The Life Path Number

The Life Path is the central number of modern numerology, the one most people mean when they speak of "their number". It is calculated from the full date of birth, the month, day and year each reduced and then added and reduced again to a single digit, or held as a master number if it comes to eleven, twenty-two or thirty-three.

Because it derives from the birth date rather than from the name, it is treated as the fixed, unchosen ground of the reading, the broad direction and lessons of the life as a whole. The whole method belongs to the Pythagorean system of numerology assembled in the United States in the first decade of the twentieth century, principally by L. Dow Balliett and systematised by Juno Jordan; the name honours Pythagoras but the procedure is not attested in antiquity. The Life Path is the modern numerologist's equivalent of the sun sign, the single figure held to summarise the native's path.