Section

Mysticism

How the tetractys was read in religious and esoteric traditions, and how much of it can be demonstrated.

1. 01The tetractys in mysticism, Hermeticism and religionWhy a site that wants to give the tetractys a scientific basis deals with mysticism, and what the four elements have to do with it.
2. 02The secret symbols of the RosicruciansA "simple ABC booklet" from 1785 full of circles, triangles and six-pointed stars, and the thesis that the fourness is explained geometrically in it.
3. 03Polygons and star polygons in FreemasonryTriangle, pentagram, hexagram and the blazing star are fixed elements of Masonic symbolism. Were they only signs, or was there knowledge behind them?
4. 04The Kabbalah – the tetractys seen differentlyTen sephirot in four worlds, ten "numbers without anything" in the Book of Creation, and 231 gates from 22 letters that form a 22-gon simplex.
5. 05Éliphas Lévi – pentagram and hexagramThe 19th-century French Kabbalist made the pentagram and hexagram core symbols of modern esotericism.
6. 06The signatures of the cathedral buildersEvery stonemason bore a mark, and every mark fitted into a "mother key", a circle geometry of triangle and square.
7. 07Christmas, the throne of God and the number 2424 elders around the throne, four creatures with six wings each, the magic circle, the Advent wreath, St John's Day and the Ægishjálmur. The number 24 in mysticism and religion.
8. 08Quantum physics, magic and the unconsciousSymmetry as the language of physics, number as the archetype of order, and a 30-gon at the heart of the Lie group E8. Where matter, symbol and soul touch.
9. 09Pyramids, knightly crosses, spatial latticesThe pyramid is half an octahedron, the cannonball stack a piece of crystal lattice, and the cross of the knightly orders a fourfold symmetry. Three symbols, one geometry.