Tetractys by Arcanalogue + Azamel

Introducing the TETRACTYS, in your choice of sterling silver or Urizenic brass (the latter hangs on an oxidized black silver chain.) The necklace length is 19.5" bit is also available at no additional charge in a 21.5" version. Please send a note if you prefer the longer chain.

Our amulet presents this symbol in an inverted position, so that it will appear right-side-up to the wearer. The reverse side is marked A, a footprint tracing back to the triangular Greek letter Alpha, the beginning of everything. (According to Plutarch’s grandfather, Lamprias, this is because it’s “the first sound that children make.”)

Each piece comes with instructions for ceremonially consecrating with the four elements, featuring a translation of a Pythagorean prayer and historical oath created for devotional use with this jewelry.

A collaboration with tarot guide Arcanalogue (Instagram: arcanalogue), who writes:

"Did you know the card meanings in the tarot deck’s minor arcana are mainly derived from number symbolism? The images that have been assigned to them from the Rider Waite Smith deck onward are just artistic interpretations of that symbolism, crafted to help us tell our stories.

The minor arcana consists of four suits, numbered Ace through 10, each with four court figures. Why? What is the significance? What does a numbered card signify on its own, versus how it fits into the larger picture of its suit, considered as part of a sequence?

Consider the Tetractys (Greek: τετρακτύς), made up of ten equidistant points arranged in an equilateral triangle. The Pythagoreans considered this figure to be sacred, even swearing their oath upon it. In this simple design they found the key to the elements, the organization of dimensional space, the hierarchy of metaphysical reality, even musical scales.

In developing the tarot as a tool for divination in high magick, Western occultists drew from Pythagorean and Kabbalist numerology, gleaning card meanings from sacred structures such as the Tetractys and the Tree of Life. Every number has symbolic value as well as mathematical value. Each minor card can be considered in the context of the numbers that come before and after it, like frames in an animated sequence.

For those who read and study the cards, number symbolism can help reveal the continuity between all tarot decks, even those which vary widely in their artistic expression and spiritual influences.

The path from 1 to 10 isn’t arbitrary, it is weighted by our evolution, our intention, our instincts, our desires, our physical form, and our imperfect awareness of the divine essence that animates everything.

That awareness craves symbolic guidance and meaningful expression; it is the fertile ground from which all questions arise. Our forebears knew this craving well, and constructed the world in anticipation of it— whether to inflame, feed, exploit, or merely suppress it.

The Tetractys endures as an important teaching and meditation tool, organizing all of reality around the simplest and most sacred numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10.