The
Law of Octaves was first suggested by
Pythagoras in ancient Greece. Having
observed that the eight notes of the
conventional Occidental musical scale
were governed by definite mathematical
relationships, Pythagoras proceeded to
create a whole cosmology based on 8s. In
this octagonal model Pythagoras made
numerous mistakes, because he was
generalizing from insufficient data.
However, his work was the first attempt
in history to unify science,
mathematics, art and mysticism into one
comprehensible system and as such is
still influential. Leary, Crowley and
Buckminster Fuller have all described
themselves as modern Pythagoreans.
In
China, roughly contemporary with
Pythagoras, the Taoists built up a
cosmology based on the interplay of yang
(positive) and yin (negative), which
produced the eight trigrams of the I
Ching, out of which are generated the 64
hexagrams.
In
India, Buddha announced, after his
illumination under the Bodhi tree, the
Noble Eightfold Path. Patanjali
subsequently reduced the science of yoga
to eight "limbs" or, as we might say,
eight "steps."
The
game of chess appeared, somewhere in the
East, with a grid based on 8x8 (64)
squares.
Hepler
discovered the laws of planetary motion
serendipitously, while trying to make
the planets fit into the Pythagorean
octave.
In the
1860s, English chemist John Newland
showed that all the chemical elements
fall into eight families. Since
Pythagorean mysticism was unfashionable
at that time, Newland was literally
laughed at and rejected by the Royal
Chemical Society. In the 1870s, with
much more detail than Newland, the
Russian chemist Mendeleyev proved once
and for all that the elements do,
indeed, fall into eight families. His
Periodic Table of the Elements, an
octave of hauntingly Pythagorean
harmony, hangs in every high-school
chemistry class today. (The Royal
Society later apologized to Newland and
gave him a Gold Medal.)
Nikolai Tesla invented the alternating
current generator which unleashed the
modern technological revolution after a
series of visions in which, among other
things, Tesla "saw" that everything in
the universe obeys a law of Octaves.
Modern
geneticists have found that the DNA-RNA
"dialogue" -- the molecular information
system governing life and evolution - it
transmitted by 64 (8x8) codons.
R. Buckminster Fuller, in his
Synergetic-Energetic Geometry, which he
claims is the "co-ordinate system of the
Universe," reduces all phenomena to
geometric-energetic constructs based on
the tetrahedron (4-sided), the octet
truss (8-sided) and the coupler
(8-faceted with 24 phases). Fuller
argues specifically that the 8-face,
24-phase coupler underlies the 8-fold
division of the chemical elements on the
Mendeleyev Periodic Table.
In
1973, unaware of Fuller's coupler -
which I called to his attention later -
Dr. Leary began to divide his 8 circuits
into a 24-stage Periodic Table of
Evolution (see diagram). Leary also
began attempting to correlate this with
the Periodic Table of Elements in
chemistry.
The
eight families of elements are:
-
Alkalis
-
Alkalines
-
Borons
-
Carbons
-
Nitrogens
-
Oxygens
-
Halogens
-
Noble Gases
The
first four families, Leary argues, are
terrestrial; that is, they are heavy and
tend to fall to Earth. The second four
familes are extraterrestrial; that is,
they tend to float off into space.
Similarly, he says, the first four
circuits of the nervous system are
terrestrial; their function is to
control survival and reproduction at the
bottom of the 4,000-mile gravity well in
which we presently live. The second four
circuits, then, are extraterrestrial;
they will come into full play only when
we live normally in zero-gravity - in
free space.
