Decad

the decad is 'soul-producing,' and, according to the Pythag-oreans, life and light are united in it; it is therefore an image of the world-creating Nous. The monad is descended from the original pneuma and includes the decad, and the decad in its turn includes the monad.

Von Franz, following Marcosian and Pythagorean sources via Irenaeus, establishes the Decad as a cosmogonic symbol — soul-producing, uniting life and light, and mutually inclusive with the Monad as image of the world-creating Nous.

von Franz, Marie-Louise, Aurora Consurgens: A Document Attributed to Thomas Aquinas on the Problem of Opposites in Alchemy, 1966thesis

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in attributing the decad to things we affirm either the truly existent decad or, where the decadhood is accidental, we necessarily posit the self-subsistent decad, decad not associated; if things are to be described as forming a decad, then either they must be of themselves the decad or be preceded by that which has no other being than that of decadhood.

Plotinus argues that the Decad must be a self-subsistent Real Being — a 'Decad-Absolute' — because its predication of sensible things presupposes an independently existent decadhood.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270thesis

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arrived at the Intellectuals, there too we discover Number, the Authentic Number, no longer entering the alien, Decad-Absolute not Decad of some particular Intellectual group.

Plotinus distinguishes the 'Decad-Absolute' resident in the Intellectual realm from any merely relational or collective use of the number ten, asserting the Decad's genuine ontological status among Authentic Beings.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270thesis

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when the several items form a unity we say decad. This would apply in the Intellectual as in the sensible. But how then can number, observed upon things, rank among Real Beings?

Plotinus differentiates 'ten' as a count of disparate items from 'decad' as a unified whole, using this distinction to press the question of number's ontological rank among Real Beings.

Plotinus, The Six Enneads, 270supporting

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the denarius is the result of the completed work. Hence the real meaning of the denarius is the Son of God.

Jung identifies the alchemical denarius — the ten-unit culmination of the opus — as a Christ-symbol and image of completed psychological wholeness, linking the Decad implicitly to the Self.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Practice of Psychotherapy: Essays on the Psychology of the Transference and Other Subjects, 1954supporting

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the denarius forms the totius operis summa, the culmi-nating point of the work beyond which it is impossible to go except by means of the multiplicatio. For, although the denarius represents a higher stage of unity, it is also a multiple of 1 and can therefore be multiplied to infinity in the ratio of 10, 100, 1000, 10,000.

Jung presents the denarius as the alchemical Decad — a higher unity that nonetheless remains generative, capable of infinite multiplication in the manner of the mystical body.

Jung, C.G., Collected Works Volume 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy, 1954supporting

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OeKuc;, -0.00c; [f.] 'decade, group of ten, especially soldiers', OEKUOEU<; 'member of a decade' (X.) also 'president of a college of ten men'.

Beekes traces the Greek δεκάς back to IE *dekm 'ten,' establishing the term's derivational history and its institutional uses as a group or administrative unit of ten.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting

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the ordinals OeKUTOC;, Lith. desifhtas, OCS deslCt'b, Go. taihunda, etc., lE *dekmto-. Lat. decimus, OIr. dechmad, and Skt. dasama-, however, derive from *dekmHo-. The collective OeKuc; is a Greek innovation.

Beekes notes that the Greek collective δεκάς — the form from which 'Decad' derives — is a specifically Greek linguistic innovation built on the inherited Indo-European root for ten.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010aside

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