A Greek Man Worships The Number 10

Inside the weird Brotherhood of Pythagoreans

“Numbers is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and demons.”

Pythagoras

Out of all of the Greek mathematicians, Euclid is referred to as the best and the most significant. I can’t deny it but maybe you are brave enough to do. For that reason, I have a poll at the end of this post, in which I ask who is better, Euclid or Pythagoras. When I mentioned Pythagoras, it probably brought you back to your high school days, when your teacher started yapping about how if in a triangle, the square on one of the sides be equal to the squares on the remaining two sides of the triangle, the angle contained by the remaining two sides of the triangle is right. In other words, that a² + b² = c².

Pythagorean Theorem Proof From Euclid

To restrict Pythagoras as a mathematician would be a disgrace. Pythagoras was also a philosopher, but in the end, when he attempted to combine both professions, weird things happened. Some say that he started his education at a young age, learning philosophy from Thales on the island of Miletus. He then establishes his school on Samos, which is in Greece. During this time in between, he became a prisoner of war, and then he stayed with a group of priests known as the Magi. The Magi invented weird astrological beliefs, which must have inspired Pythagoras’s crazy ideas, which I will get into later. We don’t know how Pythagoras escaped the Babylonians, perhaps he simply proved his worth and was let go. As a note on his theorem, he never invented it. The Egyptians used it for centuries before Pythagoras came along. My guess is that Pythagoras taught this theorem at his school to many students, thus giving him the credit. Correct me if I am wrong in the comments, but I must say that even before the Egyptians, Babylonians were using a form of this theorem. Once he was in Samos, as stated before he founded a school, known as The Semicircle. A few years later, he went to Croton, located in Italy, in which he formed a religious math cult.

The Weird Cult

In order to enter the cult, you had to take part in something known as a probation period, which lasted about three years. During this time, you were judged, tested to see if you were worthy. Or in the words of Dreisang the Archmagus, they must “prove thy worth!”. If you got in, you had to face the hierarchy of the cult-like school. The lowest rank was the Akousmatikoi, or the listeners. These peop,e focused on the spiritual teaching for five years. Above this rank was the Matheamtikoi, the learners. These people learned mathematics and help propel discoveries. The sad part is that in order to get this high prestigious status, you had to give up everything and live with random other Pythagoreans, which is emotional damage. Obviously, there had to be a third layer because Pythagoras was obsessed with triangles. But who could fill this spot? That easy…Pythagoras himself. Now why would anybody take part in this nonsense? That is another easy question. Some believed that Pythagoras was a son of Apollo. As a cult leader, you have to make outlandish claims, and nobody to this day could do this better than Pythagoras.

The first set of rules from Pythagoras was straightforward, yet weird. First of all, you had to wear white, which was stereotypical for Greeks. Second, you could never break bread at the table, which is sad for me because bread is my favorite food. The reasoning behind this is that bread symbolized friendship. Third, you had to take your right shoe off before the left. That was random.

Now I must mention the second set of rules, beginning with a very awkward one; that it is forbidden to eat a Fava bean. The reasoning is foolish; Pythagoras believed that the Fava bean was a form of reincarnation. Supposedly, the beans contained the soul of your ancestors. Pythagoras probably would punish the people with the same punishment as those accused of cannibalism, as eating a Fava bean was the equivalent of eating an ancestor. Now the final rule of Pythagoras…every member must worship the number 10, hence the title of the article. To understand this, we must grasp Pythagoras’s most important belief and goal. You must pursuit the knowledge of numbers. You see, Pythagoras had a famous quote, “all is number.” This comes from his belief that anything from music to agriculture could be explained by whole numbers. The most important was the study of the cosmos, as Pythagoras believed it would bring the soul closer to the divine. However, as we know the irrationality of the square root of 2 proved Pythagoras wrong, which lead to the school’s decline.

The Tetractys

Not a Greek god like Athena, note even a god at all. 10, a value, an integer, not anything of holy presence. Yet Pythagoras, a genius, yet crazy like many smart people, chose 10 to be worshipped by himself and other Pythagoreans. This can only be explained by looking at the schools symbol, the Tetractys, a triangle made up of other triangles. For those gamers out there, it is like the Triforce, but with more triangles. Why is this significant? Essentially, the ten points that compose nine triangles form an equilateral triangle, which is considered perfect, beautiful, or impeccable. Here is an excerpt of what they called a prayer to the Tetractys:

“Mother of all, the comprising, all bounding, the firstborn, that never swerving, the never tiring, holy ten, key holder of all.”

Praying to a triangle made from 10…how foolish.

The Downfall of Pythagoras

Remember how I mentioned the irrationality of the square root of 2? Yeah, Hippasus discovered this and Pythagoras was angry, you can’t blame him. After this, Pythagoras went mad, supposedly drowning Hippasus and unleashed evil among democracy. As a result, he was chased by the inhabitants of the city all the way to a field of Fava beans, which silly enough, led to his demise. Stepping on a Fava bean was also outrageous to Pythagoras, so he had no where to run…no where to hide. The only solution was to betray his beliefs. Some say he didn’t and was slain. Others say he did and escaped to a life of poverty until his death. Either way, Pythagoras’s importance, his school, his beliefs, all of this shattered in front of his face. To sum it up, Pythagoras crumbled with his school.

The lesson of all of this is simple; don’t go crazy. However, if you are a genius, this is hard. Many geniuses are so intelligent that they are alone, nobody is able to understand them. Thus, their solitary confinement leads to anxiety, and mental illness. Yet, this can be tied back to my post Consumption & Consequences, in which I explain how obsession with a topic can lead to a negative impact if not used wisely. As you go along your life, remember how being proved wrong may seem like a bad thing, but in reality, you should take it as constructive feedback and continue climbing the mountain of success. After Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were the pioneers in mathematics and science and created principles that remained in use during the Renaissance and beyond. Plato created the school of Athens, which Euclid was believed to have attended. Yet all of this ties back to Pythagoras, all of Greek mathematics does, from Euclid’s Infinitude of Primes to the hundreds of proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. Pythagoras created the fundamentals of these discoveries, but with a cost…his sanity.