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The Symbolism of the Number 6 in Pythagorean Philosophy and Culture
A survey of the Pythagorean school: the claim that number underlies reality, the tetractys, and how later writers reshaped the legacy of Pythagoras.
Philosophy, Form and Folklore
How Pythagorean thinkers and sacred builders saw number in shape and proportion.
Start here · Essential guide
A survey of the Pythagorean school: the claim that number underlies reality, the tetractys, and how later writers reshaped the legacy of Pythagoras.
Why Greek thinkers called six a perfect number, the sum of its divisors 1, 2 and 3, and how that arithmetical fact fed ideas about harmony and creation.
How builders and theologians read the square, the cross and the four-sided plan in temples, churches and ritual layouts, and what each form was said to represent.
How the triangle and three-part imagery appear in sacred art and architecture across Christian, Hindu, Egyptian and other traditions, and what each was meant to express.
A historical look at the fourfold schemes of elements, qualities, directions and humours in Greek and medieval thought, and how thinkers tied them to geometry.
How Plato's Timaeus matched four of the five regular solids to fire, earth, air and water, and what he said about the fifth, with the geometry explained.
The hexagon, the six-pointed star and the honeycomb: the real mathematics of six-fold packing, the history of the star motif and what each shape has symbolised.
The tetractys is a triangle of ten dots in rows of one to four. This article covers its construction, the oath sworn by it, and what is known about its ritual role.
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