Cast & Chart

Life Path number

8

Numbers describe tendencies in a symbolic tradition. They cannot decide health, money, law, marriage or children.

In the sources

Camerarius, in his edition of the Arithmetic of Nicomachus, calls it Universal Harmony, because musical ratios are distinguished by this number.

W. Wynn Westcott, Numbers: Their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues (3rd ed., 1911; first published 1890)

About this number

Greek number lore, as Westcott collected it, valued 8 as the first cube and the only evenly even number below ten. Music earned it a further title. The passages he gathers say nothing of commerce.

Money arrives with the American writers. Walton in 1914 calls 8 the number of business and material achievement, and Cheasley in 1916 names it Material Perfection and speaks of judgment, justice and organization. Balliett in 1905 says wealth comes to these people naturally, while Taylor in 1926 attaches money to the condition that energy be directed wisely and unselfishly. Those claims belong to their authors and say nothing about any reader's accounts.

Modern popular books keep the themes of authority and material results and tend to pair them with a caution about treating people as means. Sepharial's 1911 name-total entry of protection and justice has a different emphasis, closer to Cheasley's word justice than to anybody's ledger. Balliett's 1917 book counts 8 among the master numbers together with 9, 11 and 22, a grouping that did not last.

Where this text comes from

Statements credited to an older writer follow the scanned text named here and are paraphrased unless quoted. The modern readings are labeled as modern and come from none of these works.

Our own plain wording. It is not a translation of any single source.