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The Pythagorean Theorem is more or less known by everyone. The fact that Pythagoras was part of a mystical society is much less widely known. Today we would call this society a sect, but belonging to it would not necessarily have had a negative connotation. The society's main objective was to relate numbers to Man and the Universe.
For the Pythagoreans, everything was based on the central symbol of the Sacred Tetrada. As we know, the tetrahedron has four sides. In today's mathematics, the number 4 can be written as the sum of 1+3. In the "sacred" mathematics the Pythagoreans used, the number 3 symbolised the tripartite nature of Man: Body (Material), Mind, and Spirit. Similarly, the number 1 symbolized a singular nature (without separate parts; in other words, a unique integrated entity). For this reason, the number 4 symbolised (or summarised) the Unity in Man of the Body, Mind and Spirit (1+3). The tetrahedron is the only regular geometric figure with four sides, and the Sacred Tetrada is the symbol of this idea. I believe that these ancient ideas retain their validity today. I wanted to demonstrate this validity in the sculpture with the system that I to print the alpha prima. As you can be seen in the Description section, the strong segmentation in the lines that form the alpha prima show that it was printed from a computer give the work a contemporary quality. I wanted to represent the ideas in the previous paragraphs three dimensionally in the sculpture:
The tetrahedron is formed by mirrors and symbolises the ancient sacred
Tetrada. The sacred Tetrada reflects the three sides of the external
supporting triangle. The three black marks
This is the alpha prima used in ancient Greek to designate the number 1 (the "sacred" number 1). Synthesis: It is the responsibility of the viewer to find the correct perspective from which the three black marks reveal their actual form, and therefore their significance. This represents the search or cerebral "synthesis" necessary to obtain a view of the intrinsic unity of Material, Mind and Spirit, expressed through the sacred Tetrada of the Pythagoreans. Once this process of synthesis has been completed, the Unity is revealed: the alpha prima is made evident and is revealed as precisely that "sacred" 1 of the Pythagoreans.
Other possibilities Given that there are many philosophical traditions as well as religions that incorporate the idea of unifying the three existential dimensions of Man (to be seen as a whole), I believe that it is possible to replace the symbol of the alpha prima with other symbols without necessarily changing the general significance of the composition:
Plato and the Structure of the Soul ("Psyche")
Plato conceived of the soul as a tripartite structure
(based on his writings Phaedrus,
The Republic and Timeus):
According to Plato, a balanced soul is one that applies moderation
in all its forms. According to the myth of Phaedrus's winged chariot
(246D-249D and 253C-254E), if the driver is capable of controlling
the white horse (courage), who runs too much, and of moderating the
black horse (appetite) without exhausting them, balance of the soul
may be achieved.
This idea may be represented in the sculpture if, rather than
forming an alpha prima, we form the Greek word "psyche" instead. The
entire work can be read as a perfect balance of the three elements of
the soul which in turn produces the greatest expression in the finest "psyche".
The Christian Trinity
The Christian Trinity is a doctrine that explains the existence of God in three persons:
the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The unity of God is maintained by insisting that three persons, or modes of existence, of God are made up of a single substance. This doctrine, so familiar in the western world, may also be explained by the Tetraster. The word to be reconstructed could be "God" in Latin characters, and the three white triangles, each forming a part of the word "God", could represent the three persons of the Trinity. The Islamic tawhid One of the three basic religious beliefs of Islam, known as usul-al-din, is that Allah is One. This knowledge is called tawhid in Arabic and derives from the verb wahhada, meaning to "make one", or "declare unity". The sculpture also expresses the idea of "making one" of all that is multiple. The difficulty, however, is that in Islam there are not three clear divisions of reality that need to be "united". The concept i s limited to an affirmation of the multiplicity of the One in Allah. If it is accepted that the multiplicity of the world can be divided into the three sections of Physical, Mental and Spiritual, the word "Allah" can be written in Arabic characters. Then each part of the word represents one of the three worlds into which multiplicity has been divided.
I have tried to connect the main idea of the sculpture with other philosophical and religious traditions. Thus the sculpture, in its own way, can express different methods of understanding the relationship between Man and the Universe. We must not forget, however, that the most accurate representation of this idea is within the doctrine of Pythagorean numbers. - Schuré, Edouard. The Great Initiates. Biblioteca fundamental Año Cero. Madrid, 1995. - Porphyry. Life of Pythagoras. Ed. Gredos. Madrid, 1987. - Frère, Jean-Claude. Pythagore. L´initié de Samos. Les maîtres du secret. Ed. Retz. Paris. - Beltrán .J, Roig . T. Plato. Disseny Editorial de Catalunya. Barcelona, 1991. - Dictionary of Religions. Ed. Espasa. Madrid, 1998. - Feuerstein, Georg. Spirituality by the Numbers. Ed. Thassàlia. Barcelona, 1995. - Origins of Mankind. Expansion of Islam (II). Ed. Folio. Barcelona, 1995. - Museums of the World. Vienna Art Museum. Ed. Codex. Madrid, 1967. - History of Thinking. Origins of Thinking. Vol. I. Ed. Orbis. Barcelona, 1983. - Encyclopædia Britannica.
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,
,
(making reference to "sacred"
number 3) symbolise Body, Mind, and Spirit. Only when the sculpture is
viewed from the centre do the mirrors join the three pieces to form a
single alpha prima:
