Observations placeholder
Plato - Timaeus - Moving spheres
Identifier
006006
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Plato is here describing the mathematical ratios between each level and layer. If what he says is correct then these are also the ratios needed for musical notes in the scale in order to create celestial music.
The key challenge is then to find a set of frequencies corresponding to the ratios which sound harmonious and not dissonant!
NOTES
Plato's soul = Mortal soul+ Immortal soul
God = Ultimate Intelligence and note not a 'he'
A description of the experience
Plato - Timaeus
And so the thought of God made a God in the image of a perfect body, having intercourse with himself and needing no other, but in every part harmonious and self-contained and truly blessed.
The soul was first made by him--the elder to rule the younger; not in the order in which our wayward fancy has led us to describe them, but the soul first and afterwards the body. God took of the unchangeable and indivisible and also of the divisible and corporeal, and out of the two he made a third nature, essence, which was in a mean between them, and partook of the same and the other, the intractable nature of the other being compressed into the same.
Having made a compound of all the three, he proceeded to divide the entire mass into portions related to one another in the ratios of 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 27, and proceeded to fill up the double and triple intervals thus--
- over 1, 4/3, 3/2, - over 2, 8/3, 3, - over 4, 16/3, 6, - over 8:
- over 1, 3/2, 2, - over 3, 9/2, 6, - over 9, 27/2, 18, - over 27;
in which double series of numbers are two kinds of means; the one exceeds and is exceeded by equal parts of the extremes, e.g. 1, 4/3, 2; the other kind of mean is one which is equidistant from the extremes--2, 4, 6. In this manner there were formed intervals of thirds, 3:2, of fourths, 4:3, and of ninths, 9:8. And next he filled up the intervals of a fourth with ninths, leaving a remnant which is in the ratio of 256:243.
The entire compound was divided by him lengthways into two parts, which he united at the centre like the letter X, and bent into an inner and outer circle or sphere, cutting one another again at a point over against the point at which they cross. The outer circle or sphere was named the sphere of the same--the inner, the sphere of the other or diverse; and the one revolved horizontally to the right, the other diagonally to the left.
To the sphere of the same which was undivided he gave dominion, but the sphere of the other or diverse was distributed into seven unequal orbits, having intervals in ratios of twos and threes, three of either sort, and he bade the orbits move in opposite directions to one another--three of them, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, with equal swiftness, and the remaining four--the Moon, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, with unequal swiftness to the three and to one another, but all in due proportion.