Numerology is any belief in the divine, mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. It is also the study of the numerical value of letters in words, names and ideas. It is often associated with the paranormal, along with astrology and similar divinatory arts.
Despite the long history of numerological ideas, the word "numerology" was not discovered until before 1907.
Skeptics maintain that numbers have no hidden significance and cannot by themselves influence a person's life. Therefore, skeptics regard numerology as superstition and pseudoscience that uses numbers to give the subject a layer of scientific authority.
There have been two studies investigating numerological claims, both producing negative results, one in the UK in 1993 and one in 2012 in Israel. The experiment in Israel involved a professional numerologist and 200 participants. The experiment was repeated twice and still produced negative results.
There are several systems of numerology that assign a numerical value to the letters of an alphabet. Examples include the Abjad numbers in Arabic, the Hebrew numbers, the Armenian numbers, and the Greek numbers. The practice within the Jewish tradition of assigning mystical meaning to words based on their numerical values, and on connections between words of equal value, is known as gematria.
Latin alphabet systems
In one method, numbers can be assigned to the letters of the Latin alphabet as follows:
1 = a, j, s,
2 = b, k, t,
3 = c, l, u,
4 = d, m, v,
5 = e, n, w,
6 = f, o, x,
7 = g, p, y,
8 = h, q, z,
9 = i, r,
Then added. Example:
3,489 → 3 + 4 + 8 + 9 = 24 → 2 + 4 = 6
Hello → 8 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 6 = 25 → 2 + 5 = 7
A faster way to arrive at a single digit sum (the digital root) is to simply take the value modulo 9, substituting a result of 0 for 9 itself.
The single digit then reached is assigned a particular meaning according to the method used.
There are different methods of interpretation, including Chaldean, Pythagorean, Hebraic, Helyn Hitchcock's method, phonetic, Japanese, Arabic, and Indian.
The above examples are calculated using decimal arithmetic (base 10). There are other number systems, such as binary, octal, hexadecimal, and vigesimal; Adding digits in these bases produces different results. The first example, shown above, looks like this when rendered in octal (base 8):
3.48910 = 66418 → 6 + 6 + 4 + 1 = 218 → 2 + 1 = 38 = 310
