"28th Degree - Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pike Albert)

The figure 1 signifies the living man [a body standing upright] man being the only living being possessed of this faculty. Adding to it a head, we have the letter P, the sign of Paternity, Creative Power; and with a further addition, R, signifying man in motion, going, Iens, Iturus.

The Duad is the origin of contrasts. It is the imperfect condition into which, according to the Pythagoreans, a being falls, when he detaches himself from the Monad, or God. Spiritual beings, emanating from God, are enveloped in the duad, and therefore receive only illusory impressions.

As formerly the number ONE designated harmony, order, or the Good Principle (the ONE and ONLY GOD, expressed in Latin Solus, whence the words Sol, Soleil, symbol of this God), the number Two expressed the contrary idea. There commenced the fatal knowledge of good and evil.

Everything double, false opposed to the single and sole reality, was expressed by the Binary number. It expressed also that state of contrariety in which nature exists, where everything is double; night and day, light and darkness, cold and heat, wet and dry, health and sickness, error and truth, one and the other sex, etc. Hence the Romans dedicated the second month in the year to Pluto, the God of Hell, and the second day of that month to the manes of the dead.

The number One, with the Chinese, signified unity, harmony order, the Good Principle, or God; Two, disorder, duplicity, falsehood. That people, in the earliest ages, based their whole philosophical system on the two primary figures or lines, one straight and unbroken, and the other broken or divided into two; doubling which, by placing one under the other, and trebling by placing three under each other, they made the four symbols and eight Koua; which referred to the natural elements, and the primary principles of all things, and served symbolically or scientifically to express them. Plato terms unity and duality the original elements of nature, and first principles of all existence: and the oldest sacred book of the Chinese says: "The Great First Principle has produced two equations and differences, or primary rules of existence; but the two primary rules or two oppositions, namely YN and YANG, or repose and motion, have produced four signs symbols, and the four symbols have produced the eight KOUA or further combinations."

The interpretation of the Hermetic fables shows, among every ancient people, in their principal gods, first, 1, the Creating Monad, then 3, then 3 times 3, 3 times 9, and 3 times 27. This triple progression has for its foundation the three ages of Nature, the Past, the Present, and the
Future; or the three degrees of universal generation Birth, Life, Death, Beginning, middle, end.

The Monad was male, because its action produces no change in itself, but only out of itself. It represented the creative principle.

The Duad, for a contrary reason, was female, ever changing by addition, subtraction, or multiplication. It represents matter capable of form.

The union of the Monad and Duad produces the Triad, signifying the world formed by the creative principle out of matter. Pythagoras represented the world by the right-angled triangle, in which the squares of the two shortest sides are equal, added together, to the square of the longest one; as the world, as formed, is equal to the cleative cause, and matter clothed with form.

The ternary is the first of the unequal numbers. The Triad, mysterious number, which plays so great a part in the traditions of Asia and the philosophy of Plato, image of the Supreme Being, includes in itself the properties of the first two numbers. It was, to the Philosophers, the most
excellent and favorite number; a mysterious type, revered by all antiquity, and consecrated in the Mysteries; wherefore there are but three essential Degrees among Masons; who venerate, in the triangle, the most august mystery, that of the Sacred Triad, object of their homage and
study.

In geometry, a line cannot represent a body absolutely perfect. As little do two lines constitute a figure demonstratively perfect. But three lines form, by their junction, the TRIANGLE, or the first figure regularly perfect; and this is why it has served and still serves to characterize The Eternal; Who, infinitely perfect in His nature, is, as Universal Creator, the first Being, and consequently the first Perfection.

The Quadrangle or Square, perfect as it appears, being but the second perfection, can in no wise represent God; Who is the first. It is to be noted that the name of God in Latin and French (Deus, Dieu), has for its initial the Delta or Greek Triangle. Such is the reason, among ancients
and moderns, for the consecration of tne Triangle, whose three sides are emblems of the three Kingdoms, or Nature, or God. In the centre is the Hebrew JOD, the Animating Spirit of Fire, the generative principle, represented by the letter G., initial of the name of Deity in the languages
of the North, and the meaning whereof is Generation.

The first side of the Triangle, offered to the study of the Apprentice, is the mineral kingdom, symbolized by Tub.

The second side, the subject of the meditations of the Fellow Craft, is the vegetable kingdom, symbolized by Schib.'. (an ear of corn). In this reign begins the Generation of bodies; and this is why the letter G, in its radiance, is presented to the eyes of the adept.

The third side, the study whereof is devoted to the animal kingdom, and completes the instruction of the Master, is symbolized by Mach (Son of putrefaction).

The figure 3 symbolizes the Earth. It is a figure of the terrestrial bodies. The 2, upper half of 3, symbolizes the vegetable world, the lower half being hidden from our sight.

Three also referred to harmony, friendship, peace, concord, and temperance; and was so highly esteemed among the Pythagoreans that they called it perfect harmony.

Three, four, ten, and twelve were sacred numbers among the Etrurians, as they were among the Jews, Egyptians, and Hindus.

The name of Deity, in many Nations, consisted of three letters among the Greeks,I.'.A.'. Q.'.; among the Persians, H.'.O.'.M.'. among the Hindus, AUM; among the Scandinavians, I.'.O.'.W.'. On the upright Tablet of the King, discovered at Nimroud, no less than five of the thirteen
names of the Great Gods consist of three letters each, ANU, SAN, YAV, BAR, and BEI,.

The quaternary is the most perfect number, and the root of other numbers, and of all things. The tetrad expresses the first mathematical power. Four represents also the generative power, from which all combinations are derived. The Initiates considered it the emblem of Movement and the Infinite, representing everything that is neither corporeal nor sensible.

Pythagoras communicated it to his disciples as a symbol of the Eternal and Creative Principle, under the name of Quaternary, the Ineffable Name of God, which signifies Source of everything that has received existence; and which, in Hebrew, is composed of four letters.

In the Quaternary we find the first solid figure, the universal symbol of immortality, the pyramid. The Gnostics claimed that the whole edifice of their science rested on a square whose angles were. Silence, Profundity, Intelligence, and Truth. For if the Triangle, figured by the
number 3, forms the triangular base of the pyramid, it is unity which forms its point or summit.