The Compound Number

The Compound number is the two-digit total of the name before it is reduced to a single digit, and its use marks the point where modern numerology draws most directly on the Chaldean tradition. Where the Pythagorean system reduces everything to the digits one to nine, Chaldean numerology holds that the compound numbers from ten upward each carry their own distinct character, so that two names both reducing to, say, five may differ because one arrives there through fourteen and the other through twenty-three.

The compound is read as a hidden influence behind the single digit, and lists of the meanings of the compound numbers, often couched in vivid and fatalistic terms, were popularised in the early twentieth century, notably in the writings published under the name Cheiro. The Chaldean system is frequently described as older and more authentic than the Pythagorean; both, in the forms used today, are modern compilations, and the ancient Babylonian pedigree claimed for the Chaldean method is not documented.