The Coagulation
How the leitmotifs of my life, cooked through my alchemical wedding, reaffirmed my orientation of authenticity...
The motifs described in my previous post are the inspirata of my single, tattooed glyph. It's named Kali Caduceus Monas Hieroglyphica. There isn't a one-to-one correlation between the leitmotifs described and the components of the glyph. But the themes I've described inspired the glyph's elements, now inscribed on my right arm.
The following is a presentation of the glyph’s symbology.
Kali Linux—Component #1
The scintilla of the design came to mind in the early summer of 2019, about five months before my wife's ALS diagnosis. Then, I served as a cybersecurity education program director for the K12 High-Speed Network in California, and, in that work, I used a computer operating system named Kali Linux. It's designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. Here is the logo used as the operating system’s trademark …
The dragon trademark doesn't have an official name, though it's sometimes (incorrectly) referred to as Kali, the Hindu goddess. I included Kali in the name of my tattooed glyph to both represent the goddess AND my long-time infatuation with tinkering, hacking, and cybersecurity. The operating system was focused on kernel1 auditing, which is where they got the k-a-l in Kali (Kernel Auditing Linux). Since the Hindu goddess Kali is considered the master of time, change, and destruction, perhaps folks referred to the sigil as Kali because those are the things engineers do with Kali Linux—they seek out and identify exploits in code or a network and destroy them.
I have gone ahead and named the dragon myself, by the way. More on that, ahead…
It’s a serpent dragon; no feet or arms (sometimes with itsy bitsy legs and arms). Serpent dragons have been part of the human experience for eons—from Tiamat (Mesopotamian) to Leviathan (Abrahamic), Hydra (Greek), or Jörmungandr (Norse). In fact, it wasn't until the Late Middle Ages (1250 CE to 1500 CE) that dragons were envisioned as bi- or quadrupedal. I point out its serpentine quality here because the image communicates several ideas in my glyph—not just a conception of the dragon archetype that has permeated nearly all human civilizations. In the section below, I’ll reference the serpentine symbology intended in my design with regard to the Brotherhood of the Serpent— a philosophical quasi-trust of a wisdom tradition extolling the esoteric meaning of the serpents associated with Tree of Life motifs throughout many mythologies of the world.
The dragon developed as a myth in separate places worldwide but always carried certain qualities with it. In the Americas and Asia, the dragon is part of creation myths. The dragon is the very stuff that the world is made of.
In the Zoroastrian tradition, dragons were sometimes simply known as azi or serpents. They had essential roles in religious texts. They were demonic primarily, evil creatures who swallowed horses and men and emitted poison. The Persian dragon looked like the Chinese dragon, with a snake-like body. Except its body was surrounded by wisps of flame.
Aazdaha, the other word for dragon in Farsi, were almost always depicted as evil in Persian mythology. Still, there were a few times when they were depicted neutrally, usually blending Persian and Indian culture. This includes stories of dragons participating in councils with other animals as part of the greater natural world. In this way, dragons were meant to inspire natural wonder rather than fantastical imaginings.
There also seems to be an elemental aspect to dragons. In eastern mythologies, it is always water, though it can take on any number of elemental traits in the Americas and Western cultures. They breathe fire, fly through the air, swim in the sea, and create the Earth. Generally, eastern dragons are perceived as more benevolent. They are held in reverence. Western dragons are more likely to be seen as destructive and wrathful.
But there's more to the symbology of the dragon.
As an archetype, it is the symbol of the unconscious. It represents instinct and energy. It is the predator that wants to go get it. In fact, the concept of the dragon was such an immense part of my life's narrative that the driving through-line of my Master of Fine Arts degree’s thesis was structured around the fictionalized manifestation of my unconscious as a dragon that I would either run from in fear or look for to slay.
While at UCLA, I wrote and produced a play as a means to present some of the ideas I'd been most impressed and immersed by as a graduate student there. The play centers around a nameless, metaphysical fugitive running from a menace that haunts and taunts him. But the menace (which eventually is revealed to be a dragon-like entity) is elusive, transporting itself from epoch to epoch. The fugitive determines that the only way to stop the game between him and the dragon is if he travels through time, chasing the dragon through various epochs, and manifesting as various characters in those epochs that the dragon wouldn’t recognize. The fuguitive is bent on tracking the dragon down and, through the ideas or works of the characters the fugitive manifests as, he is able to find and surprise the dragon; throw it off guard so the fugitive can get a few jabs back at the behemoth. Think of it as an intellectually inclined Quantum Leap sort of thing, but with a bit of a Matrix feel.
Again, that was just the narrative device. The more academic and socially relevant ideas presented in the thesis included:
A historical perspective of fine artists (author, painter, actor, musician, etc.) and their addiction to altered states of consciousness via drink, or drugs, etc.
An anthropological investigation of the historically documented behavior artists and shamans have used temporarily perturb the mind/body psychology through ethnobotanical means.
A dissection of the roots of fine art and its connections to the education, theology, folk healing, and politics/government.
A declaration of my own decades-long exploration into comparative religions and of the Hermetic Tradition, as well as my commitment to further study.
A personal look at the dramatic story of my childhood and how the events of that period have shaped all of me.
So, I’ve lived with this illusory dragon psycho-device for quiiiiiiiite some time now. I even went ahead and named it. I call her Pymander.
Pymander is also the title of the first tractate in the Corpus Hermeticum. The image of Pymander was etched into my mind as, every time I booted the OS up, there she'd be.
Plus, I really like the simple, sleek design.
As such, the original design of the glyph was this:
Component #2—Caduceus
The name Hermes, in much of the civilizied world, conjurs recollections of the Olympian God (Greece). He was the son of Zeus and moved quickly between the human world and the one just beyond our reach, thanks in part to his winged sandals. The Greeks considered the god the guide of the dead to the afterlife.
The Romans, who largely worshiped the same mythology2, just with different names, referred to Hermes as Mercury. Because he was constantly crossing boundaries, the god was characterized as something of a trickster. As such, he was also considered the patron god of thieves, travelers, and heralds. Hermes was also the god of boundaries. A sculpture of him, known as a hermae, would often stand at crossroads or at entrances.
By about 550 BCE, Hermes was depicted as having a staff, or a wand. It was named Caduceus. The Caducues was originally depicted as being entwined by TWO serpents in much of the world’s iconogrpahy. The symbolism of snakes today is VERY different than it was in the ancient Mediterrenaean. The outstanding characteristic of the snake in the mythology of the ancients was its eyes, not that it slithers, is evil, and dangerous. It was known to be a creature that saw all.
To the classical world of antiquity, the Caduceus was the staff originally forged by Apollo, the god of oracles, healing, archery, music, arts, sunlight, knowledge, and the protection of children. He gave it to his brother, Hermes, as a gift for having invented the lyre, a U-shaped stringed instrument. The lyre’s tones (vibrations? harmonics? resonance? tember? frequencies?) were said to be so enchanting, that even Apollo was transfixed by its sounds.
As explained in William Godwin’s 1876 Lives of the Necromancers, the technology of the Caducues staff (wand) was that it would wake the sleeping and send the awake to sleep. If it was applied to the dying, their death was gentle; if applied to the dead, they returned to life.
NOTE: Caduceus is the Latin version of the staff’s name. The Greek version is Kērykeion, which happens to be a cognate of
Kykeon
, which, etymologically, means to stir or mix in Greek (κυκάω). If you don’t know what the Kykeon was, check it out. It’s fascinating.
The Caduceus as Symbol of Hermeticism
As Greek culture and influence spread following the conquests of Alexander the Great, a period of syncretism, or interpretatio graeca, saw Greek deities identified with foreign counterparts. In Ptolemaic Egypt, for example, the Egyptian god Thoth was identified by Greek speakers as the Egyptian form of Hermes. The two gods were worshiped as one at the Temple of Thoth in Khemenu, a city which became known in Greek as Hermopolis.
This led to Hermes gaining the attributes of a god of translation and interpretation, or more generally, knowledge and learning. In the 3rd-century BCE, a letter was sent by the priest Petosiris to King Nechopso, probably written in Alexandria c. 150 BC, stating that…
Hermes is the teacher of all secret wisdoms, which are accessible by the experience of religious ecstasy.
An epithet of Thoth found in the temple at Esna, "Thoth the great, the great, the great", became applied to Hermes beginning in at least 172 BC. This lent Hermes one of his most famous later titles, Hermes Trismegistus (Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος), "thrice-greatest Hermes". The figure of Hermes Trismegistus would later absorb a variety of other esoteric wisdom traditions and become a major component of Hermeticism, alchemy, and related traditions.
As a response to the increasingly rapid suppression of paganic traditions in the Meditternean area, the Levnant, and much of Asia minor, mostly due to the 1st Century CE profligation of Christianity, a slew of what is now known as esoteric traditions burgeoned, including Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, the Chaldaean Oracles, and late Orphic and Pythagorean literature. Once such traditions was Hermeticism. These traditions had their own, individual angles, but what they shared was the impulse to resist domination by doctrinal faith (i.e. a heretical stance against the developing Christian speak and superiority).
During c. 30-100, also known as the Apostolic Age, apocalyptic Jewish Christians, like the Ebionites, and those led by James the Just (brother of Jesus), not to mention Saul of Tarsus (better known as Paul the Apostle), Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, and Papias of Heirapolis were moving fast to get in on the new Jesus market. They were the ones that began to dismiss nature as the divine. They were the ones that cast nature and the feminine as vile, evil, and unpure. They were the ones that took the philosophy of a small band of Jews known as the Essenes who were just trying to get along with the local tribes and contorted them to be the basis for the genocide of (eventually) millions that would not submit to their will.
In short, to the Hermetists3, the Gnostics, etc., the people known as the early Christians were actually the bad guys! Hermetists held that the alchemical practices and wisdom that first grew out of ancient Egypt, the ecstatic traditions of the ancient Greek and Indo-Iranian peoples, along with the world’s other Paleopaganic traditions (e.g. polytheism, nature-centered worship, the sacred feminine, etc.) were all good and beneficial, pro-human ways of life!
They smelled a festering cancer developing. Those early Christian fathers, like the Greek Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen of Alexandria; the Latin Tertullian, Augustine of Hippo; the Syriac Isaac of Antioch and Aphrahat; the Desert Fathers Paul of Themes, Anthony the Great and Pachomius were all simply foisting onto the people a method for enslavement/governance and exploiting the uneducated peasants and serfs by either amassing them into huge armies to be controlled by the wealthy or enslaving them with a dream of salvation in the afterlife, as long as they break their backs in this one.
Hermetists were educated men and women of the world that were silenced by the growing, nearly pandemic-like spread of the Christian Churches. So, they set out to preserve the ancient knowledge of antiquity. Their collective work is known as the Hermetica.
Heremes Tristmegistus
The thing about the Hermetica is that NO ONE knows who the authors were. The tradition was one of secrecy. I’m sure you may’ve heard the term “hermetically sealed”. That’s why. Who wrote what was to be completely forgotten. In fact, as much of the Hermetica was in direct contraposition with what whas shaping up to be an anti-magic, anti-nature, anti-human insitution, the content itself had to be coded. More on that in another post…
So, ALL of the Hermetica is attributed to a legendary heirophant, the Greco-Egyptian Hermes Tristmegistus (in Greek, Ἑρμῆς ὁ Τρισμέγιστος, meaning "Hermes the Thrice-Greatest"). In Latin, he is referred to as Mercurius ter Maximus. In Arabic and Farsi he is known as Idris. Hermes Trismegistus originated as a syncretic combination of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth. And it is for this reason that the legendary figure is connected with and depicted wielding the mythical Caducues.
My particular interest is in the second of the two parts of the Hermetica, the Religio-Philosophical Hermetica (RPH). The earlier written one which probably started as far back as 300 BCE is known as the Technical Hermetica. But, according to most philologists, the RPH was written between 100-300 CE. No one knows who actually scribed the wisdom traditions of the RPH into texts. But the historians and philosophers I’ve subscribed to agree that they were probably written by Hellenizing members of the Egyptian priestly class, whose intellectual activity was centered in the environment of the Egyptian temples.
The RPH include treatises cheifly focused on the relationship between human beings, the cosmos, and God. It promotes a cosmogony that was VERY different than what the Jews and Christians were proferring. It’s not a work of laws (like much of the Bible). It centers on anthropology, cosmology, and theology. But like the Bible, the contents include moral exhortations calling for a way of life (known as “the way of Hermes”) leading to spiritual rebirth, and eventually, to divinization in the form of a heavenly ascent.
The RPH were probably all originally written in Greek, even though some of them only survive in Coptic, Armenian, or Latin translations. During the Middle Ages, most of them were only accessible to Byzantine scholars (an important exception being the Asclepius, which mainly survives in an early Latin translation), until a compilation of Greek Hermetic treatises known as the Corpus Hermeticum was translated into Latin by the Renaissance scholars Marsilio Ficino and Lodovico Lazzarelli in the 15th Century.
Since the overall framework of my tattooed glyph is that of the Caducueus, I claim my support of the Hermetic, as well as the heretic and magical traditions of the world—in part, due to my destiny; but largely, because of my holy, alchemical wedding to one Olga Aleksandravna of Serov, Russia (1960-2021).
The earliest discovered expression of the Caduceus shape is found on the Libation Vase of Gudea. It depicts the dragon Mušḫuššu and is dedicated to the Mesopotamian deity of vegetation and the underworld, Ningishzida (Sumerian: 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒄑𒍣𒁕). The cuneiform inscription on it can be translated in English to mean "To the god Ningiszida, his god, Gudea, governor of Lagash, for the prolongation of his life, had dedicated this."
In Late Antiquity (284 CE to 700 CE), Caduceus became the basis for the astrological symbol representing the planet Mercury:
NOTE: the cross beneathe the circle was added in the 1500s (probably, by the fellow I’ll be discussing ahead, Dr. John Dee) to put a Christian flavor to the planet and element. The Byzantine codices, in which the ancient horoscopes were preserved on papyri, depicted the symbol for Mercury as a ONLY a circle (representing the sun) and the cresecnet above it (representing the moon).
Over the past several years, I’ve been getting even deeper into the noetic archeogology of the Hermetica. By way of my own hermeneutics (wink), I’ve been considering the proposition that Hermes Trismegistus may also be an expression of the Sumerian (and potentially Elamite) worship of Ningishzida. In the Middle Babylonian myth of Adapa, Ningishzida is one of the two gatekeepers of Anu's celestial palace (the heaven of Jewish conception).
Moreover, diety's name can be translated to mean "lord of the good tree."
Trees? Snakes? Hermes? There’s something there. Which brings me to the next component of my glyph…
La Confrérie du Serpent— Component #3
The ancient Mesopotamian god Ningishzida, often depicted with snakes emanating from his shoulders, is frequently mentioned in connection with grass, which he was believed to provide for the sake of domestic animals. The "tree" in his name might be "vine" according to some Assyriologists, and an association between this god and alcoholic beverages (specifically wine) is well attested. The death of vegetation was associated with his annual travel to the underworld.
NOTE: the reason certain alcoholic beverages are referred to as
spirits
is because the are the distilled evaporation of dead vegetation (e.g. barley, wheat, etc.). Perhaps this is a reference to a long forgotten, ethnopharmacological, shamanic practice. Perhaps the Elamites, the Amorites, the Akkadians, the Anatolians, and even
the more ancient Indo-Iranic people (known widely as the Aryans) developed a philosophical understanding that ecstatic states were necessary to engage in transcendental, religious experiences—what some may refer to as “to know God”.
Like his father, Ningishzida was deeply associated with snakes, including the mythical mušḫuššu, ušumgal, and bašmu, and nirah. He was an underworld god and, in this role, was known as the "chair bearer of the underworld." Now it gets a bit fuzzy here but, perhaps THIS is why the Greek and Roman conceptions associate their Hermes with the Caduceus. It may be a call back to the worship and veneration of vegetation, such as ergots, fungii, or grasses, which brought on ecstatic conditions in mammals. The potentially psychotomimetic, intoxicating experiences that may’ve been in ritual use thanks to primitive wines and other enthogenic substances could have been a catalysts for an evolutionary leap in our ability to use language and sound in bringing about what is commonly thought of today as an experience of The Other (god, that is).
Of course, the apparent connection to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil can't be overlooked here, either. A serpent is wrapped around the tree. Ningishzida means lord of the good tree? Do you see the literal connection? In some casuistic correlation, there seems to be a leitmotif, stretching across the perhaps 2nd Millenium BCE West Asian worlds—the whole of which may be an indication that an ancient tradition having to do with vegetation, the rapid expansion of language/knowledge, serpentine characters, and communication or transportation between our living world and the world of the gods, the world of the dead, may have, and most likely still is, purveying the planet. It’s just guised as something else. Perhaps a dragon?
The Caduceus symbology, now enmeshed with the Tree of Knowledge symbology and the serpent/dragon symbology elevates my little glyph into its own magical little sigil, as far as I’m concerned. Tree-based symbology is conspicuously prevalent in philosophical systems. For example:
The Kabbalah Tree of Life
The Yggdrasil Ash tree of Norse mythos
The Urartian/Armenian tree of life
The Gaokerena of Iranian mythos
The Ceiba tree of Aztecan, Olmec, and Mayan mythos
The Fusang tree (Chinese: 扶桑; pinyin: Fú Sāng) of Chinese and Japanese mythos
The divine Kalpavriksha tree of Hindu mythos
The Islamic Tree of Immortality (Arabic: شجرة الخلود)
Today, the serpent is considered a symbol of self-indulgence, of arrogance, of deadly danger, and unholy villainy. In the Abrahamic traditions, it’s the serpent that tempts Eve into eating of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And what happened next? Well, Eve came to understand the truth. She came to know herself as a creator too, not just the obedient child of a disembodied voice permeating the world.
Aaaaaaand why is that bad?
Why exactly is being knowledgable a sin so evil that all humankind is banished from Paradise (a Farsi word, by the way) and doomed to suffer painstaking, lifelong labor? And as a special bonus, for women only, the pangs of childbirth pain: since, you know, SHE is the one that did the deed? Is that what most parents want for their children? To be forever…children of this lesser god? To not question their circumstances? Just work and go to _____ for the rest of their lives? All the while, never seeming like they’re creative beings because, that would upset daddy?
Perhaps the serpent wasn’t such a villain after all, ey? Perhaps it was the serpent that was trying to guide the blinded pair out of the Matrix and into the desert of the real.
If you think so, than you have just been knighted into the Brotherhood of the Serpent! Too late. Sorry. You’re in.
(It’s cool. We have jackets!!)
So, to represent my support of the Hermetic tradition (remember, Hermeticism is a heresy of the Abrahamic religions), my work as a technologist, and my interest in the ancient use of ethnobotanical and other technologies for healing, I came to combine the Kali Linux serpent dragons into an expression of the Caduceus.
But I had to incorporate what was sure to be the most widely respected sigil of the Hermetic tradition in post-Medieval times into the glyph. A sigil known as…
The Monas Hieroglyphica—Component #4
In 1564, the magus and court astrologer of Elizabeth I of England published a book that expounded on the meaning of an esoteric symbol of his invention—something he called the Monas Hieroglyphica (MH). The magus was named John Dee and the MH, which he wrote at the age of 37, is an enigmatic treatise on symbolic language. The text was written in 12 days while in a mystical state.
“[I am] the pen merely of [God] Whose Spirit, quickly writing these things through me, I wish and I hope to be.” -John Dee
This is what he referred to as the Monas Hieroglyphica (Latin for The Hieroglyphic Monad4):
The Monas Hieroglyphica embodies Dee's vision of the unity of the cosmos, which is a composite of various esoteric and astrological symbols. That, by the way, is what makes this a work of the Hermetic tradition. The book itself is a symbolic representation of projected philosophical positions and sets of held knowledge.
The book explains the symbol (or hieroglyph) thusly:
NOTE: I’m using much of Dee’s actual words below…
The very ancient Magi of Iran had transmitted five hieroglyphical signs of the planets up to the European Renaissance, all of which are composed of the signs used for the Moon and the Sun, together with the sign of the Elements the hieroglyphical sign of Aries, the Ram (that’s fire, ya’ll—ignaus!).
The first and most simple example and representation of all things may be demonstrated by the straight line and the circle, whether such things be either non-existent or merely hidden under nature's veils.
It is by the straight line and the circle that the first and most simple example and representation of all things may be demonstrated, whether such things be either non-existent or merely hidden under nature's veils.
Neither the circle without the line, nor the line without the point, can be artificially produced. It is, therefore, by virtue of the point and the Monad that all things commence to emerge in principle. That which is affected at the periphery, however large it may be, cannot in any way lack the support of the central point.
Therefore, the central point which we see in the center of the hieroglyphic Monad produces the Earth, round which the Sun, the Moon, and the other planets follow their respective paths. The Sun has the supreme dignity, and so he represents him by a circle having a visible centre.
Although the semicircle of the Moon is placed above the circle of the Sun and would appear to be superior, nevertheless Dee asserted that the Sun is ruler and King. We see that the Moon in her shape and her proximity rivals the Sun with her grandeur, which is apparent to ordinary men, yet the face, or a semi-sphere of the Moon, always reflects the light of the Sun. It desires so much to be impregnated with solar rays and to be transformed into Sun that at times it disappears completely from the skies and some days after reappears, so Dee represented her by the figure of the Horns (Cornucopia).
Dee gave the completion of the idea of the solar circle by adding a semicircle for the Moon, for the morning and the evening were the first day, and it was therefore in the first (day) that the Light of the Philosophers was made (or produced).
The Sun and the Moon are supported on the right-angled Cross. This Cross may signify very profoundly, and for sufficient reasons in the hieroglyph, either the Ternary (composed of three parts) or the Quaternary (composed of four parts). The Ternary is made by the two straight lines having a copulative centre.
All this accords perfectly with the Sun and Moon of our Monad, because, by the magic of the four Elements, an exact separation on their original lines must be made; following which the circulatory conjunction within the solar complement through the peripheries of these same lines is performed, because however long a given line may be, it is possible to describe a circle passing through its extremes, following the laws of the geometricians. Therefore, Dee claims that we cannot deny how useful the Sun and the Moon are to his Monad, in conjunction with the decadal proportion of the Cross.
The figure of the zodiacal sign Aries in use amongst the astronomers, is the same for all the world (a sort of erection both cutting and pointed), and it is understood that it indicates the origin of the fiery triplicity in that part of the sky. Therefore, Dee added the astronomical sign Aries to signify that in the practice of this Monad the use of fire is required. He finishes the brief hieroglyphic consideration of his Monad, which summed up in one only hieroglyphic context:
“The Sun and the Moon of this Monad desire that the Elements in which the tenth proportion will flower, shall be separated, and this is done by the application of Fire.”
And it is for this reason my own tattooed glyph is presented as being born of fire.
Sed tanquam simplicem firmamque rei formam. “God has knowledge of things not by way of multiple thought, but just as the pure and firm shape of the thing itself.” When the ancients wished to signify divine mysteries, they didn't use the small characters of script, but the whole images of plants, trees, or animals. Through the icon of the Monas Hieroglyphica, Hermeticists convey to the world that there is a semiotic system in which there is no difference, formal or otherwise, between the being of language and the language of being.
As such, I integrated Dee's glyph into my own.
A Dedicatory Didactic
Most significantly, the art of the tattoo is an homage to my Olga (in Cyrillic text, Ольга). The glyph is intended to represent the part of me that is her. It's intended to signify that, because of her, I have been metaphysically born into a new Emil—one that is now comprised of two narratives, my own and Olga's story. It wasn't her death but her life and our love together that metaphorically baked my understanding of self and the other into my story. She taught me that I was curled up into a shell that I'd donned as a mechanism for adjusting to a hostile, new land when I was but a young boy. She recognized a modicum of a quality she found fascinating and mysterious about me, which in turn inspired me to cast off my shell and be bolder. Braver.
NO MORE SECRETS
Because of her, I now remerge as my more authetic self and am willing to share my path on the way of Hermes. This is why I dedicated the conception and etching of the glyph to the memory and celebration of our everlasting marriage.
The Kali Caduceus Monas Hieroglyphica is once again expressed.
The kernel is a computer program at the core of a computer's operating system and generally has complete control over everything in the system.
Note, the “same mythology” shouldn’t be confused with the Roman Cult of Mithra which was also widely prevelant in the ancient Roman world.
Hermetists are the people that kept the Hermetic tradition alive by recording it originally. Heremetecists are people the support those traditions.
The term monad (from Greek μονάς monas, "singularity" in turn from μόνος monos, "alone") is used in some cosmogonies to refer to a most basic or original substance. As originally conceived by the Pythagoreans, the Monad is the Supreme Being, divinity or the totality of all things.