The Personal Year Number

The Personal Year is the numerological figure that changes annually, giving each calendar year of a person's life its own number and theme. It is calculated by reducing the birth month and birth day and adding the reduced current year, so that it cycles through a nine-year sequence, from a One year of beginnings to a Nine year of endings, before returning to One. It is the most immediate and short-term of the numerological indicators, used to characterise the tone of the year ahead and to time decisions, and it is often subdivided further into Personal Months and even Personal Days.

The nine-year cycle mirrors, on the scale of a single life, the sense of completion the digit nine carries throughout the system. The Personal Year belongs to the Pythagorean numerology assembled in the United States in the early twentieth century by Balliett, Jordan and their successors; it is a modern forecasting method, called Pythagorean by convention rather than by any documented descent from antiquity.