The Schools of Pythagoras - Pt. I

W. J. Colville

Date Published: 4/24/2024                        

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In the first of a three part series on the ancient patriarch of the Mystery Schools, Pythagoras, we learn of his origins and mystic education and training for the high calling of his life. What parallels can we draw in the life of the Initiate into Freemasonry?

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We have all heard the famous inscription on the Temple of Delphi, "Know thyself and thou wilt know the universe and the gods." On the basis of this maxim the entire theosophical system of the ancient Greeks was based. The three leading propositions of all the Esoteric Schools are summed up in the sentence frequently quoted as the gist of the teaching of Pythagoras: "Evolution is the law of life; number is the law of the universe; unity is the law of God."

The wonderful character known as Orpheus is no mythical personage, but a genuine adept of antiquity around whose wonderful career, as in all similar cases, multitudes of fairy tales have gathered. The work of Orpheus, like that of all other great spiritual teachers, did not consist in establishing a sect or party, but in disseminating truths of universal import which gradually percolated through many existing systems, constituting an inner body of doctrine of which simply literalists were always ignorant. Pythagoras, the Sage of Samos, though his period was not earlier than 600 B.C., is regarded as quite a legendary character by many who have not deeply studied the history of that epoch, and as in the case of so many other great leaders who worked from a spiritual standpoint, fierce persecution assailed this renowned Initiate and all who had the hardihood to publicly espouse his doctrines and remain faithful to his cause. The more we study history, the more convinced must we become that the persecuting spirit, which has relentlessly attacked all the world's great reformers, is excited not by religious conviction in any case originally, but by scheming demagogues, whose tyrannical authority, whether in Church or State, is always threatened by the spread of knowledge, and particularly by a real understanding of the Mysteries. In the case of Pythagoras and his followers, this persecution took place in Sicily, from which island many of the instructed fled to Greece, which furnished them a safe asylum. It is to Plato that we owe almost all our information concerning Pythagoras and his teachings; for, like other great spiritual enlighteners, this noble master gave instruction orally and never transferred his esoteric teachings to writing except under cover of symbolical signs, which only his disciples were able to interpret.

It appears that all masters have adopted the two-fold method of giving moral instruction freely to multitudes, but confiding the deeper meaning of their teaching exclusively to those disciples who had prepared themselves to profit by more interior instruction. No sensible or thoughtful person can fail to see the wisdom and complete justice of this course, for no one was excluded from the deeper teaching who was prepared to receive it, and preparation consisted in thoroughly digesting and practically applying the general teaching given openly to the multitudes. All sorts of curious names have been given to this inner teaching by those who referred to it metaphorically. In India the curious title of "Boar's flesh" has been sometimes applied to an inner philosophy which was concealed from the masses, a similitude which has led to the ludicrous mistake entertained by some shallow critics that one of the Buddhas died from gourmandizing on flesh, when it is well known in the East that those who occupy high spiritual stations are always vegetarians. In the School of Pythagoras, great stress was laid on simple diet, as one means for purifying the body of a candidate seeking admission into the inner circle of disciples, for if was stoutly contended that no one could become thoroughly clairvoyant, in the higher acceptance of the term, who partook of animal food, or who used any stimulants or narcotics.

The Sage of Samos was not an ordinary theurgist or worker of miracles, serving merely to create transitory sensational interest, his avowed mission being to assist humanity in the work of such complete regeneration that strife should cease upon the earth, both in the inward lives of his disciples and in the outer world also, so far as their influence extended. The essence of the Pythagorean Doctrine has come down to us in the Golden Verses of Lysis, in the commentary of Hierocles, and especially in the Timaeus of Plato, which contains a perfect system of cosmogony. All the great writers of ancient Greece radiate the spirit of Pythagoras, whom they admired so greatly that they never tire of relating anecdotes depicting the wisdom and beauty of his teaching and his marvelous power over all with whom he came in contact. He is quoted as an authority by the Gnostics of the early Christian Church as well as by the Neoplatonists of Alexandria.

This teaching constitutes a magnificent whole, and serves greatly to simplify the mysterious symbolism of India and Egypt, which often requires a clear Hellenic mind to portray it in intelligible language consistently with rational and ennobling ideas of human liberty. That wonderful period which witnessed the life and work of Pythagoras was also the age of Lao-Tse in China, and of Buddha Sakya-Muni in India. Pythagoras was a great traveler; he is said to have crossed the whole of the ancient world before delivering his message in Greece, to which country he brought the ripe fruits of a thoroughly matured philosophy. A fascinating account of this wonderful teacher is given by the gifted French author, Edouard Schure, who enters with much picturesque detail into an account of the early years and extended travels of this brilliant yet calm philosopher, who was the son of noble-minded parents. His father was a wealthy jeweler of Samos; his mother a woman of much refinement.

It is said that the Pythoness of Delphi, when consulted by these good people shortly after their marriage, promised them a son who would be useful to all men throughout all times. The oracle directed them to Sidon in Phoenicia, where the child could be born far from the disturbing influences which then ruled in their native land. Before his birth Pythagoras was fervently consecrated to Apollo, the God of Light. When the child was only a year old, acting on advice received from a priest of Delphi, his mother took him to an Israelitish temple in a valley of Lebanon where the high priest gave the infant a special blessing.

Parthenis, the mother of this wondrous babe, is reported to have been a singularly beautiful and gentle woman, highly intellectual and of a very gracious temper. As the boy grew toward manhood, his parents encouraged him in that pursuit of wisdom in which he took a most keen delight, and so earnest a student was he that when only eighteen years of age he had studied in classes composed almost exclusively of thoroughly mature and particularly able men. But though, when at the age of twenty three, he had enjoyed conference with Thales and Anazimander at Miletus, and others of the greatest among philosophers, none of these distinguished teachers had satisfied his yearning for the knowledge of perfect truth.

Their teachings seemed to him contradictory, and he was ever searching for a grand synthesis. We translate freely the following paragraphs from the French of Edouard Schure describing the hour when this marvelous genius seemed to attain his first complete glimpse of the great mission which lay before him: "Through the length of a glorious night Pythagoras directed his gaze now to the earth, now to the temple, and now to the starlit skies. Demeter, the Earth-Mother, that Nature whose secrets he sought to penetrate, was there outspread beneath him and around.

He imbibed her potent exhalations and felt the invincible attraction uniting him, a thinking atom, to her bosom, an inseparable portion of herself. The Sages whom he had consulted had told him that it was from her that all things spring. From nothing comes nothing. The soul proceeds from water and from fire, but this subtle emanation of the primal element issues from them only to revert. Nature, said they, is sightless and inflexible; resign thyself to her unchanging laws.

The sole merit thou canst have consists in this, that thou knowest them and art resigned to them. Then he gazed upon the firmament and sought to decipher the letters of flame formed by the Constellations in the fathomless depths of space. These signs, said he, must have a meaning, for if the infinitesimal, the motion of atoms, has its reason for existence, surely then also the immeasurably great, the wide-extended stars whose constellations represent a body of the universe! Verily each of these worlds must have its law, for all move unitedly according to number and in perfect harmony.

But who will decipher this starry alphabet? The priests of Juno had told him this universe is the abode of the gods which existed before the earth. 'Thy soul cometh' (said they) 'from thence. Pray to the gods that it may remount to heaven.' Then we are told that his meditations were interrupted, first by the chants of the Lesbian women and the Bacchic airs chanted by the youths, but these melodious sounds were soon interrupted by piercing mournful cries issuing from men who were to be sold as slaves and were being cruelly struck by those who were compelling them to embark for Asia.

Then it was that a painful thrill ran through his frame, for a mighty problem presented itself before him, as he contrasted vividly the different estates of the various classes of human beings who were thus brought before his notice. Whatever others might say and whatever appearances might indicate, the young Pythagoras cried out for liberty, liberty from all the pain, slavery and madness so abundantly spread around him. Who were right ? he asked. The Sages who taught a doctrine of blind fatality, the priests who attributed everything to Divine Providence, or the great mass of humanity who stood between the two with no well defined philosophy? All voices, he decided, declared some aspect of truth, but none gave to him the true solution of the problem. The three worlds, elaborately described in ancient cosmology, undoubtedly existed, and it was in the law of their equilibrium that the secret of the Kosmos lay. Having given utterance to this discovery, he rose to his feet, his glance fixed on the majestic temple which seemed transfigured in the moonbeams. In that magnificent temple he believed he saw an ideal image of the universe. The Cosmos guided and penetrated by God formed the sacred Quaternion, which is the source of Nature whose cause is eternal. Concealed in the geometrical lines of the Delphic Temple, he thought he found the key of the universe. The base, columns, architrave and triangular pediment represented to his view the three-fold nature of humanity and the universe: of the Microcosm and the Macrocosm crowned by divine unity, itself a trinity. The three worlds natural, human and divine, sustaining one another anal performing a universal drama in an ascending and descending movement signified to him the balance of earth and heaven, of which human liberty holds control. It was then that he conceived of human purification and liberation by triple initiation.

But he must prove by reason what his simple intelligence had received from the Absolute. This needs a human life; this is the task of Hercules. But where could he find the necessary knowledge to conduct this mighty labor? Nowhere but in his own soul. It was then that he forsook all allegiance to existing schools, and began the great task of working out for himself that wonderfully complete and simple, though seemingly intricate system, which we have learned to venerate as Pythagorean philosophy. "

Modern natural philosophy has always been compelled to acknowledge an imponderable universal agent, and has, therefore, sometimes quite unconsciously, fallen largely into line with the ideas of both ancient and modern Theosophists.

In the ancient Greek thought, Cybele-Maia reigns everywhere; for this is the name given to the soul of the world, that plastic, vibrating substance through which creative spirit acts. Oceans of ether unite all worlds, and this mysterious element is galled the great mediator between invisible and visible, between spirit and matter, between the interior and exterior of the universe. The modern Theosophical doctrine of the "astral light" is practically identical with the doctrine of the Logos and its many manifestations, as held in ancient Greece as well as all over the Orient. With these ancient concepts the philosophy of Pythagoras is very largely in accord; but when he visited the temple of Delphi and infused new life into the doctrines taught there, he gave to his disciples a very much loftier idea of the universe and of humanity than was then popularly known among the frequenters of that world-famous shrine. Pythagoras visited Delphi after visiting all the other Grecian temples, and at a time when its art of divination had somewhat deteriorated.

His mission everywhere was both to restore and to infuse new light. In that wonderful temple he found Theoclea, a priestess of Apollo, who belonged to one of the leading hereditary priestly families. This remarkable girl positively disliked most things which attracted others, and she was of so deeply spiritual a nature that she seemed to require none of those accessories to devotion, or aids to mystic development, which seem usually necessary. She is reported to have heard spiritual voices in open daylight, and on exposing herself to the rays of the rising sun, their mystical vibration developed in her a true ecstasy, during which she listened to the singing of choirs celestial. Feeling herself attracted to some higher world than earth, to which she had not yet found the key, she was at once attracted by that much deeper teaching, and by the far nobler influence exerted by Pythagoras than she was able to obtain from the priests of the Delphic temple, whose instructions and ceremonies by no means satisfied her inmost spirit. It is said that he and she recognized each other immediately as kindred souls, who must work together for the elevation of humanity. Pythagoras at that time was in his prime; his eloquence was amazing, and his presence so enchanting that the very atmosphere became lighter, and the intelligence of those around him awakened to an extent far beyond the usual. From this time on the work of this mighty Sage made an impression in Greece far greater than that of any other teacher, and his school was at once renowned for the extreme purity of its philosophy and its astounding depth of insight into the profoundest mysteries of the universe. Pythagoras and Theoclea worked together for a full year at Delphi in complete spiritual concert, and before he took his departure he had fully prepared her to carry on a ministry virtually identical with his own; thus did he demonstrate the underlying principle of ancient Co-Masonry which always assigns to woman an equal place with man in the celebration of all mysteries, wisely drawing a horizontal line between classes of individuals solely on account of qualification, never an absurd perpendicular line based on sex differentiation.

After leaving Delphi, Pythagoras worked in Croton, where the famous Pythagorean Institute arose, which was a college and a model city under the direction of this great Initiate. Through a wise combination of art and science, that magical harmony of soul and intellect which Pythagoreans regarded as the arcanum of philosophy was established. Science and religion were entirely at one, and it would be well indeed for many in this modern world, who are vainly endeavoring to reconcile false notions of religion with partly comprehended facts of science, to quaff a deep draft of inspiration from the Pythagorean synthesis.

Edouard Schure gives us a fascinating narrative descriptive of the white dwelling of the Pythagorean Initiates situated on a hill encircled by olive and cypress trees. The following is a free translation from the exquisite French of this delightful author: "On ascending the hill, the porticos, gardens and gymnasium were distinctly seen. The Temple of the Muses, with its circular colonnade, light and elegant, towered above the two wings of the building. The terrace of the surrounding gardens overlooked the town and its harbor. In the far distance stretched the gulf, between sharp, rugged portions of the coast, as though in a frame of agate, while the Ionian Sea enclosed the horizon with a line of azure. One might often see women dressed in many-colored costumes making their way on the left side of the hill down to the sea through an alley of cypresses. These were on their way to worship in the temple of Ceres. On the right side men were often seen mounting in white robes to the temple of Apollo. It was a great attraction to the keen imagination of youth to realize that the school of Initiates was under the protection of these divinities, one of whom (Ceres) held the profound mysteries of Woman and of Earth, while the other (Apollo) revealed those of Man and of Heaven."

Pythagoras soon sustained a reputation for sternness in discipline by refusing to admit unworthy novices, for he said that "not every kind of wood was suitable for the making of a Mercury." Young men who desired to enter the association must undergo severe tests. When Introduced by their parents or one of the masters, they were first allowed to enter the gymnasium in which the youths played games appropriate to their age; but every newcomer noticed at once that this was a gymnasium of a very peculiar sort, quite unlike those of the Grecian towns in which were heard the violent cries of clamorous groups boasting of their strength, challenging each other and proudly exhibiting their muscles. Here were only groups of well-behaved and singularly fine looking young men walking in couples beneath the porticos or playing rationally in the arena. They always invited a stranger to join them with kind simplicity, making him feel at once at home among them and never subjecting him to any annoyance or humiliation, a lesson which modern colleges in Europe and America need to mark, learn and inwardly digest until the disgraceful practice of hazing and similar abominations are once for all eliminated root and branch from all educational institutions claiming respectability and seeking the patronage of an enlightened public.