.jpg?width=300)
Wole Soyinka
Nigerian writer (born 1934)
The numbers
2 + 8 = 10
1 + 0 = 1
Lo Shu grid
Missing: 5, 6. Present digits repeat to show how many times they occur.
Life path 1 — The Initiator
Tradition reads 1 as the number of origination — the point before anything has been divided. Practitioners associate it with people who move first, set direction, and carry the discomfort of being early. The same tradition is candid about the cost: the instinct that starts a thing is not the instinct that finishes it, and 1 is read as needing others precisely where it least wants to admit it.
Complete lines
Line of Reason
A complete line in the grid.
Line of Expression
A complete line in the grid.
Line of Ambition
The 7-8-9 column complete. Read as drive that has both the wish and the machinery — the traditional marker of someone who converts intention into position.
Cooperation
A complete line in the grid.
Organisation
A complete line in the grid.
Repeated numbers
1 appears 4 times
Concentrated self-direction. Read as conviction that does not need external agreement — and does not always seek it.
What is missing
Missing 5
The centre of the grid, so its absence is weighted heavily. Read as difficulty adapting mid-course — a preference for the plan already chosen over the plan now indicated.
Missing 6
Read as a complicated relationship with obligation — either avoiding it or over-shouldering it, rarely a settled middle.
Vedic — Ank Jyotish
Moolank 4 comes from the day of the month alone; Bhagyank 1 from the whole date. They differ, which is the ordinary case — the two numbers answer different questions.
Rahu
The ascending lunar node — a shadow graha, not a physical body. Disruption, ambition, the unconventional. Read with more caution than any other.
Bhagyank uses the same arithmetic as the Western life path, so the two will always agree. That is not two traditions confirming each other — it is one calculation under two names.
In their words
I said: "A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude, he pounces". In other words: a tiger does not stand in the forest and say: "I am a tiger". When you pass where the tiger has walked before, you see the skeleton of the duiker, you know that some tigritude has been emanated there.
The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.
There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?
The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.
Well, some people say I'm pessimistic because I recognize the eternal cycle of evil. All I say is, look at the history of mankind right up to this moment and what do you find?
People say human nature is a very vague expression, people tend to say human nature is corruptible anyway and it comes from a theological point of view, goes back to the Garden of Eden, that there is always this corrupt gene waiting to be activated that we inherited from the very beginning. I don't believe in that theological excuse but I know that the sudden oil wealth, easy access to wealth fuelled the process, it definitely accentuated the process, it made corruption easy because if you are corrupt and you have extra cash you are able to shut the mouth of your accuser and they will be silenced.
Sourced from Wikiquote, restricted to the subject’s own sourced sections.