Passages similar to: Secret Teachings of All Ages — Pythagorean Mathematics
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Western Esoteric
Secret Teachings of All Ages
Pythagorean Mathematics (105)
The following symbolic names were given to the duad--2--because it has been divided, and is two rather than one; and when there are two, each is opposed to the other: genius, evil, darkness, inequality, instability, movability, boldness, fortitude, contention, matter, dissimilarity, partition between multitude and monad, defect, shapelessness, indefiniteness, indeterminate ness, harmony, tolerance, root, feet of fountain-abounding idea, top, Phanes, opinion, fallacy, alterity, diffidence, impulse, death, motion, generation, mutation, division, longitude, augmentation, composition, communion, misfortune, sustentation, imposition, marriage, soul, and science.
To each one he gave a name, since the two orders are in a name. Those belonging to the thought and those of the representation are called "the Right...
(6) To each one he gave a name, since the two orders are in a name. Those belonging to the thought and those of the representation are called "the Right Ones" and "Psychic" and "the Fiery Ones" and "the Middle Ones." Those who belong to the arrogant thought and those of the likeness are called "the Left", "Hylic", "the Dark Ones," and "the Last."
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...
(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.
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,...
(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.
To the argument touching relation we have an answer surely legitimate: The Unity is not of a nature to lose its own manner of being only because...
(14) To the argument touching relation we have an answer surely legitimate:
The Unity is not of a nature to lose its own manner of being only because something else stands in a state which it does not itself share; to stray from its unity it must itself suffer division into duality or the still wider plurality.
If by division the one identical mass can become a duality without loss of quantity, clearly the unity it possessed and by this destructive division lost was something distinct. What may be alternatively present and absent to the same subject must be classed among Real-Beings, regardless of position; an accidental elsewhere, it must have reality in itself whether it be manifested in things of sense or in the Intellectual- an accidental in the Laters but self-existent in the higher, especially in the First in its aspect of Unity developing into Being. We may be told that Unity may lose that character without change in itself, becoming duality by association with something else; but this is not true; unity does not become two things; neither the added nor what takes the addition becomes two; each remains the one thing it was; the duality is predicable of the group only, the unity remaining unchanged in each of those unchanged constituents.
Two and the Dyad are not essentially relative: if the only condition to the construction of duality were meeting and association such a relation might perhaps constitute Twoness and Duality; but in fact we see Duality produced by the very opposite process, by the splitting apart of a unity. This shows that duality- or any other such numerical form- is no relation produced either by scission or association. If one configuration produces a certain thing it is impossible that the opposite should produce the same so that the thing may be identified with the relation.
What then is the actual cause?
Unity is due to the presence of Unity; duality to that of Duality; it is precisely as things are white by Whiteness, just by Justice, beautiful by Beauty. Otherwise we must reject these universals and call in relation here also: justice would arise from a certain attitude in a given situation, Beauty from a certain pattern of the person with nothing present able to produce the beauty, nothing coming from without to effect that agreeable appearance.
You see something which you pronounce to be a unity; that thing possesses also size, form, and a host of other characteristics you might name; size, bulk, sweetness, bitterness and other Ideas are actually present in the thing; it surely cannot be thought that, while every conceivable quality has Real-Being, quantity has not and that while continuous quantity exists, discrete quantity does not and this though continuous quantity is measured by the discrete. No: as size by the presence of Magnitude, and Oneness by the presence of Unity, so with Duality and all the other numerical modes.
As to the How of participation, the enquiry is that of all participation in Ideal Forms; we must note, however, that the presence of the Decad in the looser totals is different from its presence in the continuous; there is difference again in its presence within many powers where multiplicity is concentred in unity; arrived at the Intellectuals, there too we discover Number, the Authentic Number, no longer entering the alien, Decad-Absolute not Decad of some particular Intellectual group.
Again: "The Pairs of Opposites spring into being. " As all Thingness is accompanied by the presence of the Pairs of Opposites—the contrasting sets of...
(14) Again: "The Pairs of Opposites spring into being. " As all Thingness is accompanied by the presence of the Pairs of Opposites—the contrasting sets of qualities, it follows that from the first faint breath of the World Spirit differentiation begins, and the polarity of qualities exhibit themselves.
The First Aphorism further states: "The Pairs of Opposites there were not: for there were no Things to manifest Polarity." As every student of...
(15) The First Aphorism further states: "The Pairs of Opposites there were not: for there were no Things to manifest Polarity." As every student of philosophy knows, or should know, every Thing manifests a combination of qualities, properties, or attributes. Each quality, property, or attribute, is one of a Pair of Opposites—one Pole of the Two Poles of Qualities which are ever found present. Given one quality, property, or attribute of Thingness, it necessarily follows that there is in existence in other Things an Opposite, or "Other Pole"—its antithesis. There is no exception to this rule, and though the Opposite may at first appear to be absent, diligent search will surely reveal it, and its necessary existence must be logically predicated.
To everyone they seem to come under Quantity and you have certainly brought Quantity in, where you say that discrete Quantity equally with the continu...
(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.
What then is the veritable nature of Number? Is it an accompaniment upon each substance, something seen in the things as in a man we see one man, in...
(5) What then is the veritable nature of Number?
Is it an accompaniment upon each substance, something seen in the things as in a man we see one man, in a being one being and in the total of presentations the total of number?
But how explain the dyad and triad? How comes the total to be unitary and any particular number to be brought under unity? The theory offers a multiplicity of units, and no number is reducible to unity but the simple "one." It might be suggested that a dyad is that thing- or rather what is observed upon that thing- which has two powers combined, a compound thing related to a unity: or numbers might be what the Pythagoreans seem to hold them in their symbolic system in which Justice, for example, is a Tetrad: but this is rather to add the number, a number of manifold unity like the decad, to the multiplicity of the thing which yet is one thing. Now it is not so that we treat the ten things; we bring them together and apply the figure ten to the several items. Or rather in that case we say ten, but when the several items form a unity we say decad. This would apply in the Intellectual as in the sensible.
But how then can number, observed upon things, rank among Real Beings?
One answer might be that whiteness is similarly observed upon things and yet is real, just as movement is observed upon things and there is still a real existence of movement. But movement is not on a par with number: it is because movement is an entity that unity can be observed upon it. Besides, the kind of real existence thus implied annuls the reality of number, making it no more than an attribute; but that cannot be since an attribute must exist before it can be attributed; it may be inseparable from the subject but still must in itself be something, some entity as whiteness is; to be a predicate it must be that which is to be predicated. Thus if unity is observed in every subject, and "one man" says more than "man's oneness being different from the manness and common to all things- then this oneness must be something prior to man and to all the rest: only so can the unity come to apply to each and to all: it must therefore be prior also to even movement, prior to Being, since without unity these could not be each one thing: of course what is here meant is not the unity postulated as transcending Being but the unity predicable of the Ideas which constitute each several thing. So too there is a decad prior to the subject in which we affirm it; this prior would be the decad absolute, for certainly the thing in which the decad is observed is not that absolute.
Is this unity, then, connate and coexistent to the Beings? Suppose it coexistent merely as an accidental, like health in man, it still must exist of itself; suppose it present as an element in a compound, there must first exist unity and the unity absolute that can thus enter into composition; moreover if it were compounded with an object brought into being by its agency it would make that object only spuriously a unity; its entry would produce a duality.
But what of the decad? Where lies the need of decad to a thing which, by totalling to that power, is decad already?
The need may be like that of Form to Matter; ten and decad may exist by its virtue; and, once more, the decad must previously exist of its own existence, decad unattached.
The dodecad symbolizes war, the triad of amity, the triad of enmity, three which are life-giving, three which are death-dealing, and God, the faithful...
(3) And out of the triad one stands apart; and in the heptad there are two triads, and one standing apart. The dodecad symbolizes war, the triad of amity, the triad of enmity, three which are life-giving, three which are death-dealing, and God, the faithful king, rules over all from the throne of his sanctity. One above three, three above seven, and seven above twelve, and all are linked together, and one with another.
Chapter XIV: Greek Plagiarism From the Hebrews. (9)
Again the Barbarian philosophy knows the world of thought and the world of sense - the former archetypal, and the latter the image of that which is...
(9) Again the Barbarian philosophy knows the world of thought and the world of sense - the former archetypal, and the latter the image of that which is called the model; and assigns the former to the Monad, as being perceived by the mind, and the world of sense to the number six. For six is called by the Pythagoreans marriage, as being the genital number; and he places in the Monad the invisible heaven and the holy earth, and intellectual light. For "in the beginning," it is said, "God made the heaven and the earth; and the earth was invisible." And it is added, "And God said, Let there be light; and there was light." And in the material cosmogony He creates a solid heaven (and what is solid is capable of being perceived by sense), and a visible earth, and a light that is seen. Does not Plato hence appear to have left the ideas of living creatures in the intellectual world, and to make intellectual objects into sensible species according to their genera? Rightly then Moses says, that the body which Plato calls "the earthly tabernacle" was formed of the ground, but that the rational soul was breathed by God into man's face. For there, they say, the ruling faculty is situated; interpreting the access by the senses into the first man as the addition of the soul.
It remains then to consider whether Being by its distinction produced Number or Number produced that distinction. It is certain that either Number...
(9) It remains then to consider whether Being by its distinction produced Number or Number produced that distinction. It is certain that either Number was the cause of Being, movement, rest, identity and difference, or these the cause of Number.
The first question is whether Number can exist in and of itself or is dependent upon things- Two being something observed in two things, Three in three; and so of the arithmetical One, for if this could exist apart from numbered objects it could exist also before the divisions of Being.
But could it precede Being itself?
For the present we must take it that Being precedes Number, is its source. But if One means one being and the duality two beings, then unity precedes Being, and Number precedes the Beings.
Mentally, to our approach? Yes: and in reality of existence as well.
Let us consider: When we think of the existence and the fine appearance of a man as forming one thing, that unity is certainly thought of as subsequent to a precedent duality; when we group a horse with a dog, the duality is obviously the subsequent. But think of that which brings man or horse or dog into being or produces them, with full intention, from where they lie latent within itself: the producer must say "I begin with a first, I pass on to a second; that makes two; counting myself there are three." Of course there was no such numbering even of Beings for their production, since the due number was known from the very beginning; but this consideration serves to show that all Number precedes the very Beings themselves.
But if Number thus preceded the Beings, then it is not included among them?
The truth is that it existed within the Authentic Being but not as applying to it, for Being was still unparted; the potentiality of Number existed and so produced the division within Being, put in travail with multiplicity; Number must be either the substance of Being or its Activity; the Life-Form as such and the Intellectual-Principle must be Number. Clearly Being is to be, thought of as Number Collective, while the Beings are Number unfolded: the Intellectual-Principle is Number moving within itself, while the Living-Form is Number container of the universe. Even Being is the outcome of the Unity, and, since the prior is unity, the secondary must be Number.
Hence it is that the Forms have been described as Henads and Numbers. This is the authentic Number; the other, the "monadic" is its image. The Authentic is that made manifest in the Forms and helping to bring them to be; primally it is the Number in the Authentic Being, inherent to it and preceding the Beings, serving to them as root, fount, first principle.
For the Unity is source to Being; Being's Being is stayed upon the Unity as its safeguard from dissolution; the Unity cannot rest upon Being which at that would be a unity before possessing unity; and so with the decad before possessing decadhood.
As I said earlier, among the things that were created the monad is first, the dyad follows it, and the triad, up to the tenths. Now the tenths rule...
(15) As I said earlier, among the things that were created the monad is first, the dyad follows it, and the triad, up to the tenths. Now the tenths rule the hundredths; the hundredths rule the thousandths; the thousands rule the ten thousands. This is the pattern immortals. First Man is like this: His monad [...].
That the Intellectual Beings Are Not Outside the Intellectual-principle: and on the Nature of the Good (4)
We have said that all must be brought back to a unity: this must be an authentic unity, not belonging to the order in which multiplicity is unified...
(4) We have said that all must be brought back to a unity: this must be an authentic unity, not belonging to the order in which multiplicity is unified by participation in what is truly a One; we need a unity independent of participation, not a combination in which multiplicity holds an equal place: we have exhibited, also, the Intellectual Realm and the Intellectual-Principle as more closely a unity than the rest of things, so that there is nothing closer to The One. Yet even this is not The purely One.
This purely One, essentially a unity untouched by the multiple, this we now desire to penetrate if in any way we may.
Only by a leap can we reach to this One which is to be pure of all else, halting sharp in fear of slipping ever so little aside and impinging on the dual: for if we fail of the centre, we are in a duality which does not even include The authentic One but belongs on both sides, to the later order. The One does not bear to be numbered in with anything else, with a one or a two or any such quantity; it refuses to take number because it is measure and not the measured; it is no peer of other entities to be found among them; for thus, it and they alike would be included in some container and this would be its prior, the prior it cannot have. Not even essential number can belong to The One and certainly not the still later number applying to quantities; for essential number first appears as providing duration to the divine Intellection, while quantitative number is that which furnishes the Quantity found in conjunction with other things or which provides for Quantity independent of things, if this is to be thought of as number at all. The Principle which in objects having quantitative number looks to the unity from which they spring is a copy of the Principle which in the earlier order of number looks to the veritable One; and it attains its existence without in the least degree dissipating or shattering that prior unity: the dyad has come into being, but the precedent monad still stands; and this monad is quite distinct within the dyad from either of the two constituent unities, since there is nothing to make it one rather than the other: being neither, but simply that thing apart, it is present without being inherent.
But how are the two unities distinct and how is the dyad a unity, and is this unity the same as the unity by which each of the constituents is one thing?
Our answer must be that the unity is that of a participation in the primal unity with the participants remaining distinct from that in which they partake; the dyad, in so far as it is one thing, has this participation, but in a certain degree only; the unity of an army is not that of a single building; the dyad, as a thing of extension, is not strictly a unit either quantitatively or in manner of being.
Are we then to take it that the monads in the pentad and decad differ while the unity in the pentad is the same as that in the decad?
Yes, in the sense in which, big and little, ship is one with ship, army with army, city with city; otherwise, no. But certain difficulties in this matter will be dealt with later.
The Origin and Order of the Beings. Following on the First (1)
The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession- running back, so to speak, to...
(1) The One is all things and no one of them; the source of all things is not all things; all things are its possession- running back, so to speak, to it- or, more correctly, not yet so, they will be.
But a universe from an unbroken unity, in which there appears no diversity, not even duality?
It is precisely because that is nothing within the One that all things are from it: in order that Being may be brought about, the source must be no Being but Being's generator, in what is to be thought of as the primal act of generation. Seeking nothing, possessing nothing, lacking nothing, the One is perfect and, in our metaphor, has overflowed, and its exuberance has produced the new: this product has turned again to its begetter and been filled and has become its contemplator and so an Intellectual-Principle.
That station towards the one establishes Being; that vision directed upon the One establishes the Intellectual-Principle; standing towards the One to the end of vision, it is simultaneously Intellectual-Principle and Being; and, attaining resemblance in virtue of this vision, it repeats the act of the One in pouring forth a vast power.
This second outflow is a Form or Idea representing the Divine Intellect as the Divine Intellect represented its own prior, The One.
This active power sprung from essence is Soul.
Soul arises as the idea and act of the motionless Intellectual-Principle- which itself sprang from its own motionless prior- but the soul's operation is not similarly motionless; its image is generated from its movement. It takes fulness by looking to its source; but it generates its image by adopting another, a downward, movement.
This image of Soul is Sense and Nature, the vegetal principle.
Nothing, however, is completely severed from its prior. Thus the human Soul appears to reach away as far down as to the vegetal order: in some sense it does, since the life of growing things is within its province; but it is not present entire; when it has reached the vegetal order it is there in the sense that having moved thus far downwards it produces- by its outgoing and its tendency towards the less good- another hypostasis or form of being just as its prior (the loftier phase of the Soul) is produced from the Intellectual-Principle which yet remains in untroubled self-possession.
The great Fourth Hermetic Principle--the Principle of Polarity embodies the truth that all manifested things have "two sides"; "two aspects"; "two...
(1) The great Fourth Hermetic Principle--the Principle of Polarity embodies the truth that all manifested things have "two sides"; "two aspects"; "two poles"; a "pair of opposites," with manifold degrees between the two extremes. The old paradoxes, which have ever perplexed the mind of men, are explained by an understanding of this Principle. Man has always recognized something akin to this Principle, and has endeavored to express it by such sayings, maxims and aphorisms as the following: "Everything is and isn't, at the same time"; "all truths are but half-truths"; "every truth is half-false"; "there are two sides to everything"--"there is a reverse side to every shield," etc., etc.
We have to enquire into the existence of the Numbers in the Intellectual. Are they Ideas added to the other Ideas? Or are they no more than necessary...
(4) We have to enquire into the existence of the Numbers in the Intellectual. Are they Ideas added to the other Ideas? Or are they no more than necessary concomitants to the Ideas?
In the latter case, Being, as the first would give us the conception of the Monad; then since Being produces motion and rest, Three exists; and so on for all the other members of the realm of Being. Or perhaps there is one monad for each member, or a monad for the first, with a dyad for its next, since there exists a series, and a corresponding number for every successive total, decad for ten, and so on.
If, on the contrary, Number is a direct production of the Intellectual-Principle , there is the question whether it preceded or followed the other Ideas.
Plato, where he says that men arrived at the conception of Number by way of the changes of day and night- thus making the concept depend upon variation among things- seems to hold that the things numerable precede and by their differences produce number: Number then would consist in a process within the human mind passing onwards from thing to thing; it results by the fact that the mind takes count, that is when the mind traverses things and reports their differences; observing pure identity unbroken by difference, it says One. But there is the passage where he tells us that the veritable Number has Being, is a Being; this is the opposed view that Number is no product of the reckoning mind but a reality in itself, the concept of which is reawakened in the mind by changes in things of sense.
Thus are the primeval spirits who as a pair (combining their opposite strivings), and (yet each) independent in his action, have been famed (of old)....
(3) Thus are the primeval spirits who as a pair (combining their opposite strivings), and (yet each) independent in his action, have been famed (of old). (They are) a better thing, they two, and a worse , as to thought, as to word, and as to deed. And between these two let the wisely acting choose aright. (Choose ye ) not (as) the evil-doers !
When it takes lot with multiplicity, Being becomes Number by the fact of awakening to manifoldness;- before, it was a preparation, so to speak, of...
(10) When it takes lot with multiplicity, Being becomes Number by the fact of awakening to manifoldness;- before, it was a preparation, so to speak, of the Beings, their fore-promise, a total of henads offering a stay for what was to be based upon them.
Here with us a man will say "I wish I had such and such a quantity of gold"- or "such and such a number of houses." Gold is one thing: the wish is not to bring the numerical quantity into gold but to bring the gold to quantity; the quantity, already present in the mind, is to be passed on to the gold so that it acquire that numerical value.
If the Beings preceded the number and this were discerned upon them at the stirring, to such and such a total, of the numbering principle, then the actual number of the Beings would be a chance not a choice; since that total is not a matter of chance, Number is a causing principle preceding that determined total.
Number then pre-exists and is the cause by which produced things participate in quantity.
The single thing derives its unity by participation in Unity-Absolute; its being it derives from Being-Absolute, which holds its Being from itself alone; a unity is a unity in virtue of Being; the particular unity- where the unity is a multiple unity- is one thing only as the Triad is; the collective Being is a unity of this kind, the unity not of the monad but of the myriad or any such collective number.
Take a man affirming the presence of ten thousand things; it is he that produces the number; he does not tell us that the ten thousand have uttered it; they merely exhibit their several forms; the enumerator's mind supplies the total which would never be known if the mind kept still.
How does the mind pronounce?
By being able to enumerate; that is by knowing Number: but in order to this, Number must be in existence, and that that Principle should not know its own total content is absurd, impossible.
It is with Number as with Good. When we pronounce things to be good either we mean that they are in their own nature so or we affirm goodness as an accidental in them. Dealing with the primals, the goodness we have in mind is that First Hypostasis; where the goodness is an accidental we imply the existence of a Principle of Good as a necessary condition of the accidental presence; there must be some source of that good which is observed elsewhere, whether this source be an Absolute Good or something that of its own nature produces the good. Similarly with number; in attributing the decad to things we affirm either the truly existent decad or, where the decadhood is accidental, we necessarily posit the self-subsistent decad, decad not associated; if things are to be described as forming a decad, then either they must be of themselves the decad or be preceded by that which has no other being than that of decadhood.
It must be urged as a general truth that anything affirmed of a subject not itself either found its way in from outside or is the characteristic Act of that subject; and supposing the predicated attribute to show no variation of presence and absence but to be always present, then, if the subject is a Real Being so also is the accidental in an equal degree; or, failing Real Being, it at least belongs to the existents, it exists. In the case when the subject can be thought of as remaining without its Act, yet that Act is inbound with it even though to our minds it appears as a later; when on the contrary the subject cannot be conceived without the attribute-man, for example, without unity- then the attribute is either not later but concomitant or, being essential to the existence, is precedent. In our view, Unity and Number are precedent.
YALDABAOTH RETALIATES BY CREATING DEATH (YALDABAOTH RETALIATES BY CREATING DEATH)
When the chief creator of chaos saw his son Sabaoth, and that the glory in which he dwells is more exquisite than all the authorities of chaos, he...
When the chief creator of chaos saw his son Sabaoth, and that the glory in which he dwells is more exquisite than all the authorities of chaos, he was jealous of him. And when he was angry, he conceived death from his own death. It was set up over the sixth heaven; Sabaoth had been snatched away from there. And thus the number of the six authorities of chaos was completed. Then, since death was androgynous, he mixed with his nature and conceived seven androgynous children. These are the names of the males: envy, wrath, weeping, sighing, mourning, lamenting, tearful groaning. And these are the names of the females: wrath, grief, lust, sighing, cursing, bitterness, quarrelsomeness. They had intercourse with one another, and each one conceived seven, so that the children total forty-nine androgynous demons. Their names and their functions you will find in the Book of Solomon. In the presence of these, Zoe, who dwells with Sabaoth, created seven good androgynous powers. These are the names of the males: not-jealous, blessed, joyful, true, not-envious, beloved, trustworthy. And these are the names of the females: peace, gladness, rejoicing, blessedness, truth, love, faith. And many good and guileless spirits come from these. Their accomplishments and their functions you will find in the Configurations of the Fate of Heaven beneath the Twelve.
How the Multiplicity of the Ideal-forms Came Into Being: and Upon the Good (14)
On the nature of the Intellectual-Principle we get light from its manifestations; they show that it demands such diversity as is compatible with its...
(14) On the nature of the Intellectual-Principle we get light from its manifestations; they show that it demands such diversity as is compatible with its being a monad. Take what principle you will, that of plant or animal: if this principle were a pure unity and not a specifically varied thing, it could not so serve as principle; its product would be Matter, the principle not having taken all those forms necessary if Matter is to be permeated and utterly transformed. A face is not one mass; there are nose and eyes; and the nose is not a unity but has the differences which make it a nose; as bare unity it would be mere mass.
There is infinity in Intellectual-Principle since, of its very nature, it is a multiple unity, not with the unity of a house but with that of a Reason-Principle, multiple in itself: in the one Intellectual design it includes within itself, as it were in outline, all the outlines, all the patterns. All is within it, all the powers and intellections; the division is not determined by a boundary but goes ever inward; this content is held as the living universe holds the natural forms of the living creatures in it from the greatest to the least, down even to the minutest powers where there is a halt at the individual form. The discrimination is not of items huddled within a sort of unity; this is what is known as the Universal Sympathy, not of course the sympathy known here which is a copy and prevails amongst things in separation; that authentic Sympathy consists in all being a unity and never discriminate.