Music, Mysticism and Magic
by Joscelyn Godwin
(349 pages, pb, $9.95)
Arkana Paperbacks, 1987
ISBN 1-85063-040-2
A wonderful collection of historical writings on harmonics, the music of the spheres, the
sound current, and other spiritual manefestations of music.
Selected Quotes
The heavenly singing does not extend or reach as far as the Creator's earth, as do the
rays of the sun, because of His providential care for the human race. For it rouses to
madness those who hear it, and produces in the soul an indescribable and unrestrained
pleasure. It causes them to despise food and drink and to die an untimely death through
hunger in their desire for the song. Philo (45 A.D.)
Pythagoras was likewise of the opinion that music contributed greatly to health, if it was
used in an appropriate manner. For he was accustomed to employ a purification of this
kind, but not in a careless way. And he called the medicine which is obtained through
music by the name of purification....And there are certain melodies devised as remedies
against the passions of the soul, and also against despondancy and lamentation, which
Pythagoras invented as things that afford the greatest assistance in these maladies. There
is another kind of modulation invented as a remedy against desires. Iamblichus (300 A.D.)
Farther still, the whole Pythagoric school produced by certain appropriate songs, what
they called exartysis, or adaptation; synarmoge, or elegance of manners; and
epaphe, or contact, usefully conducting the dispositions of the soul to passions
contrary to those which it before possessed. For when they went to bed, they purified the
reasoning power from the perturbations and noises to which it had been exposed during the
day, by certain odes and peculiar songs, and by this means procured for them tranquil
sleep, and few and good dreams. But when they rose from bed, they again liberated
themselves from the torpor and heaviness of sleep, by songs of another kind. Sometimes,
also, by musical sounds alone, unaccompanied with words, they healed the passions of the
soul and certain diseases, enchanting, as they say, in reality....After this manner,
therefore, Pythagoras through music produced the most beneficial correction of human
manners and lives. Iamblichus (300 A.D.)
Is it true to say that the sound of divine bodies is not audible by terrestrial ears? But
if any one, like Pythagoras, who is reported to have heard this harmony, should have his
terrestrial body exempt from him, and his luminous and celestial vehicle...purified,
either through a good allotment, or through probity of life, or through a perfection
arising from sacred operations, such a one will perceive things invisible to others, and
will hear things inaudible by others. Simplicius (530 A.D.)
Know that among the ancients, ignorance of music was held as shameful as illiteracy.
Aurelian of Rome (850)
From hearing sounds and pipings the mental fantasies gather a great strength; nay, they
become forms in the imagination. Jalalu'ddin Rumi (1269)
We cannot say that the tremendous terrifying sounds heard by the visionary mystics are
caused by an undulation of air in the brain. For an air-wave of such force...is
inconceivable. No, what we have here is the archetypal Image of the sound, and this
autonomous Form is itself a sound. Suhrawardi (1582)
The true, highest melody, however, is that which is sung without any voice. It resounds in
the interior of man, is vibrating in his heart and in all his limbs. Isaac Loeb Peretz
(1912)
[A] certain number of musicians were gathered at a feast given by a great sovereign who
took care to place them according to their degree of mastery of their respective arts,
when a man of wretched appearance, clad in rags, entered. The master of ceremonies raised
him up above all the participants, whose faces expressed their evident disapproval.
Wishing to display the man's merit and calm his guest's anger, the master asked him to let
them hear a sample of his art. He took out some pieces of wood which he had with him, set
them out before him and stretched strings over them. Then he set these strings vibrating
and performed an air that made all those present burst into laughter because of the
pleasure, the joy and the well-being that took possession of their souls. Then he changed
his tuning and played another air which made everyone weep for the tenderness of the
melody and the sadness which settled in their hearts. Then he changed the tuning, and
played another air which plunged everyone into slumber; so doing he rose, went out and was
never heard spoken of again. The Brethren of Purity of Basra