Jesus with A Protractor? | Pythagorean Sourcebook Book Club - Essay 1
Essay On The Forward and Introduction
Welcome to the Parker’s Ponderings 2026 Book Club! We’re reading a lot of philosophical fiction and non-fiction this year. You can find the full list HERE.
Right now we’re reading The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie and this is the first companion essay to it. It’s never too late to join us, and if you want to grab the book do so from that linked title above to support my work.
Here’s our reading schedule:
February 20th - Companion Essay on the Forward and introduction
February 27th - Companion Essay on Part 1: The Pythagoras Sourcebook (pg. 57-155)
March 6th - Companion Essay on Part 2: The Pythagorean Library (pg. 159-end)
March 13th - Substack Live Book Talk
So you have plenty of time to grab the book still and start reading, the essays will be here waiting for you and if you finish by March 13th you can come join our live book club book talk here on Substack.
These companion essays are for paid subscribers so please consider upgrading to a paid subscription and come join us! There are lots of other perks as well, like accessing all of my other paid posts and videos, reading my commonplace book quotes, reading my notebook tutorials, and joining us live on screen or the book talk calls (they’re free for everyone to watch and comment on but only paid subs get access to the link to join). So, if you like what I do, please consider upgrading and help me keep doing it:
Essay 1 - Forward & Introduction
Pythagoras is an utterly fascinating figure! Stephen West of PhilosophizeThis! called him Jesus with a protractor in one of his early podcast episodes and I think of that more and more often as I get to know Pythagoras better. If you don’t get it yet, you will soon.
So, what do you think? Are you guys enamored yet? If not, you will be once you get into the actual biographies. I really love this guy. Let me quickly recount a little of his info and then I want to dive in on my favorite parts of his philosophy to ponder.
Bio
Pythagoras was born in 570 BC to a gem maker named Mnesarchus and Pythias on the island of Samos, which is right by modern day Turkey. There’s a whole ton of lore around his birth and the gods and prophecy that we haven’t got into yet, but we will and it’s very interesting!
Pythagoras is said to have learned philosophy and wisdom and even magic from such great ‘presocratic’ philosophers (philosophers prior to Socrates) as Thales of Miletus (the g.o.a.t. who first predicted a solar eclipse, thus beginning all of Western philosophy and science on May 28th 585 BC), and Anaximander (my sheepadoodle’s namesake). He’s also said to have studied in Egypt for 20 years with all of their wisemen and magicians and sorcerers and then also in Babylon with the Chaldeans and the Babylonian Astronomers and wisemen and magicians and maybe even with Zoroaster who founded the religion of Zoroastrianism? But he also is said to have studied with some Hyperboreans as well—who were perhaps ancient or proto-Britans who were skilled in magic themselves.
He then found