Each issue of the Rosicrucian Digest provides members and all interested readers with a compendium of materials regarding the ongoing flow of the Rosicrucian Timeline. The articles, historical excerpts, art, and literature included in this Digest span the ages, and are not only interesting in themselves, but also seek to provide a lasting reference shelf to stimulate continuing study of all of those factors which make up Rosicrucian history and thought. Therefore, we present classical background, historical development, and modern reflections on each of our subjects, using the many forms of primary sources, reflective commentaries, the arts, creative fiction, and poetry. This magazine is dedicated• to all the women and men throughout the ages who have contributed to and perpetuated the wisdom of the Rosicrucian, Western esoteric, tradition. May we ever be •worthy of the light with which we have been entrusted. In this issue, we explore• the figure of Pythagoras and his Mystery School whose roots are in ancient Egypt and the East, and whose teachings have profoundly influenced music, art and architecture, mathematics, science, and mysticism throughout the centuries, and still move us with their resonance today. No. 1 - 2009 Vol. 87 - No. 1 Peter Kingsley, Ph.D. “Paths of the Ancient Sages: A Pythagorean History” Giulia Minicuci and Mary Jones, S.R.C. “Pythagoras the Teacher: From Samos to Metapontum” Paths of the Ancient Sages: 2 RuthOfficial Phelps, S.R.C.Magazine “The Schoolof the of Pythagoras”A Pythagorean History AnonymousWorldwide “The Golden Verses of Pythagoras”Peter Kingsley, Ph.D. AntoineRosicrucian Fabre d’Olivet, Order “Excerpt fromPythagoras Examination the Teacher: of the Golden Verses” 10 From Samos to Metapontum Hugh McCague, Ph.D., F.R.C. “Pythagoreans and Sculptors: The Canon of Polykleitos Established in 1915 by the Supreme Giulia Minicuci and Mary Jones, S.R.C. MelanieGrand Richards,Lodge of the M.Mus., English Language S.R.C. “Pythagoras and Music” Jurisdiction, AMORC, Rosicrucian The School of Pythagoras 16 LisaPark, Spencer, San Jose, M.A.O.M., CA 95191. S.R.C. “TheRuth Neo-Pythagoreans Phelps, S.R.C. at the Porta Maggiore in Rome” Copyright 2009 by the Supreme Grand JeanLodge Guesdon, of AMORC, S.R.C Inc. All rights“Silence” The Golden Verses of Pythagoras 20 reserved. Republication of any portion Anonymous of Rosicrucian Digest is prohibited Fraterwithout X, prior written permission“Music of of the Spheres and Pythagorean Numerology” Benpublisher. Finger, “Apollonius: Man orPythagoreans Myth?” and Sculptors: 23 The Canon of Polykleitos ROSICRUCIAN DIGEST (ISSN Ralph#0035–8339) M. Lewis, is published F.R.C. bi-annually“Reviewing Hugh our Acts” McCague, Ph.D., F.R.C. Stafffor of $12.00 the Rosicrucian per year, single copiesResearch $6.00, Library “A Pythagorean Bookshelf” by the Grand Lodge of the English Pythagoras and Music 30 Language Jurisdiction, AMORC, Inc., Melanie Richards, M.Mus., S.R.C. at 1342 Naglee Ave., San Jose, CA 95191. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to ROSICRUCIAN DIGEST The Neopythagoreans at the 36 at 1342 Naglee Ave., San Jose, CA Porta Maggiore in Rome 95191–0001. Lisa Spencer, M.A.O.M., S.R.C Silence: Inner Learning through the 45 Power of Silence Jeanne Guesdon, S.R.C. The Music of the Spheres 47 Frater X Apollonius of Tyana: History or Fable? 50 Ben Finger, Jr. Reviewing Our Acts 55 Ralph M. Lewis, F.R.C. A Pythagorean Bookshelf 57 Rosicrucian Research Library Staff Rosicrucian Digest No. 1 2009 Page 1 Paths of the Ancient Sages: A Pythagorean History Peter Kingsley, Ph.D. n the present article, we follow the trail eventually was transmitted from southern of Pythagorean wisdom as it wends its Egypt back to Persia. Iway from the Greek islands through For him this tradition wasn’t just a the Mediterranean to the world of Sufis and matter of history. He presented himself as its alchemists. Peter Kingsley is an honorary living representative in his own time. And he professor both at the University of New explained that he was the person responsible Mexico and at Simon Fraser University in for bringing it to its fulfillment by returning Canada. Dr. Kingsley believes his work is to it, full circle, to its roots in the East. bring back to life, and make accessible again, The few people in the West who study the extraordinary mystical tradition that lies Suhrawardi nowadays like to believe his forgotten right at the roots of the Western world. vision of the past is strictly symbolic; that his He has worked together with many of the most interpretations of history aren’t to be taken prominent figures in the fields of classics and literally, or seriously. And yet Suhrawardi was anthropology, philosophy and religious studies, very serious about what he said. So were his ancient civilizations and the history of both successors—people who down to the present healing and science. He is the author of In day claim they have perpetuated intact an the Dark Places of Wisdom; Reality; and esoteric tradition based not on theorizing Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic. or reasoning about reality, but on direct For further information about Dr.Kingsley and his work, visit www.peterkingsley.org. The year: 1191. At Aleppo in Syria a man called Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi was executed on direct instructions from the great Islamic ruler, Saladin. He was thirty- eight years old. His death and short life might seem to have nothing to do with Pythagoras, or the Pythagoreans of ancient Greece. But that’s not the case. Suhrawardi has been known in Persia since his death as “The Sheikh of the East,” or simply as “He who was killed.” While still alive he taught and wrote about how he had discovered a continuous line of esoteric tradition: a tradition that started in the East, Rosicrucian passed to the early Greek philosophers, then Digest was carried from Greece to Egypt where No. 1 Bust of Pythagoras. Roman Copy of a Greek Original. 2009 it traveled a long way up the Nile and Rome, Capitoline Museum. Page 2 experience gained through spiritual struggle Western philosophy is presented and specific techniques of realization. nowadays as strictly a Greek phenomenon, For them this tradition was alive, explainable in Greek terms alone. Claims incredibly powerful. Suhrawardi described it made by ancient sources that the earliest as an eternal “leaven,” capable of transforming philosophers traveled to distant places in whatever it touches, of raising people who search of wisdom are dismissed as romantic are ready into another level of being. And fantasies, dreamed up by Greek writers just as yeast acts subtly but irresistibly— long after the time of the people they were transforming from the inside, unrestrainable, writing about. Historians like to speak about what they call the “Oriental mirage”— the exotic illusion conjured up by Greeks that their culture owed a great deal to the East. But the real mirage is the “Greek mirage,” the illusion that the Greeks grew up in a self-enclosed world of their own. precisely because it’s so subtle—the The trouble is that, in the case of theologians in his time saw that the only way Pythagoras, the reports about him traveling to try and stop his teaching would be to kill far and wide go back more or less to the time him. But they killed nothing. when Pythagoras was alive. Historians like And Suhrawardi, like his successors to speak about what they call the “Oriental among Persian Sufis, was quite precise about mirage”—the exotic illusion conjured up by his ancestors. He mentions two early Greek Greeks that their culture owed a great deal philosophers in particular: Pythagoras, to the East. But the real mirage is the “Greek and a man from Sicily called Empedocles. mirage,” the illusion that the Greeks grew up He also states, as we’ll see, the name of the in a self-enclosed world of their own. town in southern Egypt where the tradition The reality is this: the ancient world eventually arrived. And he gives the name was one vast, interrelated whole. Everything of the man responsible for carrying it out was intimately and subtly interconnected. of Egypt in the ninth century—nearly one You only have to look at what happened and-a-half thousand years after Pythagoras in Pythagoras’s own lifetime and you find and Empedocles. Babylonian astrological traditions being As we’ll also see, he knew what he was introduced into Egypt by Persian Magi. saying. But let’s start at the beginning. Further to the east, the same traditions were being carried by Magi to India. One Vast, Interrelated Whole Everywhere nowadays it’s written or said Those who specialize in the history of that Alexander the Great was responsible classical Greece naturally tend to dislike any for opening up the East, centuries after talk about contacts with the ancient East. It Pythagoras. But that’s just a myth. The can be disconcerting to find that the area one routes that Alexander’s army followed had has given one’s life to studying is nothing but been used by Persian traders and teachers a tiny square on a far vaster chess board, that long before Alexander was even born. the details one has been analyzing are just Then there’s the case of Pythagoras the marks left behind by chess pieces being himself. His home was an island called Samos, moved from somewhere one doesn’t know just off the mainland from what’s now the about to somewhere one doesn’t understand. Mediterranean coast of Turkey. It so happens Page 3 that the people of Samos were among the ancient Persia, for Samos was an island that, specialists of specialists in long-distance from century to century, had the closest of trade.