Michael Jackson Destiny - 8

The number 8 Destiny suggests that the direction of growth in your lifetime will be a move up the ladder of attainment in the material world to achieve financial security and status amongst your peers. The positive 8 Destiny produces individuals that are very ambitious and goal-oriented. Michael expressed the positive qualities of 8 which made him an outstanding manager because he was able to plan, initiate, and complete projects; plus he was very dependable and determined.

The 8 Destiny made Michael well-equipped to develop and grow in a managerial sense.
He had the outstanding potential for organizational and administrative responsibilities, and the potential for considerable achievement in business or other powerful positions such as government leadership roles. He had the skills and abilities to establish or operate a business with great efficiency. He also had good judgment when it came to money and commercial matters because he understood how to build and accumulate material wealth.
Much of his success was due to his ability to judge character.

With the number 8 Destiny, Michael exercised sound judgment in most of his affairs, and was realistic and practical in his approach to business matters. No one has any more energy that a person with the 8 Destiny who has a plan laid and is starting to work. No one has any more self-confidence, either. The Destiny 8 is on a quest for status and power. Neither of these drives are inherently negative unless they are taken to an extreme and Michael appeared to keep things on an even keel; therefore he was able to avoid the tendency to strain after money, material matters, status, or power, to the detriment of the other important factors in his life.

Eight is ruled by the planet Saturn. Michael is a strong, practical, wise, imaginative and intense person who has a great deal of creative energy. He is a visionary and sometimes appears to be surrounded by a faint aura of melancholy. He is truthful and reliable, he never neglects his obligations, and will make almost any sacrifice for those he loves. He is dignified and capable of great charm but sometimes finds it difficult to express affection. Michael possesses an innate desire to succeed in life and is equipped to take advantage of any opportunity for advancement.

He wanted money and social position, and worked tirelessly and relentlessly to accomplish his objectives. With knowledge gained through experience and by intelligent use of his own resources, he was able to establish himself in a position of power and authority. He was an individualist but seemed to work best through conventional channels. Michael was adaptable, responsible, and self-disciplined, with the ability to overcome setbacks and disappointments, and to forge ahead without the encouragement and support of others. He was most likely interested in history and the arts, respected tradition, and admired people who had reached the top of their professions.

Michael would have done well, in addition to being a musician, as a lawyer, politician, scientist and/or a writer; but his path through life was never an easy one. In love he was loyal and devoted but needed constant reassurance of fidelity, and he didn’t care for his mates to show any type of interest in company other than his own. He may also have had the tendency to argue over principles. He could be untidy but usually made an effort to fit in with his partner’s habit patterns and although he was a great lover of comfort and luxury, he was willing to accept less. Michael appeared poised, cool and detached but was subject to great extremes of emotion, and although he could sometimes be brusque, he was always generous, gentle and sympathetic with the despairing and sick.

Eight represents degeneration and regeneration, destruction and menace, but also promise. It is the number of worldly involvement and material success or failure, so the complete reversal of fortune is always a possibility. The dual nature of this number is shown by the figure itself, a circle on top of another circle. Eight stands for worldly concerns, achievement and triumph or defeat and conquest, but it is also the number of eternity. In Christian number symbolism it represents life after death; an eight on its side is the mathematical symbol for infinity.

The ogdoad - 8 - was sacred because it was the number of the first cube, which form had eight corners, and was the only evenly-even number under 10 (1 - 2 - 4 - 8 - 4 - 2 - 1). Thus, the 8 is divided into two 4’s, each 4 is divided into two 2’s, and each 2 is divided into two 1’s, thereby re-establishing the monad. Among the keywords of the ogdoad are love, counsel, prudence, law, and convenience. Among the divinities partaking of its nature were Panarmonia, Rhea, Cibele, Cadmaea, Dindymene, Orcia, Neptune, Themis, and Euterpe (a Muse). The ogdoad was a mysterious number associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece and the Cabiri. It was called the little holy number. It derived its form partly from the twisted snakes on the Caduceus of Hermes and partly from the serpentine motion of the celestial bodies; possibly also from the moon’s nodes.

One of the divinities listed above is Euterpe, a Muse. Euterpe was one of the nine Muses, the goddesses of music, song and dance. Her name was derived from the Greek words eu- and terpô, meaning "giver of much delight." In Classical times, when the Muses were assigned specific artistic spheres, Euterpe was named Muse of lyric poetry. Her attribute was the double-flute.

While the other is Hermes and his Caduceus. In the Major Arcana of the Tarot, he is shown in the card of Judgment. In the card of the Magician, Hermes appeared as the Fool’s inner guide at the beginning of the journey of life - a trickster, a protector of lost travelers, and a magus who could point the way through the uncanny intuitions which in myth the god was said to dispense. In the card of Judgment, he is revealed as a powerful underworld deity, emissary of Hades, who summons the dying gently and eloquently by laying his golden staff with the caduceus upon their eyes.

But Hermes could also summon the souls of the dead back to life, as well as ushering them into Hades’ realm. As herald of the heavenly gods, Hermes also freed heroes such as Theseus who had entered Hades’ realm illicitly and then got stuck there. He also guided Orpheus into the dark kingdom to seek his lost wife Eurydice, and guided him out again when he had lost her for a second time. Thus Hermes of the card of Judgment is not only Hermes the Guide, but Hermes the Summoner, who leads the souls of the dead to their accounting and prepares them for renewed life.

On an inner level, Hermes is an image of a process which occurs at certain critical moments in life: a summing up, when the experiences of the past are gathered together and seen as part of an intelligent pattern, and the consequences of these experiences must be understood and accepted. This process of summing up is not an intellectual function, but rather a kind of cooking that occurs in the underworld of the unconscious. It is a call for the dead to rise - for the many and varied actions and decisions we perform to knit together and yield a harvest.

The artist experiences this process when, after many hours or weeks or even years of attempting to formulate, research, practice technique and give shape to an elusive idea or image, something at last happens and a new creative work is born. This process can occur in any realm of life where we tunnel, blind as moles, pouring effort into something which somehow remains elusive, and at last the effort is rewarded and there is a synthesis and a new development at hand. This is Hermes at his most magical, revealed at last as the true lord of the entirety of the Fool’s journey, knitting together through some mysterious process of the intuition the experiences and insights gained from each stage of the journey, and magically blending these to form the beginnings of a new and larger personality.

Thus the figure of Hermes leading the dead souls to judgment embodies a process of birth. It is the birth of a more complete personality, which arises in a non-rational way from the combined experiences of the past, fused by insight and the sense that apparently random events and choices are really secretly connected. The judge of the dead decides what future has been earned from past efforts, and it is on the efforts of the past that the future is built. The card of Judgment symbolizes the rewards for efforts made although the judge is inside us, not outside in the world.

We pay also for our sins of unconsciousness, and reap the harvest of refusing to take up responsibility for our own choices at each stage of the journey. Judgment is an image not just of a new beginning, but a beginning which emerges out of the past. In Eastern philosophy, this is called karma. Each person sows seed in his own field, and ultimately must reap the harvest which springs from his own sowing. Everything must be accounted for and man at last meets the consequences of all his choices in life.