Triumvirate of Mages (Sorcerer(s) Supreme)

History:
(Marvel Tarot / Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee) (fb) - BTS) <Circa 550 BC> - Succeeding Balkis, Queen of Sheba, a series of Greek Philosopher/Sorcerers attempted to fill the position of Sorcerer Supreme with a mystic triumvirate with mixed results. The mystical argument behind this adjustment was that it more accurately reflected the Trinity of the Vishanti, but it had much to do with the new democratic political philosophy. The triad included Thales the Milesian, Pythagoras of Samos, and Pherecydes of Syros.

From the time of the Triumvirate of Mages comes the legend of the Three Magi or Three Wise Men.

Comments: These are all people with real world history (although Epimenides is somewhat mythological) adapted into the Marvel Universe by David Sexton.

The Marvel Tarot did not reference Epimenides of Knossos. He was add in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee)

We don't know whether Balkis chose to step down or whether she was defeated by the Triumvirate; and, if the latter, we don't know whether there was a simple defeat in a contest or whether enmity was felt by either side.

Similarly, although we know Caius defeated the Triumvirate, we don't know whether it was on friendly terms, or whether enmity was felt by either side.

Further, we don't know the circumstances under which Epimenides and Empedocles replaced Thales and Pythagoras, respectively. Did either of the latter pair die or step down, and/or did either of the former pair challenge and defeat the latter?

To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any images of any of the Triumvirate. All those included here are from sculptures, etc. shown in web pages on the individuals.

Apologies for the messiness of the sub-profiles, but I don't have the time to reformat all of that text into the same font & size and/or to remove any links.

(Marvel Tarot / Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee) (fb) - BTS) <470 BC> - Empedocles of Agrigentum replaced Pythagoras of Samos in the Triumvirate, a triad of Greek Philosophers/Sorcerers serving collectively in the role of Sorcerer Supreme.

--Marvel Tarot (2007); Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee)

Note: Real world history, courtesy of Wikipedia (if you are in interested and able to provide an accurate and more complete representation/summarization of his life and activities, please let me know)

Empedocles (/ɛmˈpɛdəkliːz/; Greek: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς [empedoklɛ̂ːs], Empedoklēs; c. 494 – c. 434 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements. He also proposed forces he called Love and Strife which would mix and separate the elements, respectively. These physical speculations were part of a history of the universe which also dealt with the origin and development of life.

Influenced by Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, Empedocles was a vegetarian who supported the doctrine of reincarnation. He is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to have recorded his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than is the case for any other pre-Socratic philosopher. Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments.

Empedocles was the first pluralist in Greek philosophy. He was an enigmatic figure with multiple faces as a poet, medical doctor, preacher, mystic, magician, prophet, and a political leader as well as a philosopher.

Empedocles (c. 490 B.C – 430 B.C.) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek colony in Sicily.

Empedocles conceived the ultimate reality as the unity of four permanent elements which he called “roots”: water, earth, air, and fire. Each element has its distinct characteristics. He taught that these elements are both spiritual and physical, and the principle of love and hate causes the combination and separation of these elements, thereby producing the diversity and changes of the world. His teachings portray love as the principle of unity and hate is that of destruction. Empedocles developed a cyclical cosmology that the cosmos repeats unity and destruction by alternate domination of love and hate.

Life and Works

Empedocles is considered the last Greek philosopher to write in an epic verse and the surviving fragments of his teaching are from his two poems, Purifications and On Nature.

He claimed that by the virtue of the knowledge he possessed he had become divine and could perform miracles. He fought to preserve Greek democracy and allowed that through his teachings others could also become divine. He even went so far as to suggest that all living things were on the same spiritual plane, indicating he was influenced by Pythagorean spirituality. Like Pythagoras, he believed in the transmigration of souls between humans and animals and followed a vegetarian lifestyle.

The legend goes that he died by throwing himself into an active volcano (Mount Etna in Sicily), so that people would believe his body had vanished and he had turned into an immortal god.

Periodic cycle of the world

Empedocles developed a cyclical cosmology based upon the principle of love and hate. The world regularly repeats four periods:

The world repeats a cycle of four epochs again and again as a natural process like the four seasons. The efforts of human beings have no effect upon this process. At the fourth stage, the variety of things in the world we have today is born.

Empedocles integrated the ideas of vortex, spontaneous generation, and the survival of the fittest in his periodic view of the world in order to explain the formation of the cosmos and the development of living things.

Homeopathic theory of knowledge

Empedocles held a theory of knowledge that is recognized like by like. Recognition is the accordance between an element in us and a like element outside of us.

(Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee) (fb) - BTS) <Circa 500 BC> - Epimenides of Knossos replaced Thales in the Triumvirate, a triad of Greek Philosophers/Sorcerers serving collectively in the role of Sorcerer Supreme. The first new member to join the group, Epimenides served alongside Pythagoras and Pherecydes.

--Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee)

Note: Epimenides was not mentioned in the Marvel Tarot entry discussing the succession of Sorcerer Supremes.

Real world history, courtesy of Wikipedia (if you are in interested and able to provide an accurate and more complete representation/summarization of his life and activities, please let me know)

While tending his father's sheep, Epimenides is said to have fallen asleep for fifty-seven years in a Cretan cave sacred to Zeus, after which he reportedly awoke with the gift of prophecy. Plutarch writes that Epimenides purified Athens after the pollution brought by the Alcmeonidae, and that the seer's expertise in sacrifices and reform of funeral practices were of great help to Solon in his reform of the Athenian state. The only reward he would accept was a branch of the sacred olive, and a promise of perpetual friendship between Athens and Cnossus.

Athenaeus also mentions him, in connection with the self-sacrifice of the erastes and eromenos pair of Cratinus and Aristodemus, who were believed to have given their lives in order to purify Athens. Even in antiquity there were those who held the story to be mere fiction. Diogenes Laërtius preserves a number of spurious letters between Epimenides and Solon in his Lives of the Philosophers. Epimenides was also said to have prophesied at Sparta on military matters.

He died in Crete at an advanced age; according to his countrymen, who afterwards honored him as a god, he lived nearly three hundred years. According to another story, he was taken prisoner in a war between the Spartans and Cnossians, and put to death by his captors, because he refused to prophesy favorably for them. Pausanias reports that when Epimenides died, his skin was found to be covered with tattooed writing. This was considered odd, because the Greeks reserved tattooing for slaves. Some modern scholars have seen this as evidence that Epimenides was heir to the shamanic religions of Central Asia, because tattooing is often associated with shamanic initiation. The skin of Epimenides was preserved at the courts of the ephores in Sparta, conceivably as a good-luck charm. Epimenides is also reckoned with Melampus and Onomacritus as one of the founders of Orphism.

According to Diogenes Laertius, Epimenides met Pythagoras in Crete, and they went to the Cave of Ida.

Courtesy of http://www.hellenicaworld.com/Greece/Person/en/EpimenidesOfKnossos.html

Several prose and poetic works, now lost, were attributed to Epimenides by the Suda, including a theogony, oracles, a work on the laws of Crete, and a treatise on Minos and Rhadymanthus.

Epimenides' poem Cretica is quoted twice in the New Testament. In the poem, Minos addresses Zeus thus:

They fashioned a tomb for thee, O holy and high one—

The Cretans, always liars, evil beasts, idle bellies!

But thou art not dead: thou livest and abidest forever,

For in thee we live and move and have our being.

The fourth line is quoted without attribution in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verse 28.

The "prophet" in Titus 1:12 is identified by Clement of Alexandria as Epimenides (Miscellanies, chapter 14). In this passage, Clement mentions that "some say" Epimenides should be counted among the seven wisest philosophers.

(Marvel Tarot / Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee) (fb) - BTS) <Circa 550 BC> - Succeeding Balkis, Queen of Sheba, a series of Greek Philosopher/Sorcerers attempted to fill the position of Sorcerer Supreme with a mystic triumvirate with mixed results. The mystical argument behind this adjustment was that it more accurately reflected the Trinity of the Vishanti, but it had much to do with the new democratic political philosophy. The triad included Thales the Milesian, Pythagoras of Samos, and Pherecydes of Syros.

From the time of the Triumvirate of Mages comes the legend of the Three Magi or Three Wise Men.

--Marvel Tarot (2007); Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee)

Pherecydes of Syros (/fəˈrɛsɪˌdiːz/; Greek: Φερεκύδης ὁ Σύριος; fl. 6th century BC) was a Greek thinker from the island of Syros. Pherecydes authored a cosmogony, derived from three divine principles, Zas (Zeus), Cthonie (Earth) and Chronos (Time), known as the "Pentemychos" (Πεντέμυχος, "of the five recesses"; sometimes the alternative title "Heptamychos", "seven recesses" is given). It formed a bridge between the mythological thought of Hesiod and pre-Socratic philosophy. His work is lost, but it survived into the Hellenistic period and we are informed on part of its content indirectly. Pherecydes was said to have been the first writer to communicate philosophical musings in prose. According to William (ca. 1896), Aristotle regarded him partly a mythological writer and Plutarch, as well as many other writers gave him the title of Theologus

According to tradition Pherecydes flourished in the 59th Olympiad (544–541 BC). It was said that he was a son of one Babys. Schibli (1990) dates his birth in the 49th olympiad (584–581).

Anecdotes of "unknown reliability"^[ place Pherecydes in the city of Ephesus, where he is supposed to have been buried, although another tradition claims he was buried on Delos.

His writings were extant in the Hellenistic period, although only fragments have survived to the present day. His works were written in prose rather than verse and he has been said to have been the first to have communicated or conveyed philosophical musings in this form. Tradition maintains that Pherecydes lived in two caves in the northern part of the island of Syros. His summer habitation remains a popular tourist destination to this day.

In the older cosmogony of Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) the initial state of the universe is Chaos, a dark void considered as a divine primordial condition and the creation is ex nihilo (out of nothing). Pherecydes probably interpreted chaos as water and he does not place it at the very beginning. In his cosmogony there are three divine principles, Zas (Ζάς, Zeus), Cthonie (Χθονίη, Earth) and Chronos (Χρόνος, Time) who always existed.

The semen (seeds) of Chronos which can probably be considered as a watery chaos was placed in the recesses and composed numerous other offsprings of gods. This is described in a fragment preserved in Damascius' On First Principles.

A close relationship is thought to exist between these recesses and Chthonie. Hesiod described Tartaros as being "in a recess (muchos) of broad-wayed earth".^[ Hermann S. Schibli thinks the five muchos were actually harbored within Chthonie, or at least were so initially when Chronos disposed his seed in the five "nooks".

Alongside Chthonie and Chronos, Pherecydes held a power called Zas. Zas (Zeus), comparable with the Orphic Eros in function, and as such a personification of masculine (sexual) creativity. Proclus said that "Pherecydes used to say that Zeus changed into Eros when about to create, for the reason that, having created the world from opposites, he led it into agreement and peace and sowed sameness in all things, and unity that interpenetrates the universe".

The act of creation itself (perhaps it is more accurate to say that Chronos creates and that Zas orders and distributes) is described mytho-poetically as Zas making a cloth on which he decorates earth and sea, and which he then presents as a wedding gift to Chthonie, and wraps around her. Yet, in another fragment it is not Chthonie, but "a winged oak" that he wraps the cloth around. The "winged oak" in this cosmology has no precedent in Greek tradition.

From the time of the Triumvirate of Mages comes the legend of the Three Magi or Three Wise Men.

--Marvel Tarot (2007); Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee)

Per the above information, Pythagoras lived at least 20 years longer than his real world counterpart is reported to have lived. Presumably this was a result of mystical abilities and/or inaccuracies in ancient records.

Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 – c. 495 BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and, through them, Western philosophy. Knowledge of his life is clouded by legend, but he appears to have been the son of Mnesarchus, a seal engraver on the island of Samos. Modern scholars disagree regarding Pythagoras's education and influences, but they do agree that, around 530 BC, he traveled to Croton, where he founded a school in which initiates were sworn to secrecy and lived a communal, ascetic lifestyle. This lifestyle entailed a number of dietary prohibitions, traditionally said to have included vegetarianism, although modern scholars doubt that he ever advocated for complete vegetarianism.

The teaching most securely identified with Pythagoras is metempsychosis, or the "transmigration of souls", which holds that every soul is immortal and, upon death, enters into a new body. He may have also devised the doctrine of musica universalis, which holds that the planets move according to mathematical equations and thus resonate to produce an inaudible symphony of music. Scholars debate whether Pythagoras developed the numerological and musical teachings attributed to him, or if those teachings were developed by his later followers, particularly Philolaus of Croton. Following Croton's decisive victory over Sybaris in around 510 BC, Pythagoras's followers came into conflict with supporters of democracy and Pythagorean meeting houses were burned. Pythagoras may have been killed during this persecution, or escaped to Metapontum, where he eventually died.

In antiquity, Pythagoras was credited with many mathematical and scientific discoveries, including the Pythagorean theorem, Pythagorean tuning, the five regular solids, the Theory of Proportions, the sphericity of the Earth, and the identity of the morning and evening stars as the planet Venus. It was said that he was the first man to call himself a philosopher ("lover of wisdom") and that he was the first to divide the globe into five climatic zones. Classical historians debate whether Pythagoras made these discoveries, and many of the accomplishments credited to him likely originated earlier or were made by his colleagues or successors. Some accounts mention that the philosophy associated with Pythagoras was related to mathematics and that numbers were important, but it is debated to what extent, if at all, he actually contributed to mathematics or natural philosophy.

Pythagoras influenced Plato, whose dialogues, especially his Timaeus, exhibit Pythagorean teachings. Pythagorean ideas on mathematical perfection also impacted ancient Greek art. His teachings underwent a major revival in the first century BC among Middle Platonists, coinciding with the rise of Neopythagoreanism. Pythagoras continued to be regarded as a great philosopher throughout the Middle Ages and his philosophy had a major impact on scientists such as Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton. Pythagorean symbolism was used throughout early modern European esotericism and his teachings as portrayed in Ovid's Metamorphoses influenced the modern vegetarian movement.

Pythagoras of Samos (c. 570 - 490 B.C.) was an early Greek Pre-Socratic philosopher and mathematician from the Greek island of Samos.

He was the founder of the influential philosophical and religious movement or cult called Pythagoreanism, and he was probably the first man to actually call himself a philosopher (or lover of wisdom). Pythagoras (or in a broader sense the Pythagoreans), allegedly exercised an important influence on the work of Plato.

As a mathematician, he is known as the "father of numbers" or as the first pure mathematician, and is best known for his Pythagorean Theorem on the relation between the sides of a right triangle, the concept of square numbers and square roots, and the discovery of the golden ratio.

Unfortunately, little is known for sure about him, (none of his original writings have survived, and his followers usually published their own works in his name) and he remains something of a mysterious figure. His secret society or brotherhood had a great effect on later esoteric traditions such as Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.

Pythagoras was born on the Greek island of Samos, in the eastern Aegean Sea off the coast of Turkey, some time between 580 and 572 B.C. His father was Mnesarchus, a Phoenician merchant from Tyre; his mother was Pythais, a native of Samos. He spent his early years in Samos, but also traveled widely with his father.

According to some reports, as a young man he met Thales, who was impressed with his abilities and advised him to head to Memphis in Egypt and study mathematics and astronomy with the priests there, which he soon had the opportunity of. He also traveled to study at the temples of Tyre and Byblos in Phoenicia, as well as in Babylon. At some point he was also a student of Pherecydes of Syros and of Anaximander (who himself had been a student of Thales). While still quite a young man, he left his native city for Croton in southern Italy in order to escape the tyrannical government of Polycrates, the Tyrant of Samos (or possibly to escape political problems related to an Egyptian-style school called the "semicircle" which he had founded on Samos).

In Croton, Pythagoras established a secret religious society very similar to (and possibly influenced by) the earlier Orphic cult, in an attempt to reform the cultural life of Croton. He formed an elite circle of followers around himself, called Pythagoreans or the Mathematikoi ("learners"), subject to very strict rules of conduct, owning no personal possessions and assuming a largely vegetarian diet. They followed a structured life of religious teaching, common meals, exercise, music, poetry recitations, reading and philosophical study (very similar to later monastic life). The school (unusually for the time) was open to both male and female students uniformly (women were held to be different from men, but not necessarily inferior). The Mathematikoi extended and developed the more mathematical and scientific work Pythagoras began.

Other students, who lived in neighboring areas, were also permitted to attend some of Pythagoras' lectures, although they were not taught the inner secrets of the cult. They were known as the Akousmatikoi ("listeners"), and they focused on the more religious and ritualistic aspects of Pythagoras' teachings (and were permitted to eat meat and own personal belongings).

Among his more prominent students were the philosopher Empedocles, Brontinus (who may have been Pythagoras' successor as head of the school), Philolaus (c. 480 - 385 B.C., who has been credited with originating the theory that the earth was not the center of the universe), Lysis of Taras (who is sometimes credited with many of the works usually attributed to Pythagoras himself), Cercops (an Orphic poet), Hippasus of Metapontum (who is sometimes attributed with the discovery of irrational numbers), Zamolxis (who later amassed great wealth and a cult following as a god among the Thracian Dacians) and Theano (born c. 546 B.C., a mathematician, student, and possibly wife or daughter, of Pythagoras).

Towards the end of his life, Pythagoras fled to Metapontum (further north in the Gulf of Tarentum) because of a plot against him and his followers by a noble of Croton named Cylon. He died in Metapontum from unknown causes some time between 500 and 490 B.C., between 80 and 90 years old.

Because of the secretive nature of his school and the custom of its students to attribute everything to Pythagoras himself, it is difficult today to determine who actually did which work. To further confuse matters, some forgeries under his name (a few of which still exist) circulated in antiquity. Some of his biographers clearly aimed to present him as a god-like figure, and he became the subject of elaborate legends surrounding his historical persona.

The school that Pythagoras established at Croton was in some ways more of a secret brotherhood or monastery. It was based on his religious teachings and was highly concerned with the morality of society. Members were required to live ethically, love one another, share political beliefs, practice pacifism, and devote themselves to the mathematics of nature. They also abstained from meat, abjured personal property and observed a rule of silence (called "echemythia"), the breaking of which was punishable by death, based on the belief that if someone was in any doubt as to what to say, they should remain silent.

Pythagoras saw his religious and scientific views as inseparably interconnected. He believed in the theory of metempsychosis or the transmigration of the soul and its reincarnation again and again after death into the bodies of humans, animals or vegetables until it became moral (a belief he may have learned from his one-time teacher Pherecydes of Syros, who is usually credited as the first Greek to teach the transmigration of souls). He was one of the first to propose that the thought processes and the soul were located in the brain and not the heart.

Another of Pythagoras' central beliefs was that the essence of being (and the stability of all things that create the universe) can be found in the form of numbers, and that it can be encountered through the study of mathematics. For instance, he believed that things like health relied on a stable proportion of elements, with too much or too little of one thing causing an imbalance that makes a person unhealthy.

In mathematics, Pythagoras is commonly given credit for discovering what is now know as the Pythagorean Theorem (or Pythagoras' Theorem), a theorem in geometry that states that, in a right-angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Although this had been known and utilized previously by the Babylonians and Indians, he (or perhaps one of his students) is thought to have constructed the first proof.

He believed that the number system (and therefore the universe system) was based on the sum of the numbers one to four (i.e. ten), and that odd numbers were masculine and even numbers were feminine. He discovered the theory of mathematical proportions, constructed from three to five geometrical solids, and also discovered square numbers and square roots. The discovery of the golden ratio (referring to the ratio of two quantities such that the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the smaller, approximately 1.618) is also usually attributed to Pythagoras, or possibly to his student, Theano.

He was one of the first to think that the Earth was round, that all planets have an axis, and that all the planets travel around one central point (which he originally identified as the Earth, but later renounced it for the idea that the planets revolve around a central “fire”, although he never identified it as the Sun). He also believed that the Moon was another planet that he called a “counter-Earth".

Pythagoras was also very interested in music, and wanted to improve the music of his day, which he believed was not harmonious enough and was too hectic. According to legend, he discovered that musical notes could be translated into mathematical equations by listening to blacksmiths at work. "Pythagorean tuning" is a system of musical tuning in which the frequency relationships of all intervals are based on the ratio 3:2 (a stack of perfect fifths), a system which has been documented as long ago as 3500 B.C. in Babylonian texts, but which is nevertheless often attributed to Pythagoras. He also believed in the "musica universalis" (or the "harmony of the spheres"), the idea that the planets and stars moved according to mathematical equations, which corresponded to musical notes and thus produced a kind of symphony.

From the time of the Triumvirate of Mages comes the legend of the Three Magi or Three Wise Men.

--Marvel Tarot (2007); Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee)

Note: Per the above information, Thales lived at least 45 years longer than his real world counterpart is reported to have lived. Presumably this was a result of mystical abilities and/or inaccuracies in ancient records.

Real world history, courtesy of Wikipedia (if you are in interested and able to provide an accurate and more complete representation/summarization of his life and activities, please let me know)

Thales is recognized for breaking from the use of mythology to explain the world and the universe, and instead explaining natural objects and phenomena by theories and hypotheses, in a precursor to modern science. Almost all the other pre-Socratic philosophers followed him in explaining nature as deriving from a unity of everything based on the existence of a single ultimate substance, instead of using mythological explanations. Aristotle regarded him as the founder of the Ionian School and reported Thales' hypothesis that the originating principle of nature and the nature of matter was a single material substance: water.

In mathematics, Thales used geometry to calculate the heights of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is the first known individual to use deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' theorem. He is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed

Appearances:
Marvel Tarot (2007) - David Sexton (writer/designer), Doug Sexton (technical consultant), Jeff Christiansen (continuity consultant), Michael Short & Cory Levine (assistant editors), Mark D. Beazley & Jennifer Grunwald (associate editors), Jeff Youngquist (editor)
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z (hardcover) Vol. 7: Appendix: Magic (from the journals of Ian McNee) (May, 2009) - David Sexton (writer), Jeff Christiansen (head writer), Madison Carter, Mike Fichera & Stuart Vandal (coordination assistants), Jeff Youngquist & Jennifer Grunwald (editors)

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