>[!abstract] >The character of the original Pythagoreanism is controversial, and the conglomeration of disparate features that it displayed is intrinsically confusing. Its fame rests, however, on some very influential ideas, not always correctly understood, that have been ascribed to it since antiquity. These ideas include those of (1) the metaphysic of number and the conception that reality, including music and astronomy, is, at its deepest level, mathematical in nature; (2) the use of philosophy as a means of spiritual purification; (3) the heavenly destiny of the soul and the possibility of its rising to union with the divine; (4) the appeal to certain symbols, sometimes mystical, such as the tetraktys, the golden section, and the harmony of the spheres; (5) the Pythagorean theorem; and (6) the demand that members of the order shall observe a strict loyalty and secrecy. > >By laying stress on certain inner experiences and intuitive truths revealed only to the initiated, Pythagoreanism seems to have represented a soul-directed subjectivism alien to the mainstream of pre-Socratic Greek thought centering on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, which was preoccupied with determining what the basic cosmic substance is ("Pythagoreanism", 2025). ## References - Pythagoreanism. (2025, March 26). In *Encyclopedia Britannica*. https://www.britannica.com/science/Pythagoreanism ## Related - [[Orphism]]