny of action in itas hensible. hazard two suggestions. Fi which action isanterior to ‘ond, this primacy of Infinite T mespace-movementmatter in ne suggests the possibility of conceiving 20 | HOMAGE TO PYTHAGORAS rahe Orphic Gods, which afterall become the Pythagorean Numbers, oe some sense, Rhythins. In any event, Chronos, this Inelfable Fis oe aizes thats ads ise ost, presents ise oftselt,doublesitse penis © 060 principles Arte thats Heaven or Fire, a mae princi id Chaos, that is, What is Poured or Water, a female principle le J scmythologizing these two principh them Prras, a Principle of Limitati ‘and Apviron, a Pri. ciple of Unlimitedness or Lack of Distinction or Indefinitude. That isto sry, as an Islamic source has it: “When from the Cause emanates C there emariates from it NotOne,” that is; Two, Thus it is between One and Two that creation occurs, and Plato will call the Principle of Intel gible Matter, the Aprivon the Indefinite Dyad., What isimportant isnot to Confuse this Principle of the Unlimited with anything related to matter fase know it. Indeed one of the first things to be overcome in these ques fions is, as Coleridge says, the obsession with matter, the need for a Matter as a datum. “As soon as this gross prejudice,” he writes “is cured by the appropriate discipline, and the Mind is familiarized to the con- templation of Matter asa product in time, the resulting phenomenon of the equilibrium of two antagonist forces, Attraction and Repulsion . the idica of creation alone remains.” Cole fact, is very good on these things. As what he calls a “transcendental philosopher” he says not ‘Give me matter and motion and I will constrict you the universe,” as Descartes does, but rather: “Grant me a nature having two contrary =. one of which tends to expand infinitely, while dhe other strives vo pprehiend or find itselfin this infinity, and Iwill all up the world of in- Elignces seth the whole sytem of el representation the Platonic Pythagoreans will to arise before ¥0u.” In other words: “Every power in nature and in spirit must evolve an bres the sole means and cons ofits manifestation: and all sition isa tencleney to reunion.” This is true universally. Even God, the Unknowable Cause without Cause, must evolve an, opposite hy the Becesty of Himself, and that opposite can only be Himsel, so thatthe BEinciple of polariy becomes the principle of emt. nother words to a “ Himself to Himself, to know Himself, to take form, Chronos Fu place HimseiPas Actner before Himself 3% Chaos or forth from Himself as Chaos to return to Himself as Aether. Thus fen the Nothing before itself become 7 something: in fact as we shall se de 1 nn See4 Light, Power, Vision: which we might call with Schaller Tite the “Cosmic or Divine Ego,” the Divine “Lam.” hs Js the teaching from the beginning. forean to write anyt As Philolaus, the first pines ing down, said: "Nature in the Universe was igether (i.e, harmonized] from the Limiting and the Unlimited, Christopher Bamford 21iverse as a whole and everything in it.” Just so Plato, in his d the Indefinite Dyad were the principles of all things, even of the Eide, the Forms, them- selves. And in the Philebus he calls ita gift from the Gods, a gift passed ‘on in the form of a saying, namely: “All things that are ever said to be consist of a one and @ many, and have in their nature a conjunction of limit and unlimitedness.” Note the language: everything is formed, fit- ted together, by a conjunction, a marriage: “Great is the mystery of marriage,” says the Gospel of Philip, “for by it the world is created.” ‘This is the Orphic version, too. Chronos, polarized by addition into Aether and Chaos, forms an Ellipse, an Egg: silver, bright, shining. This ‘we may sayis the Golden Germ, seed, womb and embryo of all things, in Sanskrit the Hiranyagharbe, which is but another name for Prajapati, the Creator, the Lord of Produced Beings. So, too, in Orphism the Egg cracks, revealing the perfected manifestation of the conjunction of the two principles, called Phanes. Here we must note that while Chronos must in some sense have contained these two natures, It did so in utter darkness of potentiality, while Phanes in some sense manifests them: for Phanes, Protogonos, First-born of beings, is threefold. He-She is Phanes, first of all, who first shone forth and appeared in a blaze of light, illuminating, lighting, creating. This name was said to derive from phe nein, to shine; from which we ¢erive phenomenon or what is illuminated. But to begin with Phanes only illuminates himself, that is, Chronos, giving to him an ineffable body of light. He is thus the knower- known, the Creator-created, Fiat Lux and Logos: the primordial cosmic divine Anthropos. As threefold First Adam, he is also Erikapaius, power, masculine, and Metis, intelligence, feminine. In other words, the first form or salt, conjunction of Aether and Chaos, Fire and Water, is Light= Intelligence-Power, a triple being also called in the cosmogeny Eros, Pan and Dionysus, the first of three. This Phanes-Dionysus is symbolized as a God without a body—he is entirely spiritual—with golden wings on his side, bulls’ heads about him and a monstrous serpent encircling his head, with every form of crea: re engraved upon it, Accordingly he is, as Proclus has shown, the se, the seed of all. As Plato teaches in both the Ui unwritten doctrines, affirmed that the One a model or paradigm of the unive the Timaeus, the universe is one sing’, vsible living being made by the Demiurge after the model of the mest perfect intelligible iving beings And what dif there, Proclus asks, thinking of the Orphic Egg: between calling it an Egg ot Seed or that which is unfolded from it snamely Phanes,a being or animal, In et, as the Pythagoreans knew, (HE difference is most important, for between Fagg and Animal, between TO PYTHAGORAS seg iageeoF ogi 08 acvepeica aatO. Heise Irom the Eggs Proc sayy, cantecedenty compre Be ein hal the Canes of the secondary orden Phat Bento vce ofthe coming ino mediated wendy of Unspeaable Be cer hel concn eld 0 open Sereopmi Hoenn Unig all Numbers tat relations or phases of erelop I Sch, Lowey, sos alk page thermos yet pi aes omernenk ‘olin, Chess msibes Se sees aft dented sith what undergoes them: they are what they know and govern, At this Point we must recall that this Phanes is at once the Divine SelF-Kdentity Fee rete am. "Keep these things in thy mind dear son, and in thy Be.” says Orpheus in a fragment to his student Musaeus, “well know- Milune things of tongago, even fom Phanes Here then we hate the I scasryteagovean theory cf kuowieges The inate condtioinieas Behumanity is tua) IGontinuing this cosmogeny which is at once anthropogeny and epis- Bogs, Phancs, having his own daugherconsort aspect Ny or Wight, produces Ouranos and Gaia, according to Plato, mean- Fe looking upward” and so sigotying the pure intligible work! of oF min the level of contemplation acording to Ohmpiadors 2 eto procera era, contemplation Fn al a, bo ‘Sides the Fates and Karmuc Powers, the’ titans Chronos (Time/Saturn), BE (ears), Okeanon (Space) and Tethys (Diposer). Chronee, o Seon, takes over fom Ouran, eastrating him and marrying Sister, Rhea. The age of Chronos now begins which is paradoxically at heh Goble et San othe of Being —Chrones bad Homes sted “inteligence” and purification ako the beginning Bee. inthis sense t marks afl, indeed a fll into the body of both feed and fruit, Phanes, unfolding Hen wr an ts deh the esi et BBL rough sete emporatizes hee “There was anatare veh forward and wished wo own and rule iuelf and bad chosen sve iheening the moved time, and the movement was towards the ever Tater, not towards the self-same but towards the eve Micresingy in rating inthe Cratyts Plato abo gives “ooking upwards as the meaning of athopas "Thos we re reminded that each kee! human Indeed, as Obmpieoves aa, of Onphess—by which he means the reigns of Ouranon, Clones a hanes, the Fe Adam of Light be and of the Fist ! njg}~dhey are “wot sometimes existent, sometimes nonexistent, ba ey are Christopher Bamford | 28Thus also the Soul, when she made the sensible world. .. first of all temporalized herself, generating time as a substitute for eternity. . .. As the Soul imparts her activities in porions—one succeeding another and. succeeded by a different one—she generated succession as such along with her being active; and at one with discursive thought which is each, time different from the preceding ene, there came forth what had not been before. ...” Or, as the Orphic Hymn to Chronos says: Unbreakable is the hold you have on the boundless cosmos, 0 Chronos, begetter of time, Chronos of contrasting discourse, Child of Earth and Starry Heaven, In you there is birth and decline, august and prudent Lord of Rhea Who, as progenitor, dwell in every part of the world, Although with Chronos time and death arose, to begin with—one imagines for the duration of the Golden Age or Earthly Paradise—he ate: all his children, that is kept them within himself, until Rhea concealed Zeus from him, giving him a stone instead. Zeus, then, attaining sover= cignty, overthrows his father, casting the Titans into Tartarus, and the ‘Age of Zeus thus begins. However, we must not forget that each contains the whole. Zeus, for instance, is said to swallow Phanes, thereby making, himself the beginning, middle and end of the Universe. That is, the whole is still wholly present. Then, cutting a long story short, Zeus con- joins with his syzygy to produce Dionysus, Bakchos, also called Zagreus- “The story now goes that Hera, another aspect of the consort Rhea-Deme= terPersephone, jealous of the child Dionysus, reteases the Titans from Tartarus. These, whitening their faces, lure the child, engrossed in his own image in a mirror, away from his guardians, tear him to pieces, roast him and eat him. Zeus, arriving on the scene too late, strikes the Titans ‘with his lightning bolt. From the ashes then, or the smoke, Zeus creates humankind, a mixed creature of Dionysian and Titanic elements. Thats ‘one ending: in the other Apotlo cores and gathers up the pieces. Here again, of course, we are faced with the relation between Di onysus and Apollo, than which, as Jane Harrison says, “mythology has left us no tangle more intricate and assuredly no problem half so inter esting,” Orpheus himself is clearly an Apolline figure, yet his God, the God of Orphism, is equally clearly Dionysus, Orpheus, and Orphism, then, lead from one to the other. However, we must not imagine any OP position between these, rather 2 kind of complementarity. The universe is of one piece—it is a “one only”: one humanity, one nature, one Uni Verse, one God—and there is no more an opposition between Apoll 24 | HOMAGE TO PYTHAGORAS 41 Dionysus than between the Sun and the Moon, or between Princ se of Transcendence and Immanence. Plutarch, in his Essay on the graven over the Gate of Apollo’s Temple at Delphi, at ke point speaks ofthe “E” as representing the ive or quinary che pri- or ial marriage of even and odd, two and three, At the same time, he we represents nature, for just as nature taking a grain of wheat for ‘vill diffuse and produce many forms and species of growth, 10 re- vonce agtin to seed which once more will contain that same tiality, so the number five will always return to itself, that is when Beginning or First Cause which governs the tise, preserving the world by itself, does reciprocally perfect itself by ‘the world, as Heraclitussays of fire... the congress of five with ite Js framed by Nature to produce nothing imperfect or strange, but kas ted changes... . Now ifanyone shall say, What is allthis to Apollo? vill answer, that it concerns not Apollo only, but Bacchus also, who no less to do with Delphi than Apollo himself: For we have heard -siying and singing that God is of his own nature incor al, but yet, through a certain decree and reason, + changes of himself, having sometimes his nature kindled into and making all things alike, and otherwhiles becoming various, different shapes, pasions and powers, like unto the World, and is snes by this best known of names. But the wiser, concealing from vulgar the change... .call him both Apollo from his unity, and nge of his conversion into winds, water, Ms and animals. . . this they obscurely represent as a certain di nbering: and they now call him 5 &xhibiting and chanting forth certain corruptions, disparitions, aths and resurrections 1s genesis or becoming torn ® sucrificed by the Titans, it must be reassembled, remembered isthe transcendent principle, that aspect of the Divine whereby peste penile whereby nature or becoming made pert the sume time, as transcendent presence, Apollos the a Fa nittom of becoming, simultaneously present and ineffable in all Bl Processes as the other principle of wisdom Soul tet Point of view, Dionysus stands rather for the descent of » Apollo for its ascent or return—the one suggesting immanence Chyistopher Bamford | 25or reincamation, the other transcendence and resurrection.* “The souls of men, seeing their images in the mirror of Dionysus, as it were have en tered into that realm in a downward leap from the Supreme; yet even theyare not cut off from their origin, from the Divine Intellect,” so writes Plotinus. The Dionysian fallen soul ray have forgotten its Apolline, Dai- ‘monic nature, but itis not cut off from it. That is, there is a part of the soul that remains, or remained, forever unfallen, out of time. In this sense, Apollo is the Savior of Dionysus. Damascius writes: “When Di- ‘onysus had projected his reflection in the mirror, he followed it and thus, ‘was scattered over the universe. Apollo gathers him and brings him back to heaven, for he is the purifying God and truly the Savior of Dionysus, and therefore he is celebrated as the ‘Dionysusgiver’. Like Kore, the soul descends into generation, like Prometheus and the Titans she is chained to the body. She frees herself by acquiring the strength of Hercules, gath= ers herself through the help of Apollo and Athena . . . that is, by truly fying philosophy. Therewith we return to Pythagoras, who, as we said, ‘invented’ this no- tion of philosophy that Damascius teaches, and whose God, as we said, ‘was Apollo. Or rather: whose teaching, and practice and way was that of Apollo, First it must be stressed that these notions that Orphism intro- duced, whether they derived primarily from Egypt, Crete, Thrace oF | even Babylon (and an equally convincing case may be made for all four) were new to Greece. Apollo is always remembered asa ‘late-comer" into the company of Gods, and the idea of a transcendent self was not known: in Homeric times. More than a latecomer, however, I think we should think of Apollo as one who was ‘still arriving’. Where from? He was called. Hyperborean, and though through Thrace and Grete the idea may have come from the North, as Anne Maceulay will suggest, we should not nec essarily consider him as arriving only from the geographic north but 8. But wha is resurrection? It isthe uncovering at ny given tne of the elements that have ‘Now if you should recall having tea pel that Has appeated—and Soses—in Mls company do not suppose “ion isan apparition Is nota apparitions rather itis Something real nstead one ght to maintain thatthe world isan apparion rate than fe Sireedont ut let me not deprecate the cheutnstances of this world.» Simply: resurre Tenor ofthis wort for its el isha is constant find the revealing of what truly exists feceives i exchange forthe circumstances ofthis world or incorrupeion is teaming down wpon corruption: dows upon darkness, swallowing it np i ack, Mon Resurrection” fom The Nag Hamad Library auner also from the Cosme North, the Saeed or Transcendent Peak of he Cosmie Mountain, the pole and focus ofall rue orientation. An- einer similar intespretation makes him a “Shepherd God’, another a Srowenger oF mediator, like the Archangel Michael. All these bespeak fis wanscendent origin, from which point of view we may take his bow {and Iyre to symbolize projection, emanation into immanene bigainst this base, then, Pythagoras carries out his mission, But in act things are moving very fast and he institutes some very radical “ghanges. Let us pick him up as he arrives in Crotona, having passed his ‘. of wandering and apprenticeship: in Phoenicia, on Mount Car- fret, in Egypt, Babylon, Crete. He arrives, as C.J, de Vogel says, in Italy jain definite views: views on the structure of the universe, on fhe nacure of man and his place in it, and views on his own calling. The jent sources are unanimous. “All show us Pythagoras as a man who, “peeanse of his views on cosmic order, felt called upon to form and lead “human community to teach people to take their appropriate place in ‘the cosmos.” | We have had philosophy as a Pythagorean innovation, and now we ‘have cosmos, again a word we must rethink to understand it as he meant {Gosmos is much more than just the universe. It includes the idea of , order or goodness, and structural perfection which we might |Aruth. All of these are held together by the prior principle of unity, hich, manifesting as Cosmos—one mass of Life and Consciousness a Corpus Hermeticum will say—becomes a teaching of the harmony, at a kinship of ll things—a univer interrelationshipand in- lence: a harmony, which in the broadest sense we may take to but presiding over all things. As Phanes we said was the model is uli speeches Pythagoras alfred asco Principle of universal amity or friendship, whose embodiment Habe achieved by temperance, responsibilty, affection, honesty re Mahan’ spontancity. And atthe center of these he placed a religious Ss fF the young, philosophy forthe Ries, the Temple ofthe Fant fo the women, leadership in devotion he Pythagorean School, the heart of this was constituted by those who practiced disciplines, mathesis, Fist, an oral & probationary period of observation; then, a period of A three year residency on the periphery of the community Christopher Bamford | 27strance into the community, which began with a five-year silence, During this period one could listen, but not question; one be= gan fo practice the various disciplines of recollection, temperance, memory—memory was much stressed; music and chanting were daily employed, both as purification (hence recollection) and as worship these would be the “Orphic hymns"—and there was dancing, also {goods were held in common, in a cenobitic life. This was the first stage, Next came the real mathematies or practices; arithmetic, geometry, the ory of music, stereometry, astronomy, music. These were still a means: and not an end, Proclus says that the Pythagoreans recognized that ey= erything we call learning is remembering, and that through awakened sense-perception learning has its source wi n-our understand: ing’s attending to itself. The explanation is, he says, that_wha remembers is the understanding—dianoia, the level of Chronos in the cosmology—which is that part of the soul having its source and essen in the divine spirit, Ouranos, where the Archetypes or Numbers ha their being, and so it has prior knowledge of these, even when notusing Possessing them all in a latent fashion, it can bring them to lig when set free of hindrances, all of which stem from objectification b the senses. Every divisible thing, everything divided from us, isan obstae dle to our returning upon ourselves. “Consequently,” Proclus write when we remove these hindrances we are able to know by understatn ing itself the ideas that it has, and then we become knowers in actuality, that is, producers of genuine knovledge.” ‘There, then, is one end of Pythagorean philosophy, to become a pro- ducer of genuine knowledge. The implication at one level is that forms of thought are the laws of form, and that that through which mind understands is one with that through which the world is created, so that knowledge of mind is knowledge of creation. “You see, then, m friend,” writes Plato in the Republic, “that this branch of study really seems indispensable to us, since it plainly compels the soul to empl pure thought with a view to truth itself” The souls sel knowledge i pure thought thus becomes its knowledge of the universe. In othet words, the intention seems to have been for the student entering the Pythagorean school by means of various disciplines to become one Apollo, not many—and by becoming one enter into relation with all—Dionysu That was the intention, but, as Proclus’ description shows perhaps only too well, there was a tendeney in the in’ 1g and the knower from what was known, a tendency containing i shadow, or opposite, namely the isolation and separation of the kt 28 | HOMAGE TO PYTHAGORAS she known, here, mean the sense world. Though Pythagoras himself sto have taken great care not to separate Numbers from things, oe assion the consciousness ofthe time did not seem to be able 0 for by Plato, who is a Pythagorean, the Numbers, which he calls Iready in some sense separated from the sense Jporlds they are no longer things: nor are things, as they were for Thales, froglyphs, full of Godls. They are and they aren't, and Plato is suspi- dings both of the senses and of the sense world. Consequently epistime/ lecye/the world of ideas becomes separated from the sense-per- ible world—not that the senses do not mislead, but the idea that the can be transformed begins to be doubted. Also the ethical /moral of the sense-perceptible world begins to be lost. Though number, for je and comparable with one another, in that Number gives them {the emphasis in later Pythagoreanism is increasingly one-sidedly js no give and take, or rather there is nothing the ‘senses’ have provided. And in fact the form ygoras’ School makes elear why this occurred ginal Orphism, however, equally clearly harked back to some- different, at least held the promise of something different ing and experience are still one in the sense-object; what a thing ils meaning, is revealed in the perception of it. Through senseim- Which are names, words, songs, the Gods are spoken, So , witnessed, lived. By the time of Oras, however, it seemed as though meaning and object were Bg aha, the Gods were growing silent, meaning seemed to be Neen eimenon. Ax did wo, the senses were increasingly Fe i Simos faced withthe story of Orpheus again—the Urge {sen the Archetypal Story of All Beings, as Herder called it fost the world, the beautifal soul of manifestation, and hede- {atin aller ic into Hades, whieh Heractius tells us is one with ®, the granulated world of birth and death. He failed, in the ver- se Greece, to raise her up, but he forever holds the promise eins Of the reunion of mind and nature, being and becoming, cunt the universe, In other words, he presents the possibility of fying perception, an imaginal thinking, bj Christopher Bamford | 29Pythagoras seems to stand for, or rather, at a turn in the story. He seems to stand, in some ways, for the transformation, the development of pure thinking, of a thinking, again, in some ways free of the senses. In this sense, he opens the door to Docetism and idealism, to the kind of rational mysticism, mystical rationality that culminates perhaps in He- gel. But this is only one side of Pythagoras’ dream; the other is purely Orphic and has to do with the redemption and transfiguration of the Cosmos, Ibis time, I think, to return to that, to the world of the senses, to respiritualize it. From another point of view, this is to return to art— the speaking, disclosing, embodying of truth—as the origin of culture. We are just at the beginning. As Heidegger sa We are too late for the godsand too early for Being. Being’s poem, just begun, Bateson struggled with this. And Goethe, as in this characteristic piece: In observing the cosmic structure from its roadest expanse dawn to its ‘minutest parts, we cannot escape the impression that underlying the whole is the idea that God is operative in Nature anid Nature in Gutl, from eternity to eternity. Intuition, observation, and contemplation lead us closer to these mysteries, We are presumpnuous and venture ideas of our own; turning more modest, we merely form concepts that might be analogous to those primordial beginnings, AL this point we encounter a characteristic difficulty—one of which we are not always conscious—namely, thata definite chasm appears to be fixed between idea and experience. Our efforts to overbridge the chasm are forever in vain, but nevertheless we strive eternally to over- come this hiatus with reason, intellect, imagination, faith, emotion, illusion, or—if we are capable of nothing better—with folly, By honest persistent effort we finally discover that the philosopher might probably be right who asserts that no idea ean completely coin= cide with experience, nevertheless admitting that idea and experience are analogous, indeed must be so. In all scientific research the difficulty of uniting idea and experience appears to be a great obstacle, for an idea is independent of time and place but research must be restricted within them. Therefore, in an idea, the simu gether, whereas in an experience they are always separated. Our Mempt to imagine an operation of Nature as both simultaneous anid aneous and successive are intimately bound up to- 30 | HOMAGE TO PYTHAGORAS st in an idea, seems to drive us to the verge of in- tn intellect eannot picture uted what the senses present tit Separately and thus the duel between the perceived andthe ideated, ns forever unsolved. From the primordial beginnings of time until now it seemsas though tne whole cosmie process has been moving towards a point where it my were, turned inside out, We are at that turning, really that same farning still that Pythagoras was on and situated, We are still doing what he dd. only we area lite further on, and soitis clearer tous that having aissen out ofthe cosmic process itis time to return it, to give back what the have received, Heidegger speaks of art as creation, as the bringing forth of the uneoncealedness of whats; a the projecting of the uncon cealecness (truth) of what i, Asa letting be and a letting speak, asthe setting into-work of truth, bestowing, grounding and beginning. ‘This is fnew birth of the Orphtic word, a return of Pythagoreanisim into Or- phism, a new directive from Apollo, Iisa return to “language” as that Which brings what is into the open. Earth, Is not this what you want: to resurrect in us invisibly? Is it not your dream to be invisible one day? Earth! Invisible! ‘What's your urgent charge, if not transformation? So Rilke in the Ninth Duino Elegy; and in the last Sonnet to Orpheus: In this vast night, be the magic povser the meaning of their strange encounter And if the earthly has forgotten you, say to the still earth: I flow. To the rushing water speak: Iam. Christopher Bamford \ 31Bibliography Athanassakis, Apostolos N., trans. The Oxpic Hymns, Society of Biblical Literature, veco-Roman Series 4, Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1977, Barfield, Owen. What Coleridge Thought. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1971 Burkert, W. Lore and Science in Ancient Pythogoeaniim. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1972, Chadwick, Nora K. Poetry and Prope. Cambridge: At the University Press, 1942. de Santillana, Giorgio and von Dechund, Hertha, Hale's Mill, Boston: Gambit, 1969, de Vogel, C.J Pythagoras and Bary Pthagoreanion. Assen and New York: Van Gorcum, 1966, Eliade, Mircea. 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New 32. | HOMAGE TO PYTHAGORAS cciwatler de Lubicr Isha, “AKhensaton,” Chapter 89 in HerBak, ‘Chick ea’ Trans- Schwalle py Charles E. Sprague. New York: Inner Traditions Intemational, 1978 aca terete ect : Oxford University Press, 1957. spencer Buc, G. so Farm. New York The Jaan Pres, 1972 See aesimone, Intimations of Christianity among ike Ancient Greeks. Edited and trans: Heed by Elizabeth Chase Gefsbubler, London: Routledge & Kegan Pat, 1976 Ness Translated by Arthur Wil, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956 Waerink LG. Te Grck Commentaries on Plato's Phare: Vol. Obmpidorus ol, ‘Damacina Amsterdam: NorthHolland Publishing Company, 1976, 1977, oan Chyistopher Bamford2 Ancient Temple Architecture Robert Lawlor N THESE TALKS I WOULD LIKE to look at ancient, and partic ularly Egyptian, Temple Architecture, not from the point of view of art history nor even from the point of view of religion, but instead from that of the history of science. I would like to show that Temple Archi- tecture was symbolic language, chosen by a hieroglyphic culture for the purpose of recording its scientific philosophy and epistemological techniqu ‘This approach should have the advantage both of revealing the rele- vance of the ancient position with regard to the problems facing the philosophy of science today and of preventing our exposition of Temple geometry from remaining simply a historical curiosity. Symbols have to be slain in order to resurrect, and I feel most strongly that the ancient wisclom can only gain relevance for us if it accepts the challenge of ver- ification within the terms and data of modern science. For this to happen, however, it will be necessary first to place the ‘Temple in the broad context of the scientific beliefs which have ap- peared throughout history. Therefore, so as not to be accused of wandering away from the agreed upon topic, I would like to state right, at the beginning that I feel that the title, “Ancient Temple Architec- ture,” authorizes, and even necessitates, that we discuss four areas of thought: namely, Time, Perception, Resonance, and Symbolization hicks my reasoning. The first word, “Ancient,” implies the idea of story, which implies a particular way of perceiving and recording the Passage of Time, while the second word, “Temple,” is derived from the fa (tbs meaning "temporal orden” and templum, meaning ‘spa order,” and the third word, “Architecture,” means in Greek “the ‘Way or method of structuring what is archetypal.” Temple Architecture Robert Lawlor 35fore the structing or symbol ofthe archespal concepts of Time and Space and ths “Ancient Temple Archlectone ss oat te inchides thee out of our four areas of thooghe aio elon ce "Resonance as ou fourth will become more nboiuteen Before approaching the meaning of cent Temple nrc then, an atemptshould be made w esamine the wae ction hence Space might have been perceived, experienced aalomnied id builders, For this reason I would like to begin by outlining certain mod- ls for these concepts which I feel are suggested by the mytholoy f and geometry contained parca in the Egyptian Temple of Lor, using a8 a guide the voluminous work on this ealfice by A Setwaller de Lube, Le Tome dene pe Suda Lugar In the talks that follow shall present scent, mytholegeal and geometric data that may et as support ior these mod, 36 1 ANCIENT TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE 10N ‘Time, Perception, Resonance ail It is relatively easy to demonstrate spatial concepts in relation to archi- tecture, but Time is very difficult to conceptualize, let alone discuss, in any context, Nevertheless, those cultures which are steeped in myth gen- erally ave a model of Time which is not only cyclical but recyclical, one of whose essential premises is that Light is the carrier of the messages of ‘Time, an idea which is supported by modern research in bioclocks and helio biology According to this mythic perception, time, in the form of light, formed, filtered and resonated through the effects of celestial lav, is drawn towards earth, “Earth” here meaning a field of objectification or manifestation. Reaching earth, it forms, energizes, particularizes, drives, animates, creates and destroys; and is itself absorbed, assimilated, reflected, re- fracted, distorted, captivated, transfigured and transformed; before finally being released back again towards its celestial origin, modified, and carrying in pattern forma record of all the events that occurred dur- ing its given moment of interaction with the forces of manifestation From this point of view, time, like light, as it recedes from the earth towards the heavens and moves away from its phenomenal condi back towards its original condition of order based upon laws of celestial Configuration, may be said to diffuse, expand and shift its spectral tonal- ity relative to the viewing point from which it was perceived as an objective event. It follows from this that since every event in time is only the result of a complex momentary relation between a viewer and a Viewed, the more an event recedes in time the more it recedes in space, and conversely, In other words, the quality of time, like that of light, Robert Lawlor \ 37changes as it recedes in space-time; and the red-shift in light has a par- allel in the mythie shift in Wea ul 17 tty We are given an image, then, in which time is cycled and recycled in avolleylike exchange between a celestial orgai manifest organization; in which there is an unfolding of a pre-pattern energy within the contingencies of emerging forms and structures; a movement in which time-light descends from a mythic to a phenome- nalized level, undergoes a modification within the varied yet limited possibilities of a material state, and the returns again to the realm of potentiality Thus to the mythic mind an event in time may never be retrieved as a factual replication but only in its new quality as it recedes towards, or returns from, its origins in Mythic Time. History is then always either a deduction or an intuition based upon a residue of receding light in space and memory—which can only act as a symbol, not a fact, for thought, When the Egyptian priest told Herodotus that the first kings in Egypt were preceded by the gods, he was saying that phenomenal time before the period of the kings had already been absorbed back into the archetypal ficld of celestial organization, called in Egypt the realm of the Neters. In this sense, we will be considered gods to some fature gen- eration—that is, our phase and formation of light will have become a recurring influence within the possibilities of future evolution. 38 | ANCIENT TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE This cosmic dialogue between the existing—the changing—and the -existing is expressed in Egyptian mythology by the linguistic play of lulations on the verb “to become” or “to come into existence,” er while the Neter of the rising sun, whose symbol is the scarab, is led Khepri: One text reads ‘When I manifested myself into existence, existence existed. I came into existence in the form of the Existent, which came into existence at the First Time, Coming into existence according to the mode of existence of the Existent, [therefore existed, And itis thus that the existent came into existence, for Iwas anterior to the two Anteriors, for my name was, anterior to theirs, for I made them thus anterior to the Two Anteriors. hs \e-space metaphor, depending upon, “ontinuious, oscillating movement in duration, in which time is con- ‘ed of as a modulation shifting through variations in tendency and Robert Lawlor | 39intensity isa particularly difficult image of time for us, both because we have very few terms in our language to express these types of concepts, and because we have the linguistic habit of objectifying time by applying formal, spatial, or quantitative terms to describe it. For example, we say a “long” time or a “short” time, or break it into quantified segments, such as “ten days,” etc. But time, of course, is not an object, nor is it mea surable in the sense that we measure space. Thus in Egyptian, as in many languages of mythimbued cultures, there is no absolute grammatical segmentation of time into past, present and future tenses. Such languages, on the contrary, are structured ace cording to a continuous, graduated movement—first into a particu larized condition, then out again—jus: as light moves in and out of phe- nomenal perception. For example, in hieroglyphic writing, the verb “to listen” includes, like other verbs, modulations which indicate a process of moving through various states of actualization. One form means “ap- proaching the state of being able to listen,” and another means “the state of being able to listen,” and finally there is “listen.” A further form indicates a continuing present future, however, may only be indicated by a sort of conditional. tis evident, then, that each language reformulates in different ways (auditory, visual, symbolic) the experience of the mind’s perception of light; and itis these language patterns which permit the experience of. vibratory arrays to manifest in the realms of thought and embodied con- sciousness. To quote Benjamin Whorf: Western culture has made, through language, a provisional analysis of reality and, without correctives, holds resolutely to that analysis as final ‘The only correctives lie in all those other tongues which by aeons of in- dependent evolution have arrived at different, but equally logical, provisional analyses, The mythic analysis of reality is summarized in the essential concept underlying the Egyptian “Book of Transformations,” called The Book of what isin the Dwat, the Dwat being the “inversed” or netherworld: Re, who is Consciousness in the form of light, symbolized by the Sun, becomes flesh (Up, in order to know himself'as embodiment. The universe of time and space is thus the field through which Light can know itself as flesh and, ultimately, flesh can know itself as Light. [ would like to propose in these talks that Temple Architecture is a particularly synthetic language which describes this cosmic unfolding—a language that is a logical, even. scientific, envisioning of the mythic analysis of reality 401 ANCIENT TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE ll the time that he is listening.” The put before we ean approach the language of the Temple directly, we icknowledge that we have been drawn into a consideration of the snvst jon of perception in general through the shifting interdependency di we have found t0 exist between the concept of time and the percep- that we have tion of time. 2 In his new book, Mind and Nature, Gregory Bateson delineates the sub- iective nature of all knowledge, due to the limitations and particularities “br our perceptual activities. This interdependency between perception and what can be known of reality is, according to Bateson, “what every Schoolboy should know.” Such ideas, which began to break upon the ‘world of empirical science with relativity theory and the uncertainty principle, are now often dismissed as truisms. Unfortunately, however, ‘his is happening before we have been able to incorporate the newcon- “cept of the interdependency of perceiver and perceived into an active discipline and technique of thought. Thave already proposed one interdependency between time and the perception of time, Now I would like to examine a perceptual model “given in Ulric Neisser’s book Cognition and Reali, which is, ax may be fen from the dlagram, related to the model we have just used to con- ‘ceptualize Mythic Time. CICLE OF PeReEPnOW Tn his book, Neisser refutes the conventional linear model of percep- fon and replaces it with a circular model in which the perceptual Robert Lawlor | 41process takes place not instantaneously but in time, through constant accumulation. The perceiver is seen as engaged in a modifying ex. change with a field of informational stimuli, that is, with information reaching him as vibratory variations carried by light, sound, etc. These patterns of varied vibrational intensiy interact with a previously estab- lished anticipatory “schema” which is the coagulation of unavoidable linguistic and cultural biases subjectively maintained by the observer, the sum of his experientially acquired and internally stored cognitive perceptions. This interaction of an external object or informational in turn, modify, to some degree, the initial "schema," which may then perpetuate the eycle by directing further exploration, and so forth teriority, subject and object, is dominated by an inherently selective schematic organization maintained within the consciousness of the per- ceiver in the form of patterned neura systems in the bra This unbroken circularity of the perceptual activity demands an im ‘age of reality which must always incorporate the sensing and cognizing. ‘organism as au inseparable aspect of perceived stimuli or events. Hence only a status of mind which simultaneously perceives not only the object. field but also the structure and limitation of its own instrument in the act of perceiving can glimpse the Real, Such a status of mind appears to be achievable only through deep introspection and seléknowledge, of both a psychological and a physiological character, in combination with empirical methods of observation. Although from a limited perspective along the continuous curve of the perceptual cycle the perceiver and the perceived, or the internal and the external, can and must be distinguished from one another, itis the continuous circular integration of perceiver and perceived that T shall be referring to as our definition of objective reality. For this reason the subjectobject integration of mythology and sacred architecture ap- pears 10 me to be an effective language for scientific formulation. Indeed, when we relate research from Cognitive Psychology to the im plications of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and aspects of Einstein's relativity theory, we are already carefully beginning to free ourselves from the nineteenth-century conviction that reason and ex- perimental epistemologies have an exclusive access to the factuality of the empirical world. 420 | ANCIENT TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE field with internal “schema” will naturally tend to evoke direct explora tion by the perceiver, which may then yield new information that may, The processes of perception are thus visualized by Neisser as dy- namic, cyclic triads, in which a constantly flowing circulation of interfused activity between perceiver and perceived, interiority and ex. tn terms of Cognitive Psychology, if we tend to believe what we see Me ay perception is a process which provides information about the ea was stated very ‘ancient Hindu metaphysi ‘clearly in reality from that Whether we know it or not, all things take on thei which perceives them, “An Egyptian papyrus similarly speaks of three men walking together: To one of them there are only two _