Page 21 - GALIET DOOMSDAY AND DANTE´S PROPHECY 515: Dante IV

encompasses beginning, middle and end of all potential and actual things, in continuity or juxtaposition, in difference and sameness. God and Monad are one as source, Alpha and Omega of all existence.49 God-Monad, self-made, self- moved, self-sufficient, unchanging and everlasting, is the primordial creative principle encompassing every differentiation within itself. It never alters and forbids all else to alter. God-Monad, without it, neither composition nor knowledge exists. God-Monad, pure light, sun-like and ruling shares in the beauty of Beatrice’s divine smile. Beatrice of Plenitude, the light-brilliance aspect of God, makes different and opposed things cohere and combine into a harmonious and unified universe for Dante. God and Monad, thus undifferentiated, are removed from every existential and paradoxical duality, from tensions, tragic or otherwise, as best exemplified in Bonaventura’s ‘contrast of divine and mortal qualities.’50
It is the glorious Father-Monad within 5 1 5 that generates the Decad within 500 10 5. Exalted by the Pythagoreans for generating the first even and odd numbers and line, squares and plane,
cubes and solid, the Decad was
worshipped as containing all numbers and
therefore all things. It symbolized the
8
48 Jesus, too, is said to claim that he is the beginning, middle and end of all things. In the Gospel of John, the Son is equal with God (3:35; 5:18; 10:18-30; 16:32; 17:10) and can be accordingly called God (10:34-36; 20:28). This may have been the foundation for the Nicean Creed. Christology thus reaches its climax in the full deity of Christ.
49 Presumably alpha is the mark which signifies the Monad.” It is the first letter of word arche (source). Iamblichus. Theology of Arithmetic. 39. Waterfield, Robin. The Theology of Arithmetic by Iamblichus. USA: Red Wheel,
1988.
50 Bonaventura’s duad compilation includes attributes such as deformity, evil, corruptibility and mutability as opposed to beauty, good, incorruptibility, and immutability. Noted by Hopper. Medieval Number Symbolism.
•21•
Monad
First even, odd Squares
Cubes
1
Point Line Plane Solid
2 4
3
9
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Galiet & Galiet