Music and Magic among the Renaissance Magi

By Christine Payne-Towler
June 25,  2006

(Made from a selection of posts written at TarotL from 2000-2004)

In the paradigm inhabited by the Renaissance Magi, 22 is not just "a number." Historically 22 stands for "a circle", and 7 is "the diameter," in the time-honored shorthand of arithmosophy. Therefore the mathematical phrase 22/7 was a solid object in the cultivated medieval mind -- an educated person would recognize it as a staple in the Geometry of Nature, also known as the Religion of the World.

Naturally, the Tarot Trumps reflect this pattern too, as a product of their times. From their first appearance, all three original Tarot trump orderings group the Trumps within three clumps of seven cards, adding one extra (The Fool) to complete the 22-count. Some have questioned whether the milieu that saw the emergence of the Tarot was sufficiently aware of the Hebrew Mysteries to have seen Cabbalistic considerations in the Trump series.  But that question is actually too limited to embrace the full picture. The paradigm we are seeking to understand includes much more than just Hebrew Cabbala. In truth, the ratio of 22/7 is the key to a traditional worldview that permeated multiple disciplines and philosophies across generations and cultures, and which each culture interpreted in their own way.

The Classical Revival that fueled the Renaissance reawakened all the mathematics, astronomy, and harmonic theory embedded in the historical record, at least the material that was available in southern Europe. Our Renaissance magi saw the mathematical meditations of Antiquity as central to their discipline, dove in, and exploited the classical paradigm in endless iterations through their music, their architecture, their scholarship and their arts, their philosophies, their medicine, their ceremonies, and the tools they made for all of these purposes. Indeed, it is Decave Mysticism (Pythagorean numerology) and the harmonic ratios of Sacred Geometry applied to the movements of the planets through the zodiac that is at the root of all the world's Mysteries, ancient and modern.

Hermetic and Neoplatonic Inspirations

Almost everybody in the Tarot history field is now aware of Marcilio Ficino, a pivotal spokesperson for Christian Hermetic/Cabbalistic Theurgy from mid-1400's Italy. Ficino is often celebrated as the one who "revealed" the Christian applications of Hebrew mysteries to the Christian Renaissance.  In truth, Ficino is manifestly not the true beginning of this trend. Nevertheless we note his influence as a turning point because so many of his contemporaries and followers cite him as their first exposure to the Christianized Cabbala.

It was the Humanist writings on musica humana that provided the background context for Ficino's innovative new treatment of what was actually a very old doctrine. Musica humana is one branch of a three-pronged theory of music laid down by Boethius in the years 500-523 AD. The other two prongs of this theory are musica mundana, the Music of the Spheres (astronomy and arithmosophy), and musica instrumentalis, the literal music composed and played on instruments and with voices.

Musica Humana represents the harmonies within the human body and soul, built into our form and proportions, relating us to both Cosmos and Earth as the central term between their extremes. Musica humana explicates the astral constitution of humankind, the energetic structures we have in our auras, sensitive both to the resonant influence of instrumental music and the longer, slower waves of planetary motions. As D. P. Walker puts it in his seminal Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (p. 14):

"Thus the use of anything having the same numerical proportions as a certainly heavenly body or sphere will make your spirit similarly proportioned and provoke the required influx of celestial spirit..."

Note the mathematical link that ties together the phenomena of astrology and the governors of well being for the individual human spirit. It is a matter of matching proportions, finding the ratios that mirror and replicate macro (cosmic) phenomena on the micro (human) scale. The musical scale, constructed in octaves (7 notes+ a repeat) is the natural phenomenon that has best explained these rationated relationships from Antiquity forward. This theory of human music, the internal and invisible resonance/response of our etheric bodies to sounds both natural and produced, is a major component of theurgy in every generation.

But what stands out strikingly in the history of these arts is that our Renaissance magi alchemically smelted all the musical/magical traditions of the world together and decanted the result into a Cabalistic mold. The alloy thus produced was then shaped and attenuated via theurgical ritual to re-enliven the authentic ancient gnosis of self-initiation through music.

Here are some remarks that illustrate this point from Studies in Gnosticism and in the Philosophy of Religion by Gerald Hanratty, (pub. 1997 by Four Courts Press.) from p. 68:

"The receptive cultural climate of the Renaissance -- and the volatile religious conditions that prevailed during the century of the Reformation -- ensured that the distinctive Jewish "gnosis" encountered and blended with other esoteric gnostic currents. In particular, the intricate Cabbalist speculation was sympathetically received by Renaissance and early-modern exponents of astrology, alchemy, magic and assorted brands of esoteric mysticism. During these centuries the abundant symbolic resources of the Cabbala were appropriated and adapted by advanced thinkers in Italy, France, Germany, Spain and England. 'Whether the Kabala was accepted or rejected', a historian of the fortunes of the movement during the Renaissance concluded, 'it was a discovery which was as influential as the encounter with the New World'. (Footnote: F. Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chretiens de la Renaissance, p. 361.)

Within the next few pages, Marsilio Ficino, Pico Della Mirandola, Henry Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus are all cited as practicing Cabbalistic, Hermetic, Pythagorean Magi, thus

    "...ensure[ing] that a gnostic outlook was incorporated into one of the most influential Renaissance philosophies. Many Renaissance Platonists, who were at once theologians, philosophers and Magi, claimed that they possessed comprehensive knowledge and exercised control over all the levels of reality. From Hermetic, Cabbalist, Orphic and other esoteric traditions, they learned the passwords or signs which liberated them from the prison of bodily existence and facilitated their ascent beyond the stars and the 'governor' planets to their paradisiacal homeland." (p. 70)

On p. 75-6 we read:

"Rather than the acquiescent and contemplative attitude towards reality which generally prevailed in earlier centuries, the alchemists and Magi of the Renaissance proclaimed their dominion over all the levels of being. As adepts of the Hermetic and the Cabbalist branches of the gnostic mentality, they were convinced that they understood and could therefore exercise control over the complex system of sympathies and correspondences that linked the terrestrial, the celestial and the divine realms. The basic attitudes -- and the pragmatic operations -- of the alchemists and the Magi contributed to the formation of a climate of opinion, which fostered controlled experimentation and the use of mathematical techniques of measurement. According to Frances Yates, the practitioners of the occult arts fashioned an environment in which 'it was now dignified and important for men to operate; it was also religious and not contrary to the will of God that man, the great miracle, should exert his powers ... It was magic as an aid to gnosis which begins to turn the will in the new direction'. (Footnote to Yates' Giordano Bruno, p. 156.) The attitudes and ideas derived from the esoteric sources continued to influence the minds of the pioneers of the experimental and mathematical methods."

Over the century following Ficino, the Italian Neoplatonic academies made a big contribution to the development of music in the West. Along with researching and writing liturgical music and cosmic poetry suitable for song, they were studying Plato, whom they took for a Cabbalist!  They also expressed Pythagorean harmonic theory not only in music but also in astronomy, architecture, and medicine. Simultaneously they were reading and discussing the Sefir Yetzirah in both Hebrew and in Latin.

Hebrew Astral Science
Lenora Leet’s The Secret Doctrine of the Cabbala gives us a firm foundation for researching the Semitic stream of the sacred astral science that so inspired Ficino and his ilk.  This is the teaching that has informed Hebrew mystics since the Covenant at Sinai. In exacting detail and at great depth, Leet demonstrates the many ways that the mathematical challenge laid upon the Hebrew nation by God, (to watch the moon, practice a seven-day week, keep the Sabbath, and observe certain astronomical holidays) set the destiny of the Hebrew nation forever after. Forced by this commandment to be literate and numerate in a predominantly pre-literate world, high Kabalistic thinkers were therefore able to retain and expand upon their ancient exposures to Babylonian and Egyptian astrology, Phoenician letter-numbers, Greek gematria, and Pythagorean harmonic theory. From the ensuing synthesis they ultimately developed their uniquely sophisticated Cabbalistic mysteries, the Hebrew Gnosis, which branches into so many disciplines and aspects of life.

No doubt it was the "discovery" of the Sefir Yetzirah that clarified for the Renaissance magi the link between the Babylonian harmonic canon, the Hebrew alphabet's 3/7/12 pattern, and the modes of music (both Hindu and Greek).  This is the point where we must look beyond the popular modern occultist's belief that the only tie between the Hebrew letters and the astrological correspondences found on Tarot cards is from the Sefir Yetzirah.

Modal Music, Missing Link
We complete our assessment of the worldview shaping the Tarot makers in the 1400's by investigating the other worldwide esoteric system available to the Renaissance Magi that was operated via a 3/7/12 model. I am referring here to the 3/7/12 system of modal music, which the Renaissance magi took great interest in for healing purposes. 

To be brief, the "three" (as in Mother Letters) are the three genera of the Greek musical Modes, the chromatic, the enharmonic, and the diatonic.

The "seven" is the seven notes that make up any scale, octave to octave.

The twelve is the number of intervals of division available within the octave, from which a scale is selected. Twelve is the number of mathematical zones or slices into which the octave is divided, seven of which will be picked to make up the notes in the scale. So twelve represents the number of mathematical decisions that have to be made to define an octave, any octave, out of the infinite glissando of rising and falling notes available in nature.

Therefore, the "family resemblance" between Hebrew, the astrological model of the universe, and the musical construction of sound, would be:

• -The 12 single letters divide the circle of the octave just as the signs divide the circle of the sky. 
• -The seven double letters "set the tune" moving back and forth like the planets through the heavens.
• -The three "mother modes", the mother letters, are the genera of music in which the various scales find their forms.

For references on the math and ratios of modal construction in the three genera (and good sources in which to encounter the implications of music theory on esoteric alphabets and 3/7/12 patterning), see Alain Danielou's Music And The Power Of Sound; The Influence of Tuning and Interval on Consciousness. Also check out The Myth Of Invariance: the Origin of the Gods, Mathematics and Music from the Rg Veda to Plato, by Ernest G. McClain.  It was a very pleasant surprise for me to learn that the 3/7/12 shows up across the board in world musical theory.  It is especially fascinating that that the Hindus define 22 "srutis" (roughly half-note intervals) spanning the octave, each having its own characteristics (which in multiple instances seem to parallel the Marseilles order of the Triumphi in a way that seems uncanny! See Danielou)

Danielou and McClain are scholars of ancient cosmological music theory, dealing with mathematical concepts that are at the edges of my comprehension. I do hope any of our musicians who are not daunted by attempts to quantify fractions of a note, and who understand ratios defining modes we no longer hear in modern music, will please get hold of some of this and give us your opinions! Reading The Myth of Invariance gave me a whole new respect for Leet's The Secret Doctrine Of Cabbala, the second half of which originally looked so strange to me. I see now why a course of alphabetarian harmonic singing is packaged into the Sefir Yetzirah along with the other correspondences: The theurgical arts require a trained voice to resonate the proper magical frequencies that will "reach up to heaven" and activate effects across the three worlds.  It really doesn't matter what denomination or cultural basis the theurgist is working in -- what matters is the operator's ability to intone the sacred names correctly, with maximum power.

This 3/7/12 idea turns out to be held in common between the Hebrew, the Greek, and the Hindu canons of music, and astrological correspondences are drawn across the board in each tradition.  McClain's book The Myth of Invariance goes so far as to say that all the pantheons of god-forms east and west are derived from the mathematics of the octave, projected onto the Planets and Signs. This is a point made by other proponents of the Perennial Philosophy as well (including Guenon, Quinn, De Santillana & Von Dechend).  There is no mystery as to why this would be so -- we all look up into the same sky and watch the same things going on. We all are reading the same ephemeredes. Different cultures might have different names they use to dress up the Powers that Be, but in every case the myths render down into the Geometry of Nature, as demonstrated daily and nightly by the progress of the planets through the stars.

Danielou, meanwhile, takes another tack entirely, searching into the science of harmony and dissonance in the construction of mode. He credits the Renaissance Magi with a cultural revival of music theory in Europe. Our early Renaissance friends are highlighted as one group that really "got it," what Greek and Hindu and Hebrew (Babylonian, Egyptian) sacred music was all about mathematically, magically, and psychologically.

Remember, the Renaissance magi were reading more of the Greek and Roman classics than any generation before them. They really venerated the Alexandrian inheritance as a result of what they found.  Further, these people were often working as priests and healers in their daily lives, giving them a strong motive for experimenting with creating therapeutic music for their patients and mystical music for their ceremonies. Studies in the healing properties and astral influences of the musical modes ranked alongside their interest in Art-of-Memory images, crystals and gems, color therapy, talismanics, and other "harmonic therapies" (the like of which we hear about in much the same contexts nowadays). Due to their moment in history, the magi of the times could enjoy enough freedom of thought, discourse and study that it was possible to explore these links to the fullest.

How does the Fool Fit In?

For those who are still stumped on the eternal "what to do about the Fool" question, we can take our cues from Matityahu Glazerson's Music and Cabbala. He explains that one set of correspondences the alphabet carries is three cycles of seven notes through three octaves  -- {do, re, mi, fa, so, lo, ti} x 3 -- capped by a final "do" which closes the circle again with the origin-note at the "supercelestial" level. Therefore, just as the Tarot people say, "there are 7x3 Trumps plus the Fool at the end/beginning", the Hebrew musical Cabbalists say "there are 7x3 letters spanning three octaves, capped by the supercelestial Tav, the uppermost octave reiterated into the unknown and unknowable".

To illustrate this thought-form more completely, let me quote Glazerson directly. [And please forgive the brackets I have used here. To put the Hebrew terms into English for our readers, I have to simplify Glazerson's nest of Hebrew letters, words, and alternate vocabulary into simple [boxes] with the translations in them.]

"The book Hafla'a by the Baal HaKane says that the exact same insight and erudition that applies to connecting letters into words, also applies to connecting notes into song. . . . The Tikunei Zohar mentions three things that music affects: the Torah, the Sheckhina (the divine glory), and the Geula (redemption). These three things are parallel to the mind, heart, and body, respectively. . . . This idea is further illustrated in the sequence of the three scales. The first scale from [aleph to zain] represents the [body and Geula]; the middle scale, from [cheth to lamed], represents the [heart and Sheckhina]; the third scale, [samech to shin], the [mind and Torah].  The first scale elevates the physical body and world into the second-higher scale, which in turn leads to the third." (p. 7-8)  [This is exactly the same Three Worlds formulation followed by our Renaissance magi, including the Shechinah (translated as Sophia) as the middle term or astral body, linking the material world to the celestial one.]

To complete the alphabet and the scale, Glazerson has another chapter about the tav. He says about this special letter:

"We have seen that all of the Hebrew letters correspond to a note in the first, second, or third scale, with the exception of the letter [tav].  This is because it represents the supernatural scale, which is above this physical world. Our Sages say that this letter signifies...olam haba, the world-to-come. The shape of the letter is that of the world with an opening at the bottom and one foot stepping out, or leaving this world for the next. The numerical value of [tav] is 400, which represents four dimensions, the fourth being a metaphysical, incorporeal one. In this world, we perceive only three dimensions -- length, width, and height -- which are represented by the letter [shin], which has three branches and numerically is 300. Those who merit reward in the world-to-come will no longer be limited by the dimensions of time and space. . . . Shabat [the weekly day of family worship], which is compared to olam haba, (Koheleth Rabbah, 1:36), is a word make up of two terms [shav, return] to the [tav], to the world-to-come -- i.e. retrogress to the supernatural source, from whence we came. " (p. 17)

This should sound very familiar to Tarot historians.  Research into the symbolism and orderings of the Trumps in the early years of their appearance makes it clear that this set of icons illustrates a process of movement or evolution through the Three Worlds, from the Earthly to the Heavenly, with the goal of reintegration of the individual soul with the World Soul.  Now we hear the same theme echoed in the progress of the Hebrew Letters,  in their aspect of  notes in an ascending scale.  We even have a description of the letter tav that corresponds to the Fool's situation, "one foot stepping out, or leaving this world for the next".  Doesn't this help us to determine where the Fool would have belonged in the overall sequence of the earliest trumps.

Let's put it another way. There are those who think repeating the mantra that "the Fool is not a Trump" refutes this music-to-Trumps-to letters correspondence. This is, however, a red herring. Saying the Fool (zero) is "not a Trump"  simply puts one in the Greek camp, rather than the Hindu/Hebrew camp. The Greek musicians say 21 notes plus the octave makes the scale, while the Easterners say 22 srutis/letters (which include the final octave) make the scale. What's the difference in practice? The Fool is the fourth octave that culminates the preceding 21 notes in every system. It's the same note as #1, but resonating at multiple times the frequency. If the first note and the last note of the sequence are played together, they sound the same and get lost in each other. Hence the Fool, zero, is last in the sequence, a "thing" that is identical with, but more evolved than the start-note, #1. It rounds and completes the wheel of notes, restoring the individual to harmony with the All. To me this is a perfect example of Renaissance syncretic thinking. Very clever!

Now we see the existing relationships  as follows:

• Babylonian harmonic cosmology and astrology =
• the geometry of the circle both in time and in space=
• the Hebrew astro-alphanumeric code of the Sefir Yetzirah =
• the 22 Srutis of the Hindu octave =
• Greek (Platonic and Pythagorean) tuning theories=
• the three-octave scale, which is the limit the human ear can hear accurately.

This is not to even mention the cosmic mathematics of the Revelation of St. John, which is also totally dominated by the ancient 22/7 arithmosophy in the style of the Old Testament.  Clearly there's plenty of ground for the Tarot Trump designer to have stood on when the choice was made  to cap the set at 22!

Examining all these traditional correspondences informing the numbers, letters, and Tarot trumps, we could easily call this paradigm the Astro/Musico/Mathematic Canon of the Magi. Due to the state of this conversation in the Tarot community in general, we currently refer to it via the Astro-alphanumeric correspondences of the Sefir Yetzirah. But it's truly all one to the practitioners of the Mystery schools of antiquity, and to their Renaissance redactors as well. Personally, I am awed in the sophisticated thinking it takes to tie the Greek, Hebrew, Hindu, and Egyptian Astro/Alpha/Numeric/Musical correspondences together in one set of 21 Triumphs and the Fool. We still have a lot to learn from whoever formulated these Trumps and set them into the Mamluk pack.

Pythagorean Harmonic Theory Updated

Coming forward in time again, to the Renaissance Magi and their musical studies at the dawn of Tarot, let's look into Jocelyn Godwin's wonderful The Harmony of the Spheres: a Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music, (Inner Traditions Press, 1993). In this collection he has represented and reviewed virtually everybody in Western Civilization who has written on the Pythagorean tradition in music. It is awesome. From each  of  these entries we gain a bit more perspective on how the arithmosophy and theurgy of the so-called Prisca Theologia, being revived by the Renaissance Magi, was worked out in practice from one generation to the next. (And for more context in this area one can also consult Godwin's  other excellent works -- Music, Mysticism and Magic;  Harmonies of Heaven and Earth; Cosmic Music; and The Mystery of the Seven Vowels.)

Anchoring this tradition for the earliest Renaissance was Giorgio Anselmi (1383 - early 1440's) , about whom Godwin says: (p. 145-6)

"With Anselmi... [a citizen of Parma] ... we meet the first of our theorists for whom the establishment and elaboration of correspondences is a consuming interest; it will become the very essence of Renaissance Hermetism.  This impulse is part of a new attempt to expand the conception of the cosmos by moving from a straightforward chain of being -- the hierarchy of the Middle Ages, stretching from the lowliest stone to the highest of the angels -- to a more subtle construction in which, as it were, the chain is looped and folded.... Probably neither Anselmi nor Dante (who is assumed to be his inspiration), and certainly not the Cabbalists and Sufis, actually believed the angelic hierarchy to be physically situated in the planetary spaces to which they are here assigned. That would be a simplistic view. The Planets, rather reflect on their own level of being the orders which the angels manifest on a superior level. And here is where music comes in: nowhere else in nature does one find a better aid for grasping this conception of corresponding orders on different levels of being than in the musical scale, which replicates itself every octave in a similarity that is yet not an identity." 

The rungs of Anselmi's ladder, as can be seen from these quotes, are defined by the Angels of the Sephiroth,  as quoted by Socrates from Plato's Republic.  (The cited MS by Giorgio Anselmi Parmensis is called De Musica, with no date of publication until 1961, in an edition edited by Giuseppe Massera, published in Florence.)

Godwin goes on to show us this conception being expanded upon by Gafori and Ramis de Paraeja in particular during Ficino's time. Their reflection foreword of Anselm's concern for correspondences became a point of focus when I read in Walker that (p. 26):

"Ramis de Pareja has parallels between the modes, humors and planets, (Musica Practica, 1482, ed. J. Wolf, Leipzig, 1901, pp. 56-8.), which have a long mediaeval history (See Abert, die Musikanschauung des Mittelalters, Halle, 1905, pp. 173-4, 181-2.),  and to which Ficino may owe something, or more probably to one of their ancient sources such as Ptolemy (Ptolemy, Harmonica, III, ii-xvi.)."

In these few paragraphs, we see again how the Mosaic Sefirah Angels become the Platonic and Hermetic Ladder of Lights,  which is then elaborated through the Ptolemaic solar system and linked with the harmonic mathematical worldview of Pythagoras. Clearly Ficino was following a long venerated tradition with roots sunk deeply both into Semitic culture and also into the Greek and Latin speaking world of his own ancestors. He and his contemporaries were not merely innovating from a sketchy grasp of alien concepts, but were instead restoring a well-built structure that had already survived several millennia.

A Key Diagram from Albert von Thymus

The needed capstone for a more holistic global view of the "musica humana" and its theurgical revival from the harmonic mathematics of Antiquity is provided by Godwin's entry on Albert Freiherr von Thimus in The Harmony of the Spheres. This essay must have represented a triumph for Godwin personally, because it summarizes and clarifies a vast field of confusion spread across two millennia, which Godwin has painstakingly translated, combed through and untangled to create this volume. He modestly refrains from doing a deserved victory dance in the end zone, but the diagram we are about to look at together represents the great depth of Godwin's comprehension of the western tradition of Pythagorean musical and astronomical magic, from Plato to Romanticism. We should look on this glyph in awe, as von Thimus and Godwin together have revealed it. 

Von Thimus lived from 1806 to 1878, but as Godwin makes clear (p. 370):

"Von Thimus had the insight that the one unifying symbolic factor behind all ancient lore and learning might have been the discovery of the harmonic series and its association with mathematics....von Thimus was conscious of being the first to disinter the esoteric doctrine of Antiquity from the oblivion into which it had fallen, not only through centuries of ignorance but through deliberate concealment by initiates".

Godwin assures us of this diagram's ultimate antiquity and authenticity thus (page 376):

"Several sayings of the ancient Pythagorean school, handed down to us in fragments by later writers, and the observations on the cosmic systems of Antiquity appearing in several places in the Platonic writings, leave us in no doubt that the diagram we have described, or at least one very similar to it, was the harmonic symbol which formed the basis for the astronomical speculations of the ancients on the so-called 'musica mundana'. "

Note Godwin's language. He said "*the* harmonic symbol", not "a harmonic symbol" or "one of many harmonic symbols." This is significant.

We must be clear that this is not a report of something made up in the early 1800's. Von Thimus was restating something that had been only incompletely understood by those who had used it and passed it on through the generations from Antiquity to the Renaissance. So von Thimus is reporting, and Godwin is sketching for our eyes, a cosmic symbol which comes from Antiquity to reconcile the musical scale on a cosmic level, with the planetary rungs around the Spiritual Sun (in solar system order); also with the nested spheres of the Cabbalistic Sephira (in Lightening Bolt order); also with the astronomical doctrine of the Teli from the Sefir Yetzirah  (chapter Six in any redaction). I think this "musica mundana" diagram gives us an important glimpse into how well educated and polyvalent those early Renaissance Magi were.

Starting with the Sefir Yetzirah:

Because it is at the bull's eye of our diagram (Click to load in a new window and follow along) and would be representative of one of the oldest strata of tradition in the diagram, let us start with the image at the center of the sphere of spheres, which von Thimus says is the crossed arrows of the Teli centered withing the "Oth-Aleph,"  setting the four directions of space with its crossed arms.

Aryeh Kaplan in his definitive Sefir Yezirah, (Samuel Weiser, 1991), p. 232-3, says:

"According to many Cabbalists, the Teli mentioned here in Sefer Yetzirah is the imaginary axis around which the heavens rotate. It is seen as an imaginary line from which the celestial sphere hangs, very much like a bola from its line. According to this, the word Teli... comes from the root Talah... meaning 'to hang'." Kaplan discriminates here between the specific interpretation of the Cabbalists, who have an astronomical explanation for the Teli, seperate from the other traditions describing the Teli as being like a bola, or alternately, ascribing it to Draco, the pole star.

This  "hanging point" definition of the Teli corresponds exactly with its usage in the diagram, which shows a set of planetary spheres arranged like a bull's eye target,  centered around and emanating from a unifying glyph, called by von Thimus "the Oth-Aleph, the Ancient hieratic Tau-sign T, meaning both Aleph and Tau, adorned with the circular...coronula represented on ancient Asiatic sculptures in manifold versions..." (footnote 15, p. 473).

We now call this same symbol the Ankh, and are quite familiar with it, although perhaps in his time it was still novel in Europe.  Von Thimus shows that the circled head (coronula) of the "Oth-Aleph" is at the center of "all the worlds", and the ankh-cross descending from that first circle marks out the four "directions" of the diagram, just like the horizon and meridian of an astrological chart.

The crossed arrows, ancient symbol of the Teli, represent the X-point where the earth's axis crosses the plane of the ecliptic (Godwin's footnote 15 on p. 473 gives  von Thimus' citations from the Sefir Yezirah about this). This poignant astronomical point was uniquely discussed and revealed for antiquity within the Sefir Yetzirah. The "x" spot functions as the hanging-point for the nested planetary wheels-within-wheels diagram used by the Cabbalists before the Tree became popular. As we see in the opening lines of Chapter Six of the Sefir Yetzirah (in any redaction), the directions of space are defined by the letters emanating along their "verticals, horizontals, and diagonals", and the whole construct hangs from the Teli.

Adding Music to the Astrological Matrix

Looking at the horizontal axis spreading left and right from the ankh and crossed arrows at center, we see two decades of tones (ten in each direction) extending in descending order to the left and ascending order to the right, as if they were a keyboard full of notes for the musician to play upon.  Visually, this makes the astronomical Teli, or hanging point of our solar system,  symbolically equal to the mathematical midpoint of the octave, that no harmonic value which arithmosophers represent as the square root of 2, and which has "bothered" the proponents of Harmonic Theory since antiquity, because it is not a whole number but an irrational number, an equation.

On the axis rising from the Ankh to the top of the nested spheres, a planetary sequence from Earth (at the center, #1) to The Stars at the outer edge (#10) is labeled Exoteric Geocentric.  The planets ascend in reverse Lightening-bolt order, like the Cabbalist Path of Return from the Fall to Malkuth.

On the axis descending from the center Ankh to the base of the diagram , another set of  planetary references are shown on the expanding rungs in Solar System order,  descending  from the Divine Unity (#10, in the center),  through the Central fire #9,  Sun #8, Mercury #7, Venus #6, Earth #5, Mars #4, Jupiter #3, Saturn #2, and the Stars # 1.   This descending sequence of planets-to-sphere correspondences is labeled Esoteric Heliocentric, and describes the ancient path of the Soul from Deep Space (the Stars) into incarnation, through the planetary orbits. This descent represents the method by which souls acquire their personalities, by borrowing a little of each planetary substance in their descent, then playing those out in flesh until they are refined.

Together, these two chains of orbs describe the Fall and Reintegration of humanity on the Spheres/Sefirah,  corresponded to the tones and notes that resonate with various stages in  the journey of the soul.

In truth, one must read Godwin's article to fully appreciate some of the unfamiliar ideas represented on this diagram. My interest in presenting it is not to explain every detail, but to show how the Sefir Yetzirah is essential for the understanding of the magical/musical and astronomical worldview of the Renaissance magi, even before Ficino.

Wrapping it up

We brought forward from Walker the idea that the Renaissance Magi (with Ficino as a figurehead) saw musical theory making a mathematical bridge between the Ancient cosmology and their contemporary magical medicine. As both a doctor and a priest, Ficino carried the dual authority to present his magical theories in a way that (hopefully) didn't distress the Church too much, yet made the healing powers attributed to the ancient  Prisca Theologia (as they were being re-envisioned) available to his times and contemporaries.  Walker drops some hints where we might look to find parallel material and historical inspiration for Ficino's revelations, which ultimately lead us to Godwin and his examination of the entire historical phenomenon of the Pythagorean Tradition in music.

It is in Godwin's reconstruction of von Thimus' diagram that we find the specific references to the Sefir Yetzirah giving us the Teli, epicenter of the "musica mundana" model that Walker gives as Ficino's inspiration. Godwin reminds us that this "key" he is illustrating from von Thimus was understood in an incomplete way by non-esoteric commentators in the centuries following the original writings, due to the fact that the picture was not always communicated along with the verbal description ("The reporters of the following age, in their exoteric efforts at explanation, understood the incomplete apothegms of the [Pythagorean] school on this subject, which apparently came to them without the appropriate figures, in a childish way..." p. 376).

Plus, as I quoted from Godwin earlier, there was also the issue of occult discretion exercised by people who understood, but chose not to make what they understood easily available to others. In any case, Godwin easily demonstrates that since at least Anselmi, scholarly efforts were undertaken to re-enliven this model, not only by Ficino but also by others in his milieu who were also experimenting with this inheritance from Antiquity.

Aryeh Kaplan gave us grounding in the doctrine of the Teli, which he calls "one of the most mysterious words in the Sefir Yetzirah" (p. 231). This concept, appearing in the middle of a Pythagorean/Neoplatonic demonstration of the Harmony of the Spheres (musica mundana), gives us a startling reminder of how intimately related the Hebrew Cosmography of the Sefir Yetzirah is to the Hermeticism of  Antiquity, and thus to the neoplatonic scholars of the earliest Renaissance.

The cultural uniqueness and undeniable antiquity of the concept of the Teli requires close reading of the Sefir Yetzirah and a sense of the Antiquity's mathematical construction of the solar system even to define as a literal value (rather than just an element of ancient mythos).  It seems clear that at least some of the musical-humanist Magi who helped to provide the fertile soil for the flowering of Ficino and his followers were aware of and working with the Sefir Yetzirah cosmogram and the musical inspirations it could engender, even though others were manifestly not. This is one of many indications that demonstrates that the Hebrew Arithmosophy contained in the alphabetarian and musical mysticism of the Sefir Yetzirah was never far from the minds of the Neopythagorean, Neoplatonic, and Catholic Italian magi of the 1400's, and in the following century, in France and Spain as well.

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*Christine Payne-Towler*
Research: Esoteric Tarot, Literature and Practice; Tarot.com
Publisher, The Tarot Arkletters
Bishop, Gnostic Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Founder: Tarot University;
Author: The Underground Stream;

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Let's put it another way. There are those who think repeating the mantra that "the Fool is not a Trump" refutes this music-to-Trumps-to letters correspondence. This is, however, a red herring. Saying the Fool (zero) is "not a Trump"  simply puts one in the Greek camp, rather than the Hindu/Hebrew camp. The Greek musicians say 21 notes plus the octave makes the scale, while the Easterners say 22 srutis/letters (which include the final octave) make the scale. What's the difference in practice? The Fool is the fourth octave that culminates the preceding 21 notes in every system. It's the same note as #1, but resonating at multiple times the frequency. If the first note and the last note of the sequence are played together, they sound the same and get lost in each other. Hence the Fool, zero, is last in the sequence, a "thing" that is identical with, but more evolved than the start-note, #1. It rounds and completes the wheel of notes, restoring the individual to harmony with the All. To me this is a perfect example of Renaissance syncretic thinking. Very clever!

Comments

[mike hewitt]

Very interesting article, but the story goes deeper. Ficino, along with others was endeavouring to introduce the seventh harmonic into music. Hindu theorists had tended to avoid the seventh harmonic (any musical interval whose ratio involved the prime number seven) as they believed it invoked interplanetary powers - that is forces too strong for us to handle.
Ficino developed a scale that incorporated the seventh harmonic and evolved a system of magical music which, he hoped, would invoke such powers.

[Christine]

Hi Mike --

Fascinating! do you have any resources to help flesh this idea out?

Books, websites, whatever led you to this realization, I would love to investigate this further.

In my opinion, the Hermetic Magi were not wrong in the idea that "music" (vibration) underlies the forms of matter. The Harmonic Sequence is the alpha and omega of this train of thought. But given that many people's ears don't even consciously hear harmonics, how did Ficino manage to compose with them?

Anything that you can add to this discussion would be wonderful to read!

[reading_is_dangerous]

hello

I had Godwin's book, but I lost it
Now I was looking for that diagram of the lambdata

maybe you know of a link to that?

I'll
come back tomorrow to read the rest of your interesting-looking post

.. .. ..

thank you

[Christine]

It's called Lambdoma, and you will find the very link you are seeking farther along in the article, in the section about "Pythagorean Harmonic Tradition Updated".

I'm glad you are enjoying it, and thanks for writing in!

Christine

hello Christine

Thank you very much
Yesterday I didn't see the lambdoma
It hadn't loaded, my connection is very slow, plus I was very tired and didn't examine everything

there is a lot!

:-)

[Christine Payne-Towler]

Today my dear friend John Meador sent me this link.

http://cdcruz.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/teli-apep-celestial-serpants/

I'm thrilled to read so much about the Teli in one article. I'm sure this is something that needs to come into the collective consciousness right around now, to help us visualize what's happening to us right now.

Thank you Christoph de la Cruz!

[Cdcruz.wordpress.com]

Christine,

This is a brilliant article! Thank you for posting this and referring me here.

Seems to me as if we are taking very similar paths in our esoteric pursuits. There is so much here that ties directly in with my post on the Greek Vowels.

all the best,

Christoph

[Christine Payne]

I found a great article today from CNN, again on the subject of music and the brain:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/26/health/mental-health/music-brain-science/index.html