Lifepath: 6

Information used for the following:

Michael Joseph Jackson
Born August 29, 1958
11:53 p.m.
Gary, Indiana, USA

Lifepath: 6

The Life Path is the sum of the birth date. This number represents who Michael was at birth and the native traits he carried with him through life. The most important number that will be discussed here is the Life Path number. The Life Path describes the nature of his journey through life.

The Life Path 6 suggests that Michael entered this plane with tools to become the ultimate nurturer, and a beacon for truth, justice, righteousness, and domesticity. His paternal instincts, having a 6 Life Path, far exceeds all others by a considerable margin. Whether in the home or in the work place, Michael was the predominant caretaker and family head. While the 6 may assume significant responsibilities in the community, the life revolves around the immediate home and family, for this is the most domestic of numbers. Conservative principles and convictions were deeply ingrained and defined Michael’s character.

Michael is idealistic and must feel useful to be happy. The main contribution he feels he makes is that of advice, service, and ever present support. Michael was a humanitarian of the first order; and since he feels that it is his role to serve others, he starts in the home environment. Michael is very human and realistic about life, and he feels that the most important thing in his life is home, family and friends.

This is the Life Path related to leadership by example and assumption of responsibility, thus, it was Michael’s obligation to pick up the burden and always be ready to help; and he willingly carried far more than his fair share of any load, plus he was always there when needed. In doing so, Michael took ownership and often became an authority over a situation.

In romance, Michael was loyal and devoted. As a caretaker type, he tended to attract partners who were somewhat weaker and more needy than himself; someone he could care for and protect. The main ingredient that needed to prevail in his relationships was complete harmony. Michael didn’t function well in stressful relationships that became challenges for him to control. It was the same with friends; he was loyal and trustworthy. But there was a tendency for him to also become dominating and controlling.

It's likely that Michael felt compelled to function with strength and compassion. He was a sympathetic and kind person, generous with personal and material resources. Wisdom, balance, and understanding were the cornerstones of his life, and these defined his approach to life in general. Michael’s extraordinary wisdom and ability to understand the problems of others was apt to have commenced from an early age. This allowed Michael to easily span the generation gap and assume an important role in life early on.

The number 6 Life Path actually produces few negative examples, but there are some pitfalls peculiar to the path. Michael may have had a tendency to become overwhelmed by responsibilities and a slave to others, especially members of his family or close friends. It was also easy for him to fall into a pattern of being too critical of others along with a tendency of being too hard on himself. The natural burdens of this number are heavy.

The Lifepath 6 is ruled by the planet Venus. Michael is creative, resourceful, trusting and trustworthy. He loved beauty, was idealistic, imaginative, and was usually at his happiest when involved in some kind of creative activity. He possessed an excellent color sense, and may have had perfect color vision with a marked ability in some field of artistic endeavor. Sixes are successful in life and are able to accumulate a great deal of power as well as money.

In addition to his genius in music, Michael would have made a brilliant painter, sculptor, writer and/or teacher. Numerologists suggest that Sixes are particularly likely to excel in the arts because they have the creative power of three twice (6 = 3 + 3). Michael had moral and emotional courage, was just, kind, and adept at handling people. He possessed that rare gift of intuitively understanding the needs and difficulties of others, and getting the best out of them. He respected intelligence, loathed forceful and opinionated people and did his utmost to avoid them.

With the only number divisible by odd (3) and even (2), Michael, as a Six, was well balanced, open minded, and self-controlled. He made an excellent mediator since he had the ability to see both sides of an argument or problem impartially. As a Six, he possessed an instinctive dignity and was physically attractive and capable of great charm; although when negative, he could be obstinate, arrogant and self-indulgent.

In love, Michael was warmly affectionate, loyal, faithful, and anxious for fidelity. After marriage, he preferred the company of his mate but retained his very close friends. Michael liked a comfortable and orderly home and was fairly domesticated without making too much of it. As a Lifepath Six, Michael was always fair and considerate and disliked arguments which he often went to great lengths to avoid, although once involved in a quarrel, he could be wittily derisive and bitingly sarcastic.

He is sympathetic and extremely generous to friends and loved ones in need, and he always helped out with boring or unpleasant jobs if someone he felt affection for could not cope. Michael was exceptionally self-reliant and never asked for assistance himself, he disliked accepting favors and feared being dependent in old age. Michael was not particularly interested in money as long as things appeared to be running smoothly, although he disliked waste and was usually economical.

Michael was a very conscientious parent and his children most likely possess a great love for books and learning. Six is usually symbolized by a double triangle or circle divided into six, it represents unity of spirit and body, and harmony between man and God. In some ancient records it was asserted that the manna which fell from the heavens in the desert for six days was marked with the Hebrew vau, six. Six is also the number of love, marriage, and domestic happiness.

The Pythagoreans held the hexad - 6 - to represent, as Clement of Alexandria conceived, the creation of the world according to both the prophets and the ancient Mysteries. Six was called by the Pythagoreans the perfection of all the parts. This number was particularly sacred to Orpheus, and also to the Fate, Lachesis, and the Muse, Thalia. It was called the form of forms, the articulation of the universe, and the maker of the soul.

Among the Greeks, harmony and the soul were considered to be similar in nature, because all souls are harmonic. The hexad is also the symbol of marriage, because it is formed by the union of two triangles, one masculine and the other feminine. Among the keywords given to the hexad are: time, for it is the measure of duration; panacea, because health is equilibrium and the hexad is a balance number; the world, because the world, like the hexad, is often seen to consist of contraries by harmony; Omni-sufficient, because its parts are sufficient for totality (3 + 2 + 1 = 6); unwearied, because it contains the elements of immortality.

One of the keywords for the Lifepath 6 is time. Time is represented in the Tarot by the card of the Major Arcana called The Hermit. The Hermit is represented by the ancient god Cronos, whose name means Time. In myth, Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth) mated and produced the first race, the Titans or earth gods, of whom Cronos was the youngest. But Uranus regarded his progeny with horror and shut the Titans up in the depths of the underworld so that they might not offend his eyes.

But Gaea grew angry and meditated a terrible vengeance upon her husband. Having Cronos assist her, Gaea carried out her vengeance on Uranus whereby Cronos then liberated his brothers and became sovereign of the earth. Under his long, patient reign the work of Creation was completed. This time on earth became known as the Golden Age, because of the abundance over which Cronos presided. As god of time he ruled over the orderly passage of the seasons, birth and growth followed by death and gestation and rebirth, and was worshipped both as a grim reaper who set the boundaries past which man and nature could not go, and as a god of fertility.

Eventually, Cronos himself was banished by his son, Zeus; some say to the depths of the underworld, but others say to the Blessed Isles where he sleeps, awaiting the beginning of a new Golden Age. On an inner level Cronos, the Hermit, is an image of the last of the four Moral Lessons which the Fool must learn: the lesson of time and the limitations of mortal life. Nothing is allowed to live beyond its span, and nothing remains unchanged; and this is a simple and obvious facet of life which despite its simplicity and obviousness is painful for us to learn and often only comes with age and hard experience.

Cronos is a god who both embodies the meaning of time and also rebels against it. So he is humbled and overthrown, and learns wisdom in solitude and silence. In many ways he is an image of the body itself, which inexorably grows older and rebels against its mortal fate. The problem of solitude and the discovery that one is ultimately alone and mortal are dilemmas which all human beings must face. Youth passes into maturity, and can never be regained in any concrete way; but memory and wisdom are distilled from the passage of time, and also the gift of patience.

The lesson of the Hermit is one which cannot be learned through struggle and conquest. Thus Cronos stands in counterpoint to Heracles, for struggle will not stop time. Only acceptance of time yields the rewards of Cronos’ Golden Age. Through enforced limitation and through circumstances which only time, not battle, can release, the Fool develops the reflective, introverted, solitary stance of Cronos the Hermit. Thus Cronos is in some ways an image of humility, which often begins with humiliation in the face of that which we cannot change, but which can result in a quality of stillness and serenity without which we cannot endure the obstacles and disappointments which life sometimes brings.

However clever the intellect, however warm the heart, however strong the sense of identity, the vicissitudes of life would shatter us if we were unable to find somewhere within the patience and prudence of the Hermit, who teaches us how to endure and wait in silence. The negative face of Cronos is calcification, a stubborn resistance to change and the passage of time. But the creative face of this ancient and ambivalent god is the shrewdness to change what we can, to accept what we cannot, and to wait in silence until we can tell the difference.

Another keyword for the Lifepath 6 is world. The World card is the final card of the Major Arcana in the Tarot. Here we meet Hermaphroditus, who in myth was the child of Hermes and Aphrodite. In one version of the tale, Hermaphroditus was born a double-sexed being. But in another version, this duality or unity was made, rather than born. Hermaphroditus was originally a male child, and to conceal his illicit birth, Aphrodite immediately confided him to the nymphs of Mount Ida, who brought him up in the forests.

At the age of fifteen he was a wild and savage youth whose chief pleasure was to hunt in the wooded mountains. One day he arrived at the banks of a limpid lake whose freshness tempted him to bathe. The nymph Salmacis who ruled the lake saw him and was enamored of his beauty. She told him so, and in vain the shy youth attempted to repulse her. Salmacis threw her arms around him and covered him with kisses. He continued to resist, and the nymph cried out, “O gods! Grant that nothing may ever separate him from me, or me from him!” Immediately their two bodies were united and became one.

The four devices which surround the image of Hermaphroditus in the card of the World belong to the four deities: Aphrodite the love goddess, Zeus the king of the gods, Athene the goddess of wisdom and Poseidon the god of earthquakes. Their symbols are represented in the cards of the Magician, the cup of love, the wand of creative imagination, the sword of the intellect and the pentacle of physical reality. The serpent which surrounds Hermaphroditus is the ancient World Snake, which as we have seen embodies the raw instinctual power of life itself, forever devouring and recreating itself.

On an inner level, the image of Hermaphroditus is an image of the experience of being whole. Male and female are more than sexual identifications. They are great polarities which encompass all the opposites in life. The double-sexed being, born in one version of the myth and made in another, is a symbol of the potential integration of the opposites within the personality. In one sense Hermaphroditus is born thus, because the potential for this integration is inherent in all of us. But in another sense, Hermaphroditus is made, because it is the varied experiences of the entire journey of life which lead ultimately to this complete being.

The qualities of maternal care and paternal ethics, intuition and physical expression, mind and feeling, relationship and solitude, conflict and harmony, spirit and body - all these opposites that war within us and create such struggle in our lives are, in this card, portrayed as joined, living in harmony within the great circle of the World Snake which is an image of inexhaustible life. The image of wholeness as it is portrayed in the card of the World is an ideal goal, rather than something which we can completely possess. We are human and therefore imperfect, and the divine androgyne is beyond our reach.

But we may glimpse this state whenever there is a sense of inner healing, where two warring parts of ourselves have at last come together and some inner resolution has brought peace. Ordinarily, when we encounter these opposites in life and in ourselves, we deny that such a conflict exists, repressing half of it and casting it into the underworld of the unconscious. Or we project the uncomfortable half on to another person, or something in the outside world, and expend our energy battling with something which is really within ourselves.

The state of ambivalence is part of the human condition; yet how many of us have the courage to admit our ambivalence? But as human beings we are complex, and the Fool’s journey is really a journey of discovery through the opposites of one’s being, conscious and unconscious together. The card of the World is the final card of the Major Arcana, and the end of the Fool’s journey. Yet it is also an egg which implies the seed of a new journey. Thus, whenever we feel we have arrived and there is a moment of achievement and healing, a fresh challenge arises, a fresh discovery of the ancient spiraling journey. Thus we continue to grow and change, always moving toward Hermaphroditus, the image of wholeness, yet never achieving it save in a small and sometimes subtle way.