CULT OF PYTHAGORAS | Math's Dark Little Secret

[Music] now if you're anything like me or most people for that matter you hated math class obviously I'm more of a history person but then I stumbled across Pythagoras as coal you know the guy whose theorem was treated like a holy symbol by the math teachers well turns out it actually was worshipped like a holy symbol stick with me because it gets pretty wild from worshipping numbers to sacrifices and so forth this may be one of the only interesting math related stories so with that let's delve into what they didn't tell you in math class you may or may not have heard of Pythagoras but he more than likely heard of and used his theorem the Pythagorean theorem to be exact you know the one that finds the third side of a triangle well this theorem has been so important throughout history that it's still used today and still bears the name of its founder but this isn't a math lesson or even a history lesson on math we don't care about that stuff now this guy Pythagoras was not your standard mathematician slash philosopher while his name may be up there with the likes of Socrates Plato and Aristotle Pythagoras he had some let's say interesting ideas that set him apart from the other brilliant minds of the ancient Greek world Pythagoras has worked as one of the earliest philosophers inspired many of the world's greatest minds including the Greek ones I just mentioned his impact has been far-reaching and long-lasting but it's the smaller obscure stuff that we're going to talk about now being that he lived an incredibly long time ago and that much of his life and work wasn't recorded until many years after his death much of what we know is ambiguous and shrouded in a bit of legend so take that however you will Pythagoras was born sometime around 570 BC on the Greek island of Samos in his early life he left Greece and would spent over 30 years studying in egypt and babylon pythagoras garnered acclaim for his discovery of the pythagorean theorem and is said to have discovered that music is made up of numbers when broken down for discovery such as these Pythagoras gained much influence he was seen as immensely innovative for his time and with his large support he would begin to establish his first community a community that would grow into a cult was some rather disturbing practices Pythagorean ism is the lifestyle and ideology preached a practiced in these communes now Pythagorean ISM is a pretty broad term and an entire school of philosophy that has been altered throughout history up until the modern times and though this cult lifestyle may fall into part of that the school is involved throughout the centuries becoming more mild and less outlandish it's more in its early days during Pythagoras this time that will focus on so what were these communes and what was this lifestyle well to answer that first let's discuss how you would join in the first place it wasn't as simple as just signing up as in this first you would have to give her over all your property and then had to agree to a five-year trial period of complete silence you would not be allowed to talk at any of the gatherings and had to listen in complete silence the Pythagoras speech as soon as shielded by linen screen away from the view of those not yet allowed in the inner circle of course everything Pythagoras said was not allowed to be repeated outside the meetings as it was treated with utmost secrecy so if you were unable to make it through the trial period of five years you would be dead to the community although you may have gotten twice the return on the value of your property you gave up which if true is a nice consolation prize however if you were able to adorn the five years of silence and not disobey any rules you would be welcomed into the inner circle and actually get to see Pythagoras himself here you would be a trusted with the secrets of Pythagoras his work and advanced mathematical and do now a full-fledged member of one of the most powerful and influential political groups of the time okay so you gained entry into the inner circle great but what exactly does this all mean well we'll get to that but first we need to have some more rules hammer down it wouldn't be a proper call without them a lot of the rules of the community were over on dietary restrictions a mainly vegetarian diet was to be expected later versions of the script practiced strict vegetarianism but in its earliest form you could eat the meat of animals that were to be sacrificed other rules include that you weren't allowed to break bread at the table make sure to always keep salt on the table too don't eat fish that's considered sacred don't eat food that's fall on the floor no white roosters and do not even think about eating fava beans okay those are all odd ly specific but for what it's worth they did have some sort of symbolic meaning bread was seen as a symbol of friendship so that's why you couldn't break it salt a symbol of what is just and the eating of sacrificed meat was deemed okay although Pythagoras had a rule to never kill them it means yeah if you see the hypocrisy in that you're not alone perhaps as a member the works that you could do is eat fava beans or destroy or harm them it's best just to refrain from coming into any contact whatsoever with them because beans according to Pythagoras were believed to take away one soul and were in fact believed to contain the souls of ancestors old souls reincarnated into a crop consuming beans was seen as the same as consuming dead relatives this is one of the rules Pythagoras felt strongest about and we will be coming back to it later members were also expected to practice abstinence and then something tells me that people in a math call it didn't have much abstain from anyway anytime someone lost bodily fluids it was seen as losing part of one's soul at the very least members were expected to abstain during the summer and it could have to winter to give in to their desires sticking with the contradictory theme members were also encouraged to have children to carry on their legacy and more importantly continue worship okay now that you know your life is the follower of Pythagoras while little joy and if you've not been run off yet or still with me now you will get to find out what it is you will be practicing and mainly worshiping and yes there is gonna be a lot of worshipping not just the traditional Greek gods mind you though those are still to be worshipped though here you have an entire new pantheon to sacrifice your ox and goats and thanks to but never lambs of course never lamps you see traditional Greeks may worship Aphrodite for her beauty but let me present to you a God even more beautiful even more perfect 10 yes 10 that number 10 it was seen as the greatest those sacred all the numbers here's a quick prayer you can expect to hear Oh bless us divine number thou who generated the gods and men for the divine number begins with the profound pure unity until it comes to the holy 4 and then it begets the mother of all the all comprising all bounding the firstborn that never swerving that never tiring holy 10 key holder of all or something like that so if you're gonna go about worshiping numbers 10 makes sense is the most sacred everything's based on tents you have 10 fingers toes okay but the pythagoreans had a deeper meaning behind it it was the highest ordered number and contained the course for the entire universe it was the foundation of which all things were founded on this is seen in the holy symbol that tetrax was triangle with ten points symbolized in the space within the universe yeah I don't really see it either well 10 may be the pinnacle of numbers it wasn't the only number of where the abortion we have a few other numbers to add to the Pantheon nothing symbolizes justice more than number 8 and what could be a wiser than the number 7 but let's not forget about the mighty number 1 both even and odd the undividable the cosmic calm that gave way to the chaos of the universe generating all numbers and thus the universe in which is derived from the numbers all right let's move on as you can tell there's a lot of worshipping to do ritual sacrifices and rules to obey but what's this all for what are the beliefs had in this religious sect well there's quite a lot here and it's very philosophical and metaphysical so in order to simplify it I've broken the group's beliefs into three main parts friendship spirituality and this is really brushing over things but I think it provides a general understanding of what this community is all about friendship one of the most sacred ideas was the importance of friendship it's why you avoid breaking bread at the dinner table you don't want to break the bonds of friendship the brotherhood must remain strong unless there's an outsider then there are no friends of the pythagoreans spirituality congratulations you're immortal by the way well at least your soul is but you'll be constantly reincarnated into another body of either humans or animals this is why abstinence and staying away from beings is important you'll lose a bit of your very soul your essence also it's a more to harm other living beings unless they're sacrificed to the gods which is one of the most holy acts one can perform and finally knowledge the greatest thing one can achieve is furthering the group's understanding of the universe and being that the universe is made up of and derived from numbers and equations mathematics can be used to further break down at the cypher the universe this is why new mathematical theorems call for an ox sacrifice the gods must be praised for the blessing the world was there to buy knowledge as you can tell pythagorean society is a deeply religious one on that note let's go back to the gods for a minute so you have your traditional olympia gods and the newly found number gods but there's one more being worthy of worship and while not entirely a god you may as well worship him like one I am of course speaking of the man the myth the legendary mathematician Pythagoras himself Pythagoras was seen as a demigod quite literally the Sun of the Sun that being the god Apollo or maybe he was Apollo himself or and other stories he's the son of Hermes the messenger God the pig they don't hear you ask for what story you hear no matter which we choose though his divineness was next level he was so in touch with other means he contained all sorts of animals such as bears with a simple pet or the sheer power of his voice for you dollars you could just take a glance at his golden thigh proving his divinity or so the legend say needless to say his followers thought fairly highly of him and he did so as well Pythagoras didn't just lead a fascinating life he led fascinating lives via a gift from his father Hermes he mastered the whole reincarnation thing he could retain his memories from his previous lives he could tell you many great stories such as the time he and his buddy Achilles fought the Trojans for all his lifetimes he had now reached his greatest form yet where he achieved two unreached levels of knowledge there is numerous numerical discoveries all this was taking it very seriously mind you and one tale in particular really stands out due to its just sheared lucre see you may have heard of a rational numbers numbers they can't be written in fraction form and go on forever never ending numbers basically such as the square root of 2 there are the numbers on the calculator with like 15 6s to just keep going well they were a very important mathematical discover in their own right and Pythagoras apparently wouldn't stand for it suppose it founder of irrational numbers emphasis who was originally a disciple of Pythagoras and contradicted Pythagoras his teachings that numbers were hold so how do two mathematicians resolve this problem Pythagoras drowns him he threw him off a boat and held his head underwater okay so this is just the legend and it's probably not true but what may be true is that the factor SN is called used this tail as a warning against those who defied their teachings to be clear most Greeks thought this whole common thing with cult Gaia their ancient number worshipping was extremely odd they were always seen as crazy by most but were able to go about their rituals without much protest pythagoras himself is said to have lived to be around the age seventy five which is pretty good for ancient times it's unclear how he met his end and there are several different versions all of which undoubtedly have a bit of myth tied to him but I'll just tell the most popular story that five years of silence while watching Pythagoras speak through a curtain was painstakingly long and this poor guy just wanted to see his leaders face so he did what anyone would do he burned down pythagoras his house pythagoras didn't manage to escape but he was confronted by his old nemesis or his old friends the fava beans a whole field of them rather than run through the field of a nietzsche beans and crushed them in the process Pythagoras remained still he gave his life for the beans as the man slowed us through truly aerobic death obviously a lot of this stuff must be taken with a very just crane of soul especially when it comes to Pythagoras is life but regardless it's an interesting topic and maybe wanna make you think a little differently about those boring math teachers you have no idea what they really may be up to and they might just have the secrets to the universe and there you have it I hope you enjoyed the video if you did I'd really appreciate it if you could like share and subscribe so we can grow this channel together let me know in the comments what you guys found strangest about this cold or any other creepy cults you may know about thanks for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: And My Quill

Views: 166,267

Keywords: cult of Pythagoras, Pythagoras, cult, god is a number, math's dark little secret, math history, ancient cult, Ancient Greece, ancient history, philosophy, pythagorean, Pythagoreanism, and my quill, quill, ancient philosophy, ancient religion, pythagoreans, philosophers, greek, number gods

Id: sk-UBLJTBHw

Length: 14min 29sec (869 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 27 2020