The Talking Cabbage

The Greek musical modes are not sacred because they were the basis of the music of ancient Greece or for any other historical or cultural reason. There is in fact no evidence that seven octave species were recognised as such then, at least in the popular culture, certainly not in the sense of the Gregorian modes of medieval Church music devised in the eight century CE. Also, the principles on which the modes were constructed and the way Greek theorists analysed and named them changed over the classical period. The incomplete and uncertain view that modern scholarship has regarding ancient Greek awareness of the modes does not, however, undermine the conclusions of this article, which are based upon mathematical analysis, Pythagorean and Kabbalistic principles, that is, a priori considerations, not upon partial, empirical evidence. It proposes that the Greek modes are sacred in the same sense that the Tree of Life at the heart of Jewish mysticism is sacred. They express the seven-fold, objective nature of God made manifest in imperfect man. Today’s popular music, focussing almost exclusively on romantic love, makes it sometimes hard to remember that music is really the language of the soul, of which emotion — even that of the romantic kind — is but the lowest expression. Through their mystery religions, the ancient Greeks knew that there are seven levels of being and seven sacred planets to which the seven strings of the lyre corresponded. 

Apollo, the Sun God, had a Greek title ‘Ebdomaios,’ meaning seven-fold. The musical modes not only formally correlate with this seven-fold nature of a human being but also actually express it in terms of the qualities of their music. The Hypolydian mode (C scale) is the ideal one musically because it alone contains all the seven notes of the Pythagorean scale. Even if it is right that the counterparts of the ‘hypo’ modes were unknown to ancient Greeks but were only invented or inferred in medieval times by the theoretical need to complement the Dorian, Lydian and Phrygian modes, the fact remains that there can exist only seven such scales, for they are generated from the seven successive notes of the Pythagorean scale below the octave. In this context, therefore, the number seven is not a cultural artefact. Instead, its presence in music is a powerful example of the cyclic nature of this number.

The 3:3:1 division of the seven Sephiroth of Construction, which finds precise parallels in the Orphic mystery tradition, has its counterpart in both the seven-fold Pythagorean scale and Greek modes. The former consists of the tonic and two triads of notes of the Pythagorean scale with tone ratios in similar proportions and separated by one interval, whilst the latter comprises the Lydian mode and two triads of modes whose corresponding mesēs are in the same proportion and one interval apart. This is not a mathematical coincidence but, instead, indicates a universal principle at work structuring both consciousness and its language — music — according to the same pattern. This is why Plato’s numbers of the World Soul generate the tone ratios of the Pythagorean scale, for the World Soul is precisely the same as the Kabbalists’ Adam Kadmon, namely, Universal Man, designed in the Image of God.

Because the ancient Greek modes are the exact, musical counterpart of this cosmic paradigm, melodies played according to them have qualities that must resonate in the awareness of the hearer because, as the human version of Universal Man, the latter, too, has a seven-fold spectrum of consciousness. The highest function of music is not to entertain, although this has its place, but to bring the hearer into awareness of all these levels, instead of focussing it on just the emotional one, as modern popular music does. Because the modern, equal-tempered scale does not reproduce the exact tonal frequencies of the Pythagorean scale, the potential power of music used during the rites of ancient Mystery religions like Orphism to resonate with different levels of human consciousness and to transport the hearer to higher states of awareness is completely absent from contemporary and classical music, even when composed with the genius of a Mozart or Bach. If this happens at all, as it does sometimes, when such composers seem to capture celestial harmonies, it is only by accident. The modern musical scale is solely a human invention, conceived largely in order to solve the practical problem that (mainly) keyboard instruments had in playing in different keys the Pythagorean scale some of whose notes have complex, fractional tone ratios to which it was very difficult to tune them. Although it may have been discovered (at least in the West) by a human being, namely Pythagoras, the unique mathematical beauty of the Pythagorean scale, its generation by the integers 1, 2, 3 & 4 symbolised by the tetractys symbol of 10-fold Divine Unity, the mathematical prescription of the seven modes by the ancient, Hebrew Godnames, as well as the Tree of Life pattern of their notes, all constitute evidence that its status transcends the purely pragmatic nature of its modern successor.

A musician may argue that the pitch differences between the notes of the Dorian and equal-tempered scales are not noticeable to the human ear, at least when played in quick succession as a musical composition, so that there cannot be any significant difference in the psycho-spiritual quality of music employing these scales. This might seem incontestable as a scientific argument if, as it assumes, consciousness were merely the product of a brain whose neurological activity is affected by nerve signals issuing from the organ of Corti in the fluid-filled cochlea of the inner ear when set vibrating by sound waves in the air. However, many traditions of esoteric knowledge contradict the unproved, presupposition of modern science that the brain creates consciousness. Furthermore, they regard sounds as vibrations not only in air but also in a subtle medium that some Indian mystical traditions call ‘akasha.’ This allows the possibility (albeit not yet confirmed by orthodox science) that humans have non-physical organs of perception that create the counterparts of optical vision and hearing on a higher level of consciousness, the latter, for example, being the phenomenon known to parapsychology as ‘clairaudience.’ In fact, according to yoga, this organ is the ‘vishuddha chakra’ located in the region of the throat (14). Utilizing non-physical aspects of sounds that are unknown to science but familiar to yogis through their use of mantras, such an organ belonging to one

of the vehicles of higher consciousness described by these traditions might be responsive only to the precise, natural pitches of the Pythagorean scale, even though most ears cannot easily differentiate its notes from those of the modern equal-tempered scale. This is because, as Plato said, both the World Soul, of which the human soul is a reflection, and the Pythagorean musical scale share the same mathematical pattern, which means that the former must be tuned in a subtle way to the latter through a principle of correspondence. Higher states of awareness, evoked by a principle of sympathetic resonance with brain waves akin to that familiar to any acoustic scientist studying the effects of sound on matter, might in principle be induced in someone who was listening to music played on an instrument tuned exactly to the Pythagorean scale.

Indeed, is this not unlike the very calming, uplifting effect that the Dorian mode played by a piper had on the angry youth in the legendary tale about Pythagoras told by Iamblichus? What modern tunes played even with the skill of the great flutist, James Galway, would have this effect on rowdy youth in a wine bar? Perhaps the mood-changing pitches of sounds played by a properly tuned instrument are just as powerful (if not more so) as the melody? Perhaps we should regard a human being as like a musical instrument tuned to the ‘music of the spheres.’ The purpose of life is to play this instrument so that all its potential melodies of consciousness become alive. Then at last, like Pythagoras, we shall hear the divine harmonies within us and the instrument shall become its player.