They started and rounded off each day with music (at the time, there were no chords, i.e., simultaneous striking of several notes, and, for all we know, this music was played as a single melody); they chanted sacred sounds, meditating and bringing their souls into perfect harmony:

“…at night when his disciples went to sleep, he delivered them from all the noises and troubles of the day, and purified the perturbations of their minds, and rendered their sleeps quiet with good dreams and predictions. And when they rose again from their beds, he freed them from the drowsiness of the night, from faintness and sluggishness, by certain proper songs, either set to the Lute or some high voice.” [1]

The depiction of the angelic song and dance in Milton’s epic 17th century poem Paradise Lost could be seen as indirectly describing this Pythagorean way of life:

“That day, as other solemn days, they spent

In song and dance about the sacred hill,

Mystical dance, which yonder starry sphere

Of planets and of fixed in all her wheels

Resembles nearest mazes intricate,

Eccentric, intervolved, yet regular

Then most, when most irregular they seem;

And in their motions harmony divine

So smooths her charming tones, that God’s own ear

Listens delighted.”

Pythagoras taught that the human soul, just as the whole world, is created according to musical laws and should be tempered accordingly. This tradition is still preserved by Rosicrucians who chant sacred vowels in a certain order and Kabbalists who engage in sound meditation connected with the Sefirot Tree (the tradition that stems from Rabbi Ibrahim Abulafia, 13th century) [2], thus also harmonizing different levels of their being. In keeping with this, it was said that Pythagoras used to cure people with sound and music. As Diogenes writes, “he used to practice divination by sound or voices…”

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The tradition of chanting vowels is very ancient. As Melanie Braun writes in her article on the mystical implications of vowel intonations, “in ancient Egypt, the laws of music were even engraved on the temple walls. The Egyptians took the seven vowels from the Oriental languages and used them as musical characters. Invocations to the seven planets were composed of vowels and designated musical modes.” According to Manly P. Hall, one of the sacred Egyptian hymns contained the following invocation: The seven sounding tones praise Thee, the Great God, the ceaseless working Father of the whole universe. And in another hymn, the Deity describes Himself thus:

“I am the great indestructible lyre of the whole world, attuning the songs to the heavens.”

Most of the known sources, including Plato, point to the fact that the practice of vowel incantations derived from Egypt. In Plato’s Philebus (section 18 b), “Theuth”—known as the Egyptian deity Thoth, is mentioned as “some god, or divine man” who first divided the sounds of human speech into three categories: mutes, semi-vowels, and vowels. [3] And in Demetrius’ De Elocutione (late Hellenistic or early Roman period) the following reference is found:



“In Egypt the priests, when singing hymns in praise of the gods, employ the seven vowels, which they utter in due succession; and the sound of these letters is so euphonious that men listen to it in place of aulos and cithara.” [4]

Analogously, “in Kabbalistic study, it is taught that Hebrew letters and words are elements of power” able to reach the Deity. [5] As Jamie James and Anthony Westbrook state, the Ancient world existed within the framework of a unified intellectual continuum stretching throughout Asia, even into China, thus it is no wonder that the Greeks shared the same beliefs regarding the seven sacred vowels and their correspondence with the planetary gods.

Pythagoreans, too, associated vowels with planets and, moreover, believed that each of the planets had a certain velocity produced by its oscillation. For instance, the Pythagorean Nichomachus of Gerasa (late 1st to early 2nd centuries C.E.) in his Manual of Harmony wrote that vowels symbolized “the primary sounds emitted by the seven heavenly bodies”:

“And the tones of the seven spheres, each of which by nature produces a particular sound, are the sources of the nomenclature of the vowels. These are described as unpronounceable in themselves and in all their combinations by wise men since the tone in this context performs a role analogous to that of the monad in number, the point in geometry, and the letter in grammar. However, when they are combined with the materiality of the consonants just as soul is combined with body and harmony with strings – the one producing a creature, the other notes and melodies – they have potencies which are efficacious and perfective of divine things.” [6]