The Pinnacles

The old teachers liked to compare them to the seasons. The first Pinnacle is the spring of life. The second covers the years of building a family and carrying responsibility, the summer. The third is autumn, middle age, when your judgement has ripened. The fourth is winter, when you gather in everything you have lived. I still find that the easiest way to hold them.

What a Pinnacle is

If your life is a play and you are the actor on the stage, the Pinnacle is the set. Your Life Path is the script, and the script does not change. The set changes four times. Each Pinnacle colours the opportunities that come your way, the people who turn up, and the kind of work that feels right for those years.

People feel the change from one Pinnacle to the next whether they know the numbers or not. Careers shift, marriages start or end, children arrive, and sometimes a person simply wakes up one morning feeling they have been living someone else's life. The changeover is usually felt for about two years before it happens, and the last six months to a year of any Pinnacle tend to be the most intense. The biggest one for most people is the move from the first to the second, which falls somewhere in the late twenties or early thirties. That is usually when you stop caring quite so much what everybody else thinks.

Finding your four Pinnacles

You need your birth date and nothing else.

First reduce the month, the day and the year each to a single digit. Do not keep Master Numbers at this stage, so a birthday on the 29th counts as 2 and November counts as 2.

The first Pinnacle is the month plus the day.

The second Pinnacle is the day plus the year.

The third Pinnacle is the first two Pinnacles added together, each already reduced to its single digit or Master Number.

The fourth Pinnacle is the month plus the year.

Reduce each total to a single digit. If a total lands on 11, 22 or 33, keep it as a Master Number.

When each one begins

Your Life Path sets the timing. Take your Life Path away from 36, and that is the age your first Pinnacle ends. If your Life Path is a Master Number, use its root for this step, so an 11 counts as 2 and the first Pinnacle ends at 34, and a 22 counts as 4 and it ends at 32. The second and third Pinnacles last nine years each, and the fourth runs for the rest of your life. If you have not found your Life Path yet, the Life Path post in the daily posts shows you how.

A worked example

Sarah Jane Mitchell was born on 14 March 1987. March gives 3. The day 14 gives 1 plus 4, which is 5. The year 1987 gives 1 plus 9 plus 8 plus 7, which is 25, and 2 plus 5 is 7.

Her first Pinnacle is 3 plus 5, which is 8. Her second is 5 plus 7, which is 12, and that reduces to 3. Her third is the reduced 8 plus the reduced 3, which is 11, and 11 is a Master Number, so it stays. Her fourth is 3 plus 7, which is 10, and that reduces to 1. Sarah's Pinnacles are 8, 3, 11 and 1.

Notice the third one. Some books add the totals as they stood before reducing, 8 and 12, and get 20, which is 2. I add the two finished Pinnacles, 8 and 3, and Sarah's middle years carry a Master 11. That is the step people trip on most, so when you compare notes with a friend's book, check which way it adds.

Sarah's Life Path is 6, and 36 minus 6 is 30. Her first Pinnacle runs from birth to age 30, her second from 31 to 39, her third from 40 to 48, and her fourth from 49 onward.

So she began with an 8: ambitious young, keen on responsibility, probably working before her friends were. Her thirties are a 3, lighter and more creative. Her forties are a Master 11, the years when her sensitivity opens up and what she has kept private starts to serve other people, with the partnership and quiet cooperation of the 2 underneath it. And from 49 the 1 hands her the steering wheel and asks where she wants to go.

What each Pinnacle brings

1. Independence and new beginnings. A time to stand on your own feet, start the venture, and think for yourself. Early in life it can feel like too much too soon, and it builds the backbone you will need later.

2. Partnership, diplomacy and sensitivity. This is not the season for going it alone. Relationships deepen, and the lesson is to keep your own voice while you tune in to everyone else's.

3. Creativity, expression and joy. One of the easier Pinnacles. Watch for scattered energy, and finish what you start.

4. Hard work and foundations. Property, career, family and anything else built to last. It can feel restrictive, and the effort put in now pays for decades.

5. Freedom and change. Travel, new people, new directions. The work is to explore without becoming so restless that nothing takes root.

6. Love, home and service. Family, care and community come first. Look after yourself as well as you look after everyone else.

7. The inward turn. Study, reflection, spiritual practice and time alone. Stay connected to people while you go deep.

8. Material achievement and authority. Business, money and recognition through steady effort. Keep your integrity, and remember the people at home.

9. Completion and compassion. Letting go of what is outgrown, and caring for people beyond your own circle. Generous and creative, with plenty of ups and downs if you are still holding on to old hurts.

11. A Master Pinnacle of heightened sensitivity and spiritual opening. A teacher appears, a practice takes root, and what was private starts to serve others. Ground yourself in the body, because the sensitivity can overwhelm.

22. A Master Pinnacle of building on a large scale. The conditions are there for work that outlasts you, if you choose to take it up. Protect your health and your relationships while you build.

A 33 can also turn up, rarely, in the third Pinnacle. It is a chapter of serious teaching or healing, and it asks you to teach only what you have lived.

When a Pinnacle carries a Karmic Debt

Sometimes a Pinnacle total lands on 13, 14, 16 or 19 before you reduce it. Those are the Karmic Debt numbers, and when one sits behind a Pinnacle, the debt belongs to that chapter of your life.

Emma Louise Hart was born on 6 August 1992. August gives 8, the day gives 6, and 1992 adds to 21, which is 3. Her first Pinnacle is 8 plus 6, which is 14, and 14 reduces to 5. So her first chapter is a 5 with a 14 behind it.

A plain 5 is freedom and change. The 14 adds the debt of freedom misused, the Temperance card of the tarot, with a steady pull toward excess and a life that keeps changing until moderation is learned. For Emma that lesson belongs to her first chapter, which ends at 28, because her Life Path is 8. Her next three Pinnacles are 9, then 5, then an 11 from age 47. The 5 in her third chapter comes from 5 plus 9, which is 14 again, so the same debt returns for a second look between 38 and 46. The Karmic Debt post in the daily posts covers what each of the four debts asks of you.

Look at your own four numbers and ask which chapter you are in now, and whether it feels like it.

If you would like your own numbers read as part of a full chart, my readings are here.