The Origin of the Solfeggio Frequencies | Part 1
At the beginning of this year, I wrote an article exploring the ‘controversy’ and ‘confusion’ between the Solfeggio (or Solfège) System (a memory device designed to help musicians develop their sight-reading, sight-singing, pitch recognition, and aural skills within the Western Tradition), and the Solfeggio Frequencies, a series of frequencies discovered by Dr. Joseph Puleo in the mid-1970’s.
I wrote this article because I was confused by how these two seemingly separate notions could come to have the same or similar names. Superficially, although both based in music and sound, they seemed completely disparate to me. Analysing each from a musical perspective seemed to only prove their difference rather than their similarity, and no matter how much I tried, much of my research into how Dr. Joseph Puleo discovered these frequencies, nothing concrete came up.
That was until I tracked down the book ‘Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse’ as being the place in which Puleo’s methods and intentions were recorded. I won’t lie, initially, I was a little reluctant to read this book. It seemed pretty out of my depth; as though it would encourage me to wade into territories of which I was quite unfamiliar with and would not know how to navigate. Nevertheless, I decided to bite the bullet and give it a go.
Since, throughout my original research I had struggled to uncover any of this information online (probably because I didn’t really know what I was looking for), I thought I would share as much as I could about Puleo’s method here, in the hopes that it could help other people understand it as well. For, if you are looking to listen to these frequencies, surely, you have the right to know the method behind them?
Introduction
Much of Puleo’s work and life path is spiritually based. The book (‘Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse’) shares his unconventional journey to discover this knowledge, receiving messages from other people as well as experiencing his own visitations from spiritual beings himself. As wacko as this may seem to anyone who is not particularly spiritually minded, his discoveries are cemented in mathematics, numerology, and science. It seems that the book is an attempt to illustrate the connection between spiritual teachings and science and maths, rather than a separation, which is what makes it so interesting.
The information that Puleo was led to discover is heavily based on the Pythagoras Skein and The King James Bible. It is said that: “Though many significant discoveries have been made, it may be safely said that with the death of Pythagoras, the great key to this science was lost for nearly 2,500 years. Philosophers of all nations have attempted to unravel the Pythagorean skein, but apparently none have been successful.” (Hall, 1928)
In the book, it is indicated that much of this knowledge has been hidden on purpose to keep it away from the masses, and that the information discovered by Puleo is the unravelling of this skein that has been lost for millennia. By the way, ‘skein’ means ‘a length of loosely coiled thread or yarn’. Therefore, the Pythagoras Skein is essentially a looping pattern of numbers, as you will soon see in the next section of this article.
It is believed that the King James Bible is significant, because King James, being a part of certain secret societies, may have been fully aware of this knowledge, and in commissioning his version of his bible to be written, hid these numerical patterns within the pages. His motives for doing so are unclear. Could it be to further hide the patterns from the masses, whilst offer a place to reveal them to the select few? Could it have been to keep them safely recorded somewhere? Who knows? But it is this version of the bible that Puleo used to discover these hidden codes.
The Pythagoras Skein
Mathematically, this skein, is a process of reducing numbers to their lowest form (1-9), and in doing so, discovering repeating patterns that can be related to other aspects of our universe, for example, language. I will do my best to explain it based on what I have read in the book, though I should emphasise, I am no mathematician or spiritual philosopher. I simply share what I have read as someone who was interested enough to find out where these frequencies have come from, considering they are widely bandied about these days.
Figure 1
Figure 2
The basic idea can be seen in this first table (Figure 1). If we focus on our complete set of single digits- 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9, it seems that if we continue counting past 10, when we reduce these double figures down to single digits (as shown in the table), the 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 pattern continues to repeat throughout, in the same order. Here, I have only shown it up to 30, to save space, but if you continued to to follow the mathematical pattern, you would find that when reduced, it is simply 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 on a continuous loop.
Next, Puleo applied the same technique to the English (Latin) alphabet. By numbering all the letters A-Z from 1 to 26, he then further reduced these numbers to their single digits, only to discover that the patterns was formed again, this time following 1-9, 1-9, and then 1-8, with Z landing on 8. This is shown in Figure 2.
He found that if he took a word, such as GOD, applied the numbers attributed to each letter in the skein, for example, G (7), O (6), D (4), and added them together, in this case getting 17, and then reducing it further to its single digit,
GOD = 8 , he could, as illustrated, attribute numbers to whole words.
In numerology, the numbers 1-9 all represent something different. For example, number 8 represents infinity, and number 9 represents completion, aka the end of the cycle.
Initially, it had been believed that “The first step in obtaining the numerical value of a word is to resolve it back into its original tongue.” (Hall, 1928). This meant that the bible would have to be translated back to Greek or Hebrew in order for the numerical values discovered to make sense.
However, on investigating this further, Puleo found that when he applied this method to the Hebrew alphabet, reducing Hebrew words to their single digit numerical form, the English translations of those words would also be reduced to the same numbers. Apparently, this technique was tested on other languages as well and found to work the same too.
Nevertheless, it isn’t fool proof. As languages have continued to evolve and be modernised, many of these patterns have been warped or lost. This is likely why biblical words were a useful starting point for Puleo, since, these words remain old and unchanged.
Then Puleo was led to investigate the 8 times table. In Figure 3, the first column shows the 8 times table from 1 to 26, with each answer reduced to its single digit equivalent. The pattern that emerges is the same pattern for the alphabet but in reverse. Puleo found that if you added the number from the reversed sequence of the alphabet and the non-reversed sequence of the alphabet, every answer was equal to the number 9. He later realised that it was only the 8 times table that led to this specific pattern emerging, which is interesting when 8 represents infinity and 9 represents completion.
Next on Puleo’s journey, he was led to study the numerical patterns associated with the Hebrew alphabet. He found that the entire 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet were shared in Psalm 119 (of the King James Bible), and that under each Hebrew alphabet letter, the first number attributed to each verse followed the 9-1 pattern when reduced, as shown in Figure 4.
When investigating the multiplications of 3, 6, and 9, Puleo came across another pattern, as shown in Figure 5. He found that the answers to the 3 times table, when reduced, created a consistent 3, 6, 9 pattern. The same pattern appeared for the 6 times table, except the order was reversed. And for the 9 times table, every reduction was equal to 9. When adding up all the reduced numbers associated with the alphabet (column 1, Figure 5), the number also reduced to 9. When adding up every reduced answer for each of the times tables (3,6,9) and then reducing the answer further, each single digit resolves into the same number… 9.
Figure 3
Figure 4
Figure 5
It was this revelation that guided him to The Book of Numbers, specifically, Chapter 7, Verse 12. One only has to read this section of the King James Bible to see how perplexing it is. It is almost nonsensical, with the same phrases being repeated on a loop. Noticing that with each repeat, the verses began with phrases akin to ‘on the first day’, ‘on the second day’… rising until the twelfth day. By underlining each of the days and inspecting the corresponding verse number attributed to these lines, he noticed the same pattern emerging… 3,9,6,3,9,6.
It was at this point that Puleo recalled an earlier investigation of his into the Gregorian chants, a shift in focus that led to his unearthing of the frequencies.
Numerology Single Digit Meanings:
1 = Self/ New Beginnings 2 = Peace 3 = Creativity 4 = Power/ Stability 5 = Freedom/ Change
6 = Unconditional Love 7 = Wisdom/ Truth 8 = Infinity/ Balance 9 = Completion
Gregorian Chants
Gregorian chants are sacred unaccompanied songs, usually sung in Latin, within the traditional practices of The Roman Catholic Church. One notable Gregorian chant is ‘Ut queant laxis’, a Latin hymn in honour of John the Baptist, dating back to the eighth century. It is this hymn from which the Solfège System, the musical solmization technique, sprung.
Musicologist, Professor Apel, wrote in his book titled ‘Gregorian Chants’:
“The origin of what is now called Solfeggio… arose from a Mediaeval hymn to John the Baptist which had this peculiarity that the first six lines of the music commenced respectively on the first six successive notes of the scale, and thus the first syllable of each line was sung to a note one degree higher than the first syllable of the line that preceded it.
By degrees these syllables became associated and identified with their respective notes and as each syllable ended with a vowel they were found to be particularly adapted for vocal use. Hence ‘Ut’ was artificially replaced by ‘Do’. Guido of Arezzo was the first to adopt them in the 11th century, and Le Marie, a French musician of the 17th century, added ‘Si’ for the seventh note of the scale, in order to complete the series. It might have been formed from the intial letter of the two words in this line [Sancto Ioannes], S and I.”
Figure 6
Reading Professor Apel’s explanation, I can see where my confusion stemmed from. In my previous article on this topic, I explained what the Solfège System was from a purely musical perspective, including the hand symbols, the changing syllables, and the two different forms. Therefore, if you are interested to learn more about this system from a musical perspective, please go and read that article, which I will link at the bottom of this page.
I had simply assumed that it was somewhat a coincidence that this particular hymn had been written in the way that it had, with every line starting on the rising degrees of the scale. I had supposed that because of this characteristic, it had been discovered to be a useful tool in learning how to sing, sight-sing, and recognise pitches, and so had gradually developed from there.
Figure 7
For example, the addition of SI, followed lines of the hymn ‘Sancto Iohannes’ but they changed the note on which this line was originally sung in order to complete the seven note set. The shift from SI to TI, was likely to ensure each syllable had a different starting note, SI couldn’t start with S, because Sol started with an S, and so it was changed to a T. And lastly, the replacement of ‘Ut’ with ‘Do’, was likely to ensure every syllable started with a consonant and finished with a vowel. We can also see this with the dropping of the L on Sol, so it reads as So instead, which is the version that we are familiar with today. One could also imagine that the choice of ‘Do’ may have been to mimic ‘So’, in order to emphasise the root and fifth note relationship. And, as a result of all these changes, we have a very neat set of two-letter sounds, all starting with a consonant and finishing with a vowel that have been attributed to the seven degrees of the scale, creating a very useful tool for musical study.
From a musical perspective, the hymn was nothing more than a starting point towards the creation of of this system. As we can see, the name for this system, be it Solfeggio, Solfège, or Solfa, was derived from two of the hymn’s original syllables Sol and Fa, cementing its connection to said hymn. However, changes were made so freely and liberally to the original set of syllables, likely because the end goal was musically focussed rather than spiritually focussed, and there is nothing wrong with that when looking through a musical or non-spiritual lens. Although some people attribute the music for the hymn ‘Ut queant laxis’ to Guido of Arezzo, it is mostly believed that he merely adopted the hymn and the music as part of the development of the Solfège System and that the original composer remains unknown.
I believe that the mystery of the unknown composer is quite an important one, since, whoever wrote the melody could have had so many different intentions behind their harmonic choices. If it was Guido of Arezzo, could he have not written it with the intention that it be used as a form of solmization? And yet, if that was the case, it wouldn’t make sense to miss out the seventh note in the scale, which makes it seem quite unlikely that this was the case.
Did the composer write the hymn in this way based on mathematical or spiritual precision or guidance? Or, did they simply just like how it sounded? Here, it is important to note that composers from earlier centuries were usually incredibly precise in their musical choices and compositional techniques, especially when writing music associated with their religion and sacred texts, since there were far stricter harmonic and musical rules to abide by. Usually, little, if anything, was composed by accident. Everything was assumed to be created with great purpose and spiritual intention.
Unlike today, where, in many ways, it i like a free for all!
The Secret Ear
Although I might look at the Solfège System and the hymn ‘Ut queant laxis’ from a musical perspective, Puleo was looking at it from a spiritual and mathematical perspective. He believed that it was significant that “the first six lines of the music commenced respectively on the first six successive notes of the scale.” He felt that the alterations and additions of the syllables had significantly altered the way these frequencies were sung, affecting their mathematical resonance and spiritual impact.
He drew connections to Psalms 120 through to 134 of the King James Bible, titled ‘A Song of Degrees’, in which each Psalm is “one degree higher that the preceding one.” (Horowitz, 2007). Within these Psalms he found another mathematical pattern of which I won’t go into detail, since it is lengthy to explain, but essentially, it re-emphasises the importance of the six degrees.
As Professor Apel stated in his book: “Thus nature and grace illustrate each other, and reveal the great fact that there is a secret ear, more delicate than any ‘organs of Corti’, that can detect sounds invisible as well as inaudible to the senses…” Much of this fascination over finding specific spiritually significant frequencies stems from the idea that we have this ‘secret ear’ that hears or responds to different frequencies in different ways. Some might say it is, perhaps, our subconscious mind? And that if we are opened to frequencies that are spiritually and mathematically attuned, aka ‘music for the soul’, we can reach ‘higher matrices of thought, and to a great extent well-being.’ But if we are exposed to frequencies that are out of alignment, we can experience the opposite.
Funnily enough, I have come across other books by musicologists with spiritual interests, who although might not talk specifically about the Solfeggio Frequencies, do speak of the spiritual differences between certain traditional forms of classical music and contemporary styles in modern music of all genres. There seems to be an underlying belief that much music, usually classical, from certain periods of history, was composed in line with spiritual beliefs and mathematical codes that benefitted the listener in some way, perhaps when heard through their ‘secret ear.’ And that as time went on and music developed away from these practices and more rigid views of harmony, that more contemporary music has lost this ‘magic’ so to speak, because it is not attuned to anything concrete.
It all depends on what the composer chooses to create. Some composers may accidentally land on melodies or harmonies that are ‘spiritually aligned’. For, as Horowitz expresses, “today, many musician’s and composers may be listening with their ‘secret ear’ without knowing they are tapping into this spiritual channel communicated through mathematical frequency vibrations.” Nevertheless, it has been indicated, that for the most part, contemporary composers or songwriters are not accidentally creating wildly spiritually exalting pieces of music, but instead are throwing anything into the wind. And this ‘anything’ compared with the specific intentions on the past is often considered to be a contribution to the seemingly stark and rapid societal changes we have seen within the last century in particular.
As this article is getting increasingly longer and I have so much more to say, I will stop here and share the rest of Puleo and Horowitz’s research in Part 2. See you there!
In Part 2, I will dive deeper into what Puleo did to identify the numerical values of the Solfeggio Frequencies, so stay tuned!
If you would like to read my original article on this topic, please click on the link below:
Sources:
‘Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse’ (2007- 9th ed.) by Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz & Dr. Joseph S. Puleo.
‘Secret Teachings of All Ages’ (1928) by Manley P. Hall
‘Gregorian Chants’ (1990) by Professor Emeritus Willi Apel
