Destiny

Destiny

Destiny concerns the fixed natural order of the universe. It is the invincible necessity to which even the gods must accede, as the sibyl of Delphi confessed. Destiny is fate, personified in Greek culture by the three Moirae (called the Parcae by the Romans), with a Nordic counterpart in the three Norns.

Destiny is the irresistable power or agency that is conceived of as determining the future, whether in general or of an individual.

On an individual or even a national level, destiny is a predetermined state or condition foreordained by the Divine (see Predestination) or by human will (see Manifest Destiny. Destiny is the human lot in life. Its Old English counterpart "doom", as in the Domesday Book that took a census of England for the Normans in 1086, having taken on foreboding ominous connotations of the universal cataclysm at the end of time (see Doomsday, Doomsday machine).

Destiny is a source of irony in Greek tragedy, as it is in the Schiller play that Verdi transformed into La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny").