Page 25 - GALIET DOOMSDAY AND DANTE´S PROPHECY 515: Dante IV

trinity of odd numbers whose effulgent and living light, God as Monad and Christ as Decad, sustain the universal pentads, beautifully symbolizes the concept of divine justice known to Medievalists: in it, balance and symmetry set forth. God as the lucente (effulgent light) and Christ as the Word, the viva luce (living light)69 are exemplars of divine justice70 for Christ is also associated with the just scales of Libra.71
The Pentad, “highly expressive of heavenly justice,”72 holds equality and sameness on the analogy of a weighing instrument: it holds the balance between the extremes of the nine and the one, the ennead and the monad, each by a full tetrad. Hence, having neither excess nor lack,73 it parallels those euphonies of the golden-mean of Aristotle,74 for the Pentad comprehends, in the rational soul, every virtue, giving what is fair and equal to each thing75 since only the odd numbers admit a mean.76
Moreover, the Pythagoreans called the pentad ‘lack of strife,’ because aether, the fifth element, ever unchanging, dwelt beyond the strife that spans all things between moon and earth. It always reconciled back to itself in form, just as the primary even and odd numbers and every opposition were reconciled in the
Interpretation of Dante’s Cinquecento, dieci e cinque, “Italica”, LIX, 1982, pp. 32-40, resurrected Gematria correcting what they take to be errors by Moore in its application, to work out that the numbers represent the Hebrew letters for the word for a trumpet blast as it was written, probably, by the Jewish Italian community of Dante’s time. This is the same trumpet blast which heralds the day of Judgement in Joel 2: 1-2. See Wilaon, Prophecies and Prophecy in Dante’s Commedia.
69 Par.13, 52-63
70 Not too distant from Paradiso’s Cantos 18-20, Dante offers a vision of justice, in which, after death, as also at the
Last Judgment, all human beings will receive the exact punishment or reward that their earthly actions have merited.
71 Dante, in the Convivio 3.5.8,13 explains the sun crosses the equator when in Aries and in Libra. Kleiner notes that Aries and Libra are associated with Christ: Aries the Paschal Lamb and Libra as the Scales of Justice or Judgment. Frecerro observes that the intersection of these two contrary motions makes the Greek cross: the Platonic celestial chi, which in a tradition derived from Timaeus (34c-36e) represents the nexus between the Same (one) and the Other (Many) mentioned twice in Paradiso. Moev. The Metaphysics of Dante. 159
72 Iamblichus. Theology of Arithmetic. 68
73 Iamblichus. Theology of Arithmetic. 70-71
74 Aristotle. Nichomachean Ethics.
75 The tripartite division of the human soul into rational, passionate and appetitive stems from Plato’s Republic. 69 76 Iamblichus claims that “every square number which is equal-times-equal is receptive of justice, or a hand-held scale, but not every square number admits a mean, only odd numbers, beginning with three, the most basic of the series, admit a mean, even numbers do not have a mean. We must adapt our account of justice to this following the Pythagorean definition of justice: The power of repayment of what is equal and appropriate, being encompassed by the mean of a square odd number.” Iamblichus. Theology of Arithmetic. 70
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