Is there a correlation between the devil and the senses? In music the diminished fifth is considered to be the devils interval and in geometry the pentagram is associated with the devil. There are similarities between the diminished fifth and the pentagram that I want to discuss in this posting. In terms of the the other senses the smell of sulfur or rather of burning sulfur is associated with the devil and hell. Sulfur plays a large role in alchemy but my understanding of chemistry and alchemy is too limited to write further about sulfur. Another avenue for future investigation. In the realm of taste the only thing I could think of was the apple that Satan tempted Adam and Eve with. The only connection I can see here is the fact that when you slice an apple horizontally the seed pattern is in the shape of a pentagram.
Interesting, but It doesn't lead me any closer to a law of harmony for the sense of taste.
But the main connection that I want to make clear to myself in this post is similarity between the diminished fifth and the pentagram. What it seems to me that they have in common is irrationality. Hippasus of Metapontum, a disciple of Pythagoras, is credited with discovering irrational numbers. There seem to be two different theories as to how he discovered this; one of which is that the discovery was made while studying the pentagram (see James R. Choike (1980). "The Pentagram and the Discovery of an Irrational Number". The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal. and Kurt Von Fritz (1945). "The Discovery of Incommensurability by Hippasus of Metapontum". The Annals of Mathematics.I have not personally checked these sources. ). According to legend this discovery, or possibly the publication there of, angered Pythagoras so much that he had Hippasus killed.
I am not a mathematician and I have not checked this following statement for accuracy nor does it come from a solid source. "The pentagram actually depicts the golden ratio as well as one possible
proof of its irrationality (applying the Euclidean algorithm twice
replaces the circumscribed pentagon by the inscribed pentagon, proving
nontermination of the continued fraction). I think that this is better described by the
following diagram.
What I do understand is that a the lengths of a pentagram's segments, in order of decreasing lengths are in the ratio of Phi. This can be seen in the above diagram where the ratio of A to B= Phi and B to C = Phi, etc.
Note that this infinite generation of pentagrams with the ratio of Phi can be created upon a pentagram not just within(see diagram below). Phi of course is an irrational number.
I speculate that this irrationality, that is at the basis of the structure of the pentagram, is the reason that the pentagram has been deemed dangerous. In Divine Proportion, Phi in Art, Nature and Science, Pria Hemenway states that "The pentad was so revered in early societies that its construction was kept secret. The Pythagoreans used it as a secret sigh to recognize one another. They had studied its principles in geometry and nature and they also knew of its effect on the human psyche. They saw in its application a knowledge that could be misused and although it was a teaching tool for a thousand years, it was guarded and only taught orally. It was not written about by the craft guilds who used its symbolism in the design of the Gothic cathedrals; and it was not until 1509, when Leonardo da Vinci's teacher Luca Pacioli published his book Divina Proportione, that the method of its construction and unique geometric properties were publicly revealed to artists and philosophers."
So how does this relate to the diminished fifth? The following quotes are taken from a series of discussions between R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (RAS) and Andre VandenBroeck(AV) as reported by AV in his memoir Al-kemi. RAS poses the question, "The zodiac of the twelve tonalities is an arrested moment in the endless spiral of sound, and the cog that arrests it is the Pythagorean comma. That much is plain to me. What is less so is the development of that makes the diabolus rise out of this system. What else can this devil be but the destruction of a rational structure, incorporated into that very structure from the beginning, so to speak? He is the price paid for constraining an everchanging infinite, a cyclical infinity that is the very nature of the universe."
I will leave the idea of the Pythagorean comma to a future post. What interests me most in the above quote is the question "What else could this devil be but the destruction of a rational structure, incorporated into that very structure from the very beginning?" Could he not just as easily be talking about the necessity of irrational numbers, perfected in the pentagon, inserted into the rational structure of integers. It seems that he is also describing the transition between the system of Autoegocrat and Turgoautoegocrat system of maintaining existence that Gurdjieff describes in Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson.
For RAS the irrationality of the diminished fifth seems based on the fact that it divides the octave in to two equal parts. According to RAS, "Natural division is always into uneven parts. I can already feel the cardinal sin that will call for the devil. The product of an even division will never be stable in its duality. It makes sense that this interval would tend toward resolution with all its might."
AV further explains, "It is the equality of the complementary segments of the octave that makes their terms interchangeable: in a flatted fifth each term can belong, as third or as seventh, to two different tonalities as remote from each other as tonality can be. Hence two resolutions are possible, both occurring with equal ease, each as compelling as the other to the ear. One single dissonance leads to two different resolutions, none favored over the other unless it be further characterized by context. But these tonalities are not merely different; they stand at opposite poles, namely the two poles of the flatted fifth interval... A dissonance which finds with equal ease resolution in two extremes! The ambiguity this fact introduces into the relationships of the twelve tonalities- such is the seed of destruction bound to bring down the entire system of tonality."
To hear an example of what AVB is describing above check out John Coltrane's Giant Steps this link also gives you a good visual representation of the modulation between keys. It seems to me that there is a similarity between an interval that resolves to two different keys, that stand in the same relationship to each other as the original interval ,and the pentagram which perpetually inscribes upon and within its self proportionally similar pentagrams.
It is interesting to note that Ouspensky places the devil on the Do-Si interval of the lateral octave which parallels the Sol- Fa interval of the Ray of Creation.
It is also interesting to note that the Blues scale, the scale that defines the Blues sound, is a minor pentatonic scale with an added note- the diminished fifth. The early bluesman Robert Johnson, known as the King of the Delta Blues and the Grandfather of Rock and Roll, is said to have sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads in return for being the greatest guitar player ever.
From Gothe's Faust,
Mephistopheles:
I must confess, my stepping o'er
Thy threshold a slight hindrance doth impede;
The wizard-foot doth me retain.
Faust:
The pentagram thy peace doth mar?
To me, thou son of hell, explain,
How earnest thou in, if this thine exit bar?
Could such a spirit aught ensnare?
From ESO European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, http://www.vt-2004.org/Education/edu1app5.html
This is the diagram on the zodiac that Venus makes in eight years. After that period, Venus, the Sun, the Earth and the stars are again in the same relative positions. It means that Venus, seen from the Earth, is in the same position with respect not only to the Sun, but also to the stars. This happens because five periods of Venus take eight years (When we round Venus' synodic period to a whole number 584, we can calculate that 584x5=2920 days, 2920/365 = 8 years). Take a particular point in a synodic revolution of Venus, for instance the greatest elongation east which places it in one zodiacal constellation. After an interval of 584 days (or nearly 19 months) later, greatest elongation east will take place again, this time almost seven constellations away. These events repeat every nineteen months and the result is that in eight years the eastern elongation point will return close to the point where it started - only about two degrees less - making a pentagram on the zodiac .

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