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Appendix: Technical and Speculative

This appendix will offer some basics of tuning theory for the sake of more closely understanding the
arguments of McClain; it will also present some work of Connie Achilles, though it will not strictly
concur with all of her conclusions. Finally, it will make some speculations based on my reinterpretation
of some of her findings. These speculations are frankly hypothetical efforts toward reconstruction of the
pre-Platonic tradition we have been postulating. In partial keeping with the thrust of both McClain’s and
Michell’s work, our net will be cast more widely here. After much time spent shuttling between ancient
Greek and contemporary philosophy, our final (much more speculative) ruminations will hazard some
preliminary guesses as to the cultural background upon which Plato’s Pythagorean material may have
been based. This will lead us to compare (in a necessarily cursory manner) musical and mystical lore
from Vedic and Kabbalisitc materials.

Technical

Sounds are made by vibrating bodies; for instance, plucked strings. When we speak of tones in music
theory, we are speaking of a tone made by a plucked string; and when we speak of ratios, we mean the
proportions between the length of one string and another. The most important ratios in tuning theory are
the unison (ratio 1:1) and the octave (ratio 2:1). That is, all other things being equal, two plucked strings
will generate tones in octave relation if the one is twice the length of the other. (“All other things” here
means string thickness, material, and tautness)1.

After the octave, the next most important intervals are the perfect fifth and perfect fourth. These are
generated by a ratio of 3:2 and 4:3, respectively. The one is the inverse of the other. This means that an
“ascending” fourth (for example, from D to G, left-to-right on a piano keyboard) is the same as a “falling”
fifth, and vice-versa. You can verify this on a piano:

1
This qualification is extremely important. “All other things” are never equal. As with such legal fictions as “laboratory
conditions” or “ideal” geometrical figures (as opposed to the actual triangles and circles drawn on chalkboards or paper or
computer screens), various other factors always conspire to contaminate, complicate, or otherwise interfere with theoretical
constructs with their inconvenient entropy or friction. And since in the case of music there simply is no music without actual
vibrating bodies, these other factors make the approximation which adjusts for them, again, an inherent part of music and not a
negligible distraction.
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Thus, the note that is a fifth above a given tone, also has an octave that is a fourth below the same tone,
and vice-versa. For instance, the note A is a fifth above D; but it is also a fourth below it. Of course, it is
not the same A!

Another, mathematically equivalent, way of deriving the perfect fifth and fourth, is to take the arithmetic
and harmonic mean, respectively, of the octave. Thus if the lower note is given by a string of length 2,
and the octave above of length 1, then one takes the arithmetic mean (commonly known as the “average”)
of these to get the string length for the perfect fifth: (1+2)/2 = 3/2 = 11/2.

Notice that this means 11/2 times the higher tone’s string (i.e., the shorter length), which is the same as 3/4
of the lower tone’s (the longer) length).

Now to take the harmonic mean to find the perfect fourth. In the case of two numbers, x & y, the
harmonic mean is (2(xy))/(x+y). So, in the case we just gave, we have (2x1x2)/(1+2) = 4/3. Again, this is
four-thirds of the higher (shorter) length, the same as 2/3 of the lower, (longer) length.

The root tone, low D (DL) and the higher D above it, (DH) are made by strings of lengths 2 and 1, respectively. The note
A is both a perfect fifth above low D and a perfect fourth below high D; its string is a length 2/3 of the longer string,
and 4/3 of the shorter. The note G is a perfect fourth above low D and a perfect fifth below high D. Its string is a length
3/4 of the longer string, and 3/2 of the shorter.

While the octave ratio (1:2) will clearly never generate any more tones than octaves, already with the
perfect fifth, we are able to generate all the rest of the notes of our modern scale. All it takes is twelve
iterations of the proportion (in whichever direction one likes, including six of both if you prefer) of 2:3 or
4:3. After twelve fifths, twelve fourths, or six of one in one direction and a half dozen of the other in the
other, one arrives at a range of seven octaves, in which the top and bottom note are almost seven octaves
apart. This “almost” is important, because of course the consonance is not precise; the Pythagorean
comma has intervened, or rather, been discovered.

In brief: twelve perfect fifths is not quite the same “length” as seven octaves. The Pythagorean comma is
the measure of the difference between them.

Pythagorean tunings relied on the tuning of perfect fifths and fourths; and this means, only using ratios
that admit multiples of 2 and 3. However, there are other intervals as well. After the fourth and fifth, the
next important intervals are the major and minor third. These too can be generated by the arithmetic and
harmonic means, this time of the fifth. The arithmetic mean of the fifth gives the major third, ascending
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from the root. The harmonic mean also gives the major third, this time descending, from the fifth. This
descending major third is the minor third in comparison with the root.

The major third is a ratio of 5:4. But since 5 is prime, it is not admitted in Pythagorean tuning, which can
only approximate the major third with a ratio of 81:64. If we choose to make use of further numbers than
2 and 3, we can generated these intervals more “cleanly;” but they will in turn be somewhat out of tune
with other notes in our scale. In short, while one can make many approximations, one will never derive
perfect intervals with whole numbers that are absolutely consonant, because the denominators in the
fractions one is using are different primes and thus share no factors, which means they are not
commensurate with each other.

Of course, one can attempt to make tunings not by approximating, but by keeping as many intervals as
one chooses. Such scales are found in many cultures, for example in Arabic music and the music of the
Indian subcontinent. The Vedic octave, the saptaka, has seven notes as does our western scale, but the5th
century (?) BC Natya Sastra by Bharata divides these unevenly into different numbers of parts, four,
three, or two each, totaling 22. The rationale behind this is quite obscure and greatly debated. Alain
Danielou2 produced what he claimed was a scale reconstructed from considering ancient materials, which
is essentially (as he acknowledges) a version of 53-tone Equal Temperament, a tuning derived by
dividing the octave into fifty-three equal steps of a frequency ratio of 21/53 each. Chinese theorists as early
as the first century BC, discovered an extremely close approximation between 53 just fifths (ratio 3/2) and
31 octaves (ratio 2/1). The 53rd root of 2 is also very close to the syntonic comma of 81/80.

We come now to the suggestion of Connie Achilles3. Achilles simply presents two sets of ratios, with the
consequence that she gives most of the twelve tones of the scale not one value but two. Her first tuning is
strictly Pythagorean, and relies only on ratios involving the primes 2 and 3 (precisely like Crantor’s
lambda figure presented in the body of this paper). Achilles’ second scale includes ratios generated from
the prime factor 5. Between these two tunings, three tones are stable and fixed: the root, the fourth, and
the fifth. Each of these tones has but one ratio defining it: 1/1 for the root (or 2/1 at the octave); 4/3 for the
fourth, and 3/2 for the fifth. The other nine tones have two different ratios, depending upon whether their
ratios allow the factor 5. In equal temperament, these two ratios for each tone are compressed together,
yielding a single irrational ratio of 1to the 12th root of 2. But left uncompressed, there are not twelve but
twenty-one separate ratios; 22 counting the octave. Thus out of thirteen tones (including the octave and its
root) only four (root, octave, fourth and fifth) are given single values. All the other none have not one
value but two. This gives a total of 18 + 4 = 22 notes for the scale.4
2
See Alain Danielou, Introduction to the Study of Musical Scales (revised as Music and the Power of Sound).

3
Connie Achilles’ research is available online at http://www.harmonictheory.com

4
Extrapolation from this result to speculations on the shruti system should be made most cautiously, and I hasten to point out
that while Achilles cites Danielou, she does not, as far as I know, claim her reconstruction to have been used historically. It is
important to acknowledge that most shruti systems I have seen, including Danielou’s, give 22 intervals, meaning 23 notes when
the octave tone is included (unlike Achilles’ system which gives 22 notes including the root and its octave). While some have
disputed that the canonical number of shrutis is really 22, there is no question that it is the most widely attested total.
Legitimately in question, however, are the issues of why there should be 22 shrutis, why they are distributed as they are, and how
precisely they fall in the most ancient scales. One suggestion, common but hard to think through consistently, relates the number
to the regular seven-note scale by way of the ancient approximation of 22/7 for pi in circle mapping. I offer no opinion here. I am
an enthusiastic listener to Indian music, but my musical competence, such as it is, is western; I am a keyboardist trained (largely
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Achilles takes the further step of translating these ratios into degrees of a circle; as noted, the octave is a
circle, and the root and its octave (say, low and hi C) coincide at 0° and 360°. It is a simple matter to
render any ratio X:Y as degrees. The formula is 360((X/Y) – 1), or ((360X)/Y)-360, as it may be
equivalently rendered5.

From this step, she derives her arithmetic that is quite suggestive in light of Michell’s and McClain’s
work. Not all the ratios correlate evenly to degrees; several involve minutes and seconds. But their total
is slightly in excess of 3,168 degrees; and the number 3,168, recall, was connected by Michell
arithmetically to both the Timaeus and the Laws.

Assigned, for the sake of convenience to a scale rooted at D, and arranged in a line to better display the
symmetry, Achilles’ ratios and my correlating degree measurements are:

As can be seen easily, only four notes have single values given: the root D and its octave, and the perfect
fourth (G) and fifth (A). Thus out of thirteen tones (including the octave and its root) only four are given
single values. All the other none have not one value but two. This gives a total of 18 + 4 = 22 notes for
the scale.

The total number of degrees is 3,169°38”3’, which is very slightly (less than 2°) in excess of Michell’s
total 3,168 for the circumference of his circle in the Timaeus’ world soul diagram. In fact, Achilles
initially presented her total as even closer—a remarkable 3,168° 9’. This smaller margin (exceeding
Michell’s number by not even 1/60 of a degree), arose because for any ratio that did not translate into a
whole number of degrees, Achilles calculated her fractions to within the nearest 1/1000—well within the
needs of musicians6. I on the other hand have allowed myself the convenience of modern calculators with
decimal places extending far beyond what any tuning theorist would require, anciently or today. While
ancient mathematicians were well aware of the difference between precision and approximation (such a
distinction underlies the famous restriction of Euclidean problem-solving techniques to compass and
unmarked straightedge alone), I have let my more precise figures stand. I leave it to readers to decide
whether these parameters suffice for credibility for Achilles’ and Michell’s results7.

self-trained) on instruments tuned mostly in equal temperament. I only note that Achilles’ reconstruction makes good arithmetic
sense and seems historically plausible. Though unlikely to bear directly upon music, one more resonance of the number 22 may
be mentioned here: 22 x 360 = 7920, twice Michell’s figure for the radius of the Earth in miles—i.e., the terrestrial diameter.

5
Example: the note Gb is given here as 81/64. This is 1.265625. Subtracting 1 and multiplying by 360, we get 95.625 degrees,
which is rendered as 95°37’30”.

6
Thus, to use the example from the previous footnote, Achilles rounds 81/64 to 1.265, which gives her 95.4 degrees or 95°24’.

7
Those wishing to duplicate the calculations have more than one option, which can cause slightly varying arithmetic depending
on the degree of exactitude they desire and the stage at which they render their results in degrees minutes and seconds. Such
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In our chart, if there are two ratios for a given note, the smaller one is given first, the larger one
underneath. In each such case but one, one value involves the prime factor 5, and one does not. The sole
exception here is the center of the chart, the tritone Ab/G#. This is because in the tritone is the “farthest”
tone from the octave—six half-steps in either direction, directly opposite the root/octave—and in
Pythagorean tunings is tuned “last.” One can see why if one rearranges the chart, with the root/octave in
the center:

In this second arrangement, one moves to the right by fifths, to the left by fourths. Here it is the root D
that has “two” values, while the tritone is now “split” with its two values appearing at opposite ends. As
before, lower values are listed above greater ones. This reveals an interesting symmetry: note that on the
right-hand side, all the ratios with multiples of 5 are in the top row; on the left-hand side, ratios involving
5 are in the bottom. Note too that both ratios for the tritone include the number 729, one as numerator,
one as denominator. This number is also known to us from Plato, this time in the Republic8, in which he
notes with remarkable and apparently finicky precision that the life of the good ruler is 729 time more
pleasant than that of the tyrant, and that of the tyrant less pleasant than that of the good ruler. McClain
notes that Socrates’ explanation actually involves some sleight-of-math: he had listed five rulers, but he
numbers them 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, and from here proceeds to take the cube of 9 to attain the tyrant’s number.9
Plato’s more general point is valid, for the interval between root and tritone is the most dissonant and
unsettling of all intervals, and was as is well known, avoided for this reason by musicians and composers
for many centuries, even acquiring the sinister nickname diabolus in musica.

Speculative

In an alphabet where words could also register as numbers, for instance, multiple registers of meaning
could be intended “between the lines.” Reference was made in the body of the paper to the Greek system
of isopsephia, which made use of the numerical values of the letters. These values were as follows:

α β γ δ ε ζ η θ
1 2 3 4 5 [6] 7 8 9

ι κ λ µ ν ξ ο π
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 [90]

variations arise of course only because measurement in degrees, minutes and seconds is itself a matter of approximation, since its
fine-grainedness ends at one second, or 1/3600 of a degree, that is, .0002777… degrees.

8
Republic 587b-88a

9
The Pythagorean Plato pp 33-9
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ρ σ, ς τ υ φ χ ψ ω
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 [900]

The values of 6, 90, and 900 were represented in Greek by letters that had passed out of alphabetic usage,
and were only used for arithmetic. Also, note that the letter sigma, σ , was written ς at the end of words.

From these values, one can verify that the sums for the two phrases mentioned in our text,
τα α υ τ α κ α ι τ α ε τ ε ρ α (“the same and the other”) and
κυρ ι ο σ Ι η σ ο υ ς Χ ρ ι σ τ ο ς (“Lord Jesus Christ”), do sum to 1,746 and to 3,168
respectively:

κ 20 τ 3 00
υ 400 α 1
ρ 100
ι 10 α 1
ο 70 υ 4 00
ς 200 τ 3 00
α 1
Ι 10
η 8 κ 20
σ 200 α 1
ο 70 ι 10
υ 400
ς 200 τ 3 00
α 1
Χ 600
ρ 100 ε 5
ι 10 τ 3 00
σ 200 ε 5
τ 300 ρ 1 00
ο 70 α 1
ς 200

3 , 168 1,746

Like the word-as-number, the word apprehended as sung is experienced in a different manner than the
word read or argued. A more ancient manner of psychology would say that such a word is addressed to a
different faculty of the soul than is the spoken, written or “argued” word. It is thus suggestive that
Hebrew, which like Greek had a method of deriving numerical equivalences from words (it is called
gematria in a Hebrew context), has 22 letters, just as the shruti system and Achilles’ reconstructed scales
have 22 notes.

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I conclude with some speculation on these. Duane Christensen and Casper Labuschagne have each
offered powerful analyses of the use of numerical arrangement in the composition of Biblical texts, in
terms of metrical scansion, word-, syllable- and even letter-count in various units. Other researches by
David Crookes indicate the profound and continuing pertinence of gematria to Biblical interpretation; and
John Wheeler (following Suzanne Haik-Vantoura) has unpacked considerable meaning from the
cantillation marks preserved in the Masoretic text. No matter to what degree one assents or demurs from
these findings10, what is indisputable is that the text of the Hebrew Bible as it has stood for centuries is
intended not to be read but to be sung. This is how the scriptural text was received by congregations in
synagogues, churches and monasteries for centuries, and despite the upheavals and interruptions
occasioned by the Reformation, remains how it is heard in liturgical context in many worshipping
communities today.

There is reason to guess music played a compositional role in the writing and redaction of the Biblical
text as well as in its intended reception. Christensen’s work, in particular, suggests that the musical
substructure of the Bible goes back to the very origin of the alphabet. Josephus gives the total number of
books in the Tanakh as 22:

For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one
another, as the Greeks have, but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times;
which are justly believed to be divine.11

These 22 books are the same as the 39 as canonically numbered by Christians. St. Hilary of Poitiers gives
the list, and notes the coincidence with number of letters in the Hebrew alef-bet:

The law of the Old Testament is reckoned in twenty-two books, that they might fit the number of Hebrew
letters. They are counted according to the tradition of the ancient fathers, so that those of Moses are five
books; the sixth of Joshua; the seventh of Judges and Ruth; the eighth of the first and second of Kings; the
tenth of the two books called the Chronicles; the eleventh of Ezra, (wherein Nehemiah was comprehended:)
the book of Psalms made the twelfth; the Proverbs of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, made
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth; the twelve prophets made the sixteenth; then Isaiah, and Jeremy,
together with his Lamentations and his Epistle, Daniel, and Ezekiel, and Job, and Esther, made up the full
number of twenty-two books.12

Note that the books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles are counted singly (not broken up into 1 and 2, as
in the LXX); the twelve prophets are counted as a single scroll, or “book;” and Judges and Ruth are
combined, as are Jeremiah and Lamentations. (The conflations of Judges with Ruth and Jeremiah with
Lamentations were abandoned in later centuries; the modern Tanakh lists 24 books, not 22). Numerous
writers both Jewish and Christian attest to the total of the Hebrew books being 22, and Origen among
others explicitly links this with the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet:

10
See especially Duane Christensen, Explosion of the Canon, and The Unity of the Bible; Casper Labuschagne, Numerical
Secrets of the Bible; Suzanne Haïk-Vantoura, The Music of the Bible Revealed. David Z. Crookes’ exhaustive work on gematria
is forthcoming. John Wheeler’s work is available online at http://www.rakkav.com

11
Josephus, Contra Apion, I 6

12
Hilary, Expositions of the Psalms 15
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Not without reason, the canonical books are twenty-two according to the Hebrew tradition, the same in
number as the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. For as the twenty-two letters may be regarded as an
introduction to the wisdom and the Divine doctrines given to men in those characters, so the twenty-two
inspired books are an alphabet of the wisdom of God and an introduction to the knowledge of realities.13

Note how the second chart above, listing the tones in spiral fifths order, displays internal symmetry.
Similar structural order is found by Christensen, Labuschagne, and others in their analyses of Biblical
texts; it is precisely the centered chiasmus structuring typical of much ancient literature but above all of
Hebrew scripture, and whose name derives from the Greek letter X, chi, the letter in the musical geometry
of the Timaeus cosmology.

The Sefer Yetzirach 14 divides the Hebrew alef-bet into three groups of letters: three “mothers,” seven
“double” letters, and twelve “elemental” or “single” letters. These letters, together with their respective
gematria values, are listed below, together with their position in the alef-bet (from 1 to 22) and their
traditional value in the most common system of gematria. I list first the serial value (1-22) and next the
gematria value from 1 to 400:

This division of the alphabet is phonetic; the Elementals each have a single sound to which they
correspond; the Doubles have two (although in some cases one has passed out of use). The Mothers stand
as the types for the degree of intensity of sound involved in any pronunciation at all: mem is a “mute”,
(made with a closed mouth); shin with a sharp hissing “shh;” alef is semi-voiced, “mediating” between
them. In the Sefer Yetzirach, this tripartite scheme acquires overtly astrological connotations, among
others; the twelve Elementals are seen as corresponding to the Zodiac, the seven Doubles to the classical
planets; the three Mothers are seasons: Mem is winter, Shin summer, and Alef the “transitional” seasons
of Spring and Fall. However, Howard Schatz has suggested that there is also a musicological sense to the
13
Origen, Commentary on Psalm 1; c.f the Philocalia of Origen, ch 3; compare also Eusebius, Church History VI 25

14
The Sepher Yetzirach or “Book of Creation” is a Kabbalistic commentary on the Hebrew Alef-Bet; it has been dated very
widely, some versions (there are four) as late as the tenth century, or as early (in at least for some content) to the Babylonian
exile. See Aryeh Kaplan’s very good popular edition, Sefer Yetzirah, Book of Creation. Some support for the very old dating has
been found in Simo Parpola’s controversial thesis that the Kabbalistic Tree of Life motif and its numerological and astrological
associations may be traced to Assyrian, Babylonian and Sumerian theology, which included artistic representations of cosmic
trees and numerical values for its gods. See Parpola, "The Assyrian Tree of Life: Tracing the Origins of Jewish Monotheism and
Greek Philosophy", Journal of Near Eastern Studies July 1993.
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Sefer Yetzirach, and with this in mind I suggest that the three divisions of letters can be clearly correlated
with three different arrangements of the scale. It is of course well-established that the seven notes of Do,
Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Ti—a seven-note scale not ubiquitous, but very widespread—has in tradition a
close correspondence with the seven classical planets; similarly, the twelve-note “full” scale, with all
semitones filled in, is also (and equally frequently) held to correlate with the twelve months or the twelve
zodiac signs. Thus it does not strain credulity to consider the “double” and “elemental” letters as
respectively the 7- and 12-note scales, as they are already freighted with these astrological associations.

But what, musically, are the three “mothers”? Here we must consider the respective locations of the
letters in the sequence of the alef-bet. Positionally, alef is the first, mem the thirteenth, and shin the
penultimate letter. It is sometimes incorrectly asserted that mem is the middle letter, a curious claim as it
is easily seen to be misleading. It is not difficult to ascertain the arithmetic differences between mem and
alef (13-1=12) and between shin and mem (22-13=8). These differences make a ratio, 12:8, which
reduces to a ratio of 3:2. Mem is two-thirds of the way between alef and shin.

This ratio is of course that of the perfect fifth. And a glance at the table above will show that this ratio
does correspond to the midpoint, on the circle. This is because the ratio 3:2 is 1½, and on the circle, the 1
is equivalent to a complete revolution of the circle, thus as either 360 or 0 degrees. Thus it simply drops
out of our consideration; it can be added or subtracted indifferently. This leaves us here with 1/2, or 180°;
halfway around the circle.

This position on our circle of 22 notes is the ratio 3:2, the proportion of the perfect fifth. As we have seen,
this single ratio is sufficient to generate the entire musical scale. It generates, for instance, from a root of
D, the fifth above (A) and the fourth below (G). This gives a span from G to A, already a whole step more
than an octave. It would be easy to sound superlative in attempting to drive home the significance of this
interval. The notes generated by it lie at the root of all music, from Gregorian chant to Greensleeves to
“Louie, Louie.” This is in part because of the fact that these tones, and no others (as the chart shows)
remainstable; they do not need “better” approximations. As the second chart shows, they stand at the
“center” of the musical tuning, generative of everything that follows. I cannot of course prove that the
“three Mothers” are (or “really mean”) G, D, and A (or any three notes in such relationship); and it is
important to understand that no one-to-one correspondence is being suggested between letters and notes.
The authors of the traditions behind the Sefer Yetzirach would not have thought this way, as though their
letters “really” were notes, or numbers; they were all of these and more. Throughout this essay, I have
used the letters of the Latin alphabet for the notes of the scale, without controversy; a convention that has
its basis in the properly “elemental” nature of the letters. The tremendous significance attached to the
three “Mothers” by kabbalists—a significance that eclipses in some ways even that of the tetragrammaton
—testifies to the originary power associated with these three letters. Moreover, the rationale I have
presented, the “equivalence” between 2/3 and 1/2 is the only expedient which makes sense of the
traditional claim that mem is “halfway” through the alef-bet.

These musical ruminations upon the alef-bet could be extended a very long while, but I will content
myself here with answering one objection which could be very strong: the ratio between alef, mem, and
shin holds because shin is the 21st letter; but the alef-bet has 22 letters, and so does the circle of 22 tones.
One could certainly construe this as a discrepancy. But it is just as easy to assert that it confirms the
rationale. For the 22nd note in question is the octave tone: the same as the root. There are 21 tones, and the

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22nd is the reiteration of the very first, an octave either above or below. The 22nd note is both the same and
different from the first.

I note that, if the Mothers, Doubles, and Elementals are each reckonings of the scale, they must be
separate reckonings; because otherwise one would add only four (not seven) notes to the triad G-D-A,
and five (not twelve) notes to the seven-note scale; and come up with twelve, not twenty-two. Curiously,
this tripartite system too can find some support in the Sefer Yetzirach, which lays out a cosmology in
which the universe is comprised of three interpenetrating parts: the world (space), the year (time), and
man. Each of these has, as it were, a “circular” structure; they may be thought of as three octaves, linked
by the fact that the top of one is the bottom of another. (The circularity of the world and the year are, I
hope, self-evident; for that of the human being, think for instance of the Vitruvian man). One can count
these octaves as three iterations of the do-re-mi scale, with the final do. This gives (3 x 7)+1 = 22 notes.
These three octaves are in essence found in numerous notational and tuning systems worldwide, for the
simple reason that three octaves is the approximate range of the human voice. To return to our starting
place, the 22 shrutis can figure in any of three registers, “mandra,” “madhya” and “tara”—low, medium,
and high, respectively.

It seems quite feasible that this understanding hangs in the background of St. Jerome’s remark:

As, then, there are twenty-two elementary characters by means of which we write in Hebrew all we say,
and the compass of the human voice is contained within their limits, so we reckon twenty-two books, by
which, as by the alphabet of the doctrine of God, a righteous man is instructed in tender infancy, and, as it
were, while still at the breast.15

There is of course no question of direct influence between Vedic and Biblical (or later Hebrew) tradition,
though in his edition of the Sepher Yetzirach, Aryeh Kaplan noted numerous parallels. But both traditions
are very ancient, and it has been a part of my intent to raise the speculative possibility that their common
background is still discernible, and—more to the point—still pertinent.

With this latter point we move from scholarship to philosophy proper. The scriptural writings in Hindu,
Jewish and Christian contexts (and others not explicitly considered here, e.g. Buddhist and Muslim) are
intended to be sung, not merely read; to be heard as music, not merely as reporting or argument; and may
well be structured along principles derived as much from music as from historical chronicle or theological
dogmatizing. To assert this clearly raises the possibility that the whole issue of revelation being at odds
with the rational, the famous “tension between faith and reason” or the “warfare between science and
religion,” has been misstated. But to claim this would be, potentially, to insist upon the rights of another
faculty than the discursive intellect. That this obviously has implications for the question of the “status”
of such “rationally meaningless” assertions as Meillassoux calls into question, is only one measure of the
significance of such seemingly abstruse questions as the role of tuning theory for philosophy. It does not
render these objections null; but it insists that they be taken into the continuing dialogue on the question
quid sit deus, rather than foreclosing that conversation with a bored yawn, an embarrassed cough, an
angry thump on the table, or a derisive roll of the eyes. Such responses are all to frequent. But they are
unbecoming of philosophers.

15
Jerome, Preface to Kings & Samuel. (My emphasis).
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 DRAFT ONLY

If the whole cosmos is a musical harmony, composed and created by God, and if on the other hand the
human being is a microcosm since he is also the image of him who built the cosmos, then what the Spirit
shows us in the microcosm is also found in the microcosm.16

16
St. Gregory of Nyssa, Explanations of the Titles of the Psalms Psalm I, 3

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Celestial Music17

Louise Gluck

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.

Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God,
she thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth, she's unusually competent.
Brave, too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by weakness, by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality.
But timid, also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
according to nature. For my sake, she intervened,
brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains

my aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who buries her head in the pillow
so as not to see, the child who tells herself
that light causes sadness—
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
to wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person—

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking

on the same road, except it's winter now;
she's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
like brides leaping to a great height—
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth—

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
from time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're both trying to explain, the fact
that we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, the composition
fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering—
it's this stillness that we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.

17
From Louise Gluck, Ararat
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