Gate 136: חצ — HARMONY

חצ

Pillar 5: NUMBER AND PATTERN

[136:1] "There's geometry in the humming of the strings,

[136:2] there's music in the spacing of the spheres."

[136:3] --- Pythagoras

[136:4] "Harmony is a state recognized by great souls."

[136:5] --- Pythagoras

[136:6] "The soul is a harmony."

[136:7] --- Plato, Phaedo

[136:8] [136:1] The Hebrew חס (Chas) means "to pity" or "to

spare"---and harmony is the mercy that ratios show to the ear, the

sparing of dissonance.

[136:9] [136:2] Harmony is ratios that please. Simple

ratios---2:1 (octave), 3:2 (fifth), 4:3 (fourth)---sound consonant.

Complex ratios sound dissonant. The ear detects mathematical

relationships; what the math calls simple, the ear calls beautiful.

Harmony is mathematics heard.

[136:10] [136:3] "There's geometry in the humming of the

strings." Pythagoras discovered that musical intervals correspond to

string length ratios. The abstract realm of number and the sensory realm

of sound meet at harmony. Music is applied mathematics; mathematics is

silent music.

[136:11] [136:4] "There's music in the spacing of the

spheres." The "harmony of the spheres"---Pythagoras's vision that

the planets produce music in their orbital ratios---is physically false

but poetically profound. The universe is harmonious in the mathematical

sense; its laws have elegant structure; its proportions are not

arbitrary.

[136:12] [FIGURE 136.1: A musical chord diagrammed as

ratios---the frequencies 1:2:3 producing the root, octave, and fifth,

mathematics making music.] [136:5] "Harmony is a state recognized by

great souls." Pythagoras locates harmony's perception in the

perceiver. The harmony is objective (the ratios are real); the

recognition is subjective (not everyone hears). To train the soul is to

attune it to harmony---to become capable of recognizing what is always

there.

[136:13] [136:6] "The soul is a harmony." Plato reports this

view (to criticize it, but it has endured). The soul's health is like

musical consonance---all parts in proper proportion. Discord in the soul

is like dissonance in music---unresolved tension, suffering. Healing the

soul is tuning it.

[136:14] [136:7] Harmony is not uniformity. A chord requires

different notes; their harmony lies in their relationship, not their

identity. Unity in diversity, difference organized into coherence---this

is harmony. The opposite of harmony is not difference but

unrelated-ness.

[136:15] [136:8] Dissonance is tension; harmony is resolution.

Music moves from consonance through dissonance back to consonance. The

journey is necessary; without dissonance, no drama; without resolution,

no satisfaction. Life, too, moves through dissonance toward harmony.

[136:16] [136:9] Cosmic harmony: the Fine-Structure Constant

(\~1/137), the golden ratio in physics, the mathematical elegance of

fundamental laws---these suggest that the universe is harmoniously

constructed. Whether this is projection or perception, the intuition of

cosmic harmony drives physics and mysticism alike.

[136:17] [136:10] Seek harmony---in music, in relationships, in

the structure of thought. Learn to hear consonance; learn to tolerate

dissonance; learn to move from one to the other and back. The soul that

knows harmony is the soul that is harmony. The recognition and the state

are one.

[136:18] See Also: • Gate 116: ות (Vat) --- The Gate of Ratio

(what harmony is built from) • Gate 117: זא (Za) --- The Gate of the

Octave (the simplest harmony) • Gate 137: חע --- The Gate of Dissonance

(harmony's complement) • Gate 216: מס --- The Gate of Harmony

(revisited in Pillar VII) End of Gates 133-136 Batch 58 Complete ---

Pillar V: Number and Pattern (Continued) LIBER TIGRIS Gates 137-141