(5) These Ten Numbers, beyond the Infinite one, have the boundless realms, boundless origin and end, an abyss of good and one of evil, boundless height and depth, East and West, North and South, and the one only God and king, faithful forever seated on his throne, shall rule over all, forever and ever.

(186) The number nine is divine, receives its completion from three triads, and attains the summits of theology, according to the Chaldaic philosophy as Porphyry informeth us.

(60) The comic poet Epicharmus speaks in the Republic clearly of the Word in the following terms: "The life of men needs calculation and number alone, And we live by number and calculation, for these save mortals."

(2) What, then, of the "Number of the Infinite"?

To begin with, how is Number consistent with infinity?

Objects of sense are not unlimited and therefore the Number applying to them cannot be so. Nor is an enumerator able to number to infinity; though we double, multiply over and over again, we still end with a finite number; though we range over past and future, and consider them, even, as a totality, we still end with the finite.

Are we then to dismiss absolute limitlessness and think merely that there is always something beyond?

No; that more is not in the reckoner's power to produce; the total stands already defined.

In the Intellectual the Beings are determined and with them Number, the number corresponding to their total; in this sphere of our own- as we make a man a multiple by counting up his various characteristics, his beauty and the rest- we take each image of Being and form a corresponding image of number; we multiply a non-existent in and so produce multiple numbers; if we number years we draw on the numbers in our own minds and apply them to the years; these numbers are still our possession.

(2) Ten are the numbers, as are the Sephiroth, and twenty-two the letters, these are the Foundation of all things. Of these letters, three are mothers, seven are double, and twelve are simple.

(25) And when those whom I have discussed appeared, All-Begetter, their father, very soon created twelve aeons for retinue for the twelve angels. And in each aeon there were six (heavens), so there are seventy-two heavens of the seventy-two powers who appeared from him. And in each of the heavens there were five firmaments, so there are (altogether) three hundred sixty firmaments of the three hundred sixty powers that appeared from them. When the firmaments were complete, they were called 'The Three Hundred Sixty Heavens', according to the name of the heavens that were before them. And all these are perfect and good. And in this way the defect of femaleness appeared.

(24) Therefore our aeon came to be as the type of Immortal Man. Time came to be as the type of First Begetter, his son. The year came to be as the type of Savior. The twelve months came to be as the type of the twelve powers. The three hundred and sixty days of the year came to be as the three hundred and sixty powers who appeared from Savior. Their hours and moments came to be as the type of the angels who came from them (the powers), who are without number.

(17) But what of the Infinite Number we hear of; does not all this reasoning set it under limit?

And rightly so if the thing is to be a number; limitlessness and number are in contradiction.

How, then, do we come to use the term? Is it that we think of Number as we think of an infinite line, not with the idea that any such lire exists but that even the very greatest- that of the universe, for example- may be thought of as still greater? So it might be with number; let it be fixed, yet we still are free to think of its double, though not of course to produce the doubled quantity since it is impossible to join to the actual what is no more than a conception, a phantasm, private to ourselves.

It is our view that there does exist an infinite line, among the Intellectual Beings: for There a line would not be quantitative and being without quantity could be numerically infinite. This however would be in another mode than that of limitless extension. In what mode then? In that the conception of the Absolute Line does not include the conception of limit.

But what sort of thing is the Line in the Intellectual and what place does it hold?

It is later than Number since unity is observed in it; it rises at one point and traverses one course and simply lacks the quantity that would be the measure of the distance.

But where does this thing lie? Is it existent only in the defining thought, so to speak?

No; it is also a thing, though a thing of the Intellectual. All that belongs to that order is at once an Intellectual and in some degree the concrete thing. There is a position, as well as a manner of being, for all configurations, for surface, for solid. And certainly the configurations are not of our devising; for example, the configurations of the universe are obviously antecedent to ourselves; so it must be with all the configurations of the things of nature; before the bodily reproductions all must exist There, without configuration, primal configurations. For these primals are not shapes in something; self-belonging, they are perfect without extension; only the extended needs the external. In the sphere of Real-Being the configuration is always a unity; it becomes discrete either in the Living-Form or immediately before: I say "becomes discrete" not in the sense that it takes magnitude There but that it is broken apart for the purpose of the Living-Form and is allotted to the bodies within that Form- for instance, to Fire There, the Intellectual Pyramid. And because the Ideal-Form is There, the fire of this sphere seeks to produce that configuration against the check of Matter: and so of all the rest as we read in the account of the realm of sense.

But does the Life-Form contain the configurations by the mere fact of its life?

They are in the Intellectual-Principle previously but they also exist in the Living-Form; if this be considered as including the Intellectual-Principle, then they are primally in the Life-Form, but if that Principle comes first then they are previously in that. And if the Life-Form entire contains also souls, it must certainly be subsequent to the Intellectual-Principle.

No doubt there is the passage "Whatever Intellect sees in the entire Life-Form"; thus seeing, must not the Intellectual-Principle be the later?

No; the seeing may imply merely that the reality comes into being by the fact of that seeing; the Intellectual-Principle is not external to the Life-Form; all is one; the Act of the Intellectual-Principle possesses itself of bare sphere, while the Life-Form holds the sphere as sphere of a living total.

(5) Such, then, is the style of the example in arithmetic. And let the testimony of geometry be the tabernacle that was constructed, and the ark that was fashioned, - constructed in most regular proportions, and through divine ideas, by the gift of understanding, which leads us from things of sense to intellectual objects, or rather from these to holy things, and to the holy of holies. For the squares of wood indicate that the square form, producing fight angles, pervades all, and points out security. And the length of the structure was three hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty, and the height thirty; and above, the ark ends in a cubit, narrowing to a cubit from the broad base like a pyramid, the symbol of those who are purified and tested by fire. And this geometrical proportion has a place, for the transport of those holy abodes, whose differences are indicated by the differences of the numbers set down below.

(546) the laws which regulate them will not be discovered by an intelligence which is alloyed with sense, but will escape them, and they will bring children into the world when they ought not. Now that which is of divine birth has a period which is contained in a perfect number, 1 but the period of human birth is comprehended in a number in which first increments by involution and evolution [ or squared and cubed] obtaining three intervals and four terms of like and unlike, waxing and waning numbers, make all the terms commensurable and agreeable to one another. 2 The base of these (3) with a third added (4) when combined with five (20) and raised to the third power furnishes two harmonies; the first a square which is a hundred times as great (400 = 4 × 100), 3 and the other a figure having one side equal to the former, but oblong, 4 consisting of a hundred numbers squared upon rational diameters of a square (i.e. omitting fractions), the side of which is five (7 × 7 = 49 × 100 = 4900), each of them being less by one (than the perfect square which includes the fractions, sc. 50) or less by 5 two perfect squares of irrational diameters (of a square the side of which is five = 50 + 50 = 100); and a hundred cubes of three (27 × 100 = 2700 + 4900 + 400 = 8000). Now this number represents a geometrical figure which has control over the good and evil of births. For when your guardians are ignorant of the law of births, and unite bride and bridegroom out of season, the children will not be goodly or fortunate. And though only the best of them will be appointed by their predecessors, still they will be unworthy to hold their fathers’ places, and when they come into power as guardians, they will soon be found to fail in taking care of us, the Muses, first by under-valuing music; which neglect will soon extend to gymnastic; and hence the young men of your State will be less cultivated. In the succeeding generation rulers will be appointed who have lost the guardian power of testing the metal of your

(18) It appears then that Number in that realm is definite; it is we that can conceive the "More than is present"; the infinity lies in our counting: in the Real is no conceiving more than has been conceived; all stands entire; no number has been or could be omitted to make addition possible. It might be described as infinite in the sense that it has not been measured- who is there to measure it?- but it is solely its own, a concentrated unit, entire, not ringed round by any boundary; its manner of being is settled for it by itself alone. None of the Real-Beings is under limit; what is limited, measured, is what needs measure to prevent it running away into the unbounded. There every being is Measure; and therefore it is that all is beautiful. Because that is a living thing it is beautiful, holding the highest life, the complete, a life not tainted towards death, nothing mortal there, nothing dying. Nor is the life of that Absolute Living-Form some feeble flickering; it is primal, the brightest, holding all that life has of radiance; it is that first light which the souls There draw upon for their life and bring with them when they come here. It knows for what purpose it lives, towards What it lives, from Whence it lives; for the Whence of its life is the Whither... and close above it stands the wisdom of all, the collective Intellectual-Principle, knit into it, one with it, colouring it to a higher goodness, by kneading wisdom into it, making its beauty still more august. Even here the august and veritably beautiful life is the life in wisdom, here dimly seen, There purely. For There wisdom gives sight to the seer and power for the fuller living and in that tenser life both to see and to become what is seen.

Here attention is set for the most part upon the unliving and, in the living, upon what is lifeless in them; the inner life is taken only with alloy: There, all are Living Beings, living wholly, unalloyed; however you may choose to study one of them apart from its life, in a moment that life is flashed out upon you: once you have known the Essence that pervades them, conferring that unchangeable life upon them, once you perceive the judgement and wisdom and knowledge that are theirs, you can but smile at all the lower nature with its pretention to Reality.

In virtue of this Essence it is that life endures, that the Intellectual-Principle endures, that the Beings stand in their eternity; nothing alters it, turns it, moves it; nothing, indeed, is in being besides it to touch it; anything that is must be its product; anything opposed to it could not affect it. Being itself could not make such an opposite into Being; that would require a prior to both and that prior would then be Being; so that Parmenides was right when he taught the identity of Being and Unity. Being is thus beyond contact not because it stands alone but because it is Being. For Being alone has Being in its own right.

How then can we deny to it either Being or anything at all that may exist effectively, anything that may derive from it?

As long as it exists it produces: but it exists for ever; so, therefore, do its products. And so great is it in power and beauty that it remains the allurer, all things of the universe depending from it and rejoicing to hold their trace of it and through that to seek their good. To us, existence is before the good; all this world desires life and wisdom in order to Being; every soul and every intellect seeks to be its Being, but Being is sufficient to itself.

(2) Nepenthe, without gall, o’er every ill

Oblivion spreads;——

and thus snatched his host Anchitus from death, and the youth from the crime of homicide. It is also related that the youth from that time became the most celebrated of the disciples of Pythagoras. Farther still, the whole Pythagoric school produced by certain appropriate songs, what they called exartysis or adaptation, synarmoge or elegance of manners, and epaphe or contact, usefully conducting the dispositions of the soul to passions contrary to those which it before possessed. For when they went to bed they purified the reasoning power from the perturbations and noises to which it had been exposed during the day, by certain odes and peculiar songs, and by this means procured for themselves tranquil sleep, and few and good dreams. But when they rose from bed, they again liberated themselves from the torpor and heaviness of sleep, by songs of another kind. Sometimes, also, by musical sounds alone, unaccompanied with words, they healed the passions of the soul and certain diseases, enchanting, as they say, in reality. And it is probable that from hence this name epode , i. e. enchantment, came to be generally used. After this manner, therefore, Pythagoras through music produced the most beneficial correction of human manners and lives.

(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).

(12) These are the ten ineffable existences, the spirit of the living God, Air, Water, Fire, Height and Depth, East and West, North and South.

(4) Ten are the numbers of the ineffable Sephiroth, ten and not nine, ten and not eleven. Learn this wisdom, and be wise in the understanding of it, investigate these numbers, and draw knowledge from them, fix the design in its purity, and pass from it to its Creator seated on his throne.

(3) "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the twelve Immoveables have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have set themselves with all their orders and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the Unwaverables have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have set themselves up, divided into twelve orders, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless, which belong to the orders of the space of the Ineffable. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the Incomprehensibles, which pertain to the second space of the Ineffable, have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the twelve Undesignatables have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have set themselves up after all the orders of the Unindicatables, themselves being uncontainable and boundless, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor these Unindicatables have rent themselves asunder,--[they] who have not indicated themselves nor brought themselves into publicity according to the economy of the One and Only, the Ineffable, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the Super-deeps have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have distributed themselves, being a single order, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the twelve orders of the Unspeakables have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have divided themselves, being three portions, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor all the Imperishables, being their twelve orders, have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have settled themselves, being expanded in a single order, and wherefor they have divided themselves and formed different orders, being uncontainable and boundless, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the Impassables have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have set themselves up, being twelve boundless spaces, and have settled themselves, being three orders of spaces, according to the economy of the One and Only, the Ineffable, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the twelve Uncontainables, which belong to the orders of the One and Only, the Ineffable, have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless, until they were brought to the space of the First Mystery, which is the second space. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor the four-and-twenty myriads of Praise-singers have rent themselves asunder and wherefor they have extended themselves outside the veil of the First Mystery, which is the twin-mystery, that which looketh within and without, of the One and Only, the Ineffable, and wherefor they have come forth from the Fatherless. "And that mystery knoweth wherefor all the [paragraph continues] Uncontainables have rent themselves asunder--[those], which I have just named, which are in the regions of the second space of the Ineffable, which is the space of the First Mystery, and wherefor those Uncontainables and Boundless have come forth from the Fatherless.

(3) The circle, however, must not be interpreted as conveying the idea of limitation; rather is it intended to convey the idea of limitlessness. The symbol, although the best possible for the purpose, is inadequate—this by reason of the impossibility of representing the Infinite by a finite symbol. The only adequate symbol of the Eternal Parent would be that of Infinite Space, and this, of course, cannot be represented by a sign, for no matter how wide the circle might be drawn there would always be Space beyond it. But, recognizing the impossibility of an adequate symbol, the ancient Rosicrucians have adopted the empty circle as the best possible finite symbol of the Infinite Unmanifest.

(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.

(2) All things being undefined and yet unwrought, the light things were assigned unto the height, the heavy ones had their foundations laid down underneath the moist part of Dry Space, the universal things being bounded off by Fire and hanged in Breath to keep them up. And Heaven was seen in seven circles; its Gods were visible in forms of stars with all their signs; while Nature had her members made articulate together with the Gods in her. And [Heaven's] periphery revolved in cyclic course, borne on by Breath of God.

(4) On another principle, 120 is a triangular number, and consists of the equality of the number 64, [which consists of eight of the odd numbers beginning with unity], the addition of which (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15) in succession generate squares; and of the inequality of the number 56, consisting of seven of the even numbers beginning with 2 (2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14), which produce the numbers that are not squares Again, according to another way of indicating. the number 120 consists of four numbers - of one triangle, 15; of another, a square, 25; of a third, a pentagon, 35; and of a fourth, a hexagon, 45. The 5 is taken according to the same ratio in each mode. For in triangular numbers, from the unity 5 comes 15; and in squares, 25; and of those in succession, proportionally. Now 25, which is the number 5 from unity, is said to be the symbol of the Levitical tribe. And the number 35 depends also on the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic scale of doubles - 6, 8, 9, 12; the addition of which makes 35. In these days, the Jews say that seven months' children are formed. And the number 45 depends on the scale of triples - 6, 9, 12, 18 - the addition of which makes 45; and similarly, in these days they say that nine months' children are formed.