The Formative Cycle

Modern numerology divides the life into three long cycles, and the Formative or First Cycle is the earliest of them, governing childhood and youth. It is calculated from the reduced month of birth, and it describes the conditions, influences and lessons of the opening period of life, the years in which character is formed. The three cycles, Formative from the month, Productive from the day, Harvest from the year, are held to run consecutively across the lifespan, each coloured by its own number, so that the native passes from the environment of the birth month through the productive middle years to the reflective final period.

The scheme is part of the Pythagorean numerology assembled in the United States in the early twentieth century; like the Life Path and the name numbers it is modern, an elaboration of the digit-reduction system built by Balliett and Jordan, and it carries no descent from any ancient practice despite the Pythagorean label the whole system bears.