Discovery of one series of Mystic numbers
used to design artefacts in Europe
Were the Linear A & B clay tablets of Crete, Phaistos disk, Celtic coins, Pantheon in Rome
and Scandinavian runes designed during 1,700 years using mystic numbers of Pythagoras?
Recognising the numbers: a quick-start guide
Life of Pythagoras
A specific series of numbers was reused in Europe during many centuries. The numbers were often referred to as the “mystic numbers of Pythagoras”, the first to call himself a philosopher – “one who loved wisdom”. The 3rd-century author Porphyry in Rome wrote a biography, Life of Pythagoras, one of the few manuscripts that survived the burning of texts from antiquity, a biography with the potential to reveal the foundations of European history that was misread by scholars.
The Buddha Gotama (624 – 544 BC) in India became enlightened in 588 BC, a date meticulously recorded by the community of Theravada monks. He started teaching the meditation system based on how kamma is the Cause that results in its Effect as rebirth in future lives, he became very famous and people all over the world started meditating, following his example.
Pythagoras (c. 580-500 BC) was born in Samos about 8 years after the enlightenment of the Buddha, in 3rd-century Rome Porphyry described in the biography, Life of Pythagoras:
“19 … He taught that the soul was immortal and that after death it transmigrated into other animated bodies. …Pythagoras was the first to introduce these teachings into Greece”.
37. His utterances were of two kinds, plain or symbolical. … The Students learned the fuller and more exactly elaborate reasons of science, while the Hearers heard only the chief heads of learning, without more detailed explanations.”
– [Porphyry, life of Pythagoras]
Was Pythagoras a follower of the Buddha?
The legacy of the Buddha is poorly understood in Europe where scholars – who normally insist on written sources – were quick to discard eyewitness accounts of thousands of people that were recorded in Pali texts as “mythology, idealised, imagined”, European history of the 20th century was written with eyes fixed on the Christian world view where all other beliefs were inferior, scholars changed the date of birth of the Buddha from 624-544 BC to 563-483 BC “because it suited the historical facts better”. Those dates are still used in modern books written about the Buddha and about Buddhism, described as a so-called religion. In Pali texts it was described that the Buddha “scanned the world with his wisdom eye” every day and appeared to those who would be able to attain enlightenment, regardless of the distance. It was also recorded in the texts that 30% of the world’s population at that time were followers of the Buddha. This number will be disputed by western scholars who stated that “there is no evidence of Buddhism in Europe”. Is it true – or did the scholars overlook masses of evidence all around them? Did scholars simply not recognise the abstract symbols that were used in Europe? Masses of written evidence can be found on clay tablets and seen on famous objects such as the Pantheon in Rome, where the numbers as used were evidence of wide-spread meditation practices that lasted for up to 1,700 years.
Bamiyan Buddha light projection
Japanese sponsors Afghanistan
A Buddha’s body radiating light as recorded in Pali texts
Image Sayalay Saddhammacārī
Bodhi tree: Buddha’s body radiates light
Image Setti Wessels
Artist’s journey – discovery of the numbers
A journey to make watercolour drawings of trees in-between visiting exciting locations in Asia unexpectedly turned into a systematic exploration that exposed the mind – the 6th sense – and what it can do when meditating under the guidance of a monk, a meditation teacher. The methods were complex and meditation notes were made using drawings rather than words. It was just luck that there was a good notebook available – a special handmade book from good quality watercolour paper, a hobby.
Diving – before discovering that
the 6th sense can do the same
Painting-turned-exploration:
the mind penetrates deep inside the body
The drawings were painted pictures of the images seen as light that appear in front of the face when the mind is concentrated – named a “nimitta”. Symbols and gestures were used to imitate the movement of the mind while examining meditation objects, to be able to remember what the monk taught. Years of experience working as an architect was useful, using scribbles and annotations to systematically describe the visual experiences – which were meticulously described in ancient Pali texts.
4 great elements meditation:
earth, water, fire, wind
Eye: how to discern
particles & space
(kalāpas in Pali)
Celtic votive coins made 500 years after the Buddha: how to use the light of the concentrated mind, the 6th sense
Those scribbles made in the notebook turned out to be recognisable on European artefacts – they used the same images, the same gestures and symbols – highly stylised, but still recognisable. My intuitively scribbled dots ••• and angles >>><<< to describe my own mind in concentration were used on Celtic horse coins minted in Belgium/France/Germany over 2,000 years ago.
The Celtic coins were meditation diagrams. Each coin was designed to tell a detailed story with a specific meaning to describe meditation experiences.
Instructions with >>> investigating the eye as nimitta
Treveri Eye coin horse with 16● tail 3 mane 8
Treveri: eye, pupil wheel 8 spokes, winged horse: Victory
Was Pythagoras the first one to use images
to explain meditation to his students?
Tiny pictures inscribed on soft clay tablets discovered in Crete and other locations in Greece were repeatedly copied for centuries until they were reused on Viking objects until the 12th century as oversized open air engravings on rocks. Some rune symbols were direct copies of symbols found on tablets.
“12. In Egypt he [learned] … three kinds of letters, the epistolic, the hieroglyphic, and symbolic, whereof one imitates the common way of speaking, while the others express the sense by allegory and parable.”- [Porphyry, life of Pythagoras]
Knossos 13 Linear B clay tablet Crete: the path of concentration of a meditator, not phonetic sounds
Linear A clay tablet Crete original source of the “hanging man”: for all who are born death is inevitable
The “hanging man” as fruit of his own kamma hanging from the tree of life, Ramsund stone Sweden
The numbers expressed as abstract symbols: ideograms
When 19-20th century archeologists (Schliemann and Evans) made their discoveries they chose the most famous characters and locations described in Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, naming their sites after Greek mythology – Mycenaean and in Crete Minoan where the palace of King Minos was identified as the labyrinth of the mythological Minotaur. Never expecting that the Buddha’s system of meditation techniques reached Greece and were practiced at the sites, they corrupted European history by allocating imaginary dates ranging from 1,700 – 1200 BC to objects that cannot be carbon dated, the scripts named Linear A and Linear B were never convincingly translated.
What if the Phaistos Disk and Linear A and B clay tablets were not ancient phonetic Greek scripts but step-by-step meditation instructions scribbled into soft clay tablets at learning centres, first taught by the famous teacher Pythagoras? Porphyry described that his favourite student Zamolxis taught the Goth traders philosophy in Thrace at the Black Sea, the same miniature drawings seen on clay tablets are found as large open-air diagrams in Sweden 1,500 years later – proof of the endurance of the meditation practices in Europe.
After 1,000 years when sites in the south were demolished by Christian emperor Theodosius I in 381 the practices moved north and a selection of symbols from the Linear A and B drawings were formalised into a series of abstract codes: ideograms used to write votive messages, the Elder Futhark rune alphabet.
Crete clay tablet ZA14 and Ramsund warrior with his “sword of wisdom”
Sword of wisdom Välsgarde Sweden with abstract coded image of a walking meditator
Crete tablet Knossos13: meditator’s path of purification drawn as pictures
Did Hadrian design these objects to promote peace in the Roman Empire based on dialectics of philosophy – meditation?
The Scandinavian runes resemble symbols used on clay tablets – but there is more to it. In the 1-2nd century Roman emperor Hadrian promoted the “dialectics of philosophy”. The “mystic numbers of Pythagoras” were used to design the Pantheon, but the numbers are also found displayed on the Gundestrup cauldron in great detail (Natmus: beeswax recently dated to 93-144 AD). The numbers are also systematically described as 20 paragraphs in the famous essay of Plutarch, priest in Delphi and Neoplatonic philosopher: “On the ‘E’ at Delphi”.
Gundestrup Cauldron: an illustrated meditation diagram
made in c. 93-143 AD
Hadrian: Pantheon Rome “Eye to see the Truth”
completed 125 AD
Pantheon floor plan with meditation codes described by Plutarch in his essay “On the ‘E’ at Delphi” c. 120 AD
Were Scandinavian runes designed to visually express the “mystic numbers of Pythagoras” a thousand years later?
The series of numbers used to design the Pantheon were based on “the mystic numbers of Pythagoras”, eventually expressed as Scandinavian runes.
Definitions were chosen for Elder Futhark rune symbols to translate rune stones for at least 2 years before discovering that they were already described by Plutarch in an essay written in c. 120 AD.
The Elder Futhark runes of the 5th century were arranged in the same order as Plutarch’s paragraphs.
To choose definitions for runes in the 21st century – and then discover an essay that was written 1,900 before, where the same definitions and the same order was used that was also found in the Scandinavian rune system, is not luck. The Elder Futhark rune alphabet was designed 1,000 years after the Buddha to celebrate the network of knowledge that was used in Europe during centuries, before it was suppressed and eventually forgotten.
To follow the thread of a complex series of mathematical numbers that were applied on objects during a period of 1,700 years is impossible to imagine.
The mystic numbers of Pythagoras were only forgotten – not lost.