February 8, 2014

• The Musical Fruit

   

  Agriculture began with beans about 9,000 b.p.  Beans were the first crop ever cultivated.  Pythagoras, the ancient philosopher-mathematician, believed they were harmful.
  
  The poet Callimachus once said, "Keep your hands from beans, a painful food, and as Pythagoras enjoined, I too urge.”

  His fellow poet, Empedocles, concurred: “Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans.”
  

  Saint Epiphanus: “Pythagoras the Samian, son of Mnesarchos, said that the monad is god, and that nothing has been brought into being apart from this.  He was wont to say that wise men ought not to sacrifice animals to the gods, nor yet to eat what had life, or beans, nor to drink wine.”

  Pythagoras is a mysterious fellow.  He left us no writings to be quoted.

  This is from History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell, First Published 1945, Page 31

  Pythagoras is one of the most interesting and puzzling men in history.  Not only are the traditions concerning him an almost inextricable mixture of truth and falsehood, but even in their barest and least disputable form they present us with a very curious psychology.  He may be described, briefly, as a combination of Einstein and Mrs. Eddy.  He founded a religion, of which the main tenets were the transmigration of souls and the sinfulness of eating beans.  His religion was embodied in a religious order, which, here and there, acquired control of the State and established a rule of the saints.  But the unregenerate hankered after beans, and sooner or later rebelled.

  Some of the rules of the Pythagorean order were:

  To abstain from beans.
  Not to pick up what has fallen.
  Not to touch a white cock.
  Not to break bread.
  Not to step over a crossbar.
  Not to stir the fire with iron.
  Not to eat from a whole loaf.
  Not to pluck a garland.
  Not to sit on a quart measure.
  Not to eat the heart.
  Not to walk on highways.
  Not to let swallows share one's roof.
  When the pot is taken off the fire, not to leave the mark of it in the ashes, but to stir them together.
  Do not look in a mirror beside a light.
  When you rise from the bedclothes, roll them together and smooth out the impress of the body.

  All these precepts belong to primitive tabu-conceptions.

   

  Peace Out.
  
   

  • 12:57 pm
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