(3) For that, in order that a man should be complete in either part, observe that he hath been composed of elements of either part in sets of four;—with hands, and feet, both of them pairs, and with the other members of his body, by means of which he may do service to the lower (that is to say the terrene) world. And to these parts [are added other] four;—of sense, and soul, of memory, and foresight, by means of which he may become acquainted with the rest of things divine, and judge of them. Hence it is brought about that man investigates the differences and qualities, effects and quantities of things, with critical research; yet, as he is held back with the too heavy weight of body’s imperfection, he cannot properly descry the causes of the nature of [all] things which [really] are the true ones.

(82) In the third or inner circle is man, a tenfold creature, consisting of nine parts--three of spirit, three of intellect, and three of soul--enclosed within one constitution. According to Selenus, man's three spiritual qualities are thought, speech, and action; his three intellectual qualities are memory, intelligence, and will; and his three qualities of soul are understanding, courage, and desire. The third circle is further divided into three parts called ages: the Golden Age of spiritual truth in the upper right section, the Iron Age of spiritual darkness in the lower right section and the Bronze Age--a composite of the two occupying the entire left half of the inner circle and itself divided into three parts. The lowest division of the Bronze Age depicts ignorant man controlled by force, the central the partly awakened man controlled by jurisprudence, and the upper the spiritually illuminated man controlled by love. Both the second and third circles revolve upon the axis of law, but the divine source, of law--Heavenly Justice--is concealed by clouds. All of the symbols and figures ornamenting the plate are devoted to a detailed amplification of the principles here outlined.

(136) The decad--10--according to the Pythagoreans, is the greatest of numbers, not only because it is the tetractys (the 10 dots) but because it comprehends all arithmetic and harmonic proportions. Pythagoras said that 10 is the nature of number, because all nations reckon to it and when they arrive at it they return to the monad. The decad was called both heaven and the world, because the former includes the latter. Being a perfect number, the decad was applied by the Pythagoreans to those things relating to age, power, faith, necessity, and the power of memory. It was also called unwearied, because, like God, it was tireless. The Pythagoreans divided the heavenly bodies into ten orders. They also stated that the decad perfected all numbers and comprehended within itself the nature of odd and even, moved and unmoved, good and ill. They associated its power with the following deities: Atlas (for it carried the numbers on its shoulders), Urania, Mnemosyne, the Sun, Phanes, and the One God.

(2) But as to Sense and all things similar, I will set forth the whole discourse when [I explain] concerning Spirit. For man is the sole animal that is twofold. One part of him is simple: the [man] “essential,” as say the Greeks, but which we call the “form of the Divine Similitude.” He also is fourfold: that which the Greeks call “hylic,” [but] which we call “cosmic”; of which is made the corporal part, in which is vestured what we just have said is the divine in man, —in which the godhead of the Mind alone, together with its kin, that is the Pure Mind’s senses, findeth home and rest, its self with its own self, as though shut in the body’s walls.

(9) In order, then, to know what the Divine Mind is, we must observe soul and especially its most God-like phase.

One certain way to this knowledge is to separate first, the man from the body- yourself, that is, from your body- next to put aside that soul which moulded the body, and, very earnestly, the system of sense with desires and impulses and every such futility, all setting definitely towards the mortal: what is left is the phase of the soul which we have declared to be an image of the Divine Intellect, retaining some light from that sun, while it pours downward upon the sphere of magnitudes the light playing about itself which is generated from its own nature.

Of course we do not pretend that the sun's light remains a self-gathered and sun-centred thing: it is at once outrushing and indwelling; it strikes outward continuously, lap after lap, until it reaches us upon our earth: we must take it that all the light, including that which plays about the sun's orb, has travelled; otherwise we would have a void expanse, that of the space- which is material- next to the sun's orb. The Soul, on the contrary- a light springing from the Divine Mind and shining about it- is in closest touch with that source; it is not in transit but remains centred there, and, in likeness to that principle, it has no place: the light of the sun is actually in the air, but the soul is clean of all such contact so that its immunity is patent to itself and to any other of the same order.

And by its own characteristic act, though not without reasoning process, it knows the nature of the Intellectual-Principle which, on its side, knows itself without need of reasoning, for it is ever self-present whereas we become so by directing our soul towards it; our life is broken and there are many lives, but that principle needs no changings of life or of things; the lives it brings to being are for others not for itself: it cannot need the inferior; nor does it for itself produce the less when it possesses or is the all, nor the images when it possesses or is the prototype.

Anyone not of the strength to lay hold of the first soul, that possessing pure intellection, must grasp that which has to do with our ordinary thinking and thence ascend: if even this prove too hard, let him turn to account the sensitive phase which carries the ideal forms of the less fine degree, that phase which, too, with its powers, is immaterial and lies just within the realm of Ideal-principles.

One may even, if it seem necessary, begin as low as the reproductive soul and its very production and thence make the ascent, mounting from those ultimate ideal principles to the ultimates in the higher sense, that is to the primals.

(102) 8. The three that cause love are the heart and the two ears; the three that produce hatred are the liver, the gall, and the tongues; the three life-givers are the two nostrils and the spleen; and the three destroyers are the mouth and the two lower openings of the body. Over all these rules God, the faithful king, from His holy habitation in all eternity. God is One above three, three are above seven, seven are above twelve, yet all are linked together.

(98) The third order of gates is termed Decad of Humanity and its divisions are as follows: (21) Appearance of Man; (22) Material human body; (23) Human Soul conferred; (24) Mystery of Adam and Eve; (25) Complete Man as the Microcosm; (26) Gift of five human faces acting exteriorly; (27) Gift of five powers to the soul; (28) Adam Kadmon, the Heavenly Man; (29) Angelic beings, (30) Man in the image of God.

(4) But there is yet another way to this knowledge:

Admiring the world of sense as we look out upon its vastness and beauty and the order of its eternal march, thinking of the gods within it, seen and hidden, and the celestial spirits and all the life of animal and plant, let us mount to its archetype, to the yet more authentic sphere: there we are to contemplate all things as members of the Intellectual- eternal in their own right, vested with a self-springing consciousness and life- and, presiding over all these, the unsoiled Intelligence and the unapproachable wisdom.

That archetypal world is the true Golden Age, age of Kronos, who is the Intellectual-Principle as being the offspring or exuberance of God. For here is contained all that is immortal: nothing here but is Divine Mind; all is God; this is the place of every soul. Here is rest unbroken: for how can that seek change, in which all is well; what need that reach to, which holds all within itself; what increase can that desire, which stands utterly achieved? All its content, thus, is perfect, that itself may be perfect throughout, as holding nothing that is less than the divine, nothing that is less than intellective. Its knowing is not by search but by possession, its blessedness inherent, not acquired; for all belongs to it eternally and it holds the authentic Eternity imitated by Time which, circling round the Soul, makes towards the new thing and passes by the old. Soul deals with thing after thing- now Socrates; now a horse: always some one entity from among beings- but the Intellectual-Principle is all and therefore its entire content is simultaneously present in that identity: this is pure being in eternal actuality; nowhere is there any future, for every then is a now; nor is there any past, for nothing there has ever ceased to be; everything has taken its stand for ever, an identity well pleased, we might say, to be as it is; and everything, in that entire content, is Intellectual-Principle and Authentic Existence; and the total of all is Intellectual-Principle entire and Being entire. Intellectual-Principle by its intellective act establishes Being, which in turn, as the object of intellection, becomes the cause of intellection and of existence to the Intellectual-Principle- though, of course, there is another cause of intellection which is also a cause to Being, both rising in a source distinct from either.

Now while these two are coalescents, having their existence in common, and are never apart, still the unity they form is two-sided; there is Intellectual-Principle as against Being, the intellectual agent as against the object of intellection; we consider the intellective act and we have the Intellectual-Principle; we think of the object of that act and we have Being.

Such difference there must be if there is to be any intellection; but similarly there must also be identity

Thus the Primals are seen to be: Intellectual-Principle; Existence; Difference; Identity: we must include also Motion and Rest: Motion provides for the intellectual act, Rest preserves identity as Difference gives at once a Knower and a Known, for, failing this, all is one, and silent.

So too the objects of intellection - identical in virtue of the self-concentration of the principle which is their common ground- must still be distinct each from another; this distinction constitutes Difference.

The Intellectual Kosmos thus a manifold, Number and Quantity arise: Quality is the specific character of each of these ideas which stand as the principles from which all else derives.

(5) As a manifold, then, this God, the Intellectual-Principle, exists within the Soul here, the Soul which once for all stands linked a member of the divine, unless by a deliberate apostasy.

Bringing itself close to the divine Intellect, becoming, as it were, one with this, it seeks still further: What Being, now, has engendered this God, what is the Simplex preceding this multiple; what the cause at once of its existence and of its existing as a manifold; what the source of this Number, this Quantity?

Number, Quantity, is not primal: obviously before even duality, there must stand the unity.

The Dyad is a secondary; deriving from unity, it finds in unity the determinant needed by its native indetermination: once there is any determination, there is Number, in the sense, of course, of the real Number. And the soul is such a number or quantity. For the Primals are not masses or magnitudes; all of that gross order is later, real only to the sense-thought; even in seed the effective reality is not the moist substance but the unseen- that is to say Number and the Reason-Principle .

Thus by what we call the Number and the Dyad of that higher realm, we mean Reason Principles and the Intellectual-Principle: but while the Dyad is, as regards that sphere, undetermined- representing, as it were, the underly of The One- the later Number - that which rises from the Dyad and The One- is not Matter to the later existents but is their forming-Idea, for all of them take shape, so to speak, from the ideas rising within this. The determination of the Dyad is brought about partly from its object- The One- and partly from itself, as is the case with all vision in the act of sight: intellection is vision occupied upon The One.

(12) Hermes: This dwelling-place through which we have just passed circle of the twelve types-of-life, this being composed of elements, twelve in number, but of one nature, an omniform idea. For man's delusion there are disunions in them, son, while in their action they are one. Not only can we never part Rashness from Wrath; they cannot even be distinguished. According to right reason (logos), then, they naturally withdraw once and for all, in as much as they are chased out by no less than ten powers, that is, the Ten. For, son, the Ten is that which giveth birth to souls. And Life and Light are unified there, where the One hath being from the Spirit. According then to reason (logos) the One contains the Ten, the Ten the One.

(3) Of all these genera, those [species] which are animal have [many] roots, which stretch from the above below, whereas those which are stationary —these from [one] living root send forth a wood of branching greenery up from below into the upper parts. Moreover, some of them are nourished with a two-fold form of food, while others with a single form. Twain are the forms of food—for soul and body, of which [all] animals consist. Their soul is nourished by the ever-restless motion of the World ; their bodies have their growth from foods [drawn] from the water and the earth of the inferior world. Spirit, with which they all are filled, being interblended with the rest, doth make them live; sense being added, and also reason in the case of man—which hath been given to man alone as a fifth part out of the æther. Of all the living things [God] doth adorn, extend, exalt, the sense of man alone unto the understanding of the Reason of Divinity. But since I am impressed to speak concerning Sense, I will a little further on set forth for you the sermon on this [point]; for that it is most holy, and [most] mighty, not less than in the Reason of Divinity itself. VII

(3) The ten numbers formed from nothing are the Decad: these are seen in the fingers of the hands, five on one, five on the other, and over them is the Covenant by voice spiritual, and the rite of Circumcision, corporeal (as of Abraham).

(130) The 3 (spirit, mind, and soul) descend into the 4 (the world), the sum being the 7, or the mystic nature of man, consisting of a threefold spiritual body and a fourfold material form. These are symbolized by the cube, which has six surfaces and a mysterious seventh point within. The six surfaces are the directions: north, east, south, west, up, and down; or, front, back, right, left, above, and below; or again, earth, fire, air, water, spirit, and matter. In the midst of these stands the 1, which is the upright figure of man, from whose center in the cube radiate six pyramids. From this comes the great occult axiom: "The center is the father of the directions, the dimensions, and the distances."

(15) We must repeat: The Collective Being, the Authentic, There, is at once Being and Intellectual-Principle and the Complete Living Form; thus it includes the total of living things; the Unity There is reproduced by the unity of this living universe in the degree possible to it- for the sense-nature as such cannot compass that transcendental unity- thus that Living-All is inevitably Number-Entire: if the Number were not complete, the All would be deficient to the extent of some number, and if every number applicable to living things were not contained in it, it would not be the all-comprehending Life-Form. Therefore, Number exists before every living thing, before the collective Life-Form.

Again: Man exists in the Intellectual and with him all other living things, both by possession of Real-Being and because that is the Life-Form Complete. Even the man of this sphere is a member of the Intellectual since that is the Life-Form Complete; every living thing by virtue of having life, is There, There in the Life-form, and man is There also, in the Intellectual, in so far as he is intellect, for all intelligences are severally members of That. Now all this means Number There. Yet even in Intellect Number is not present primally; its presence There is the reckoning of the Acts of Intellectual-Principle; it tallies with the justice in Intellectual-Principle, its moral wisdom, its virtues, its knowledge, all whose possession makes That Principle what it is.

But knowledge- must not this imply presence to the alien? No; knowledge, known and knower are an identity; so with all the rest; every member of Intellectual-Principle is therefore present to it primally; justice, for example, is not accidental to it as to soul in its character as soul, where these virtues are mainly potential becoming actual by the intention towards Intellectual-Principle and association with it.

Next we come to Being, fully realized, and this is the seat of Number; by Number, Being brings forth the Beings; its movement is planned to Number; it establishes the numbers of its offspring before bringing them to be, in the same way as it establishes its own unity by linking pure Being to the First: the numbers do not link the lower to the First; it suffices that Being is so linked; for Being, in taking form as Number, binds its members to itself. As a unity, it suffers no division, remaining self-constant; as a thing of division, containing its chosen total of members, it knows that total and so brings forth Number, a phase therefore of its content: its development of part is ruled by the powers of Number, and the Beings it produces sum to that Number. Thus Number, the primal and true, is Principle and source of actuality to the Beings.

Hence it is that in our sphere, also, Number accompanies the coming to be of particular things and to suppose another number than the actual is to suppose the production of something else or of nothing.

These then are the primal numbers; they are numerable; the numbers of the other order are of a double character; as derived from the first numbers they are themselves numerable but as acting for those first they are measures of the rest of things, numbering numbers and numerables. For how could they declare a Decad save in the light of numbers within themselves?

(2) Farther still, to the former that which is highest and that which is incomprehensible pertain, and also that which is better than all measure, and is in such a manner formless, as not to be circumscribed by any form; but the latter is vanquished by inclination, habitude, and propensity; and is detained by appetites directed to that which is less excellent, and by familiarity with secondary natures. Hence, in the last place, it is formalized by all-various measures derived from them. Intellect, therefore, which is the leader and king of all beings, and which is the demiurgic art of the universe, is always present with the Gods with invariable sameness, perfectly, and without indigence, being purely established in itself, according to one energy. But soul participates of a partible and multiform intellect, having its attention directed to the government of the whole. It also providentially attends to inanimate natures, becoming at different times ingenerated in different forms.

(14) The Ten Commandments are the ten shining gems placed by the Holy One in the sapphire sea of Being, and in the depths of matter the reflections of these jewels are seen as the laws governing the sublunary spheres. They are the sacred ten by which the Supreme Deity has stamped His will upon the face of Nature. This same decad was celebrated by the Pythagoreans under the form of the tetractys--that triangle of spermatic points which reveals to the initiated the whole working of the cosmic scheme; for ten is the number of perfection, the key to creation, and the proper symbol of God, man, and the universe.

(14) The Reason, then, is the Mind's image, and Mind God's [image]; while Body is [the image] of the Form; and Form [the image] of the Soul. The subtlest part of Matter is, then, Air ; of Air, Soul; of Soul, Mind; and of Mind, God. And God surroundeth all and permeateth all; while Mind Surroundeth Soul, Soul Air, Air Matter. Necessity and Providence and Nature are instruments of Cosmos and of Matter's ordering; while of intelligible things each is Essence, and Sameness is their Essence. But of the bodies of the Cosmos each is many; for through possessiong Sameness, [these] composed bodies, though they do change from one into another of themselves, do natheless keep the incorruption of their Sameness.

(16) But here we may be questioned about these numbers which we describe as the primal and authentic:

"Where do you place these numbers, in what genus among Beings? To everyone they seem to come under Quantity and you have certainly brought Quantity in, where you say that discrete Quantity equally with the continuous holds place among Beings; but you go on to say that there are the numbers belonging to the Firsts and then talk of other numbers quite distinct, those of reckoning; tell us how you arrange all this, for there is difficulty here. And then, the unity in sense-things- is that a quantity or is quantity here just so many units brought together, the unity being the starting-point of quantity but not quantity itself? And, if the starting-point, is it a kindred thing or of another genus? All this you owe it to us to make clear."

Be it so; we begin by pointing out a distinction:

You take one thing with another- for we must first deal with objects of sense- a dog and a man, or two men; or you take a group and affirm ten, a decad of men: in this case the number affirmed is not a Reality, even as Reality goes in the sphere of sense, but is purely Quantity: similarly when you resolve into units, breaking up the decad, those units are your principle of Quantity since the single individual is not a unity absolute.

But the case is different when you consider one man in himself and affirm a certain number, duality, for example, in that he is at once living and reasoning.

By this analysis and totalling, you get quantity; but there are two objects under consideration and each of these is one; each of the unities contributes to the complete being and the oneness is inherent in each; this is another kind of number; number essential; even the duality so formed is no posterior; it does not signify a quantity apart from the thing but the quantity in the essence which holds the thing together. The number here is no mere result of your detailing; the things exist of themselves and are not brought together by your reckoning, but what has it to do with essential reality that you count one man in with another? There is here no resultant unity such as that of a choir- the decad is real only to you who count the ten; in the ten of your reckoning there cannot be a decad without a unitary basis; it is you that make the ten by your counting, by fixing that tenness down to quantity; in choir and army there is something more than that, something not of your placing.

But how do you come to have a number to place?

The Number inherent apart from any enumeration has its own manner of being, but the other, that resulting upon the appearance of an external to be appraised by the Number within yourself, is either an Act of these inherent numbers or an Act in accordance with them; in counting we produce number and so bring quantity into being just as in walking we bring a certain movement into being.

But what of that "Number within us having its own manner of being"?

It is the Number of our essence. "Our essence" we read "partakes of Number and harmony and, also, is Number and harmony." "Neither body nor magnitude," someone says: soul, then, is Number since it is essence. The number belonging to body is an essence of the order of body; the number belonging to soul constitutes the essences of souls.

In the Intellectuals, all, if the Absolute Living-Form, there is a multiple- a triad, let us say- that Triad of the Living-Form is of the nature of essence: and the Triad prior to any living thing, Triad in the realm of Being, is a principle of essence.

When you enumerate two things- say, animal and beauty- each of these remains one thing; the number is your production; it lay within yourself; it is you that elaborate quantity, here the dyad. But when you declare virtue to be a Tetrad, you are affirming a Tetrad which does actually exist; the parts, so to speak, make one thing; you are taking as the object of your act a Unity- Tetrad to which you accommodate the Tetrad within yourself.

(113) Pythagoras maintained that the soul of man consists of a tetrad, the four powers of the soul being mind, science, opinion, and sense. The tetrad connects all beings, elements, numbers, and seasons; nor can anything be named which does not depend upon the tetractys. It is the Cause and Maker of all things, the intelligible God, Author of celestial and sensible good, Plutarch interprets this tetractys, which he said was also called the world, to be 36, consisting of the first four odd numbers added to the first four even numbers, thus:

(3) But they also depict them under the likeness of men, on account of the intellectual faculty, and their having powers of looking upwards, and their straight and erect form, and their innate faculty of ruling and guiding, and whilst being least, in physical strength as compared with the other powers of irrational creatures, yet ruling over all by their superior power of mind, and by their dominion in consequence of rational science, and their innate unslavishness and indomitableness of soul. It is possible, then, I think, to find within each of the many parts of our body harmonious images of the Heavenly Powers, by affirming that the powers of vision denote the most transparent elevation towards the Divine lights, and again, the tender, and liquid, and not repellent, but sensitive, and pure, and unfolded, reception, free from all passion, of the supremely Divine illuminations. Now the discriminating powers of the nostrils denote the being able to receive, as far as attainable, the sweet-smelling largess beyond conception, and to distinguish accurately things which are not such, and to entirely reject. The powers of the ears denote the participation and conscious reception of the supremely Divine inspiration. The powers of taste denote the fulness of the intelligible nourishments, and the reception of the Divine and nourishing streams. The powers of touch denote the skilful discrimination of that which is suitable or injurious. The eyelids and eyebrows denote the guarding of the conceptions which see God. The figures of manhood and youth denote the perpetual bloom and vigour of life. The teeth denote the dividing of the nourishing perfection given to us; for each intellectual Being divides and multiplies, by a provident faculty, the unified conception given to it by the more Divine for the proportionate elevation of the inferior. The shoulders and elbows, and further, the hands, denote the power of making, and operating, and accomplishing. The heart again is a symbol of the Godlike life, dispersing its own life-giving power to the objects of its forethought, as beseems the good. The chest again denotes the invincible and protective faculty of the life-giving distribution, as being placed above the heart. The back, the holding together the whole productive powers of life. The feet denote the moving and quickness, and skilfulness of the perpetual movement advancing towards Divine things. Wherefore also the Word of God arranged the feet of the holy Minds under their wings; for the wing displays the elevating quickness and the heavenly progress towards higher things, and the superiority to every grovelling thing by reason of the ascending, and the lightness of the wings denotes their being in no respect earthly, but undefiledly and lightly raised to the sublime; and the naked and unshod denotes the unfettered, agile, and unrestrained, and free from all external superfluity, and assimilation to the Divine simplicity, as far as attainable.