Eight

Chinese tradition

• Eight is used in Yijing.

  The eight trigrams are the Yijing’s elementary figures. Wilhelm’s English made them a Western divinatory furniture; the classic is older and wider than that.

  from Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes (translation) · I Ching (Yijing), Wilhelm 1924; Baynes English 1950

  used in · sourced · documented

• Eight is associated with Chinese tradition.

  Bagua diagrams belong to Chinese correlative schemes. Luck-eight in later popular talk is not the classic’s only job.

  from Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes (translation) · I Ching (Yijing), Wilhelm 1924; Baynes English 1950

  associated with · sourced · documented

• Eight appears in Chinese tradition.

  The Yijing’s bagua are eight trigrams. A named eight-count in that classic’s trigram speech, not sixty-four as the hexagram total and not a lucky-number dump alone.

  from Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes (translation) · I Ching (Yijing), Wilhelm 1924; Baynes English 1950

  appears in · sourced · documented

Daoism

• Eight is associated with Daoism.

  Later Daoist and popular diagrams use bagua. The Yijing is older and wider than Daoism as a label.

  from Richard Wilhelm / Cary F. Baynes (translation) · I Ching (Yijing), Wilhelm 1924; Baynes English 1950

  associated with · sourced · culturally specific

Norse tradition

• Eight appears in Norse tradition.

  Snorri’s Gylfaginning names Sleipnir as Odin’s eight-legged horse. A named eight in that prose, not horse as the animal kind alone and not a bare octad dump.

  from Snorri Sturluson · Gylfaginning, c. 1220

  appears in · sourced · documented

Shinto

• Eight appears in Shinto.

  The Kojiki names the Yamata serpent as eight-forked and eight-tailed, and eight recurs in that episode’s counting speech. Named eight in that serpent narrative, not a generic lucky-number dump and not Bagua as Chinese eightfold diagram.

  from Ō no Yasumaro (compiler); Donald L. Philippi (translation) · Kojiki, 712 CE; Philippi trans. 1968

  appears in · sourced · documented

• Sixteen is used in Eight.

  In Agricola’s De Re Metallica, a quicksilver holding is divided into eight shares, or into sixteen or thirty-two — eight and sixteen are paired share cuts of that division.

  from Georgius Agricola; Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (translation) · De Re Metallica, 1556 Latin; Hoover English 1912

  used in · sourced · documented

• Octagon is associated with Eight.

  In Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture, Andronicus of Cyrrhus built the marble octagonal tower of the winds among the eight wind divisions — eight winds seat that octagon tower.

  from Vitruvius; Morris Hicky Morgan (translation) · De Architectura, 1st century BCE; Morgan English 1914

  associated with · sourced · documented

• Cinquefoil is associated with Eight.

  In Culpeper’s English Physician, leaves like cinquefoil are compared among plants whose leaf divisions run to five or eight parts — cinquefoil is the leaf likeness for that divided form.

  from Nicholas Culpeper · The English Physician, 1652 (and later PD editions)

  associated with · sourced · documented

• Perfect number is associated with Eight.

  In Vitruvius’s Ten Books on Architecture, six is the perfect number, and as the number grows the addition of a unit yields the ratios that include eight among the named multiples — eight sits in that perfect-number proportion ladder.

  from Vitruvius; Morris Hicky Morgan (translation) · De Architectura, 1st century BCE; Morgan English 1914

  associated with · sourced · documented