Eight is a cosmic number. While that is true of all numbers, it is applicable to 8 in the sense that the vibratory power of 8 tends to lift one beyond the limitations of the personal environment. It is termed a 'free' number; also the resurrection number. Its color is light yellow, and carries the high powers of the Golden Christ Ray.
The birth force composes the working capital of a life, the substance of the rough ashlar which is to be fashioned into the perfect Cube. The keynote sounded by a name is the index of former achievements. Names are changed automatically as it were, as man touches higher levels of consciousness. It is an impossibility for the spirit to respond to the continuous vibrational impacts of a name which is inharmonious to its evolutionary status. Many names bestowed upon children are never used by them because they do not fit; others, in later years rename themselves. We cannot work with that which we do not understand. Nor is the spirit content to use that with which it has finished.
When Christenings come to be understood as being ceremonies of spiritual power attended even by the angels, an important step shall have been taken in the spiritual life of man. Because of the regenerative of 8, by far the greater number of the old fonts and baptistries are octagonal. In harmony with these facts we read in Luke 2:21:22:
Eight is the highest feminine number of the entire series. It is the number of the feminine in exaltation, referred to sometimes by esoteric numerologists as the number of the Double Feminine. In keeping with this signification it is the symbol of awakened and developed soul faculties of the highest type. An 8 is one in whom the still small voice ever speaks clearly. It is the number of intuition par excellence. The Book of Exodus is keyed to 8. The paramount message of this Book is found in the words: "I was never disobedient to the heavenly vision." These words are descriptive of 8. Those who come under the rulership of this number rise easily above the material and claim their own amidst the things of the spiritual. Eight is the number of the resurrection into a higher consciousness and a new manner of living. It is the power of the divinity within which leads man, as represented by the children of Israel, out of Egypt, the symbolical land of materiality ruled over by Pharaoh, the power of this world, and into a land wherein they no longer function under bestial bondage but under the laws of God. The highway of spirit is definitely pointed out in this illuminating record of a God-guided people. It outlines the steps on the path of soul attainment. It offers truly an exodus from the old, the finite, and the personal, into the Promised Land of the New Age, wherein freedom, equality, soul comradeship and cosmic knowing, all of which are key-words of 8, will be generally realized.
The study of external or objective nature is based upon the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. These four constituents pass through an extended or spiritual gradation, also fourfold in number, but whose operations are invisible to the outer physical plane senses. When man develops fourth dimensional consciousness, which gives the ability to observe, study, and tabulate something of the effects of these extended forces as they operate in their finer or more etheric gradations, he will be attuned to the true powers of 8 which now become his teacher as well as his servant, unveiling for him wonders which may not be lawfully revealed. These gradations of finer matter are known to the esotericists as Fire, Air, Water and Earth. In these forces are to be found the keys to inner plane development.
Moses, the primary personality of the Book of Exodus, is an 8 character. Pharaoh, the symbol of unregenerate man, is a 4. Four represents activity on the outer planes of materialism only. It embraces the realms of the material scientist whose world is bounded by the powers of oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon. Moses typifies the fourth dimensional consciousness wherein those fourfold forces are projected or lifted into the sphere of the 8.
This projection or expansion of faculties is difficult of accomplishment and is earned only by merit. The experiences encountered by the ego during this process of unfoldment are described briefly in the great Plagues of Exodus. Through the multitude of external impacts experienced in the course of daily living the soul encounters joy and sorrow, pain and comfort, and all the many other opposites common to earth life. From these it makes an extract which becomes the spiritual substance out of which it builds the foundation stone upon which it fashions the New Age structure, namely, the consciousness that functions at will amid the glories of the new or Promised Land. This land is the true domain of the 8 who is born to know his cosmic heritage and who, for this reason, is obligated spiritually to aid all those who may ask for assistance. The 8 must always serve and point the way toward emancipation. For such service Moses is the ideal type.
The sublimated essences of initiatory experiences are represented by Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. It is most interesting to note that the names of the Four Gospels which outline this fourfold Path leading to the Cosmic Temple of Light, collectively digit the, number 8. Numerologically this indicates that in the Gospels is to be found the way of attainment and the supreme consummation of the high spiritual quest.
In a certain part of the Masonic Initiations the candidate is asked what he understands to be the meaning of the number 8. His answer: "This number is the sign of the Wise Men."
In order that we may have some comprehension of the inner wisdom which is concealed within this answer and at the same time be brought into a fuller realization of the cosmic significances of numbers and the primary importance that they hold in the continuously evolving scheme of life upon the earth planet, we shall turn in meditation to the primal symbolism of the number 8. Perhaps the most profound and far-reaching definition relative to the power, purpose and significance of number is: God is a number endowed with motion." The first initial impulses of God in creation are emblazoned upon the eternal Cosmic Records as specific lines of force or light forming the supreme Creative Fiat or Word, and in which all things are fashioned. These starry or spiritual patterns are in continuous and incessant motion and form the cosmic outline of the numerical series.
Each number is an accumulation of spiritual force or God power and is a mighty repository of God Immanent controlling a definite vibratory rhythm, or keynote, and emanating a certain specific color. Herein we find the very beginnings of the sacred science of numbers. They are God-Hieroglyphics, the writing of Deity upon the walls of Time and of Eternity, wherein "naught obtains its form but through the Deity, which is an effect of number."
Cosmically defined, motion and number are all but synonymous. At the heart of every atom is the number which sets the keynote of its rhythm or motion. The mystery of the octad, or 8, is that of the lemniscate, the eternal and continuous spiral motion which is the supreme signature of the universe and the path of all evolutionary cycles. The number 8 was first sounded by the alternate inbreathings and outbreathings of the planetary Earth Spirit. This cyclic motion of 8 appears in the caduceus, the staff of mystic wisdom carried by Mercury, or Hermes, the god of the Ancient Wisdom. The caduceus is alsd a symbol of the Logos, or the creative Word or Fiat, which becomes the universal, fecundating principle of the cosmos. The two intertwined serpents of the caduceus are referred to in the Masonic Teachings.
The serpent encircled rod surmounted with two out-spread wings belongs to the profound symbolism of the number 8 and represents the lemniscate currents of life force which sweep the earth passing through every living form from the body of the earth itself down to its most minute organism. It is the uniting of the two currents, one positive and the other negative, which produces the equilibrium that results in the circulation of force. This force, or Essence of Life and Spirit, impresses its cosmic signature in the form of the figure 8 on every earthly form. In the body of man these currents become radiations of light, flowing out from the sympathetic and the cerebro-spinal nervous systems, when the consciousness is elevated above the material to the spiritual.
Eight is the feminine, the negative, the primeval Mother or Water Principle. In the words of a Masonic writer, "The figure 8 is formed by drawing a line around a woman's breasts, each in turn, thus is symbolized re-creation." This is the true keyword of 8. The ancients describe the eight-faced God with a face toward each of the four points of the compass and also a face toward each of the four intermediate points.
We have stressed the cosmic aspects of 8 in order that we may understand how impossible it is for an 8 soul or destiny path to be narrowly circumscribed in consciousness or environment. The vast spaces are always calling. The inner voice of 8 is ever speaking unutterable things. On the outstretched wings of the Caduceus he must be out and away breathing a rarefied air if he is to do his best work and realize the high idealism of which his soul is ever conscious. He must be free and untrammeled to follow Moses to the heights of Mt Nebo, the peak of Wisdom, there to meet God face to face and to know the glory of a divine transfiguration. Eight in its highest expression elevates man from the realms of mortality to his true position within ther radiance of spiritual being.
Sea green is the color of 8, and the Caduceus its symbol. The eighth zodiacal sign, Scorpio, is the emblem of death and also of immortality; it is for the native to choose which of the two it shall be, the path of the beast or the way of the eagle. The casket is encircled with the rainbow.
The Dragon, or the Serpent, is symbolically related to the number 8. The serpentine or cyclic ebb and flow of all life currents have been shown to be the origin of the cosmic 8. It was the misuse of this serpentine life current within the body of man which caused him to become an exile from the Edenic Garden. When this is understood and the currents corrected through regeneration the gates will open on the New Jerusalem. "That which ascends is the same as that which descends."
A symbolic picture of the New Age depicts a stormy sea typifying the travail of overcoming the turbulence of earthly life. Above the waters shine 8 clear, brilliant stars. A young girl stands with one foot on land, one on sea. In her hands she holds two cups from which flow Charity or Love and Equality or Universal Brotherhood. Above her head shines an eight-pointed star, and near her is an open flower above which is poised a butterfly with wide-stretched wings. This figure represents Truth. The picture as a whole represents symbolically the illumined 8.
Key words of this number are freedom, expansion, progression, regeneration, and transfiguration.
The eighth sephira, or branch of the kaballistic Tree of Life, is the letter H, or Hod in Hebrew, meaning splendor. Such is the condition of the New Order brought forth by the 8 after the cycle of 7 has prepared the way and completed its septenary task. The illumined consciousness of that New Order is described by Paul in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians wherein he speaks of the mortal putting on immortality and the corruptible becoming incorruptible.
Eight is the consciousness which, spanning heaven and earth, manifests the powers of conscious Invisible Helpership. At its highest, it gives extended perception and transcendental powers. Not until these are acquired and exercised can the 8 experience true satisfaction of soul. All secret wisdom is hidden in number, declared the Ageless Wisdom. Eight is the power of that divine darkness, which is no darkness save to outer perception and ignorance. To the inner knowing it is the refracted glory of a light supernal, a light which knows neither shadow or turning. It is the dazzling luminosity in which John, the beloved, visioned the Celestial City.
The 8 offers no half-way measures. It is either personal limitation or spiritual freedom, splendor or degradation, the casket or the rainbow, the terrestrial or the celestial. Eight may grovel in the material, the bestial or soar upon the wings of the Caduceus into immortal spheres, returning as a prophet of glory, a messenger of the joys of an eternal life. The word "sheep" so often used in the Bible contains the spiritual rhythm of 8.
Eight holds the secret to Balance. The power of Polarity is contained within it. Toward its powers, the heart of the world is striving, either consciously or unconsciously. To attain its qualities is the great task before humanity at this time.
Hermes Trismegistus, the thrice-great Egyptian sage, declared many thousands of. years ago that the principle work of the present Fifth Root Race would be the attainment of Balance. That this is still far from being realized in the mass of humanity is evident in the inharmonious conditions generally prevalent everywhere and which manifest as pain, poverty, disease, and death.
The ancient symbol representing this discordant condition of man is a blindfolded feminine figure holding a pair of scales. The profound wisdom of the ancients is shown in their use of this symbol which so adequately depicts the condition of humanity in this modem day, when the climax of unbalance has been reached. The scales are about to turn. When they do there will be a tremendous, physical, economic, social and religious upheaval, resulting in deep sorrow and suffering. Then the bandage will be withdrawn from the eyes of the figure (mass humanity). God will "wipe away all tears," and the eyes will again see clearly.
The primary note of the celestial rhythms of 8 has been expressed in the following words: "From the field of sin and punishment thou shalt pass into the boundless freedom of my divine protection."
The full orbed cipher represents the Divine Feminine; if broken or imperfect, abasement is denoted; if complete, regeneration and union with spirit is designated.
Note: These lessons are not intended for casual reading, but for careful study and meditation wherein it is hoped that by a lifting and acceleration of consciousness, the student may be able to contact more fully the inner man, that source of wisdom and light eternal which makes life complete both within and without.
— Corinne Heline
