The Golden Verses of Pythagoras · 32 of 122 · tr. Florence M. Firth
Section 12 (part 9)
Honour a figure and a step before a figure and a tribolus.
Explanation .--The exhortation of this Symbol is as follows: Philosophize and diligently betake yourself to disciplines, and through these, as through steps, proceed to the thing proposed; but reject the p.
98 progression through those things which are honoured and venerated by the many.
Prefer also the Italic philosophy, 1 which contemplates things essentially incorporeal, to the Ionic, 2 which makes bodies the principal object of consideration.
SYMBOL 37.
Abstain from beans.
Explanation .--This Symbol admonishes us to beware of everything which is corruptive of our converse with the gods and divine prophecy.
SYMBOL 38.
Transplant mallows indeed in your garden; but eat them not.
Explanation .--This Symbol obscurely signifies that plants of this kind turn with the sun, and it thinks fit that this should be noticed by us.
It also adds transplant , that p.
99 is to say, observe its nature, its tendency towards, and sympathy with, the sun; but rest not satisfied, nor dwell upon this, but transfer, and as it were transplant your conception to kindred plants and pot-herbs, and also to animals which are not kindred, to stones, and rivers, and in short to natures of every kind.
For you will find them to be prolific and multiform, and admirably abundant; and this to one who begins from the mallows, as from a root and principle, is significant of the union and consent of the world.
Not only, therefore, do not destroy or obliterate observations of this kind, but increase and multiply them as if they were transplanted.
SYMBOL 39.
Abstain from animals.
Explanation .--This Symbol exhorts to justice, to all the honour of kindred, to the reception of similar life, and to many other things of a like kind.
From all this, therefore, the exhortatory type through symbols becomes apparent, which contains much in it of the ancient and Pythagorean mode of writing.
Footnotes 73:1 According to Œlian and Suldas, Melanurus is a fish ; but as the word signifies that which has a black termination , it is very appropriately used as a Symbol of a material nature.
73:2 Iamblichus most likely alludes here to a more copious work on this subject, which is lost.
74:3 Viz., those gods that are characterized by intellect , and the Intelligible, concerning which see Taylor's introduction to and notes on the Parmenides of Plato.
75:1 Or, stir not up fire with a sword.--Dacier.
78:1 The justice to which we are exhorted, in this Symbol, belongs to the theoretic virtues, concerning which see Taylor's notes on the Phædo of Plato.
83:1 The crangœ are fish belonging to the genus cancer .
84:2 Aristotle has discussed with his usual accuracy everything pertaining to the nature of justice in the fifth book of his Nicomachean Ethics .
85:1 By this it appears that the philosophy which is wholly busied in the investigation of sensibles, similar to that which has been so industriously studied in a neighbouring country, and propagated in this, was very prevalent in the time of Iamblichus.
89:1 This work appears to be lost.
92:1 This alludes to the silence of five years imposed by Pythagoras on a great part of his auditors.
96:1 This is said to be a fish of a red colour.
96:2 This is that power of the soul which reasons scientifically.
97:1 This is, by drawing diagrams.
98:1 That is, the philosophy of Pythagoras, which is called Italic, because it was first propagated in Italy.
The Stoic and Plotinian doctrine that all parts of the cosmos are bound by hidden affinities, so that a movement in one part resonates through the whole; the metaphysical basis for astrology, magic, and divination.
It describes the universe's union and consent, noting all men are allied by nature.
Eckhart's Abgeschiedenheit/Gelassenheit — radical letting-go of will, image, and grasping that opens the soul to God; distinct from inner_silence (quietness) and from material renunciation, and adjacent to Sufi tark and Buddhist non-grasping as a practice rather than a metaphysical claim.
The passage instructs despising connascent material things and sensible instruments.
Disciplined inward attention — sitting, focused, or open-awareness practice — as a stand-alone term that umbrellas active_contemplation, inner_silence, and dhyana-style sitting.
Contemplation is presented as the means to truly philosophize and gain wisdom.