#gnosticpowers

It is precisely this subjective element which distinguishes the Renaissance magus from the medieval theorist; for static hierarchical schemes and correspondences between planets and music are transformed into dynamic energies at work throughout creation, energies which can be harnessed and transfused for the harmonising of individual souls. Following Plotinus, Ficino emphasises the necessity of focussing the emotion in an act which depends on both intuition and expertise in order to expand consciousness: 'Whoever prays to a star in an opportune and skilled way projects his spirit into the manifest and occult rays of the star, everywhere diffused and life-giving; from these he may claim for himself vital stellar gifts.' In the Platonic/Pythagorean tradition, music and the stars are inextricably linked as audible and visible images of an invisible dimension of existence, whose intellectual perception is made possible through the senses of hearing and sight. The foundations of the musical cosmos are established by Plato in the creation myth of his Timaeus, which maintains a vital connection to Egyptian, Chaldaean and other ancient traditions. In this dialogue, Plato sets up a model for a three-fold musical cosmos where the movements of the spheres, the passions of the human soul and the audible sounds of music are all expressions of a divine intelligence manifesting through the various dimensions of creation. Such a tripartite division was to be differentiated by the fifth century A.D. theorist Boethius as musica mundana, musica humana and musica instrumentalis, and it was commonplace for music theorists to work out elaborate systems of corrrespondences between astronomical distances and musical intervals, between the nature of musical patterns and emotional states, between planetary characteristics and audible sound. The key, in this tradition, to the ordering of the cosmos, whether astronomically or musically, is of course number - a discovery which was transmitted to Western thinkers by Pythagoras. Indeed for the Platonists number determines all things in nature and their concrete manifestation, together with all rhythms and cycles of life. Number revealed by the heavenly bodies unfolds as Time, and as the human soul was seen to be mirrored in the order of the heavens, divination, or aligning oneself to the gods, required the appropriate ritual at a precise time. Iamblichus tells us that the numbers gov erning nature are the outflowing energies of the gods, and if we wish to assimilate ourselves to them, we must use their language - that is, align ourselv es with the harmonies underlying the cosmos. Merely humanly contrived numerical systems, discursive conceptions of number, numerological theories, cannot reproduce an experience of unity which will give rise to true knowledge of first principles. In the Timaeus, we learn that the Demiurge created a substance called the world-soul and inserted it into the centre of the world-body. He then divided up this soul-stuff according to the ratios of the three consonant musical intervals, that is the octave which resonates in the proportion of 2:1, the perfect fifth, 3:2 and the perfect fourth, 4:3, continuing, by further division, to create the intervallic steps of the Pythagorean scale. The soul was cut into two parts which were bent around each other, forming the circles of the Same and the Different: the Same containing the unmoving sphere of the fixed stars, the Different containing the moving instruments of Time, or the planets. The Different was then divided into narrower strips which were arranged according to the geometrical progressions of 2 and 3; 1 2 4 Page 38 and 1 3 9 27. Permeating the whole cosmos, the soul connected the physical world with the eternal, being 'interfused everywhere from the centre to the circumference of heaven' and partaking of 'reason and harmony'.  The human soul, also partaking directly of the anima mundi, must therefore be regulated according to the same proportions. But due to the passions of the body, the soul on entering it became distorted and stirred up - only the correct kind of education could restore harmonious equilibrium. This education would induce a recognition of the soul's congruence with the cosmos through the audible harmonic framework of the musical scale, for as we have seen, the proportions in the world-soul could be reproduced in musical sound. The numbers one to four, or the tetraktys, thus not only form the framework for all musical scales, but also embody this dynamic process of embodiment in the fourfold m o v e ment of geometry from point to line to plane to solid; from the unity comes the duality of opposition, the triad of perfect equilibrium and the quaternity of material existence. Each stage both limits and contains the one following, and the initiate is warned in the Chaldaean oracles 'do not deepen the plane' - that is, extend towards the material world from a the perfect condition of the triad, but do not lose your limiting power by letting go of it and becoming lost in the quaternity, or chaos of matter. This can be understood musically as the imperative of maintaining the perfect intervals as defining structures. In listening to geometry in sound, the perfect intervals set a framework or limit on unlimited sound, and since the specific arrangement of sizes of tones and semitones within this framework mirror the exact astronomical relationships of the planets, the very fabric of creation is brought to the ear and, in Platonic terms, evokes a memory of the harmonies once heard with the ears of the mind. F r o m  this essential premise, the schemes attributing planets to actual pitches and astronomical distances to musical intervals abounded. In the Myth of Er at the end of his Republic, Plato suggests that sirens positioned on the rims of the planetary orbits each sound a pitch, making up a musical scale, much like a Greek lyre projected into the heavens. In another interpretation, found in Cicero's Dream of Scipio, the planets produce different tones according to their various speeds of revolution. We are told that 'the high and low tones blended together produce different harmonies' and that 'gifted men, imitating this harmony on stringed instruments and in singing, have gained for themselves a return to this region, as have those of exceptional abilities who have studied divine matters even in earthly life'.  Exactly how to imitate the music of the spheres thus became the question raised by music theorists, and the science of harmonics, or the study of mathematical properties of musical ratios, was considered to be the first step. It is very difficult to know how much this highly speculative procedure - considered by Plato to be the highest form of knowledge - influenced the practical music-making of classical times. We are certainly better informed about the connection between musica humana and musica instrumentalis, for central to ancient Greek musical writings is the concept of ethos, or subtle ethical effects produced in the human psyche by the use of different modes or 'set' combinations of tone-patterns. For example, the Phrygian mode moved men to anger, the Lydian soothed them, the Dorian induced gravity and temperance - each quality being reflected in the character of particular regions. By medieval times the ancient Greek modes had been replaced by the eight Church modes, but this did not interrupt the association of subtle ethical effects by theorists. One twelfth century writer notes that 'the modes have individual qualities of sound, differing from each other, so that they prompt spontaneous recognition by an attentive musician or even by a practised singer'. It is to our loss that the music we hear today is limited to only two types of mode - the major and minor.  But what of the connection between ethics and cosmology? Ethical powers were attributed to syst e m s of pitch, while planets were generally associated with single pitches - so in the writings of most classical theorists, it is difficult to see how an effective form of musica instrumentalis could influence the human soul through direct imitation of cosmic harmony - despite the model transmitted by Plato. Generally speaking, celestial phenomena were made to fit a preconceived notion of musical order, rather than the phenomena themselves being asked to reveal their order as principles of intelligence. Although the Middle Ages produced some great original thinkers in this field, such as John Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century, and indeed the influential Islamic school of musical and astrological therapy, it was only in the fifteenth century that the West began to explore the practical means by which the harmonic relationships in the cosmos could be expressed through music, not by literally reproducing astronomical measurement in sound, but by symbolically evoking a unifying principle at work in the manifest and unmanifest worlds. With the music theorists Georgio Anselmi and Bartolom¾ Ramos de Pareja, we see the seeds being sown for a revisioning of cosmic music. (PDF) The Music of the Spheres: Marsilio Ficino and Renaissance harmonia. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/290164617_The_Music_of_the_Spheres_Marsilio_Ficino_and_Renaissance_harmonia [accessed Apr 23 2021].