Organizing Reality

Why do we organize things in groups of ten? You could argue that it’s only because we use the decimal system or base-10 mathematics, so it just appears that way.  However there is a lot of evidence that supports the idea that the decimal system is not some made-up anthropocentric contrivance, but a scalable numerical matrix to our reality.  Wikipedia tells us, we use base-10 because it is the most convenient since we have 10 fingers.  But as we’ll explore, there’s much more to it than that.

The Tetragrammaton Tetractys

The tetractys is a mystical symbol and was very important to the secret worship of the Pythagoreans.  A triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row, which is the geometrical representation of the fourth triangular number.  The Tetragrammaton is the the name of God written in four Hebrew letters usually transliterated YHWH.  Both of these highly venerated symbols encode the decad, base-10 and the decimal system.  What were they trying to tell us?

The Tetractys Reveals Perfect Musical Intervals

Exactly ten dots are arranged to represent these perfect harmonic ratios that sound so pleasing to the human ear.  The tetractys was venerated for its innate power in its symbolism as a perfect geometric construct for how nature organizes itself.  There is something profound about ten.  Not as a mere quantity. But as a symbol for how reality organizes itself.

At the heart of Pythagorean philosophy is the triangular pattern of 10 dots or points called the ‘tetractys’. Mathematicians regard it as the fourth of the so-called ‘triangular numbers’. These are numbers that are the sums of triangular arrays of dots, each denoting the number 1. For example, 1, 1+2=3, 1+2+3=6 and 1+2+3+4=10 are the first four triangular numbers. The tetractys, however, meant far more to the followers of Pythagoras. In fact, so much did they honour it that they swore to their teacher, who had recognised the meaning and importance of this pattern, an oath of loyalty that mentioned the symbol. Just as the number 1 is the source of all number, so the Monad symbolized by a point or dot is the divine origin of all phenomena. Integers increase until they attain their perfect completion in the number 10, the Decad. The tetractys is more than just a representation of this number. It symbolizes the 10-fold nature of Divine Unity as it manifests in existence – physical and superphysical. As such, it is the template for constructing holistic objects that possess sacred geometry.  -Stephen Phillips

As Scott Onstott mentions in his book Taking Measure, base systems are made up of one less than the number they are based off of.  The Babylonians and Sumerians used a sexigesimal system, or base-60, which is composed of the numbers 1 through 59. There are only 9 numbers in our decimal system, 1-9.  Zero is not a number, but a placeholder used for scalar expansion and contraction.  In base-12, there are only 11 numbers.  If we use the decimal system because of our fingers, shouldn’t we only have nine of them?

The ancient systems below all use small sets of characters to represent a limited range of numbers.  Those from the ancient Mediterranean repeat marks like a tall stick to make some numbers while the Chinese system combines the characters for one to nine with characters meaning 10, 100, 1000, and 10,000.  In all these systems a number such as 57 would be written as the character for 50 followed by the character for 7 with no place value. -from the book ‘Quadrivium’ -Wooden Books

Early Number Systems

Base-10 or Decimal is not a base system.  It is THE system for organizing Number itself.  All other base systems stem from the Decad (1-10, Decimal, Base-10,).  Before ancient mathematicians decided what base to use, they’d  have to organize the numbers in a convenient way.  In every ancient civilization ten is distinctly different from the nine numbers before it,  suggesting that TEN is primordial and foundational in the Numerical Universe.

Place Value Number Systems

Ancient civilizations denoted numbers in decimal form. The base-60 system of the Sumerians and Babylonians is organized in decimal form, both in the distinction of the number after nine, and their written expansion.  In other words, the number 432 would be written or described as four symbols that represented ‘100’, three symbols that represent ’30’, and the symbol they used for ‘2’.   Ancient Babylonians and Sumerians really used base-10.  Even Wikipedia admits it.

The sexagesimal system as used in ancient Mesopotamia was not a pure base-60 system, in the sense that it did not use 60 distinct symbols for its digits. Instead, the cuneiform digits used ten as a sub-base – wikipedia

Ancient Sumerian & Babylonian Numerals

The symbol used for ten is completely different than the previous nine numbers.  In the Sumerian numeral system, they start over after nine.  They probably realized they should come up with a new symbol at some point or they’re gonna have to make a unique character for each number, for which there are infinity of.  The ancient Babylonians, as well as every other civilization to ever inhabit earth, decided to start over after nine and make a new symbol for ten.  Why?  What is it about nine and ten?

Peter Plichta is one of the few to hold a Ph.D in both chemistry and physics.  His dreams and visions led him into the search for a divine blueprint behind the natural world. Unlike many other scientists, who are mainly interested in describing what the world is and how it functions, Plichta began to ask the question “Why?” In particular, he asked why there are repeated patterns that transcend the individual sciences. More often than not, these patterns had to do with numbers.  Numbers are the scaffold upon which light waves dance across the universe.

Plichta became convinced that beneath the surface of physical, chemical and biological phenomena lay a deeper structure, composed of numbers.  Along the way, Plichta comments about many surprising facts that seem to suggest that the world we live in is the product of design, not the result of chance. While not directly commenting on what physicists call the Anthropic principle, he has much to say about the particular parameters of our world that refute the common materialist notion that we are just a speck in the vastness of space. The Earth, which presents the perfect environment for humans, is not some accidental planet.  more..

The Decimal System

He discovered that there are exactly 81 stable elements.  The elements in the periodic system are listed in order of increasing atomic number (the number of protons in the nucleus of an atom).  After 83 they are all radioactive. Of the first 83, two elements do not exist in nature , Technetium (43), and Promethium (61).  This give us 81, or 9 x 9, or three to the fourth power.  81, as we’ll see, is a very important number.

The Periodic Table of Elements

Plichta found that out of the 81 elements, only 20 have a single isotope.  Out of all the possible amino acids, only 20 make up all proteins. Why is the speed of light almost exactly 3 x 10^10 cm/sec or 300,000,000 m/s?

The reciprocal of 81 is all natural numbers added together in this manner. As you will see the 8 disappears.

Earth is 81 times more massive than the Moon which could be another indication of the decimal structure to reality.   81 is also three to the fourth power, which reflects the numbers of 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional geometry.  Three creates the first shape, the triangle.  And four is the minimum number of sides required to construct anything in three dimensions(the tetrahedron).

81 is almost like the mother of all numbers.  All of the natural numbers spring from it’s reciprocal, as previously shown.  Divide the mother of all numbers by the largest number beneath it, and you’ll produce zero through nine.  Notice the missing “one”.

80/81 = .9876543209876543209876…

The Ancients were clever and knew that this information would likely be suppressed over the ages so they encoded this knowledge into their units of measure for space and time.  There is a reason that 360 reduces to 9 (since 3+6+0 = 9). The amount of seconds in a day, 86,400, reduces to 9.  A cubic foot is 144 inches. 1+4+4=9.  A square yard is 1296 inches, a cubic yard is 46,656 cubic inches, always reducing to nine.

There are also 3600 seconds in a hour, 1440 minutes in a day, 10,080 minutes in a week, and 25,920 years in the precession of the equinoxes.  The vedic age we are said to be in currently, the Kali Yuga, has a cycle of 432,000 years. The others also all reduce to nine.

The numbers always reduce to nine

In fact any number multiplied by another number that reduces to nine, reduces to nine.  For example 450 x 1.23 =  553.5   (5 + 5 + 3 + 5 =  18 , and 1+8= 9)

360 is a Harshad (joy-giving) number, in that it is divisible by the number it reduces to i.e. 360/9 = 40, which is a whole number, so it is a joy gi

ving number.  It is also one of the few superior highly composite numbers.  Now I’m getting off topic.  I only wanted to point out that there are

many reasons why there are 360 degrees in a circle, but that is another post.

Remember, 9 is the largest number in the decimal system.  10 is more of a concept or a convenient way of organizing all of the nine numbers.  In a sense there are only nine numbers to existence. Ten borrows the ‘1’ and the ‘0’  by putting ‘something’ with ‘no-thing’. In this way, all of the other numbers reflect this duality by the very nature of their organizational structure.  The Ennead, the numbers 1 through 9, show their unique built-in order with their scalar invariance.  79,200,000 is a very different number from 792 but their underlying qualitative meaning remains the same.

Additionally, the Platonic Solids encode the decimal system.

There are exactly 50 vertices(points), 50 faces, and 90 edges, highlighting the importance of base-10, and (phi)ve.

The sizes and distances of the Sun and Moon reflect the ‘base-10 reality’ we find ourselves in.  It’s interesting to point out that the Sun and Moon are the same size in the sky.  NASA tells us that the Sun is much larger, but also a lot farther away.

If you do the math you’ll find that the Sun is almost exactly 400 times larger than the Moon while being almost exactly 400 times farther away.  Every solar eclipse shows the exactness and perfection of Nature’s anthropocentric design.

The Sun and Moon are the same size in the sky. This has always been an ancient quandary that philosophers contemplated

The decimal system is the way Number organizes itself from zero to infinity.  It is not some man made contrivance.  It is THE SYSTEM the divine cosmic architect designed just for us.

Within the human consciousness is the unique ability to perceive the transparency between absolute, permanent relationships, contained in the insubstantial forms of a geometric order, and the transitory, changing forms of our actual world. The content of our experience results from an immaterial, abstract, geometric architecture which is composed of harmonic waves of energy, nodes of relationality, melodic forms springing forth from the eternal realm of geometric proportion.  -Robert Lawlor