ANGELS WE HAVE HEARD ON HIGH

Pythagorean Harmonies & Kabbalist Planets

In Republic, Plato describes the heavenly harmony that the Sirens make as they sit atop
the orbits of the Wanderers, seven Planets corresponding to the seven notes of the octave.
Cicero would follow Plato, and in his On The Republic, we similarly find the Pythagorean
Music of the Celestial Bodies as they revolve up above.
Medieval Kabbalists turned the Sirens into angels, with various sources ascribing different
angels to different Planets (Aryeh Kaplan, Sefer Yetzirah, Weiser Books, 1997).

The Planets were no strangers to Jewish thought and ritual. According to the historian
Josephus and the philosopher Philo of Alexandria, the seven candles of the grand Menorah
of the Jerusalem Temple stood for the Planets. Even today, the first candle to be lit is called
Shamash, the Babylonian Sun god.

With Kabbalists connecting the Planets to angels, we might appreciate how the carols and
angelic singing we hear in the Holiday Season today echo the Planetary music of the
Pythagoreans.
Have a Happy Solstice!