Tardemah: The Biblical Key to Spirituality

Abstract

If you think that religion and mathematics have nothing to do with each other... think again! “From the dawn of history, sages have intertwined numbers with magic to create the Gods, demons, and the world views needed by the rest of us to make existence seem comprehensible” (Cole, 1987). The Kabbalistic numerology of Jewish mysticism is said to reveal the deep, hidden meaning of Scripture, known in Hebrew as Razah D’Oraytah (“Secret of Knowledge,” “Secret of the Torah,” or “Secret of the 22 Foundation Letters”). The author is convinced that this great Kabbalistic secret has been hidden in plain sight within the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation), the only text attributed to the prophet Abraham by many within the Ultra-Orthodox and Chasidic rabbinical community. Two noted Jewish scholars, Leo Baeck (1873-1956) and Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), were both convinced that this allegedly Abrahamic text could only be understood in terms of the ancient Greek “Pythagorean” mathematical tradition better known as the Music of the Spheres. Unfortunately, neither of these two Jewish scholars was sufficiently schooled in the Pythagorean mathematics necessary to decipher this “Secret of Knowledge.”
The “Pythagoreans” are known to have integrated mathematics and music as universal disciplines that define the fundamental nature of reality, existence, and being. The Music of the Spheres sought to explain the macrocosm of the cosmos as a reflection of the microcosm of man's soul. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the Music of the Spheres evolved into an educational system known as the Seven Liberal Arts. These seven disciplines include the Quadrivium’s four mathematical disciplines: arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, and the Trivium’s three language disciplines: rhetoric, dialectic, and discourse. Learning the Quadrivium
required a student to master each of the four mathematical disciplines separately and then integrate them into a holistic view of reality that unlocked the metaphysical foundation of both religion and philosophy. In summary, the Quadrivium integrates arithmetic, harmonics, geometry, and astronomy into a mathematical framework that describes both the source and diversity of creation. A “classically trained” polymath would also have mastered the Trivium’s three language disciplines to communicate the Quadrivium’s complexities to others. Unfortunately, this Kabbalistic Secret of Knowledge was lost in 586 BCE when the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, kidnapped and murdered the last High Priest of Solomon’s Temple who knew this great secret. Deciphering
Abraham’s Book of Creation reveals the heart of his teachings as “231 Gates of Wisdom,” a mathematical table that seamlessly integrated the four disciplines of the Quadrivium (see Figure 12). If this mathematics had never been lost, there would likely have been many more polymaths benefiting from these Abrahamic/Pythagorean teachings than Galileo, Da Vinci, and Isaac Newton. Integrating the Quadrivium’s disciplines provides the underlying mathematical model that shapes and structures the metaphysics of history’s great religious and philosophical texts. Unlike the Seven Liberal Arts, our modern educational system educates subject-matter
experts capable of earning a living wage, but from the perspective of a “classical education,” these students would be considered narrow-minded.
The great rabbi, philosopher, and physician, Maimonides (1135 - 1205 CE), was the most famous Jewish scholar to admit that he did not understand how to apply the so-called “Pythagorean” Music of the Spheres to Judaism’s Secrets of the Law. While working toward a Bachelor of Science degree in Music Composition during the 1970’s, the author wrote a paper about the Early Middle Ages scholar and polymath, Boethius. Boethius was responsible for teaching the early church fathers about Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Plato. In response to my paper, the Music Department created a graduate honors seminar that would enable me to study independently with the school’s most noted “Pythagorean,” Dr. Ernest McClain. McClain’s work focused on establishing the Music of the Spheres as the underlying mathematical framework that shaped the metaphysics of Plato’s Dialogues. However, McClain also speculated that “Pythagoreanism” provided the underlying mathematical framework for many other ancient “wisdom texts,” including the Rig Veda, Hinduism’s oldest religious text, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and even the Hebrew Bible. Raised in the Conservative Jewish tradition, the author was intrigued by the universality of Dr. McClain’s speculation and wondered whether it could be confirmed by the Hebrew Bible itself. The author then spent more than a year auditing courses at a Chasidic Yeshiva, studying the Torah, the Talmud, and an 18th-century Kabbalistic text, Likutei Amarim Tanya, written by Schneer Zalman of Liadi, the founder of the Lubavitch Chasidic sect. The Tanya describes the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation) as the only text attributed to the prophet Abraham. After many years spent deciphering the Book of Creation’s mathematical riddles, the author is confident that he has been able to successfully apply the “Pythagorean” Music of the Spheres to Judaism’s Secrets of the Law. This article will demonstrate how the Book of Creation provides the underlying mathematical framework for modeling Biblical allegory and symbolism.