Extract from the Preface to the latest book in the Astropoetic Series by Joe Landwehr Astrology and the Archetypal Power of Numbers (pp. 10-11).
**************************************************************************************************************************************************
Numbers As the Gateway to an Understanding of Multidimensionality
One who is interested in knowing the original power of number can only do so by entering the storm and getting wet.
In the Pythagorean approach, number is seen not as a counting mechanism, but as a living force. In the foreword to Robin Waterfield’s translation of The Theology of Arithmetic, Keith Critchlow finds an expression of this more holistic approach to number in the famous arrangement of ten dots in a triangle. Pythagoras used this pattern – called the Decad or Tetraktys – to illustrate the unity of the first ten numbers [see above]. Critchlow says “that ideal number is not necessarily subject to a sequential or causal progression from one through ten, but is rather a unity with ten essential and potential qualities, simultaneously present….” The intriguing implication behind these words is that everything science uses number to measure, participates in this Unity, and encompasses these same universal qualities.
Within this worldview, the observer cannot be separate from what is being observed in the way that science insists she must be. The most intriguing implication of the Pythagorean understanding of number is that everything I am capable of observing in some way reflects back to me who I am, because both it and I are embodiments of this same Unity, elaborated and illuminated in different ways by the same numbers. Or as put by the Jewish Neoplatonist Philo of Alexandria, “Both in the world and in man the decad is all”.
As I observed and measured the changing colors in my sophomore titration experiment, something parallel to that transformation occurred in me. As a therapist, every time I was able to facilitate growth in a client, it was because on some level of my own being, I resonated with the changes in them that wanted to take place. If numbers are a Unity, within which simultaneous qualities intermingle and perpetually shift in relation to each other, then subject and object must both share in that dance.
Science remains blind to this possibility whenever science insists on objectivity – requiring its practitioners to pretend that they are not part of the world they observe, and that what they observe is not influenced by their observation. Science’s own experiments have proven that this is an untenable pretension, but most scientists keep on pretending anyway. By contrast, in the original sense in which numbers were understood – by Pythagoras, by Moses, and by the indigenous peoples who employed them in their ceremonies and rituals – they were instead a key to more conscious participation in the world. Participation by number was more conscious because each number was a dakini syllable within which natural law was written, and to become conscious of the true meaning of numbers required the seeker of truth to align herself with natural law. Unlike science, which insists on maintaining intellectual distance, engaging the terma teaching of number is not a spectator sport.
If we imagine this terma teaching to be a thunderstorm, the difference in these two approaches to an understanding of number becomes rather tangible. A scientist witnesses and documents this thunderstorm from the comfort and safety of a room protected from the weather. One who is interested in knowing the original power of number, however, can only do so by entering the storm and getting wet. Such an act would make no objective sense, but be filled with subjective meaning, in the same way that communing with the gods is different than worshipping them.
As a student of both chemistry and psychology, I was brought to the altar by the high priests of education and compelled to worship. All the while, what my soul craved was communion. I wanted to tear the altar down and embrace what it was built to honor. Numbers were offered me in college as the ritual tools of worship. Never was it hinted that they could also become the ritual tools of communion, if I was willing to cross the subject-object barrier and allow them to permeate me. It is to reclaim this missing piece of my education that this book is being written.
Part One [the current volume] explores individual numbers from Zero to Nine. Each chapter begins where possible with references to the original teachings of Pythagoras, and to other sources that hint of the true creative power of number. My exploration then extends into a free form dialogue designed to elicit an experience of each number in its archetypal essence.
Part Two [to come in 2012] shows how these experiences reverberate through the birthchart in various ways, and are embedded as implicit dakini syllables at the heart of the astrological language. Part Two includes a series of case studies – of both significant moments in history and of individuals who have altered history – showing how these principles can be used to enhance our understanding of the soul’s journey as it is revealed in the birthchart, and to facilitate the soul’s participation in our collective evolution through a more conscious embodiment of natural law.
To read more see the previous three blog posts -
better still, purchase the book!
