Number 0

Meaning

0 is not one of the nine numbers of numerology. No letter is worth 0, and adding the digits of a date or a name never ends on it. A 0 appears only where Ulune measures a difference between two numbers, and the two agree.

Read that way, 0 is the absence of a gap rather than a quality of its own. As a challenge, Ulune calls it the challenge of choice. No single difficulty stands out, so a person meets a little of each, or chooses their own. Knowing what one values makes the choice easier.

As a bridge, 0 means the two numbers agree and there is nothing to bridge. The growth theme here is too much of the same quality. What helps, in Ulune’s words, is borrowing a little from one’s other numbers.

Its light side is freedom, with no obstacle fixed in advance. Its shadow is the same openness without a direction.

In practice

• A challenge of 0. Any of the four challenges can be 0, including the third, the main one, which colours the whole of life. The theme is to choose a direction rather than wait for one.
• The Life Path–Expression bridge. A 0 says the road and the talents point the same way. Variety comes from the other numbers.
• The Soul Urge–Personality bridge. A 0 says what is wanted inside and what others see agree. The work is to notice when one tone takes over.
• The birth grid. The zeros of the birth date are set aside. Only the digits 1 to 9 take a place in the grid.

Hugo Paul Mercier, born 6 June 1995, has a challenge of 0 four times over. June gives 6, the 6th gives 6, and 1995 gives 24 → 6. Every difference is |6 − 6| = 0, and the main challenge is |0 − 0| = 0.

Lucie Anne Moreau, born 15 June 1990, has two bridges of 0. Her Life Path and Expression are both 13/4, so |4 − 4| = 0. Her Soul Urge is 2 and her Personality 11, which counts as 2 here: |2 − 2| = 0.

Across traditions

• Greek number lore. Greek arithmetic had no zero as a number. Euclid defines number as a multitude of units, so counting begins at the unit, the monad.
• India. Brahmagupta, in 628, gave rules for adding, subtracting and multiplying with zero as a number in its own right.
• Europe. Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci, brought the Hindu–Arabic numerals to a wide Latin readership in his Liber Abaci of 1202. He calls the sign 0 zephirum.
• Letter tables. The Pythagorean table runs from 1 to 9, and Cheiro’s Chaldean table from 1 to 8. Neither gives any letter the value 0.
• The Lo Shu square. The Chinese square of nine holds the numbers 1 to 9, with no place for zero.

Origin and history

Zero entered numerology through subtraction. When 20th-century numerologists set the challenges as differences between parts of the birth date, two equal parts gave 0. Hans Decoz, whose rules Ulune follows, gives the 0 challenge a reading of its own. David A. Phillips, whose birth grid Ulune draws, places only the digits 1 to 9 and leaves the zeros out.

How Ulune calculates it

Ulune reduces the month, the day and the year of birth each to 1–9. A master number counts as its root here (11 as 2, 22 as 4). The first challenge is the month minus the day, and the second the day minus the year. The third, the main one, is the first minus the second. The fourth is the month minus the year. Each is taken without its sign, so the challenges run from 0 to 8.

The two bridges work the same way: the Life Path against the Expression, the Soul Urge against the Personality, each reduced to 1–9 first.

Inside a reduction, a 0 adds nothing: 1990 → 19 → 10 → 1, and 2000 → 2. No total of a date or a name reduces to 0. A missing name gives no number at all, never a 0. The personal cycles run from 1 to 9, and the universal year adds only 11 and 22.

Anna Lise Berg, born 10 October 2000, has five zeros in her date. Her grid holds only 1, 1 and 2. In Phillips’s layout, four lines are empty, among them 3-6-9 and 7-8-9.

Correspondences