Soul Urge number

Meaning

The Soul Urge number comes from the vowels of the full name at birth. Many books call it the Heart’s Desire. Numerology reads it as what a person wants deep down: the motive behind their choices, which other people do not always see.

Vowels are the open sounds that carry a name, and numerology reads their number as the inner voice. A Soul Urge 1 is read as a wish to be one’s own person and to lead the way. A Soul Urge 6 is read as a wish to care for others and make a home. A Soul Urge 7 is read as a longing to understand.

It is often the number people recognise most in themselves, and the one others guess least. Where it differs from the Personality, the consonants’ first impression, numerology sees a gap between what a person shows and what moves them. Ulune measures that gap as a bridge.

The Soul Urge is half of the Expression, which adds every letter. Reading the two together shows how much of a person’s working style is driven from inside.

In practice

Take a made-up person, Yolanda Mary Kyle. Her name has three Y’s, and each is read by its place:

• in Yolanda, the Y comes first, before a vowel: it sounds like a consonant;
• in Mary, the Y comes last, after a consonant: it sounds like a vowel;
• in Kyle, the Y stands between two consonants: it is the vowel of its syllable.

Ulune then adds the vowels of each name:

• Yolanda: O 6 + A 1 + A 1 = 8;
• Mary: A 1 + Y 7 = 8;
• Kyle: Y 7 + E 5 = 12, then 3.

The names together give 8 + 8 + 3 = 19, then 10, then 1. Yolanda has a Soul Urge 1, written 19/1. The 19 is a karmic debt. The tradition reads it as a lesson about independence and accepting help, to work with patiently, never as a fault. Her inner wish, a 1, is to stand on her own feet.

If Yolanda says her name with a vowel Y, she can switch it by hand, and every number follows.

Across traditions

• Hebrew gematria works on a script written mostly without vowels, so its sums come from the consonants. The vowel number is a feature of numerology in the Latin alphabet.
• The Chaldean number gives one total for the whole name. It has no separate vowel number.
• Astrology has no vowel number either. Some readers compare the Soul Urge to the Moon, the planet of inner needs. This is a comparison for learning, not a rule of either tradition.

Origin and history

Reading vowels as the hidden side of a name belongs to modern numerology. In 1908, L. Dow Balliett writes that the vowels show “the hidden strength or weakness of names”. Two names can reduce to the same number and still feel different, she explains, because “the vowels are different.”

Later 20th-century manuals made the vowel total one of the three name numbers. Hans Decoz’s World Numerology names it the Soul Urge, also called the Heart’s Desire. French books often call it the nombre intime, the inner number. It also reads a minor Soul Urge from the name a person uses now. Y is sometimes a vowel and sometimes a consonant, by how it is used in the name. Ulune applies Decoz’s rule by the Y’s place, and lets anyone switch it.

How Ulune calculates it

• Which name. The full name at birth, typed for numerology. Without it, the chart’s own name if it is a typed one, with a note. Without any name, the Soul Urge waits and shows a dash.
• Vowels. A, E, I, O and U always. W never.
• Y. Read in its own name. Alone, or first before a consonant (Yvonne), it is a vowel. First before a vowel (Yolanda), a consonant. Last after a consonant (Barry), a vowel; last after a vowel (Mickey), a consonant. Between consonants (Kyle), a vowel. After a vowel (Taylor), a consonant. Before a vowel, it is the vowel when no vowel comes earlier in the name (Ryan), a consonant otherwise (Tanya). Each Y can be switched by hand.
• Letter values. A = 1, E = 5, I = 9, O = 6, U = 3, Y = 7. Accents are dropped.
• Reduction. The vowels of each name are added and reduced, keeping 11, 22 and 33. The names are then added and reduced, keeping them too. A name without a vowel adds nothing.
• Karmic debt. A 13, 14, 16 or 19 in the total’s steps marks a karmic debt.

Correspondences