Pythagoras

Pythagoras was born in Samos around 580 BCE and emigrated around 530 to Croton, in southern Italy, where he founded a philosophical and religious community. His teachings have come down to us only indirectly, through his disciples and later Aristotle, Diogenes Laertius and Iamblichus. Pythagoreanism combines mathematical inquiry, ascetic discipline, the theory of metempsychosis (transmigration of souls) and the cult of numbers. The famous formula all is number translates the conviction that numerical ratios structure reality: musical intervals, geometry, celestial motions. The tetractys, a triangular configuration of the first ten numbers, is the central symbol of the school.

The Pythagorean school divided into akousmatikoi (listeners, who preserved the religious dimension) and mathematikoi (students, who developed scientific research). Pythagoreanism influenced Plato, who took up the doctrine of numbers as principles, then Neoplatonism and medieval Jewish Kabbalah. Modern Western numerology, codified at the beginning of the 20th century by Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and Juno Jordan, claims Pythagoras as its forerunner but in fact owes him little: the letter-to-number correspondence table used comes from Christian Kabbalah and the theories of Helena Blavatsky. Pythagoras himself used the Greek alphabet, structurally different.

The Pythagorean legacy runs through three practical fields today. In music, the interval ratios discovered by Pythagoras remain the basis of Pythagorean tuning and Western musical theory. In geometry, the Pythagorean theorem is still taught in every school. In numerology, the notion that each number carries an essential quality comes directly from Pythagoreanism, even if the modern implementation diverges. On Tarotoui, numerological calculations rest on the so-called Pythagorean system (A=1, B=2... I=9, J=1, etc.). The tetractys inspires certain pyramid divinatory spreads.

The historical figure of Pythagoras is largely reconstructed after the fact. The anecdotes about his miracles, his travels in Egypt, or his strict vegetarianism belong to legend. Contemporary numerology presents itself as Pythagorean as much by marketing as by real lineage. Note also that Pythagoras himself probably wrote nothing: everything we attribute to him passes through later intermediaries.