Aristoxenus's Ghost

Aristoxenus's Ghost
Author: Mitzi DeWhitt
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2004-09-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1465332057

As Vyasa, scribe of the epic Mahabarata, said, This book is about you. At first glance the material may seem to be about the specter of ancient Greek musical theory, the ghostly remains that concern a musical system long past and forgotten. However, first glances are often very deceiving. What is offered within its pages goes far beyond arid musical theorizing. As the reader soon begins to discover, permeating through-and-through, in every word on every page, is the archetypal portrait of the ever-present Self. The original and revelatory information, overflowing with meaning, emerges into the world-at-large not only from the extensive research that comes from books and libraries and institutions of higher learning, but also from the deep, quiet, inner searching for the soul. The ideas are unquestionably rich in the nutrients that feed the mind, while also nourishing the heart. Assimilating their message cannot help but inform and transform the reader. Utilizing simple but irrefutable musical mathematics, the author deftly erases centuries-long misunderstandings and speculations by bringing to light what has been lost for twenty-five hundred years: the enharmonic genus. Her point of departure is the Greek musician, Aristoxenus [c. 360 B. C.], a pupil of the philosopher Aristotle. Aristoxenus, the son of a musician, penned a seven-part treatise about music, called Elementa Harmonica. Harmonics was the science concerned with the laws of world creation and world maintenance: how they came into existence and how they were organized. Harmonics revealed the fundamental blueprint of creation, and subsequent theoretical structures. The Elementa Harmonica is considered the oldest theory text still in existence. Its influence was considerable and its theoretical ideas were passed on as doctrine by musical theorist of antiquity. Even so, much of what Aristoxenus wrote in Elementa Harmonica has been lost. Of its last three sections (Modes, Modulation, and Construction) very little remains, while the first four categories (Genera, Intervals, Notes, and Systems) continue to be the basis for heated controversy and endless confusion among scholars. The perplexities are immediately cleared up by the recovery of the enharmonic genus. Suddenly, with discovery of the long lost key, we are able to read the basic blueprint, or matrix, that reveals the universal laws. What today we call the matrix, the ancient Greeks named the katapyknosis. From the shifts within the matrix structure comes the organization of the ancient Harmonia, a word that means soul. Harmonics is really about the soul: of what it is composed, and how it is made. Being the reconciling factor, the soul integrates the inner and outer octaves, enabling the image-formation that is uniquely human. By the measure of the soul one is able to view both the world and oneself objectively. Taking a more intuitive approach than what is permitted in academia, the author describes how Aristoxenuss seven musical categories, beginning with the key of the recovered enharmonic genus, actually reveal the expanded viewpoint of an underlying hermetic tradition, one effectively preserved and transmitted by the very information contained within Elementa Harmonica itself. The bold and innovative interpretations in this work may, in all likelihood, set off a storm of controversy that will go beyond the confines of the academic community. What has been dared is the revivifying of ideas, long considered cold and dead, so they once again vibrate the eternal truths of physical and metaphysical principles. Uniquely original yet universal, crossing the lines of science and religion and philosophy, the information emerges into the world-at-large just in the nick of time, as the world approaches the brink of an abyss that cannot be bridged by the usual attempts at diplo

Gurdjieff, String Theory, Music

Gurdjieff, String Theory, Music
Author: Mitzi DeWhitt
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2006-02-08
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1465332073

As the third in a musicological trilogy that seeks objective answers to physical and metaphysical questions by way of musical ratios and proportions, this book may start with the acoustical properties of vibrating strings, but it certainly does not stop there. Rather, it goes on to attack some of the thorniest issues facing quantum physics today, including why string theory, as it is presently conceived, doesnt work; what is missing in the physicists understanding of missing information; and how the real cause underlying the perceived inflation of the universe is, in fact, due to the power laws inherent in vibrating strings. The surprising answers are neither wholly mathematical nor totally philosophical, but result from the reconciling perspective of music theory, the real M-theory. Moving beyond the sterile and secular world-view of the physicists, the author introduces into the equation the sacred metaphysical soul principle, now viewed as the holographic membrane whose sole function is to gather and store information and thus serve as the anti-entropic force within the universe. The properties of the soul, being movement and expansion, have long been associated with the figure called the lambdoma, and with the ancient diatonic scale that naturally forms within it, known as The Scale of the Soul of the World and Nature. With uncanny insight, the author shows how there is not one, but three musical scalesdiatonic, chromatic, and enharmonicwhich form of their own accord within the expanding lambdoma. These informing musical scales become the obvious links to the three branes of the quantum physicists, at the same time providing substantive evidence for why a three brain system is absolutely essential for the completion of the soul of manan idea that students of the Gurdjieff Work will find very familiar, and perhaps very intriguing.

The Meaning of the Musical Tree

The Meaning of the Musical Tree
Author: Mitzi DeWhitt
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2010-01-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1450030726

INTRODUCTION. WHAT DOES IT MEAN? We had the experience but missed the meaning —T. S. Eliot, The Four Quartets What does it mean? How many times we ask ourselves that question! Frankl wrote that to find meaning in one’s life was the primary motivational force in man. Gurdjieff’s fundamental question was ”What is the meaning and purpose of man’s life on earth?” Without meaning, life becomes only a dreary disillusionment, a mere stopgap between birth and death. Since our human nature abhors a vacuum, our common search turns toward filling the ever-present inner void. Our humanity urges us to fill in the empty space between the two points. What urges us is the will to meaning: Who am I? What am I? Why am I here? The Mysteries not only address these wrenching human questions, but afford them objective, mathematically provable answers. The Mystery teachings are all about the science of mediation. Mediation means the mean between the extremes. Without the calculable knowledge of the mean, we are the halt leading the blind; and all fall into the ditch of ignorance and discord. From ancient times, the keynote of the special training into the Mysteries concerned the vibratory laws of harmonics. Harmonics is the language of initiates. Even today, our scientists, peering into the ineluctable mysteries of Nature, recognize how the knowledge harmonics unveils the hidden, mysterious, underlying substructure of the visible material world in which we live. They call it string theory. However, they see only the tip of the iceberg and fail to comprehend the vastness of the structure lying below the surface. Consequently, their results give no real meaning to their discoveries. As ancient cultures well knew, unless understood with a special cast of mind, the arid and secular (Ital. secco, dry) knowledge of mathematical harmonic ratios lead only to pedantic factual data that no one, except perhaps the pedants themselves, care to peruse. The sacred meaning is lost. Meaning, one might say, is the value computed by dividing the sum of two extremes of a range of values by 2? Both means and meaning are valuable as the connectors that join together the proverbial two ends of the octave stick. Means are what come in between. As the ancient musicians were at pains to point out, means provide the middle position. As the reconciling force, they represent the distinctive and valuable aspects of our human nature. In the Timaeus, Plato expresses the importance of the mean that mediates between the two incommensurable things: mind and body, allegorized as fire and earth. However, the universal frame was not simply a surface plane (for which a single mean would have sufficed). Rather, it was a solid, and solid bodies are always compacted not by one mean but by two. Therefore, God placed water and air in the mean between fire and earth, and made them to have the same proportion so far as was possible(as fire is to air, so is water to earth); and thus he bound and put together a visible and tangible heaven. And for these reasons, and out of such elements which are in number four, the body of the world was created, and it was harmonized by proportion, and therefore has the spirit of harmonia, having been reconciled to itself,

Nearly All and Almost Everything

Nearly All and Almost Everything
Author: Mitzi DeWhitt
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2005-05-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1465332065

This musicological study, by persuasive explanation, shows how, adhering to certain exact ratios and proportions, music gains objective power. The inquiry is scientific, the solutions ingenious. Following unexplored and unconventional lines, the author brings together what, on the surface, appear to be three separate lines: Judaism, Hinduism, and the Gurdjieff Work. Their link is musical harmonics, or the magical science of connection between sounds. The failure of modern musicians to achieve the magical effects long ascribed to music by the ancients is due to the prevailing ignorance of those who know nothing about the objective laws on which music is based. Ancient cultures knew how the laws of harmonics (or what comes in between the tones) could evoke metaphysical correspondences of a spiritual nature, as did Gurdjieff. The Hebrews encoded harmonics in their Tree of Life diagram, the Hindus incorporated the potent musical information in a secretive Music of the Path, and Gurdjieff enshrined it in the Enneagram symbol of the Work. In this groundbreaking book, the author presents a provocative and engaging picture of how these laws work. The wealth of new information will have a profound impact on modern views of music and its laws.

The Reality of Being, Decoded

The Reality of Being, Decoded
Author: Mitzi DeWhitt
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2013-09
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 148369481X

"To be one, whole in the face of life, is all that matters. So long as I remain conscious of this, I feel a life within me and a peace that nothing else can give." The words are Madame de Salzmann's, from the final page of her book The Reality of Being. I read them and feel good. For a moment I experience "the peace that passeth understanding." At that same moment I realize my incapacity and my non-comprehension and I feel bad. Stabbed in the heart by "the sword of gnosis" I want to run away, fall back into complacency. I see how I am, divided. Do I care? So long as I remain trapped in passivity, nothing new can appear: no Newness, no New Man, no New World. Do I really wish to explore the Unknown? Or am I only an armchair adventurer, a dreamer vicariously gaining the experience from another's travels? How can I know myself? My journey to inaccessible places begins with seeing that I am two: I wish, I do not wish. The act of seeing itself is the appearance of I." Not the ordinary "I" that is deeply afraid and wishes only for security, but the real "I," pure, uncontaminated by fear, grounded in love. "Without it I will never know what is true, never enter a world entirely new." Her words convey deep meaning, far deeper than we ordinarily realize. To discover the New World requires knowing how to measure. Without the science of measures I cannot go far. "It is my measure, the measure both of my capacity and of the quality of my moment of work." Knowing the code of measures, I can decipher the reality of who I am. This book provides the keys to the code.

Acorns: Windows High-Tide Foghat

Acorns: Windows High-Tide Foghat
Author: Joshua Morris
Publisher: iUniverse
Total Pages: 1832
Release: 2013-01-23
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1475966911

Acorns delineates the future of humanity as a reunification of intellect with the Deep Self. Having chosen to focus upon ego (established securely by the time of Christ), much more beta brain wave development will destroy our species and others, which process has already begun. We create our own realities through beliefs, intents and desires and we were in and out of probabilities constantly. Feelings follow beliefs, not the other way around.

Hamlet's Ghost

Hamlet's Ghost
Author: James Cowan
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2015-09-04
Genre: City planning
ISBN: 144388149X

Occasionally a man emerges from history without us knowing him. Duke Vespasiano Gonzaga (1531–91) of Sabbioneta escaped the net of sixteenth century Italy, its history of wars and conflicts, to fashion a life that was uniquely different. He set out to change the way urban man lived. Importantly, he was the first man to build a Città ideale. Sabbioneta is the prototype of all planned cities of the modern era. As a confidant of King Philip II of Spain and a traveller, he quickly acquired a cosmopolitan worldview, which led him to become a uomo universale. It was in this capacity that he designed Sabbioneta as a genuine “little Athens.” His life was fraught with tragedy, however. Not only did he suffer from syphilis, but his personal troubles left him emotionally damaged. The mysterious death of two wives, including the beautiful Diana of Cardona, forced him to find solace in the construction of his ideal city. As nephew to the legendary Giulia Gonzaga – and with her encouragement – the Duke managed to forge a career as a poet, bibliophile, antiquarian, condottiero, urban planner and diplomat, all against the backdrop of New World discovery, the Protestant Reformation, and the Inquisition. This book reveals another fascinating story: Vespasiano Gonzaga’s link to Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Like the Prince of Denmark, he reflects the emergence of our modern consciousness. He was a true Renaissance man whose legacy remains with us to this day. As a self-fashioned personality, the Duke made every attempt to place himself at the forefront of events of his time. His life tells us a great deal about how late-Renaissance men exteriorised their inner world in a bid to achieve immortality.