Treatise on Nought Lore Books

Description

A remarkable treatise on the mystery of numbers and the symbol of emptiness.

Text

Algoritmi de numero Indorum
Treatise on Nought

If something has been written about the symbolism of numbers, we must distinguish between what is significant for algebra and therefore for mathematics and what is significant for astrology and gematria. We can only differentiate one from the other with the help of God and the judgment that God gives to those seek His assistance in studying the work of creation, and heed not the voices from the dark abyss from whence His fallen servants call to them with sweet tones.

The ancient Greek scholar Aristotle says that nature abhors a vacuum and therefore fills all empty spaces with ether. Nevertheless, we must account for empty space because its filling causes movement in all directions, such as the displacement of a stone in flight by other matter that fills the entire world around it. Therefore, emptiness exists only if it is being filled by something else at the same moment.

The beginning must always be sought in God, and God is unity, symbolised by the numeral One. This One alone unites, and all other numbers are merely its multiplication. The numeral One is the Creator in His completeness and perfection.
Furthermore, there are two certainties. First, that every whole can always be divided into parts, which we call fractions, and second, that opposed to the work of creation is the emptiness from which everything emerged and which God’s work has been filling since the beginning. If numbers rise upwards from the Arabic 1 by multiplication, then the emptiness must necessarily be found on the opposite side. Thus, what is found here is Castrensis’s Zero, represented by the symbol of a dot, a circle, or two Babylonian oblique wedges, which he himself adopted from the Persian scholar Al-Khwarizmi, known as Algorithmus.

Zero itself can neutralise or absorb, but it can never amplify or divide. Neutralisation occurs by addition, where the initial value remains the same. Absorption occurs by multiplication. For amplification, zero is always irrelevant, as its emptiness inevitably results in only emptiness.
If every whole can be divided infinitely, there must necessarily be a multitude of other numbers between Algorithmus’s empty zero and the number 1, which are the fractions of the whole according to the chosen system. All these numbers can then be equally well represented by the symbol 0 with a dot and an Arabic numeral, as by the symbol of a fraction.
In this way, we can infinitely record smaller wholes and never reach emptiness, as we will always find the next half of the previous half. So, where does this zero lie? How is it that it is not present, yet we need it? Let us ask where it does not lie, and thus best describe its emptiness while preserving our sanity when gazing into the bottomless abyss of nothingness.