Pythagoras
| Pythagoras is a fictional philosopher who supposedly lived in Greece from 570 bc until 495 bc, invented as a name of a mystery school in South Italy which attributed mystical properties to numbers. Pytha-python: the serpent, also worshipped by the Pytha priestesses at the oracle of Apollo. The cult of Mercury (Thoth) held mathematics in high esteem as it described the ideal world of forms. Pythagorean tradition was spread by Philolaus of Croton and Nicomachus, who wrote A Life of Phytagoras, used by Plotinus' student Porphyry and his student Iamblichus. |  |
The tetractys Monad divided in two, three and four is a variation of the one eye pyramid symbol, used in alchemy, kabbalism (mystical Judaism) and freemasonry. It is a representation of the soul who incarnates into the realm of 4 elements.
Like the Kabbalists, the Pythagoreans considered 10 a holy number (1 and 0, male and female) and divided the Tree of Life into 10 sepiroth, instead of 9.
Music theory of 7 notes correspond to the teachings of 7 chakra's and 7 planets.
The theorem about the relationship between the three sides of a right triangle, already used by the Babylonians was named after him, proven in Euclid's Elements.
The biggest source of mythology about Pythogoras is unreliable author Diogenes Laertius, who claims he was mentioned in the satires of Xenophanes and that Pythagoras was a son of Hermes in one of his reincarnations (Hermetic tradition).
Pythageran thought influenced the texts of Plato, an author invented by the Medici's (Marsilio Ficino) to revive the Hermetic tradition.
In 1509 Rafael painted Pythagoras and the tetractys symbol in the School of Athens in the Vatican Palace of the Catholic Church with also Plato (based on homosexual Leonardo da Vinci, who taught Rafael drawing in perspective), carrying a copy of Timaeus and Aristotle making the Hermetic sign As Above So Below. It also includes Giovanni Bazzi (nicknamed 'the sodomite'), Zoroaster, Ptolemy, Archimedes, Euclid (holding a square, based on Bramante), Heraclitus (based on Michelangelo) and the skeptics Arcesilaus, Carneades, Pythodorus,.. It also depicts statues of Apollo and Athena. The painting was commissioned by pope Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere).
Walter Burkert (American Philosophical Society) wrote Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism.
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