Pythagoreans: The First Step in the Masonic Journey
Pythagoras lived and taught in the sixth century BC. He was born in Samos and settled in the Greek colony of Croton, modern day Calabria, where he founded his community. His teachings emphasized moderation, piety, health of body and soul, respect for elders and of the state, and monogamy. He believed in the transmigration [also known as metempsychosis, is the belief that the soul or non-physical essence of a living being continues its existence in a different physical form or body after biological death] of souls, opposed animal cruelty, and advocated for the benefits of vegetarianism.
His cenobic [a monastic lifestyle characterized by communal living and shared resources, where monks or nuns live together in a monastery or convent, following a common rule and sharing meals, possessions, and labor] community included akousmatikoi, “those who listen,” and mathematikoi, “those who learn,” with initiations similar to classical mystery cults. They reverenced Pythian Apollo and sought escape from reincarnation through union with the gods. Pythagoras is credited with discovering the Pythagorean theorem and the mathematical underpinnings of music (i.e. the two-to-one octave ratio, basis for the modern musical scale). He ever sought harmony and proportionality, especially via geometry.
Numbers, for him, were the basis of the universe and proof of the supernatural; for nowhere does a number exist in and of itself, yet they govern all things. Numbers are, then, pure ideas, pure spirit. Should people cease to exist—should the world cease to exist—two plus two will still equal four. So numbers exceed both mind and world. Mathematics is the true magic, the language of the gods. (The Pythagorean who proved irrational numbers was said to have been struck down by the gods for the outrage.)
New Pythagoreans were chosen based on merit and discipline. After a five-year apprenticeship, they could “test up” to become mathematikoi, the inner circle. Yet people could leave the community at any time. Most were men, though some exceptional women were accepted. Pythagorean cosmology and insistence on universal justice heavily influenced Plato and, through him, all of subsequent Western philosophy.
Not for nothing, Pythagorean communities became subject to anti-Pythagorean violence. The akousmatikoi were largely displaced as mendicants [beggars] by the Cynics [a school of ancient Greek philosophers founded by Antisthenes, marked by an ostentatious contempt for ease and pleasure], and the mathematikoi were absorbed into other philosophical schools and mystery cults.
So we have, then, an ancient secret society with two levels of initiates (as did the Lodge before the later addition of the Third Degree); who gathered in community to discuss the mysteries of the universe; who concerned themselves with geometry, music, mathematics, astronomy, cosmology, justice, and virtue; who sought to make good men better; who blurred the lines between philosophy, religion, education, and esotericism; and who were persecuted for their practice. Sound familiar?
Freemasonry draws much from classical education, Western philosophy, and mystery cults. We too concern ourselves with the numerical quadrivium: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. We reverence deity and insist upon both familial and civic virtue. One can see the Pythagorean theorem on our banners, and the pentagram in our appendant bodies. The G, as they say, stands for both geometry and God.
As for where we started: the five-pointed star, to Pythagoras, is said to have represented not only the elements but the emptiness between them, which divides them and makes them distinct. More significantly, the pentagram contains within it the Golden Ratio [(a+b) is to a as a is to b], found throughout nature and art; and thus can be used to create a Golden Rectangle—which, with its triangular guidelines, looks uncannily like a Masonic apron.
For the Greeks the Golden Ratio represented a mathematical law of beauty. The Golden Rectangle and related Golden Spiral can be found throughout their sculpture and architecture, a tradition continued in the cathedrals of the Middle Ages and paintings of the Renaissance. We find it in flowers, seashells, pinecones, conifer trees, and healthy human proportions. You might be surprised just how often it shows up in within the Lodge.
I leave you with an odd and somewhat recherché recommendation: Donald in Mathmagic Land (1959). This educational animated short film, available for free viewing on YouTube, and produced by Walt Disney, who had a number of Masonic connections, fancifully captures that ancient Greek sense of wonder at the miraculous—indeed, divine—beauty of the mathematical foundations of our universe.
And wonder truly ought to be our proper response to this point at which reason, faith,
virtue, and aesthetics intersect.
By: Reverend Sir Knight Ryan Stout
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