Your life path number is found by adding every digit in your date of birth together and reducing the total to a single digit between 1 and 9, or to one of the master numbers 11, 22 and 33. That number describes the journey your life is built around.
What is numerology?
Numerology is an old discipline that studies the universal language of numbers and their bearing on a human life. In the system that descends from Pythagoras, everything in the universe carries a mathematical frequency. Your date of birth, on that reading, is not a random day but a frequency code that sets out the journey your soul is making.
How to calculate your life path number
Add the digits of the day, the month and the year separately, reduce each to one digit, then add those three results and reduce once more.
Worked example: a birth date of 15 May 1990 (15.05.1990).
- Day: 1 + 5 = 6
- Month: 0 + 5 = 5
- Year: 1 + 9 + 9 + 0 = 19, then 1 + 9 = 10, then 1 + 0 = 1
- Total: 6 + 5 + 1 = 12, then 1 + 2 = 3
This person's life path number is 3. If a stage of the sum lands on 11, 22 or 33, leave it there rather than reducing further: those are the master numbers.
What each life path number means
- 1 (The Leader): Independent, inventive, first through the door. Has to learn to set their own course and draw others to it.
- 2 (The Diplomat): Harmonious, intuitive, peace-keeping. Their real talent is balance inside relationships.
- 3 (The Creator): Expressive, cheerful, artistic. Born to say what they mean through words and through art.
- 4 (The Builder): Practical, disciplined, dependable. Laying solid foundations is the point of the life.
- 5 (The Adventurer): Attached to their freedom, curious, open to change. Wants to experience life rather than repeat it.
- 6 (The Nurturer): Responsible, compassionate, family-centred. Charged with healing and protecting those around them.
- 7 (The Thinker): Analytical, spiritual, investigative. Lives to find the truth behind appearances.
- 8 (The Powerful): Ambitious, effective in material matters, authoritative. Has to learn to use power fairly.
- 9 (The Humanitarian): Universal in their love, idealistic, merciful. Their destiny is service to others.
What to do with the number
Your life path number is a compass, not a verdict: which strengths are worth polishing, and which difficulties are yours to work through.
Have your numbers interpreted in depth on our numerology reading page, read more in the numerology section, or set it against the sky you were born under in our guide to reading your birth chart.
