The life path number
Add every digit of the date of birth, then reduce the total to a single digit (or to one of the "master numbers", 11 or 22). For someone born on 17 May 1990: 1+7+0+5+1+9+9+0 = 32, then 3+2 = 5.
The expression number
Each letter is given a value from 1 to 9 (A=1, B=2, C=3… starting again at 1 after 9). Adding the letters of a name and reducing the total gives the "expression number", said to describe character traits.
What the numbers are said to mean
- 1 — independence, leadership, pioneering spirit.
- 2 — diplomacy, sensitivity, cooperation.
- 3 — creativity, expression, sociability.
- 4 — rigour, practicality, need for stability.
- 5 — freedom, curiosity, appetite for change.
- 6 — responsibility, harmony, family.
- 7 — reflection, spirituality, need for solitude.
- 8 — ambition, business sense, power.
- 9 — generosity, idealism, openness to the world.
As with astrology
Numerology has no recognised scientific basis: it is a symbolic system inherited from older traditions, best enjoyed as a prompt for self-reflection rather than a predictive tool.
Try it for two
These compatibility readings — zodiac signs, Chinese signs, Vedic astrology, biorhythms, first names, life path — are gathered and calculated for two people on the Love compatibility page.
Where the practice comes from
Modern numerology draws on older traditions that paired letters with numbers — Hebrew gematria, Greek isopsephy — and on a romanticised reading of Pythagoreanism. Its present form dates mainly from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when several authors codified the letter-to-number tables still in use.
That recent origin explains much of the system's inconsistency: the correspondences differ from one author to another, and nothing allows you to choose between the competing tables.
Frequently asked questions
How is a life path number worked out?
By adding all the digits of the date of birth and reducing the total to a single digit — except for the so-called master numbers, eleven, twenty-two and thirty-three, which the tradition keeps intact. The result is said to describe a general orientation of the life.
Why do the readings so often seem accurate?
This is the Barnum effect, well documented in psychology: descriptions that are general enough and mostly flattering are recognised as accurate by almost everybody. The classic experiment gives the same text to a whole group, and each person recognises themselves in it. A good reading exploits that mechanism, knowingly or not.
Is there any scientific basis?
None. No study has established a relationship between the arithmetical reduction of a date or a name and any character trait, and the system rests on arbitrary conventions: which alphabet, which calendar, which way of reducing. Change the convention and you change the result.