Chaldean number

Meaning

The Chaldean number is a second reading of the name, made with another letter table. Cheiro, the Irish palmist and author born William John Warner, published it in his book of numbers in 1926. The letters take values from 1 to 8, grouped by their sound rather than by the order of the alphabet. No letter is worth 9.

The letters of the name are added into one total. Cheiro reads totals from 10 to 52 as compound numbers, each with a character of its own, and the single digit as their root. Ulune shows the total, the compound number and the single number, with the planet Cheiro gives to the single number. In his system 1 is the Sun, 2 the Moon, 3 Jupiter, 4 Uranus, 5 Mercury, 6 Venus, 7 Neptune, 8 Saturn and 9 Mars.

The Chaldean number stands beside the Pythagorean numbers, labelled, and never mixes with them. Both read the same name, but the two tables rarely agree, so the two numbers usually differ. Numerology treats them as two angles on one name; neither corrects the other. The planets are Cheiro’s own associations: they stay in this reading and never change a number or reach into the birth chart.

In practice

Take a made-up name, Camille Marie Laurent. With Cheiro’s values, Camille is 3 + 1 + 4 + 1 + 3 + 3 + 5 = 20. Marie is 4 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 5 = 13. Laurent is 3 + 1 + 6 + 2 + 5 + 5 + 4 = 26. The total is 59. Above 52, it is reduced once: 5 + 9 = 14, the compound number. Its root is 1 + 4 = 5, the number of Mercury. The Pythagorean Expression number of the same name is 3.

For Yolanda Mary Kyle, the total is 41. It is already a compound number, between 10 and 52, and its root is 5. Each Y counts 1 here, wherever it stands; in the Pythagorean table it is worth 7.

For Bernard Olivier Martin, the total is 63. One step gives 6 + 3 = 9, which is under 10: there is no compound number, and the single number is 9, the number of Mars.

Across traditions

Hebrew gematria numbers the 22 letters of its alphabet, from aleph, 1, to tav, 400. Set side by side with it, Cheiro’s table is telling. Most of his values match the Hebrew letter of the same sound, with its zeros dropped. K is 2, like kaph (20); L is 3, like lamed (30); M is 4, like mem (40). P is 8, like pe (80); Q is 1, like qoph (100); R is 2, like resh (200); T is 4, like tav (400). The table looks like the Hebrew values carried over to the Latin alphabet.

Greek isopsephy and the Arabic abjad also give letters number values. All of these count in tens and hundreds, where Cheiro’s table, like the Pythagorean one, stays under 10.

Origin and history

The Chaldeans lived in southern Mesopotamia, around Babylon. In Greek and Roman times their name came to mean astrologers: Diodorus Siculus describes the Chaldeans of Babylon as watchers of the stars. The name “Chaldean numerology” borrows that prestige.

No Babylonian text with these letter values is known. Cuneiform, the writing of Babylon, used signs for syllables and words, not an alphabet. The table comes to us through Cheiro’s book of 1926. Its history before him is not documented, and the resemblance to Hebrew values suggests a source in the Hebrew tradition rather than in Babylon.

How Ulune calculates it

• The letter values are Cheiro’s, as in the table below, from 1 to 8. No letter is 9.
• The letters are the same as in the Pythagorean count: accents taken off, ligatures written out, other signs left aside.
• All the letters of the full name at birth are added at once. The names are not reduced one by one, and vowels and consonants are not separated.
• As long as the total is above 52, Ulune adds up its digits. The result, if it is 10 or more, is the compound number. Under 10 there is no compound number.
• The single number is the total reduced to one digit, from 1 to 9. No master number is kept.
• The single number gives Cheiro’s planet. The Chaldean number feeds no other number in Ulune.

Correspondences