Pitch

Celestial music uses quite definite pitches, but the pitches used do not necessarily map onto the notes we use in music today.

If you think of sound as a continuum of frequencies of vibration, there are in a sense an infinite number of possible pitches that one could use to create music. In western systems today we have chosen a limited number of standard frequencies in the musical scale, but celestial music seems quite unlike these frequencies. Composers gifted with inspiration, have often been hugely frustrated by the inadequacies of current western scales to map onto what they have perceived.

If we view celestial music heard with our 'inner ear 'as the execution of a transaction of the universe and thus in a sense a traversal of sub-functions as the notes are heard, it is clear that there is some order to the storage system used to store functions within the spiritual world. If there was no order people hearing celestial music would simply hear a cacophony of frequencies. But they don't, they hear notes in a definite musical scale with distinct repeating notes and tunes. In effect, the notes they 'hear' actually correspond to some level within the overall continuum of the spiritual plane.

To provide a simplistic example. Let us assume the function 'joy' is a transaction with steps like a computer program, but that these steps have been stored spiritually at various levels and layers. As they execute there will be a traversal up and down the levels and layers and this will then be heard as a 'tune'. I have tried to show this in the diagram below. First A is executed - a high note at a high vibrational level , then B is executed, a slightly lower note at a lower vibrational level, then C is executed, lower still, then three notes simultaneously at different levels [B, D and E] then three more simultaneously again all at different levels vibrationally in the spirit world [F, H and G]

The pitch of each note [the stored step] is then a very specific level and layer in the spiritual realm.

Although all mystic systems recognise the principle five levels of Aether, Fire, Air, Water and Earth, there is little agreement on the sub-levels within these levels. Musically the lower notes are found at the Earth level and below, the highest notes are to be found in the Aether level, which is probably why soaring notes lift your soul and low descending notes fill you with foreboding as you sink down towards the underworld and hell!

But we know from mystics that the Aether level is divided into at least seven sub-layers – the so called planetary levels - and described by those who heard the celestial music resulting from ascending to these spiritual heights as the Music of the Spheres. Each level had a tone associated with it.

Observations

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• Charles Burnett – Spiritual medicine, music and healing in Islam – The Maqam
• Engel, C - On ancient pitch and modes
• Ficino, Marsilio - Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus - And music therapy
• Ibn Hindu - The Key to Medicine and a Guide for Students
• Led Zeppelin - And pitch deviations
• Levitin, Professor Daniel - Music and the brain
• Levitin, Professor Daniel - On ratios and pitch
• Levitin, Professor Daniel - On the octave
• Levitin, Professor Daniel - The Gestalts and configurations
• Oliver Sacks - Musical prodigy
• Plato - Republic - Harmony and the Planets
• Pythagoras - Marcilio Ficino describes the musical ratios of Pythagoras
• Saint-Yves d’Alveydre – The Archeometer – Revelation 06
• Stockhausen - On 'sounds' 1972