Date:
Feb 01 2000 02:01:10 EST
From:
Karl Starkweather
Subject:
Re: Numerological Speculation
jeremy dixon wrote:
> Enneagram & Octave Discussion List - http://www.listbot.com/archive/octave
>
> A couple of quick comments/questions....
>
> " but please notice that the Golden Section merely describes the
> external form of the octave. In short, there is NOTHING ESOTERIC about the
> it.
> It reveals nothing about the inner workings of the octave except to serve as
> evidence of the type of triad on which the process was based (growth being
> one
> of the six basic triads)."
>
> And the other five you would say are...? One tradition I've encountered
> would associate "growth" with the "312" triad (ie
> Neutralizing-Positive-Negative). To say that I understand what the hell this
> may mean would be an exaggeration.....
>
Well, I'd planned to put together a detailed post outlining some discoveries of
my own regarding the six triads, (aka "activities" or "processes") which are
actually very important keys to approaching any octave, but for now I will just
say these are the triads as given by Collin:
123 - Growth, Multiplication
132 - Destruction, Elimination
213 - Refinement, Digestion
312 - Corruption, Disease
231 - Invention, Healing
321 - Regeneration
..to give a sense of what I'm talking about, the Ray of Creation is an octave of
Growth. It follows the triad [123] because it begins with the active force, in
this case the Will of the Absolute.
>
> "It is interesting to note that when Kepler was establishing relations
> between the musical scale and the orbits of the planets (demonstrating by
> implication that the solar system was the result of a living, creative
> process),
> he went out of his way to stress that none of the intervals could be arrived
> at
> through a division by seven, since such a division could not be constructed
> geometrically and the heptagon appears in none of the platonic solids on
> which
> his musical ratios were based (whereas the Golden Section appears in the
> pentagon, which forms the dodecahedron, from which all five of the platonic
> solids can be derived). Yet it is this very incommensurable division by
> seven
> upon which the Enneagram is based. This simple reality should tell us
> something
> about what the Enneagram addresses - it is hidden, and therefore esoteric."
>
> Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I can't help suspecting that this line of
> argument is based on the misconception that the seven divisions are _equal_,
> which is what we normally mean by "division by seven". But they're not, its
> just a convention to draw them so. Or maybe I've misunderstood yr point?
>
Let me explain a little further. You are, of course, quite correct about the
divisions not being equal. The classical musical scale was constructed by way
of ratios between whole numbers which fell between 1 (the "Tonic") and 2 (the
"Octave"). For instance the Perfect Fifth (Sol) was 3:2 (or 1.5). What this
meant was that you could take a violin string, wrap it around a circle,
construct a triangle within that circle, then make a mark at the second point of
the triangle (dividing it into 2/3) and use that mark as a reference to play the
note G (assuming that the full length of the string is tuned to C). Other
ratios used were 5:4 (Major Third -Mi) 4:3 (Perfect Fourth - La) and 5:3 (Major
Sixth - La). Keplers point was that these could all be arrived at through
triangles, squares, and pentagons, which can all be constructed with a compass
and straightedge (whereas a heptagon cannot). The division by seven produces an
irrational repeating decimal .142857... which describes the heart of the
Enneagram. Five-fold symmetry appears in nature frequently because it results
from the Golden Section, and is the result of growth. I know of no natural
phenomena however that exhibits seven-fold symmetry.
>
> About the "esoteric" and the "exoteric" generally...I am sceptical. I
> suspect the "esoteric" is just a word for what I don't know or can't do.
> Which is a lot of things. G often suggested this...."There is no difference
> between magical [ie "esoteric"] powers and ordinary powers....Every
> competent businessman can foresee the future, otherwise he'd go broke!"
>
First off, I wouldn't equate "magical" with "esoteric", that's another issue
altogether.
"Esoteric" means hidden, and to me that implies more than just something I
don't know...It's something I can't see, because it represents knowledge that is
on a different scale than ordinary knowledge. The Golden Section appears to be
esoteric because it is out of sync with most contemporary scientific theories,
and reveals a truth we don't hear from the establishment. However, any grade
school student can understand and apply it with a little training. The
enneagram is a different story. Knowing about it's mechanics is not enough
because understanding requires a different level of being. (and conversely the
right effort to understand it will change one's being)
Date:
Feb 02 2000 05:38:13 EST
From:
Karl Starkweather
Subject:
Re: Numerological Speculation
jeremy dixon wrote:
> Enneagram & Octave Discussion List - http://www.listbot.com/archive/octave
>
> karl wrote (inter alia):
>
>
> 123 - Growth, Multiplication
> 132 - Destruction, Elimination
> 213 - Refinement, Digestion
> 312 - Corruption, Disease
> 231 - Invention, Healing
> 321 - Regeneration"
>
> Thanks. I am ignorant, pretty much, of the Collin tradition. This is as good
> an opportunity as any to say publicly that I regret being abusive about
> Collin and all his works in a few previous posts...
>
I seem to recall from sifting through the archives that you were responding to a
person apparently in that lineage who started out fairly abusive himself. I
appreciate your candor.
>
> So, to test my understanding here, the Food Diagram would represent a 213
> octave, or actually several 213 octaves?
>
Quite right, it begins with the inert matter of solid food (passive) which is
then met by digestive enzymes (active) to produce the refined nutrient liquid
known as chyme (neutralizing), which then in turn becomes passive and is acted
upon by bile and other active secretions from the liver, producing a still more
refined solution which can be directly absorbed into the blood system. And so
the process continues up the scale. I would still call it one octave of
digestion though. The supporting octaves of Air and Impressions may also work
on the basis of a (213) triad, but I don't know, and at any rate they never
reach completion
Date:
Feb 03 2000 20:17:36 EST
From:
"rosewood"
Subject:
Re: .Nine star Ki-personality typing
Hi Jeremy,
Thank you for pointing out my misunderstanding of the Fibonacci Progression.
It sounds interesting and I will check out the site you mentioned. Perhaps I
was confusing reduction with "theosophical addition" (?). As to the
possibility that the enneagram can also be viewed as having a central number
(nine in the middle) I like it. I have seen some diagrams where the
enneagram had nine about "chest high" so to speak at the crossing of inner
lines 2-8 and 7-1. I believe it was in the literature for one of the 4th way
schools that associates personality and body type with planets. Nine star ki
also can associate numbers with planets. The personality side of nine star
ki, in my opinion is not nearly as well developed as the enneagram
personality work. They both are perhaps "resurrections" of an older
understanding that need to be modified to modern man's psyche. Also the
language in direct translation can be a turn off to our western clinical
view of life. Basically the nine numbers are an enlargement of the
5-transformation theory and were given names and symbols that somewhat
relate to everyday things we see and know that surround us. They are not
meant to be exact representations but only allusions to a type of energy or
change that occurs in nature. The five tranformations are called
water(dormancy,liquid,winter,cold,kidneys, the number 1 in nine star, the
direction north,midnight) :fire( active,hot,noon,summer,up energy,south,
heart,the number nine: metal(hard,condensing energy,fall, the numbers 6 and
seven in the magic square,lungs,directions west,and northwest): wood
energy(up energy),early morning,spring,liver,east and southeast, the numbers
3 and 4 in the magic square). Earth( the numbers 5 in the center, 2 in the
southwest and 8 in the northeast, stomach, gathering energy(2), balancing
energy(5), internal seed expansion (8). If you plot these numbers in the
magic square and trace them 1-9, you get an internal line sequence that is
described as the unseen progression of forces(a similar idea as the internal
lines of the enneagram). If you follow them around the outside, you get a
progression in time of events,ie:the seasons, time of day, growth of plant
life,etc, just like the enneagram. As to the personality traits of each
number, they can be read about in a thin book called Nine Star Ki by Michio
Kushi. One can guess a bit by the energies they represent. If anyone has a
further interest, you may contact me directly and I will try to help you.
Thanks for your question.
-Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: jeremy dixon
To: octave@listbot.com
Date: Sunday, January 30, 2000 7:39 PM
Subject: Re: .(Re: Fibonacci Progression): Nine Star Ki, Enneagram-
Reduction
>Enneagram & Octave Discussion List - http://www.listbot.com/archive/octave
>
>rosewood wrote:
>
>"There are also 9 personality types associated with each number similar to,
>but different from, the enneagram system of personalities."
>
>What, briefly, are these types of the Nine Star Ki?
>
>
>"As of yet I have found little in common with the Enneagam system which has
>no center number."
>
>Well, I think (even leaving aside my interest in the Compass Glyph!) that
>you can treat 9 as something like the "central" number in the enneagram. It
>is the "do" remember....and for those who dig quoting scripture I believe G
>was quoted by Ouspensky as saying that the 9 or zero point in a sense
>represented the whole circle. The numbers of the enneagram pair off as two
>rows of numbers, each pair adding to nine, excpet for nine itself...and
>other stuff like that...(If one doesn't leave aside the Compass Glyph then
a
>whole lot more can be said, but obviously there is no point pursuing that
>right now!)
>
>"The Fibonacci Progression comes into play when translating the
>correct ninestar year from our 10 based calendar. The Fibonacci Progession
>is very old and simply may be referred to as "reduction" as it is a system
>of translating the decimal(ten) based system into nine."
>
>Just a point of semantics, the Fibonacci Progression does not in itself
have
>anything to do with reduction. The FB is the series of numbers:
>1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144.......
>which has some properties very interesting to mathematicians, an interest
>apparently shared by God as She used the FB in making the world.
>
>If one reduces the FB then one gets the repeating series of digits I called
>the Fibonacci Pattern.
>
>In a sense the decimal system is based on nine! Zero is merely a
>placeholder, not a number.
>
>I'll get back to this....but am aching to hear more about the Nine Star Ki!
>
>-Jeremy
>
>
>Our decimal system
>can just keep rolling up to infinity. In the nine based system there are
>only nine single digit numbers, so our infintely expanding calendar must be
>reduced to a single digit (1-9). The enneagram system "sort-of" alludes to
>this by calling the whole circle ten(or zero). Until I understand more, in
>my opinion, the nine-star system attemptes to explain the universe(s) flow
>of energy(laws) from the "ground up" so to speak, while the Enneagram
>attempts to explain the same from the "top down" so to speak. It "inner
>calms" me for the moment to see one as the inside of a helping hand, the
>other as the back of the same hand. Similar purpose, but not exactly the
>same. Perhaps each teaching will attract different essences or
personalities
>to itself. Do you picture yourself on the Earth looking up to the heavens,
>or rather in the heavens looking down upon the Earth?
>In any case, if we are hungry, we eat.
>-Bruce
>
> >For an extensive page on the Fibonacci Progression (and the Golden
Ratio),
> >see:
> >
> >http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fib.html
> >
> >This page is not "esoteric" but is written apparently for children so is
> >just about simple enough for me to mostly follow. Lots of animations and
> >stuff, both the striking mathematical properties of the Fibonacci
> >Progression, or some of them, and its widespread appearance in the
natural
> >world.
> >
> >Finding the links between the enneagram and Fibonacci will tell us a lot.
> >(Extensive links _must_ exist if the claims of Gurdjieff regarding the
> >enneagram are even halfway true).
> >
> >Anyway, I'd be glad to hear how other people go with this. As I noted in
>the
> >preivious post if one reduces the Fibonacci progression (as in 13
>"reduces"
> >to 1+3=4) then one gets a repeating sequence of 24 characters, (falling
>into
> >two obvious halves of 12 characters each).
> >If one draws this repeating sequence on the Compass (or "Celtic") Glyph
of
> >the enneagram then one finds a certain figure that I will leave people to
> >discover for themselves.
> >
> >I expect further work to be fruitful, but meanwhile this is the only
clear
> >connection between the Fibonacci numbers and the enneagram that I know
of.
> >This has confirmed the importance of the Compass Glyph in my eyes, and
>have
> >for the first time realized a major significance of the sequence of the
> >Inner Hexagon around the rim of the Compass Glyph,ie :
> >1,2,4,8,7,5,1,2....
> >Of course, the sequence is the reduced form of the powers of 2,the
>ascending
> >octaves, ie:
> >1,2,4,8,16 (1+6=7),32 [3+2=5],64[6+4=10,1+0=1],128,256,512 etc.
> >
> >People may recall that the Compass Glyph looks like so:
> >
> >
> > 1
> > 5 2
> > 6 9 3
> > 7 4
> > 8
> >
> >
> >The inner hexagram numbers are those not divisible by three.
> >Gurdjieff regarded the decimal system as being non-arbitrary...indeed one
> >might say in a sense that the decimal system "is" the enneagram. This
side
> >of Gurdjieff's teachings always fascinated me. He recommended that we
look
> >to popular sayings and idioms to find wisdom. Everytime we use our
>language
> >we are like children playing with gold-bearing stones. In much the same
>way,
> >we "work" the enneagram everytime we use the decimal system.
> >
> >Fibonacci himself, who lived in the 13th century, was a pioneer in
> >introducing the decimal "Hindu-Arabic" system to Europe.
> >
> >
> >
> >I'll get back to this, meanwhile some random thoughts....
> >
> >Looking at the numerals from the viewpoint of Theosophical Addition is
> >interesting.If we "reduce" the times tables we get, obviously, nine
> >sequences (remember that the sequence for 19 will be the same as for 1,
13
> >for 4, etc). All the sequences generate all nine numbers except for the 3
> >and 6 sequences (which only include 3, 6 and 9) and the 9 sequnce which
>only
> >inludes itself.
> >
> >So the Inner Hexagram numbers are distinguished form the Inner Triad in
>this
> >way, as well as being distinguished by the Inner Hexagagram being the
> >repeating decimal for 1/7. As well the Inner Hexagram numbers are the
> >reduced form of the _powers of two_, ie the ascending octave; and the
> >Compass Glyph gives shape to this property.
> >
> >Finally one obtains one of the Inner Hexagram numbers (ie *not* 3 6 or 9)
> >everytime you reduce a Prime Number. Is that interesting? I dunno, it
> >interested me.
> >
> >
> >Luv, Jeremy
> >
Date:
Feb 09 2000 12:39:11 EST
From:
"rosewood"
Subject:
Food Diagram
I also find this(see below) interesting. It has a practical value to me.I am
studying the food diagram presently and am enjoying my own formatory "ideas"
as well as others. I saw a footnote somewhere that described air as "help
for the moon" and impressions as "help for God". The air "shock" is
described as mechanical (taking blood and creating action?-which helps
transfer energy to the moon???). Impressions are meant for something
higher,I surmise, but it takes a "concious shock" to somehow activate. I am
guessing the moon and perhaps other systems do not need us or this higher
energy to evolve, but WE do, and perhaps the solar system and stars do. But
nature as we know it has no neccessity of us evolving further and so
supplies no more mechanical shocks for our development. What do you guess?
-Bruce
-----Original Message-----
From: jeremy dixon
To: octave@listbot.com
Date: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 7:41 PM
Subject: Re: Numerological Speculation
>Enneagram & Octave Discussion List - http://www.listbot.com/archive/octave
>
>
>I find this discussion of extraordinary interest and will pause somewhat to
>digest it before making any further independent comment of my own.
>
>[Like other posts in this thread the discussion is carried out using
>4th-way derived terms. For those unfamiliar but interested; these terms are
>partially explained in very early posts on this list and on 4th-way sites
on
>the web. With luck they are also to some extent self-explanatory in the
>present context]
>
>
>Karl wrote:
>
>>Can you say why it is Air, and not Impressions which make up the active
>>force in
>>digestion?
>
>To attempt a proper answer to this I'd have to hit the physiology texts,
>which will take time. However this does make intuitive sense to me, so
I'll
>try to explain why it makes intuitive sense.
>
>Air joins the evolving Food at the point of Food's entry into the
>bloodstream, until then it was in the alimentary canal, outside (in one
>sense) the "body proper".The answer to this question ,I think, lies in the
>nature of blood....and "in the blood is the life" as the bible puts it
>somewhere. The blood flow is organized around carrying oxygen.
>
>There is a mystery in Air. I remember still the powerful impression I once
>had of the atmosphere being something like the ocean, only thinner, and
>birds being like fish and trees seaweed and so on. Put like that it sounds
>very dry (so to speak!) and abstract....but that's the Formatory Apparatus
>in action. Experientially it was remarkable while it lasted. Afterwards I
>heard that D.H.Lawrence had written of the same experience, but I've never
>seen the passage. Associated with it was a strong awareness of how we are
>always sharing each others Air, a kind of perpetual communion.
>
>Sometimes I still deliberately evoke this experience as an exercise. It is,
>I imagine, part of the attraction of sailing that that craft gives one a
>heightened awareness of the Air.
>
>As to Impressions...there is a puzzling passage in In Search Of The
>Miraculous where it is remarked we can live for days without Food
(including
>water), minutes without Air but for effectively no time at all without
>Impressions. What sense does this make?
>
>The sense it made to me eventually is that Impressions is best understood
as
>electromagnetic radiation. While the text of ISOTM seems to treat it as
>information; this while not exactly untrue is a bit misleading (like so
much
>in ISOTM!). If we were to give hydrogen 48 a nickname in the same spirit as
>hydrogen 96 is nicknamed Fire then 48 should be nicknamed Light. It seems
>very clear to me that the light-sensitive neurotransmitter serotonin is (or
>partly is, or is associated with) the body's own hydrogen 48 that interacts
>with Impressions. So Gurdjieff was in contact with a source which knew
about
>serotonin and its light sensitive nature. Serotonin is of course produced
by
>the "Third Eye" pineal gland (although not exclusively)
>
>Anyway, Impressions. We are dependent on elctromagnetic radiation not just
>for light but for heat. Further, matter itself is at bottom just an
involved
>(!) form of electromagnetic radiation. This may help explain how it could
>be that Impressions might be described as the Neutralizing force in
>digestion. But to discuss this in more precise language I'll need time to
>chew over it.
>
>Another Refining or Digestion octave would be distilling wouldn't it? I'm
>very interested in distilling at the moment and will try to work out an
>Octave of Distilling which may shed more light.
>
>
>I wrote:
>>>I've encountered a tradition associating triads, apparently the same
>>>triads,
>> > with the planets. These people (who were also my source for the
"Celtic"
>> > glyph of the octave) associated 312 with the planet Jupiter.
>> >
>
>Karl wrote:
>>I have no idea where this tradition is coming from or how they are viewing
>>the
>>planets (or triads for that matter).
>
>Truth is, I'm a bit puzzled on all of that myself. The other planetary
>attributions I was shown were: Moon 213, Mercury 321, Mars 231, Saturn
123,
>Jupiter we've done, Venus 132. I make no claims for this material, which I
>merely transmit for whatever interest it may hold. The Kitchen Octave
(which
>lends itself rather easily as model for other manufacturing processes)
>would by this account be a "Mercury" octave.
>
>
>Anyway, I'll get to work on the distillation octave and see what comes up.
>
>Luv, Jeremy
>
>
>
>
>"Black drinks the sun, and draws all colours to it" -Grave
Date:
Feb 09 2000 01:32:14 EST
From:
"jeremy dixon"
Subject:
Kitchen Triads
Can't keep quiet on this as have been struck by an interesting thought or
two. But first a minor point:
Karl wrote:
>
>Of the six triads, three produce ascending octaves and three produce
>descending
>(involving) octaves. One guideline to help determine which is which is
>that an
>ascending octave will not end with the passive force and a descending
>octave
>will not end with the active force. Another is that ascending octaves
>don't
>begin with an "active DO", since this leaves them with insufficient force
>to
>cross the MI-FA interval. Descending octaves on the other hand do well
>with an
>active DO since the first interval to be crossed is the SI-DO at the
>beginning
>of the octave.
A simpler way of putting this would be to say that if the Active precedes
the Passive, as in 123, 132, 312 then the octave is involutionary;
contrariwise as in 321, 231, 213 then it is evolutionary.
That was the minor point. A bigger point comes with looking at the Kitchen
Octave. It goes something like so:
DO KITCHEN ready
RE Cooking Implements Out
MI Implements Prepared
=>Shock, FOOD enters [and FOOD octave starts]
FA Food prepared for cooking
SO (or "sol") Food cooked.
=>Shock, COMMUNITY assembles, "Dinner bell rings" [=>mi-fa of FOOD]
LA Food served
TI (or "si") Food eaten
So we have a 369 triad of Kitchen-Food-Community. In a 4th-way group I once
hung around we were encouraged to look at these triads but not given much
material to work with.......I gather in a Collin group the situation is
contrariwise!
Anyway, suppose for the sake of argument I was to scamper fecklessly on and
assume that it was correct to take the Kitchen Octave as a 321....so the
Kitchen is Neutralizing
the Food is Passive
and the Community is Active.
This would make sense....now for a bit of further merry scampering. The