Page 22 - GALIET DOOMSDAY AND DANTE´S PROPHECY 515: Dante IV

‘universe and heaven,’ ‘all,’ ‘Fate,’ ‘eternity,’ ‘power,’ ‘trust,’ and ‘necessity.’51 It also symbolized the ten universal spheres52 no less akin to the ten radiant spheres of Dante’s Paradiso. Not surprisingly, the Decad, too, was seen as the diameter of the spheric principle. It was the Decad that turned them around and limited them to maintain them.53 Perhaps these Pythagorean conceptions all arose from the glorious realization that the first four archetypal numbers engendered the Decad as sum (1+2+3+4=10), thus becoming the representation of ten in the perfect triangle of fourness, the Tetraktys,54 sometimes called the Platonic Lambda55 or Pythagorean Lambda, adored figure and the legendary oath of the Pythagoreans.56 Yet, what do they sire?
51 They called it ‘universe and heaven,’ and among the Muses, “Ourania,” because it arranges and is the receptacle of all universal and particular things. They called it ‘all’ because, as the greatest of natural numbers, every number recurs and returns to Decad and because of the ten fauna species and mythical Pan. They called it ‘Fate,’ because all things are sown in the Decad and its numbers including every extension thereof giving rise to Fate as an orderly result. ‘Eternity’ because it encompasses and fulfils all things: complete and everlasting. ‘Power’ because it empowers the things of the universe, and it controls all other numbers and principles as a defence, enclosure and receptacle.51 ‘Trust’ because the Decad guarantees comprehension of all things. Necessity, because, occupying the furthest rim of the heavens, it perpetually drives and urges on the whole rotation with an adamantine and indefatigable whip, circumscribes everything, and, by mingling things one with another and again separating them, it imbues things with change and continuity. Iamblichus. Theology of Arithmetic. 109-111
52 Aristotle reports that from the first their cosmic theory was derived. A central fire was placed at the center of the universe about which revolved earth, sun, moon, planets and fixed stars. The resulting nine spheres was so repugnant to Grecians in an ordered and mathematical universe that an invisible ‘counter-earth’ was postulated to complete the Decad. Not only is the number 10 necessary to realize completeness just as Dante needs one extra canto to complete his three canticas and elevate it to a multiple of 10: 100, but all things are contained within the Decad, since after 10 the numbers merely repeat themselves. Dante has deliberately contained all things, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, within his 100 Cantos. Iamblichus. Theology of Arithmetic. 90, 111.
53 Please compare Plato’s image of Necessity as a spindle running through the spheres of the universe. Republic 616c.
54 Photius, Biography, 4; Iamblichus, Biography, 28; Capella, op.cit., VII. Noted by Hopper. Medieval Number Symbolism.
55 In the Timaeus, Plato declares that the primary sequence of world-soul numbers, by which the universe gains life is 1,2,3,4,9,8,27 displayed as a lambda. This lambda becomes a complete Tetraktys when three geometrical means are inserted, 6-12-18 which add to 36 which equals the apex of the triangle. Plato also mentions these sequences in the passage on the generation of soul, which begins, “He removed one portion from the whole,” and so on. Plato. Timaeus 35b. See also Iamblichus. Theology of Arithmetic. 29.
56 Iamblichus, Biography, 28.
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