We will return to the Number 8 & Iamblichus, very soon. The Inklings are well-known to Christians, and greatly lauded; unfortunately, very few are interested in the more profound portions of any of their work. Gornahoor has already pointed out that CS Lewis ultimately held a reductive view of the … Continue reading
Heaven By Storm on the Number Seven
I have paused, once more, at the Number Seven, for there are seven deadly sins which every mortal must purge themselves from, before the ascent, and there are seven corresponding virtues, four classical ones, and three theological ones, which (no doubt), ingenious readers can correspond in various ways to each … Continue reading
Hebdomad
Seven is called the Virgin, Guardian, Message, Critical Time, Athena, Chance & Acropolis. It is a mean between the second Monad (ie., the Hexad, issuing into material Creation, since Dyad and Triad belong more properly to the One) and the Decad. It is perfect: it is 3 from 4 and … Continue reading
A Pause at the Hexad
There is a natural pause over the Hexad: it represents, in many ways, a repetition of the Monad, being halfway in between 1 & 10. The Hexad, or Seal of Solomon, reminds us that even the Monad itself is not original, but ab-original, because Iamblichus never deals with the Number … Continue reading
Hexad
The Hexad is the first perfect number: it arises, by multiplication (rather than addition) from the Dyad and the Triad, and is hence termed “marriage” (whereas the Pentad is androgynous). That is, the Hexad unifies Male-Female through “blending” and harmony, rather than sticking them together through addition in the Pentad, … Continue reading
Pentad
It is worth while reminding the reader that Iamblichus was not merely a mathematician and a philosopher, in the idealistic fashion: he was of a princely line, and well-educated, and his caste seems to have been that of Brahmin. Iamblichus wrote a life of Pythagoras, an autobiography of his great … Continue reading
The Tetrad
As we have journeyed through each Number, they appear to us like different states of consciousness: in the 1, I see Unity, in 2, I behold the difference between Being and Non-Being, and with 3, I see the deeper harmony of the One-and-the-Many. Of course, neither Unity, Being, nor Harmony … Continue reading
The Triad
When one refers to the Triad, one must remember that: The Triad has a special beauty and fairness beyond all numbers, because it is the very first to make actual the potentialities of the Monad – oddness, perfection, proportionality, unification, limit. We recall that the Dyad is a second Monad, … Continue reading
The Dyad
Numbers inculcate the appreciation of metaphysical truths, such as the interplay between Microcosm and Macrocosm: the Moon or the Queen can become or stand in place of the Original Unity, precisely because of the primal unity of the One. Continue reading
Numbers According to Iamblichus
Plato said that no one could be a philosopher who had not studied mathematics. Undoubtedly, this is partially a reference to the Pythagoreans. Having been a mathematical dunce until college (although not innumerate entirely), this is part of my penance, to work through Iamblichus’ treatise. Luckily, this work supplies a … Continue reading