Numbers

How this one is built

The life path is the birth date reduced to a single figure, except that eleven, twenty-two and thirty-three are traditionally kept as they are. There are two ways of doing the reduction and they are not the same operation: reducing the day, month and year separately and adding the results, or adding every digit of the date at once. This page does the first, shows its working, and tells you when the second would have given a different answer — which happens often enough to matter and is almost never mentioned.

The personal year runs birthday to birthday rather than January to January, on the grounds that it is supposed to be your year rather than the calendar’s. That is also a choice other people make differently. The name number lays the alphabet over one to nine, three times over, and adds up what your name comes to.

The meanings are composed rather than written out fifty times over: one vocabulary of twelve numbers, applied in four roles — the road, the year, the manner, and the name. The tradition is already built that way, since a five is a five wherever it turns up, and saying so is more honest than pretending each combination was written on its own.

Using the page

If a birth date is saved on this device the fields are already filled in and the working appears straight away; otherwise type the day, month and year and press Work it out. The name is optional. The working reduces the day, the month and the year one line each, then adds them and reduces the total to the life path, with a note underneath whenever adding every digit at once would have given another answer. Four short readings follow: the life path, the day you were born, the personal year with the dates it runs between, and the name if you gave one.

A worked example

For 14 July 1985 the day, 14, reduces to 5, the month is 7, and 1985 adds to 23 and then 5. Together that is 5 + 7 + 5 = 17, which reduces to 8, so the life path is eight. Adding every digit at once gives 1 + 4 + 7 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 5 = 35, and 8 again, so no note appears. The birthday number is 5. The personal year from 14 July 2026 to 14 July 2027 is 5 + 7 + 10 = 22, taken down to 4, because master numbers are kept for the life path, the birthday and the name but not for the year. The name Anna is A 1, N 5, N 5, A 1, which makes 12 and then 3.

When the two methods disagree

They part company over master numbers. For 1 January 1980 the parts are 1, 1 and 1980, and 1980 adds to 18 and then 9, so the three together make 11, which the page keeps. Adding every digit at once gives 1 + 1 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 0 = 20, which reduces to 2. Eleven and two are close relatives in the tradition, eleven being read as a two at a higher pitch, but they are not the same answer, and the note under the working says so rather than choosing one quietly.

Common confusions

The letter values here are Pythagorean: A to I are one to nine, then J to R, then S to Z. The Chaldean system gives different values and leaves nine out, so a Chaldean name number is a different figure, not a mistake. Only the letters A to Z are counted, which means accented letters such as é are skipped rather than read as e, so type the plain letter if that is how you spell your name. Every letter counts, Y included, and vowels are not separated from consonants, so the page gives no soul urge or personality number. The personal year here runs from birthday to birthday, while many numerologists start it on 1 January.

What this is not is a measurement. There is nothing in a birth date that can be weighed, and no study has found one. What there is, is a very old habit of using arithmetic as a mirror — a fixed, impersonal thing to hold a life against for a minute. That is what is offered here, and nothing on this page predicts anything.

Where it fits

Your numerology year, month and day are laid out as a calendar on personal year. The same add-the-date arithmetic, laid over the Major Arcana instead of the numbers one to nine, gives the tarot birth cards. Other old ways of naming a date are the animal and element of the Chinese zodiac and your day in the Maya Tzolk’in.