Numbers
37
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Origin 1908 to 1965
Thirty-seven is prime. Its distinctive arithmetic is that 3 x 37 = 111, so thirty-seven multiplied by any multiple of three produces a repeated digit: 222, 333, and so on to 999. That property has made it a favourite of gematria and of number puzzles, and it is why the six-by-six magic constant of 111 factors as it does. Thirty-seven has no substantial independent religious tradition of its own. In digit-reduction numerology its digits sum to 10 and reduce to 1.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin Period Origin PeriodThe arithmological reading of the first numbers, one as source, two as division, four as justice, seven as virgin, ten as completion, reaches us through Platonic and Neopythagorean writers of the centuries after Plato. Burkert's finding is that it cannot be traced to Pythagoras himself, whose activity was religious rather than mathematical: the doctrines were credited backwards to him. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Origin PeriodThe system that gives a number a personality, and a person a number, was assembled in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century out of New Thought material. Balliett's The Philosophy of Numbers appeared in 1908; the chart positions, pinnacles and cycles were added by her successors over the next fifty years. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Place of OriginThe Greek world, and above all the Greek cities of southern Italy where the Pythagorean societies were established; the arithmological literature itself is later and largely eastern Mediterranean. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Place of OriginThe United States, and specifically the New Thought circuit of the north-eastern seaboard; Balliett worked from Atlantic City. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Attributed Author / CompilerAttributed by the tradition to Pythagoras. Burkert's study is the standard demonstration that the number-doctrines carrying his name are the work of later hands, and that almost nothing in them can be shown to go back to the sixth century BCE. The attribution is recorded because it is what the tradition says, not because it holds. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Attributed Author / CompilerMrs. L. Dow Balliett, who published the first version of the modern system in 1908 and to whom Dudley devotes a chapter. What later authors added, the pinnacles, the challenges, the cycles, the personal year, is theirs, and this atlas's own numerology-position entries cite four different authors between 1908 and 1965 for what is presented as one system. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Origin of the NamePythagorean numerology is a twentieth-century label. The system it names has no demonstrable descent from Pythagoras, from the Pythagorean societies, or from the ancient arithmological literature; the letter-value chart it rests on was drawn up in the United States after 1900. The name borrows a pedigree, the oldest move in the subject. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 1 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseNumerology has been sold since Balliett as a basis for decisions: which name to take, which date to marry on, which house number to buy. Dudley's survey of what numerologists sell is the standard critical account and its finding is blunt, numbers have power over minds, not over events. These entries record what the tradition says, not advice. 1 Modern Numerology
Reduction in the Modern SystemThe modern system reduces every number above nine by adding its digits: 3 + 7 = 10, then 1 + 0 = 1. Whatever the system says of 37 it therefore says of 1, because it holds no separate doctrine for the higher numbers. The stated exceptions are 11, 22 and 33, which it leaves unreduced and calls master numbers. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceSourced to the subject's own accountIn number theory thirty-seven is the twelfth prime. It forms no twin prime pair: 35 (5 x 7) and 39 (3 x 13). It carries no religious or scriptural significance recorded in any tradition this atlas has surveyed. 3 Learn More
The Repunit Factor
Thirty-seven is prime and has a set of arithmetical properties that number-mystics have long enjoyed. It is the factor of the repunits: one hundred and eleven is three times thirty-seven, and every three-digit repdigit, two hundred and twenty-two, three hundred and thirty-three, up to nine hundred and ninety-nine, is divisible by thirty-seven, because a hundred and eleven is. It is also one of the mirror primes, its reverse seventy-three being prime as well, and the two multiply to two thousand seven hundred and one, which is the gematria of the opening verse of Genesis, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, a coincidence much prized in Jewish arithmetical exegesis, since two thousand seven hundred and one is thirty-seven times seventy-three and also a triangular number.
Unlike many of the higher compound numbers in his scheme, Cheiro's 1926 Book of Numbers gives thirty-seven a description entirely its own rather than pointing back to a lower number: a distinct potency, good and fortunate friendships in love and in combinations with the opposite sex, favourable for partnerships of every kind and a fortunate sign wherever it appears in calculations touching future events, one of the more consistently positive readings in the whole compound-number scheme.
Thirty-Seven and the Number of the Beast
The repunit property links thirty-seven to the most notorious number of all: six hundred and sixty-six is six times a hundred and eleven, and so eighteen times thirty-seven, which is why the number of the beast is itself divisible by thirty-seven and triangular. These relations are genuine and have been noticed for centuries, but they are properties of the base-ten writing of numbers rather than of anything the ancient authors intended, and they belong to recreational and mystical mathematics rather than to scriptural symbolism proper. Thirty-seven has no developed traditional lore of its own; its interest is entirely in the elegant arithmetic that connects it to a hundred and eleven, to six hundred and sixty-six, and to the gematria of Genesis.
Balliett's 1908 chart reduces thirty-seven to one, initiative and new beginnings in the standard modern keyword list, by way of three plus seven making ten and one plus zero making one; the American root reading and Cheiro's own compound reading of fortunate partnership sit at some distance from one another, one stressing solitary initiative and the other cooperative alliance, a reminder that even within the same twentieth-century tradition the compound and reduced readings of a number are not always in obvious harmony.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Disciplines That Use This
The modern numerological system assigns this number a meaning, which is why the atlas records it as a subject in its own right, though this does not endorse what the discipline says about it. This link shows only that the discipline works with this particular number; the readings of the number itself belong to whichever tradition holds them.
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