Reading Room · Fortune-Telling Methods · Method
Where did fortune-telling by numbers come from?
Arithmancy and numerology, the practice of reading meaning and foretelling outcomes from numbers, trace back to Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Greece. Pythagorean number symbolism, Hellenistic letter-number methods and later Kabbalistic gematria shaped its forms, while modern numerology took shape in the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Facts checked on against 15 sources, 10 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| c. 582–507 BCE | Pythagoras is dated to this period, and Iamblichus reports that he studied number and music in Egypt and Babylon before founding his school at Crotona.123 |
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| c. 400 BCE | Bond and Lea state that the Greek alphabet was perfected at Athens, and the older Greek numeral system is known as the Herodian.4 |
| 2nd century CE | Nicomachus of Gerasa wrote an introduction to arithmetic that shaped Western mathematical thinking through the Middle Ages.15 |
| 12th–15th centuries | Gematria spread in Jewish mystical writing, and Kabbalists used it to read the Torah and everyday events.67 |
| 1533 | Cornelius Agrippa's Occult Philosophy was published, and it presents planetary magick squares and a Pythagorean pentacle.289 |
| c. 1912 | Julia Seton Sears, M.D., is credited with coining the term Numerology.510 |
Pythagorean number symbolism and letter-number systems
The Pythagoreans held that all is number, and the Tetraktys, a triangle of ten points built from the first four integers, was treated as their great oath.518
Greek letters were given numerical values early, and these letter-numbers formed the basis of an elaborate symbolism and divination; the Greek name for the method was Isopsephy in its variant spellings.94
The first known use of gematria is an inscription of Sargon II (727–707 B.C.E.), which describes a wall length chosen to match the numerical value of the king's name, and the use of letters as arithmetic for words was widespread among the Magi and Hellenistic dream interpreters.6
Rabbinic literature shows numerical gematria from the tannaim of the 2nd century C.E., where it served as supporting evidence and a mnemonic, and in halakhah it has little weight beyond a hint.6
Kabbalah, Renaissance occult writing and modern numerology
The Sepher Yetzirah is described as the foundational text of Kabbalah and the earliest kabbalistic text to use gematria, and Kabbalists treated letters and numbers as interchangeable.111273
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Pythagorean tradition credits Pythagoras with the view that the world rests on the magical power of numbers, and Pythagoreans considered four their most holy number and swore their most solemn oaths on it.9
The Chaldean method, which emphasizes the vibration of a whole name rather than individual letters, is described by practitioners as a distinct type of numerology.13
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
Bond and Lea state that the Greek and Hebrew numeration systems, in which letters also serve as numerals, began to appear in the Syro-Phoenician centre around the fifth century B.C., and that the origin of the letter-number method is traceable to a more eastern source rather than Phoenicia.4
Bond and Lea report that the zero used in later numeration was not known in the Greek and Hebrew systems and was introduced from an Arab source about the third century A.D.; Coptic scholars had regarded some letter-number texts as mere magic or astrology.4
Lawrence attributes to Pythagoras the aim of ending divination by the entrails of sacrificed animals, using a numerical system instead, and places the Crotona school in 536 B.C.14
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
- Number-based fortune-telling has no single origin; the records point to several early centres, including Mesopotamia, Egypt and China, whose number lore later merged with Greek and Hebrew letter-number methods.15564
- The modern form of numerology is largely a later development that drew on Pythagorean and Kabbalistic ideas, with Agrippa's Occult Philosophy and the early twentieth-century writers shaping its popular version.95
Not yet confirmed
- Which early number systems passed their divinatory methods directly to Greek and Hebrew practice?
- How far did Pythagoras himself shape the number symbolism later attributed to him?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- Internet Archive: Guthrie 1987 The Pythagorean Sourcebook And Library. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: Magick Squares As The Cornerstone Of Pythagorean Tetractys Symbolism. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: The Secret Science Of Numerology. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: Gematria - A Preliminary Investigation. Read on · Primary text
- numerologist.com: The History of Numerology: Origins, Pythagoras & More. Read on · Reference
- jewishvirtuallibrary.org: Gematria. Read on · Library
- aish.com: What Is Gematria? | Aish. Read on · Reference
- Internet Archive: Pythagoras, Plato, and the Golden Ratio. Read on · Primary text
- encyclopedia.com: Numerology | Encyclopedia.com. Read on · Reference
- archive.org: archive.org. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: Number Games. Read on · Primary text
- Internet Archive: Letters And Numbers - Zachary K. Hubbard. Read on · Primary text
- occultist.net: Divination With Numbers: A Practical Numerology Guide. Read on · Reference
- Internet Archive: The Secrets Of Numerology. Read on · Primary text
- numerologist.com: Arithmancy: Magical Numerology for Divination & Insight. Read on · Reference