The Pythagorean Triangle, Or, the Science of Numbers

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875 edition. Excerpt: ... PROGRESSIVE GENERATION OF THE TETRAD OR SOLID, REPRESENTING FIRE. THE SOLID, TETRAD, QUATERNARY, OR THE NUMBER FOUR. CHAPTER IV. THE SOLID. TETRAD, QUATERNARY, OR THE NUMBER FOUR. "By that pure, holy, Four-Letter Name on high, Nature's eternal fountain and supply, The parent of all souls that living be, By Him, with faithful oath, I swear to thee." Oath Of Pythagoras. "The Grand and Sacred Name ought to be saluted four times in four peculiar positions, for the following reasons."--Old Lectdbes. HE tetrad, though not essentially masonic, for the only instances in which it I is exemplified, viz., in the Sacred Name and the Cherubim, are attached to the third degree only, was esteemed the most perfect number, and referred to the Author of nature, or T.G.A.O. T.U.; and his name was therefore composed of four letters, nW, and was called Tetragrammaton by the Jews, and Tetractys by the Gentiles; of the latter of whom Hierocles, in his exposition of the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, says, "He is the Demiurgus, the architect and maker of all tilings." These are his words: "The author of these verses shows that the tetrad, which is the fountain of the perpetual orderly distribution of things, is the same with God who is the Demiurgus; an intelligible god, the source of the celestial and sensible good." The tetrad, as Mr Taylor thinks, is, however, the animal itself of Plato, who, as Syrianus justly observes, was the best of the Pythagoreans; subsists at the extremity of the intelligible triad, as is most satisfactorily shown by Proclus in the third book of his treatise on the theology of Plato. And between these two triads, the one intelligible, and the other intellectual, another order of gods exists, which partakes of both extremes. This number...