Secret_History

280 The Secret History of the World
Pythagorean Mathematics will be among the earliest considerations. Manly Hall
wrote that:
The true key to philosophic mathematics is the famous Forty-seventh Proposition of
Pythagoras, erroneously attributed to Euclid. The Forty-seventh Theorem is stated
thus: In a right-angled triangle the square described on the hypotenuse is equal to
the sum of the squares described on the other two sides. 184
Everyone who has attended public school and paid the slightest attention in math
class knows that one. The problem is: what does it really mean that it is the “true
key to philosophic mathematics”? What does C 2 =A 2 +B 2 have to tell us?
Accounts of the travels and studies of Pythagoras differ, but most historians
agree that he visited many countries and studied at the feet of many masters.
Supposedly, after having been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, he went to
Egypt and was initiated into the Mysteries of Isis. He then traveled to Phoenicia
and Syria and was initiated into the Mysteries of Adonis. After that, he traveled to
the valley of the Euphrates and learned all the secrets of the Chaldeans still living
in the area of Babylon. Finally, he traveled to Media and Persia, then to India
where he was a pupil and initiate of the Brahmins there. Sounds like he had all the
bases covered.
Pythagoras was said to have invented the term “philosopher” in preference to the
word “sage” since the former meant one who is attempting to find the truth, and
the latter means one who knows the truth. Apparently Pythagoras didn’t think he
had the whole banana.
Pythagoras started a school at Crotona in Southern Italy and gathered students
and disciples there whom he supposedly instructed in the principles of the secrets
that had been revealed to him. He considered mathematics, music and astronomy
to be the foundation of all the arts and sciences. When he was about sixty years
old, he married one of his disciples and had seven children. I guess he was a pretty
lively senior citizen! His wife was, apparently, quite a woman in her own right,
and she carried on his work after he was assassinated by a band of murderers
incited to violence by a student whom he refused to initiate. The accounts of
Pythagoras’ murder vary. Some say he and all his disciples were killed, others say
that he may have escaped because some of his students protected him by
sacrificing themselves and that he later died of a broken heart when he realized the
apparent fruitlessness of his efforts to illuminate humanity.
The experts say that very little remains of the teachings of Pythagoras in the
present time unless it has been handed down in secret schools or societies.
Naturally, every secret society on the planet claims to have this “initiated”
knowledge to one extent or another. It is possible that there exists some of the
184 Hall, Manly P., The Secret Teachings of All Ages (Los Angeles: The Philosophical Research Society
1988) p. LXIX (facing page).