Why the so-called ancient Solfeggio scale is not ancient, not Solfeggio, and not even a scale and how two entirely new sets of Solfeggio tuning forks came into being?

It must have been around 2008 when I first heard about the so-called ancient Solfeggio sounds (also referred to as: ancient Solfeggio scale, sacred Solfeggio tones, Solfeggio scale, Solfeggio frequencies). I remember thinking at the time: “Hooray! Someone’s finally discovered them!” and I was surprised by that thought myself. Music had always been present in my life, and from the moment I first encountered the cello, I was convinced that there was power hidden within sound. I couldn’t justify that conviction in any rational way, but the feeling was stronger than certainty. I believe that’s why the so-called ancient Solfeggio sounds intrigued me so deeply. In 2011, I ordered a book from the United States titled Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse, written by Dr Leonard G. Horowitz and Dr Joseph S. Puleo. I never actually finished reading it, as my English at the time wasn’t good enough. And by the time it had improved enough for me to tackle the book, somewhere around page 50 or 60, disappointment crept in.

Let’s start speaking a common language

I’m a naturopath, and my everyday work involves sound healing. I feel most connected to Tibetan singing bowls and the gong, although I do occasionally work with tuning forks as well. I’ve been observing the sound healing market for quite some time now, and I’m continually surprised and often concerned by the lack of competence among some practitioners. There are all sorts of strange and far-fetched theories developing around sound, many of which create confusion, and in some cases, even pose real dangers. I believe we need to start taking sound therapy more seriously. It cannot be that anyone who simply feels like it picks up some tuning forks or starts banging on a gong and suddenly declares themselves a therapist. Such people are usurpers. Sound therapy is an art form. It requires knowledge and a solid foundation. And that’s especially true when you consider that we’re not just working with a client’s physical body, we’re also working on the level of emotion and energy. The time has finally come for sound therapists to begin speaking a common language. I dream of the day when we can create a common rhetoric, a thoughtful and coherent framework for how we understand and discuss this work.

The greatest abuse I’ve encountered so far in the field of sound healing is the theory of the so-called ancient Solfeggio sounds. Now, I’m not here to argue that these tones don’t hold a certain magic or that they don’t “work”, but I do feel a strong inner calling to speak my truth about them. If you search online for information about the ancient Solfeggio tones, you’ll come across one and the same distorted story, repeated by hundreds, if not thousands of people. And I’ll humbly admit that I, too, repeated that story for a while. It seems we have a curious tendency as humans: we often assume that something must be true simply because it’s been repeated many times. We rarely check the facts. And it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not the information is actually accurate. I wonder is this down to laziness, or is it that it doesn’t even cross our minds that some of what we hear might not be true?

So let’s start from the beginning. The so-called ancient Solfeggio tones are neither Solfeggio, nor ancient. Nor do they form a scale in any real musical sense. That said, I must admit – I really like them. I use them often. And I know they can bring about beautiful things.

Where did the ancient solfeggio tones come from?

Let’s start from the beginning, with the story that can be found all over the internet and in the book Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse, concerning the so-called ancient Solfeggio tones. The original Solfeggio scale was developed by the Benedictine monk Guido d’Arezzo, who lived between approximately 991 and 1050 CE. According to various sources, this scale was used by singers to make it easier to learn chants (namely Gregorian chant). Today, we know the Solfeggio scale as a sequence of seven ascending tones associated with the syllables: Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti. The original scale, however, consisted of six ascending tones linked to the syllables: Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La. These syllables were taken from a hymn to St John the Baptist, Ut Queant Laxis, written by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century. According to the narrative, these tones were eventually lost and forgotten by humanity, until they were supposedly rediscovered in the mid-1970s by Dr Joseph Puleo, an American physician and herbalist.

As described in Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse, Dr Puleo allegedly had a vision, in which an angelic being revealed to him the principles of a supposed Pythagorean method for reducing numbers to single digits and directed him to Chapter 7 of the Book of Numbers. Using this numerological method, Dr Puleo identified a pattern of six repeating codes in verses 12 to 83 of that chapter. For instance, in verse 12, he found reference to the first day; verse 18 referred to the second day; verse 24, the third day – continuing in this pattern until verse 78, which referenced the twelfth day. The frequency 369 Hz was derived by reducing 12 to 3 (1+2=3), 18 to 9 (1+8=9), and 24 to 6 (2+4=6). The remaining frequencies were allegedly identified in a similar fashion. Dr Puleo found the next frequency by analysing verse 13, which mentioned a sacrificial offering. The same offering or concept was repeated six verses later, in verse 19, and again in verse 25. Thus, using the same numerological reduction method, he discovered the second frequency – 417 Hz. The remaining frequencies were calculated using this same system.

We are then told that each syllable and the corresponding frequency supposedly revealed through the codes in the Book of Numbers was carefully studied by Dr Puleo and other professional researchers, and described as follows:

• UT – 396 Hz – liberating guilt and fear, transforming grief into joy
• RE – 417 Hz – facilitating change and undoing situations
• MI – 528 Hz – transformation, miracles, and DNA repair
• FA – 639 Hz – reconnection and harmonising relationships
• SOL – 741 Hz – problem-solving, self-expression, and solutions
• LA – 852 Hz – awakening intuition, returning to spiritual order

Why the ancient solfeggio tones are not solfeggio, not ancient, and don’t form a scale?

The first thing that raised a red flag for me regarding the so-called ancient Solfeggio tones was part of the name itself. I remembered that when I study at music school, I had a solfège book, a collection of melodies (some of them quite nice) written on a stave. From that book, we learned to read music and sing while looking at notation. Some of us guessed the notes, but the idea was to look at the notation and imagine the sound in our heads. Sometimes we were also tasked with writing out on a stave what our teacher had played for us by ear. So I was a little confused by the use of the term solfeggio in relation to these “ancient tones,” as it reminded me of that educational practice. In music, Solfeggio (also known as solfège, sol-fa, solfedge, or solfa) is a teaching technique used to train the ability to sight-sing – that is, reading and singing music from notation on first sight, a vista. In musical terminology, a vista refers to the first performance of a piece by a performer who has not seen the musical notation before, without any prior preparation.

Today, solfège has evolved into a broader discipline of ear training. In addition to learning to read music (basic solfège) and transcribe it by ear (dictation), it also involves developing the skills of aural analysis, including pitch recognition, tone colour, rhythmic sensitivity, dynamic awareness, and an understanding of musical style. It cultivates intonation, the ability to distinguish musical scales, and even vocal improvisation. In essence, solfeggio is simply a form of solmisation, a system of using syllables to represent musical notes during vocal exercises. The origin of solmisation is attributed to Guido d’Arezzo, who drew the initial syllables (Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La) from a hymn in honour of St John the Baptist, Ut Queant Laxis, where each phrase began on a different note of the hexachord. Hexachord is a rather lovely word that refers to a sequence of six notes within the interval of a sixth, with a semitone in the middle. Hexachords were constructed from the notes C, F, and G, leading to the identification of three types: natural hexachord – C, D, E, F, G, A, soft hexachord – F, G, A, B♭, C, D, and hard hexachord – G, A, B, C, D, E. Around 1600, a seventh degree was added to the hexachord and given the syllable Si, and by 1650, the voiceless Ut was replaced with the more singable Do. There are, in fact, two Solfeggio systems: one with a fixed Do, where the syllable Do always corresponds to the note C, regardless of the key and one with a movable Do, where syllables correspond to scale degrees, and the pitch of Do varies depending on the key. For example, in the key of G major, the syllable Do would correspond to the note G. It’s generally believed that Guido d’Arezzo used the movable Do system.

I think that by this point, anyone who has read this far will have already come to understand that the so-called ancient Solfeggio tones are not in the least bit ancient. Quoting from Wikipedia, antiquity is defined as “a period in history (…) covering the time from the emergence of the first civilisations up to around the 5th century CE.” Guido d’Arezzo, the creator of Solfeggio, lived from around 991 to 1050 CE, which clearly places him in the Middle Ages. Let’s also remember that the hymn Ut Queant Laxis was written by Paulus Diaconus in the 8th century. That was my second major issue with the theory of the so-called ancient Solfeggio tones. I simply could not understand why Dr Horowitz and Dr Puleo continued to refer to them as “ancient.”

It also needs to be stated clearly that the Bible was divided into chapters in the 12th century, and the numbering of verses didn’t appear until the 16th century. So if the frequencies of the “ancient Solfeggio tones” are derived by reducing the verse numbers from 12 to 83 in Chapter 7 of the Book of Numbers, then Guido d’Arezzo could not possibly have known this, let alone calculated it. I would also emphasise that in d’Arezzo’s time, there were no tools or instruments available for measuring the frequency (pitch) of a sound. So assigning a precise frequency such as 396 Hz to the syllable UT, or 417 Hz to RE, 528 Hz to MI, and so on, makes no sense at all, because d’Arezzo would have had absolutely no knowledge of such measurements.

As I mentioned earlier, Guido d’Arezzo selected the initial syllables (Ut, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La) from the lines of the hymn in honour of St John the Baptist, Ut Queant Laxis. Each line of the hymn began on a successively higher note of the hexachord, a sequence of six tones within a sixth interval, with a semitone in the middle. All it takes is to listen to Ut Queant Laxis on YouTube to understand that each line starts a tone higher than the previous one. However, when we arrange in ascending order the frequencies decoded by Dr Puleo from the Book of Numbers, the effect is entirely different and in no way resembles the sounds of Ut Queant Laxis. In fact, when ordered, these frequencies bear no resemblance to any known musical scale, due to the very unusual intervals between the tones.
Those intervals might make sense numerically (which I will return to shortly when I share my own discovery), but musically, they do not form any coherent or recognisable pattern. It is also believed that Guido d’Arezzo used a Solfeggio system based on the movable Do. This means that the Solfeggio tones did not have fixed pitches, they weren’t tied to specific frequencies. Therefore, assigning the value of 396 Hz to Do (Ut) and subsequent frequencies to the rest of the scale makes no sense whatsoever.

In the following discussion, I’ll leave aside a few other inconsistencies in the story of the so-called ancient Solfeggio tones — such as the scale based on A = 444 Hz, the paradox of assigning 528 Hz simultaneously to both A and C, the so-called Pythagorean method of number reduction (which is, in fact, a numerological method also known as mod 9), or the alleged claim that the frequency of 528 Hz is widely recognised in the field of biology.

What does Marko Rodin say in his vortex-based mathematics model?

It is said that Marko Rodin discovered the source of the electron’s spin. By introducing a mathematical model based on vortices, he demonstrated how energy expresses itself mathematically. Vortex-based mathematics describes the movement of a torus using numbers. In this concept, the torus is viewed as an infinite source of energy, a kind of energy generator. At the centre of the torus, Rodin describes the existence of a singularity, which implodes and in doing so generates energy. This energy radiates outward and, following the toroidal geometry, returns to the centre, creating a kind of eternal, self-sustaining motion.

Now things start to get even more interesting because in describing how energy expresses itself mathematically, Rodin used what he called the “family number groups”, and these sequences happen to align with the very same number sequences that Dr Puleo decoded from Chapter 7 of the Book of Numbers. The first group represents positive electrical emanations – 1, 7, 4; the second group, negative electrical emanations – 2, 8, 5; and the third group corresponds to magnetic emanations – 3, 9, 6. These numbers serve as a kind of node system along the path of energy flow. Of course, Rodin makes no mention of frequencies. His family number groups are simply three sets of digits. Still, it’s worth noting that, just as in Puleo’s work, 1 is grouped with 7 and 4; 2 belongs with 5 and 8; 3 is in the same group as 6 and 9. Coincidence?

But why can we still say that the ancient solfeggio tones are ancient?

In September 2012, I took a closer look at the numbers that Dr Puleo had decoded from Chapter 7 of the Book of Numbers: 396, 417, 528, 639, 741, 852. I noticed that these could be divided into three groups: 396 and 639, 417 and 741, 528 and 852. I also observed something curious: in each pair, the second number seemed to be formed by moving the last digit of the first number to the front. Take 639, for example: it can be seen as the number 396, with the 6 shifted to the beginning. This meant that each group could produce a third number – one for each pair. So the first group became: 396, 639, 963; the second group: 174, 417, 741; and the third group: 285, 528, 852. Then I applied the numerological method of reducing numbers to single digits. It turned out that: all numbers in the first group reduce to 9 (e.g. 3+9+6=18 → 1+8=9), the second group reduces to 3, the third group reduces to 6. When organised this way, I ended up with the following arrangement of nine Solfeggio frequencies (let’s continue to call them Solfeggio frequencies, even though I’ve previously demonstrated that they are, in fact, not):

For my own understanding, I named the group of threes the first vertical triangle, the group of sixes the second vertical triangle, and the group of nines the third vertical triangle. I called them vertical triangles because the set of these numbers (or frequencies) can also be arranged into horizontal triangles, something I’ll come back to later when I discuss tuning forks. I spent time studying these numbers, adding, multiplying, averaging, and the results always surprised me. I both felt and understood that these were significant sets. Perhaps they truly were frequencies. When I arranged the digits from 1 to 9 in sequence and then repeated the sequence, I discovered something fascinating: the triangle of threes begins with 1, and each subsequent digit in the group appears every 6 places, the triangle of sixes starts with 2, and again, its digits appear at 6-place intervals, the triangle of nines starts with 3, and its digits also reappear every 6 steps.

I studied these numbers with growing curiosity, until suddenly – a moment of revelation. I had seen them somewhere before! I quickly reached for the Lo Shu Square, and everything fell into place. The story of the Lo Shu Square is rooted in a Chinese legend. In ancient China, there was a great flood. People began offering sacrifices to the gods of the overflowing rivers, hoping to calm their wrath. One such offering was made to the god of the River Luo, from whose waters a turtle emerged, bearing a strange and magical pattern on its shell. That pattern turned out to be a magic square, which later became the foundation of Feng Shui and the entire theory of the Five Elements. These events are said to have taken place during the reign of the legendary Chinese emperor Yu, who lived between approximately 2123 BCE and 2025 BCE.

The even numbers in the Lo Shu Square represent the feminine yin element and are positioned in the corners of the square. The odd numbers, on the other hand, symbolise the masculine yang element and form a cross pattern in the middle. Each even digit is followed by an odd one. The central number symbolises the human being and is considered the most powerful element, it also represents the Five Elements. In Chinese symbolism, the numbers are associated with the elements as follows: 2, 5, and 8 correspond to the Earth element, 7 and 6 to Metal, 1 to Water, 3 and 4 to Wood, 9 to Fire. It’s also worth mentioning that any three numbers in a given row, column or diagonal, when added together, always result in 15, which can be reduced to 6 using the numerological reduction method. When I expanded the Lo Shu Square, I was able to find all of the numbers, the Solfeggio frequencies, I had written about earlier, appearing one after another.

Is it really a coincidence that the same numbers were discovered by Dr Puleo in the Book of Numbers, by Marko Rodin in the way energy expresses itself mathematically, and by me in the Lo Shu Square?

Solfeggio tuning forks

There is an interesting numerical relationship surrounding the nine numbers, the so-called Solfeggio frequencies, which I described earlier. If we arrange them in ascending order and treat them as frequencies, they unfortunately do not form any musical scale. However, this ordering does reveal a kind of logic in the numerical distances between the individual degrees. At this point, I’ll begin referring to what I call the horizontal triangles, which also form three groups (triangles): the first horizontal triangle consists of: 174, 285, 396; the second: 417, 528, 639; and the third: 741, 852, 963. The distance between the degrees within each triangle is always 111. But a significant observation is that: the gap between the first and second horizontal triangle is 21, while the gap between the second and third triangle is 102. So we have 21 (or 021) and 102. Which begs the question: why not create a fourth triangle?

Since we previously established that the numbers within the vertical triangles can be formed by shifting the last digit to the beginning (for example, shifting the 4 in 174 to the front gives 417), then why not apply the same method to the distances between the horizontal triangles? If we do, the next numerical gap would be 210, which would give us the next number (or frequency) as 1173. This idea was suggested by a friend of our household, Ewa Gryt, in December 2019, after she saw my complete study on the Solfeggio frequencies, which had been lying in my drawer since 2012.

At this point, I must say a few words about tuning forks. As I mentioned earlier, arranging the numbers in ascending order and treating them as frequencies does not produce a musical scale. But fortunately, a lack of musical scale does not prevent these Solfeggio frequencies from being used effectively in sound therapy. Over time, a beautifully resonant set of nine tuning forks was developed, whose tones work on three levels: physical, mental, and spiritual. In the hands of a skilled therapist, this set can truly work wonders. It sounds particularly powerful when the therapeutic effect is triggered through vertical triangles, that is, when all three frequencies of a given group (the threes, sixes, or nines) are used simultaneously.

Of course, I couldn’t resist the temptation to expand the basic Solfeggio tuning fork set with new ones, though in truth, I was rather forced into it by Ewa, who started shouting at me in the middle of the night that it had to be calculated immediately! Since I had already worked out all the intervals within the basic set and understood the principles behind them, creating new sets became a matter of simple calculation. And that’s exactly how the Solfeggio I and Solfeggio II tuning fork sets came to life. At first, I thought they would serve only as supplements to the basic Solfeggio set. I believed that, for the sake of mathematical elegance and simplicity, the original set would always be the most effective tool in sound therapy. After all, it is this set of frequencies that fits so beautifully into the Lo Shu Square. I held that belief until I actually touched and used the other two sets, which had been custom-made (of course!) for Ewa. Their tones don’t just sound beautiful, they lift you, they create a sense of levitation, they relax you on an astonishingly deep level, and they cleanse the energy like nothing else. I’m genuinely blown away by them. They do wonders in the energy field! I imagine and deeply feel that each of these sets operates on a different level, in a different reality. The first is incredibly powerful in the third dimension (3D), the second in the fourth (4D), and the third in the fifth (5D).

Once I’ve worked with them a little longer, I’ll post an update and share more.

Author: Izabela Strzelecka