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Pythagorean Teachings Across the Centuries

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Pythagorean Teachings Across the Centuries Pythagorean Teachings across the Centuries Angela Tripodi, adapted and expanded by the Rosicrucian Research Library Staff and Friends he school of Pythagoras has been defined by Vincenzo Capparelli and by several Tother authors, as the “Greatest school of Wisdom of the West.” It has had profound influence across time and has contributed to providing the coordination needed to combine the search for mystical truth with a clear methodology of wisdom. Even if the inheritance of the Pythagorean tradition cannot be fully grasped, due to its initiatory character, The last-remaining column of the temple dedicated to Hera which required a severe selection process and Lacinia in Crotona, Italy. Photo by Sandro Baldi. involved the obligation of absolute silence of teachings until the very last degrees. The from its Neophyte members, it is still possible few initiates able to enter the last doorway to relive the outlines of the sacred knowledge obeyed the sacred promise of absolute silence. in the teachings. Several sources need to be This norm of silence was the secret of the consulted in order to retrace the spread of school and is mentioned in several sources. this inspired wisdom whose light reached It also implies that all especially profound far from its original source. According to information and teachings were hidden, the information transmitted by Porphyry, not only from outsiders, but also from the Iamblichus, and in part by Diogenes Laertius, participants of the lower degrees. when the school at Crotona1 was destroyed, As is well known, the school had its many essential concepts were lost forever. center in Crotona. Shortly after being The School of Crotona established, Pythagorean political, ethical, and religious concepts spread like wildfire The type of initiation given at the school across all of southern Italy, affecting life included a long period of training that was throughout the entire area known as Magna accomplished through various degrees. These Graecia. This Pythagorean wisdom extended trials were difficult to overcome for the among the people of neighboring areas, such majority of the aspirants. Their progress was as Lucca, Pisa, and other Latin towns. Many hampered by severe tests that became harder were attracted to the Pythagoreans in order to master as the applicant advanced farther, to learn about the marvelous teachings that requiring special personal characteristics, resounded with unusual expressions among qualities difficult to find among the students. the people. Even the Roman institutions felt It can be understood that the most its influence, and Cicero himself remarked important and essential concepts of on this: “Many from our institutions are Pythagorean philosophy were not the subject attracted by them.” Page xxiii the universe and all the individual objects. Next, Plato, in his Dialogues, Theaetetus, Parmenides, etc., demonstrates the influence of the Pythagorean school, so much so, as Burnet states, that Plato established his own academy with the intention of continuing the line of teachings of the Pythagorean school.3 Moved by the desire for learning the secrets of this “initiatic knowledge,” Plato was not satisfied to listen to the last representatives of Pythagoreanism, who had taken refuge in Greece (some of these, as noted before, were part of the group surrounding Socrates). Rather, he tried to get in touch with those more advanced on the initiatic path. From this desire arose his need, according to some authors, to investigate more deeply and more personally in those places that had been the Portrait of Socrates. Roman marble, first century CE, theater of the “Pythagorean drama.” perhaps a copy of a lost bronze statue made by Lysippos. Louvre, Paris. Photo ©2005 Eric Gaba/Wikimedia In such places the environment had Commons. preserved traces of the events and still kept Given these beginnings, though this school had been founded by Greeks, it was intended to attract the interest of Italian Peninsular peoples more than all the other ancient schools; however, the contrary happened in many ways. Capparelli notes that in Italy the school of Pythagoras has had a negative reputation, at least in modern times.2 Several of the Pythagorean teachings have been attributed to other ancient philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Some literary critics, and among them, Burnet, give the following explanation. Pythagorean Influence on Socrates and Plato The Pythagoreans, after being dispersed, went to Greece and regrouped around Socrates, who became their leader and incorporated the original teachings with the following modification: the Pythagoreans assumed the “universal” to be separated from Alexander Visits the Sage Plato. Page from a dispersed Rosicrucian manuscript of the Khamsa (Quintet) of Amir Khusrau Digest the sensible objects. Socrates denied such Dihlavi. Mughal miniature attributed to Basawan, Lahore, No. 1 separation and established the harmony of 1597/87. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. 2009 Page xxiv alive the voice of the Master. In addition, it was possible to listen to the many stories in which the pain of the destruction of the school was still fresh. Also in such surroundings, memories were preserved with great care in certain families and could suggest to the sensitive mind of Plato the correct materials for a reconstruction of a true and most genuine Pythagoreanism. According to Gomperz, Plato made use of this information to construct a link between the Socratic and the Pythagorean teachings. Nevertheless, Plato, following the tradition of silence, at the beginning rarely mentions the Pythagoreans. After his first trip to Italy, unavoidably and progressively he is more and more attracted to the voice of the “Pythagorean Siren,” so much so that, beginning with Meno, in his later dialogues Bust of Aristotle. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek bronze and in the teachings of his immediate original by Lysippos from 330 BCE. The alabaster mantle successors, we can witness the “inclusion of is a modern addition. Palazzo Altaemps, Roma. Photo ©2006 by Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons. Platonism into the greater Pythagoreanism.” Pythagorean doctrine, “Not only because This change is also notable in Phaedo. of the many years spent at the Academy, In this work, Plato introduces Cebes and where he had the opportunity of learning Simmias, Pythagoreans from Thebes, as all that was known there. This information those who listen to the last words of the was the result of the long researches made by dying Socrates, and talk with him about Plato himself, and because of the systematic immortality. This choice is relevant, as Plato historic research that he himself did (or was did not place some Sophists or followers of done by his students), Aristotle was able to Heraclitus or Anaxagoras at the scene; rather have a rich and vast library.” he chooses Pythagoreans.4 In his Metaphysics, Aristotle wrote, Pythagorean Elements in Aristotle’s Work “With respect to the activity of these philosophers called Pythagorean, they Aristotle himself felt the influence of began the study of mathematics and were the Pythagorean doctrine, not only because the first to make progress in it. They grew he attended the Academy for twenty years, accustomed to it to the point of believing but also because he took part in the interest- that its principles were the principles of all ing meetings of Pythagorean savants. His entities. Given that numbers are the first early work, On Philosophy, discusses the elements of mathematics, they perceived in teachings of the Pythagoreans and Plato; and numbers much similarity with what exists similarly, he does so in Eudemus (or “On the and becomes. Soul”), and Protrepticus, of which we only “Therefore, they assumed that some have short passages. aspect of numbers relates to justice, some According to Vincenzo Capparelli, other to soul and intellect, another is the Aristotle was one of the greatest students of ‘right moment.’ Besides, they found that the Page xxv relationships of harmony consist of numbers, and that all reality would be similar to Given that numbers are the numbers.... So they arrived at the conclusion first elements of mathemat- that the elements of number were the elements ics, they perceived in numbers of all things, of all that exists on earth and much similarity with what that ‘heaven was harmony and numbers.’” exists and becomes. In another part of the same work, he added: “The Pythagoreans say that elements of Pythagoras’s wisdom. This the principles are ten, expressed in pairs understanding primarily lay in the realization of opposites: limit-unlimited; even-odd; that the essential teachings did not refer only one-many; right-left; male-female; stillness- to science, but involved a new concept of movement; straight-bent; light-darkness; human destiny: the strong aspiration for a good-bad; square-rectangle.”5 natural renewal. The Tradition Returns to Egypt Pythagorean mysticism spread in two directions in the vast cultural The Crotona School itself never rose environment of Alexandria: the Jewish- from the ashes of destruction; however its Alexandrian Pythagoreans and the Roman influence spread with time more and more Pythagoreans. The latter is better known in in the form of mysteries, of mysticism, our philosophical tradition then the former. almost of divination. So much so that However, much of the content of the Pythagorean thought found more fertile Pythagoreanism of the Jewish community in ground in Alexandria than in Athens. There, Alexandria found a strong resonance in the the Western world had come more closely religious and moral continuity that gave rise in contact with the Eastern world and to Christianity in Egypt. was better able to understand the various It is not easy to fix the date when the revived Pythagorean movement established itself in Rome. Nevertheless, we must consider that those with austere ways who established the greatness of the Roman Republic would feel kinship with the Pythagorean elevated morality and severe discipline.
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