In modern numerology thirty-four reduces to seven, and the number is read through that root as a call to reflection and inner enquiry, the seven reached by way of a three of expression and a four of order, an interpretation that belongs to the twentieth-century name-and-birthdate system rather than to any older tradition. Beyond the magic square and this reductive reading, thirty-four is best described as a number without significant lore, one of the many integers between the charged small numbers and the round hundred that the symbolic traditions simply did not develop.
The two digits that make up thirty-four carry sharply opposed weight in Chinese numerology: three, san, is a near-homophone of sheng, life or birth, and is read favourably, while four, si, is a near-homophone of si, to die, and is the single most avoided digit in Chinese-influenced building and address numbering; a number combining the two sits, in that tradition, under an unresolved tension quite unlike the tidy Renaissance mathematics of the Durer magic square already described above. The magic square referenced above is a specific and famous one: Albrecht Durer's 1514 engraving Melencolia I includes a four-by-four magic square in which every row, column, diagonal and central block sums to thirty-four, and the middle cells of its bottom row spell out 1514, the engraving's own year, worked deliberately into the mathematics. Thirty-four is also the atomic number of selenium.