One of Pythagoras’s main doctrines was metempsychosis, the belief in reincarination, that all souls are immortal and that, after death, a soul is transferred into a new body. According to Porphyry, Pythagoras taught that the seven Muses were actually the seven planets singing together.

When Pythagoras was asked why humans exist, he said, “to observe the heavens”. He practiced divination and prophecy. he usually appears either in his religious or priestly guise, or else as a lawgiver.

“The so-called Pythagoreans, who were the first to take up mathematics, not only advanced this subject, but saturated with it, they fancied that the principles of mathematics were the principles of all things.” Aristotle, Metaphysics 350 BC According to Aristotle, the Pythagoreans used mathematics for solely mystical reasons. They believed that all things were made of numbers. The number one (the monad) represented the origin of all things and the number two (the dyad) represented matter. The number three, a triangle was the symbol of the god Apollo. The number four signified the four seasons and the four elements. They believed that odd numbers were masculine and that even numbers were feminine, Ten was regarded as the “perfect number”

Painting showing a group of people dressed in white standing at the edge overlooking the sea watching as the sun rises. Both of his arms are raised into the air. The three men closest to him, are kneeling praying. Behind them, an older man plays a harp and two women play lyres. A man in the foreground kneels prayerfully towards the sunrise.

Pythagoreans Celebrate the Sunrise (1869) by Fyodor Bronnikov