Last updated: November 9, 2024

One symbol/model that has been important to me in my personal spiritual development is the Figure 8.  When you open your eyes, you can start to see Figure 8 symbols in a few different, critical places.  For example, if you have ever been on a sailboat or tried mountain climbing, you may be familiar with the Figure 8 knot.  This knot, shown at right, is commonly used as a stopper knot on ships and boats, serving as a temporary knot to tie them off.  In addition, the Figure 8 knot is frequently used to attach a rope to a harness in mountain climbing.  This knot is favored in these situations, because it is generally easier to untie than an overhand knot and it reduces the tendency of the rope to jam and fray, while providing a knot that is equally secure.

The Figure 8 might also be familiar to those of you who ice skate or have watched figure skating competitions – well back in the day….  Prior to 1990, competitive skaters needed to exhibit their skill in compulsory figures.  The photo at left shows German skater Sonja Morgenstern performing the compulsory component in a 1971 competition.   You can even find a short YouTube video that demonstrates the ice skating Figure 8 here.  To execute the Figure 8 correctly takes good balance, skill, and the right amount of energy flow for each rotation.

Believe it or not, you can even find a Figure 8 workout program that you can do at home for cardio and to tone your abs!  It’s a “cardio-dance-core hybrid exercise” that has ties to both Latin dance and Mediterranean belly dancing.  You can find numerous examples with a simple YouTube search on “figure 8 workout.”

Balance and right orderly action is like the symbol/model of the Figure 8 that I learned about from my friend Dale, when I was going through a tough time.  Tracing the Figure 8 on my palm, over and over again, I  was finally able to physically absorb the concept – to find a way to keep my mind moving up and down and around the Figure 8.  I understand how important it is not to get stuck going around and around the bottom circle (unending depression and unbalanced despair) nor to get stuck going around and around the top circle (unending ego and unbalanced euphoria.)

And to take it one step further, Dale told me that there is a point of transition from the bottom circle to the top circle (like the skater changing blades) that she called “the click point.”  So when you are feeling a little bit depressed or stuck going around and around the bottom circle, it’s important to keep looking for the divine click point and Jesus will meet you there to help pull you back up to the top circle of the Figure 8.  It is critical to continue to move mentally, in such a way that you don’t get stuck. You must keep moving to stay healthy.

The art image at right, from the Full of Eyes website, shows the Figure 8 turned sideways with Jesus in the middle.  It was painted with a beginning point of the following verse in Scripture:

For thus says the one who is high and exalted, living eternally, whose name is the Holy One:  “On high I dwell, and  in holiness, and with the crushed and dejected in spirit.  To revive the spirits of the dejected, to revive the hearts of the crushed.”  (Isaiah 57:15)

“The crushed and dejected in spirit” is something I understand and thus this verse is directly related to my understanding of the Figure 8 model of mental health.   There are a couple of other interesting aspects of the Figure 8, in terms of symbolism.  Turn it on its side and it becomes the symbol for infinity.  I saw plenty of those in the calculus classes I took in college.  And I’ve learned that in Jewish tradition, eight is the numerical value of the unpronounceable name of God.  It is endlessness, the continually flowing energy and yet paradoxically also a moment of stillness.

The Figure 8 can also be associated with the concept of ebb and flow, words that immediately remind me of the ebb and flow of the ocean, as the water creeps up along the shoreline and then recedes back into the ocean.  Walking along the beach always slows me down to the time of ebb and flow.

We ebb and flow, life ebbs and flows, the entire cosmos is a process of ebb and flow, and the ebbing is as holy as the flow.  This is the mystery we need to remember and believe…  Never can the one be found without the other, and the one is always in the process of becoming the other.  Perhaps we will rediscover the secret of our power when we can finally raise up from our depths the wisdom of ebb and flow.  Ebbing has been called weakness, but perhaps we will discover in it a new kind of power.  Perhaps there is power in all that we have associated with the ebb side of the cycle: silence, waiting, emptiness, darkness, receptivity, detachment, aloneness and death.  Perhaps ebbing is the power opening the passage through which life flows.  Perhaps, paradoxically, emptying is fullness.

Christin Lore Weber (1987)

This quote by Christin Lore Weber is exactly what I want to pair with the Figure 8 acrylic monoprint that I made – shown at left.  I have come to believe that there are many contrasts that we are aware of in our lives that require a moving balance.  As I was working on blog posts about the O Antiphons this year, I became aware of some of these contrasts, such as light/darkness, strong/gentle, open/shut, and alpha/omega.  We are certainly living in polarizing times and so are acutely sensitive to these “opposites.”  However, I think it is more worthwhile to think of these as continuums, rather than poles.  These continuums are everywhere, just as Christin writes that with ebb and flow, “never can one be found without the other, and the one is always in the process of becoming the other.”

UPDATE: This blog post was updated August 7, 2024 and again on November 9, 2024 to verify links and to make minor editorial changes.

Reading: The New American Bible, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington DC, 1970.

Reference 1: Weber, Christin Lore, WomanChrist, Harper & Row, San Francisco, CA, 1987.  

Reference 2: Allen, Pat B., Art is a Spiritual Path, Shambala Publications, Inc., Boston, MA, 2005.

Reference 3:  Lapidos, Rachel,  The “Figure 8 Workout” Will Fire up Your Abs Without You Even Realizing It, Well + Good website, July 29, 2019.

Image 1: Garside, Jonathan, “Film: Tying a Figure of Eight Knot,” British Mountaineering Council, July 27, 2007, https://www.thebmc.co.uk/film-tying-a-figure-of-eight-knot.

Image 2: Sonja Morgenstern peforming Compulsory Figures, photo by Rainer Mittelstadt, German Federal  Archives, CC-BY-SA 3.0, December 1971.

Image 3: Full of Eyes, Isaiah 57:15, https://www.fullofeyes.com/project/isaiah-5715-3/.

Image 4: Figure 8 – Ebb and Flow, acrylic monoprint by Julie Henkener, 2023.