The Egyptian Oedipus, Volume II

CLASS VII. HIEROGLYPHIC MATHEMATICS. 13 CH. II.

...is simply contracted. God is the light of intelligence, because He is its unity; intelligence, however, is the light of the soul, because it is the soul's unity; and the physical form of the soul's unity exists as number. We do not perceive the unity of the soul in itself, but rather we contemplate it through the sensory investigation of its body. In the same way, we do not see intelligence in itself, but in the soul; nor do we see the first, simplest, and most absolute Unity meaning God as it is in itself, but we contemplate it within intelligence as if within a number and a seal. Therefore, God is the form of intelligence, intelligence is the form of the soul, and the soul is the form of the body. Consequently, Reason is to be considered not as the root of the cubic three-dimensional body, but as the medium through which the intellectual root descends into the body; for reason is the instrument of the intellect, and thus the principle or instrumental root of physical things.

The Monad of one hundred original: "centenaria monas" — representing the number 100 symbolizes the soul, while the Monad of one thousand original: "millenaria" represents the body. Now, the number one thousand arises from the leading of the denary the number 10, representing the Intellect into the hundred—that is, from the multiplication of intelligence by the soul. For every number is perfected in the number ten; the number of the simplest unity proceeds through the simplest number into the ten. Therefore, those things which in the first Unity are the simplest unity itself, are found to be divided and varied in its numerical "unfolding" original: "explicatione". Thus, the Intelligences—which are the number of the simplest and most absolute union—participate intellectually in the nature of number in relation to the First; yet intellectual difference, opposition, and otherness (and similar qualities that belong to number) are, in truth, absolute unity itself. Furthermore, "square" otherness and opposition the level of 2D geometry or the soul exist in Reason as intellectual unity. Finally, "cubic" 3D oppositions and othernesses, which are sensible and physical, exist as unity within Reason.

The power and nature of the Fourth, thousand-fold Unity.

Lastly, the fourth unity—the thousand-fold—is the final and sensible unfolding of these unions. Just as the thousand is composed of many parts, so too is this unity. The First Unity therefore behaves in the manner of a point; the second in the manner of a line; the third in the manner of a surface; and the fourth in the manner of a body or a cube. The unity of the simplest point is everything that is contained within the linear, superficial, and physical unity; and the unity of the surface unfolds everything that is within the physical unity. Indeed, the three prior unities are not perceptible to the senses and are distinguishable only by the mind itself, which alone considers the point, line, and surface in isolation; the senses, however, can only grasp that which is physical.

Therefore, if anyone tried to measure mental things by sensible things, they would be doing the same as someone who attempted to measure a point, a line, or a surface with a solid block; they would be acting imprudently, not to say stupidly. Every sensible thing must therefore be raised to the level of reason, or to intelligence, or even to absolute unity. If, in this way, we reduce every sensible, rational, or intellectual multitude to an absolute and infinite simplicity, nothing more can be affirmed about it. For at that point, a thing is no more a "stone" than a "non-stone"; rather, it is all things—namely, the simplest unity, God, blessed forever. Hence, just as the absolute unity of that sensible and rational stone is God, so its intellectual unity is intelligence. You see from these unities how the senses return into reason, reason into intelligence, and intelligence into God, where there is both the beginning and the completion in a perfect circle, as Cusanus Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464), a philosopher and mathematician and Franciscus Patricius Francesco Patrizi (1529–1597), a Neoplatonist philosopher beautifully prove from the Hermetic writings.