September 28, 2021 • 43 mins
The premise of numerology - that numbers are responsible for our destinies and personalities - is plainly nuts, but the history and thinking behind it is too interesting to skip.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and there's Chuck, and Chuck's a seven and I'm a nine,
and this is stuff you should know. Yeah, did you
(00:22):
figure your years out? Are you a nine? Uh? It
depends on my UM seven nine for my birth. I'm
a nine for my UM birth as well my life
cat number. We're both nines, but you're a you're seven
for your destiny number if I figured years out, Hey,
we're all that. That means this all makes sense now, Yeah,
(00:45):
that's why we were meant to be together on the show.
It was preordained by the spirit herself. So we're talking
about numerology, which I guess an overarching definition would be, um,
it's a pseudo scientific practice in which people base things
(01:06):
on numbers, like your destiny and who your romantic partner
should be, and maybe what job you should have and
stuff like this. Uh. And I just want to say
at the beginning of this that there are many different
kinds of numerology, and depending on where you're from, and
there are many different methods and many different charts, and
like we're not going to get too far into the
(01:27):
weeds on those because it's all fake, because it would
just be a super long, like four our episode on numerology.
So this is kind of just an overarching how you know,
that's what we do. It's it's basically how what numerology
is and how it works, and and not all the
specificities of each system. Yeah, because your brain starts to
(01:49):
melt a little bit when you start getting into all that,
and they're all kind of the same. It's just different
variations of sort of the same thing. And I think
the fact that there's so many variations there are supposed
to arrive at a press slice figure kind of also
warns the person to take the whole thing with a
grain of salt. But it's apparently way more popular in
twenty one century America than I realized. How is it?
(02:12):
Oh yeah, I man going to Bustle and The Cut,
and um, there's numerology dot com and there's a lot
a lot of sites that have if they're not like
overtly dedicated to numerology, they have like whole sections dedicated
to numerology and all that stuff. So the cool kids
doing it, I think. So I can't tell if it's
(02:33):
the Millennials or gen Z or I don't know, but
you're not on their Supreme sweatshirt talking about numbers. That's right.
I just met someone who works with them, who works
for Bustle for it, works for Supreme, and we should
shout out to it's uh master guitar player and is
this stuff you should know? Fan Matt Sweeney, who in
(02:56):
the mid nineties had the indie rock sort of math
rock band and Chavez and now has played with everyone
from Johnny Cash to Adele. I know him from his
work with Bonnie Prince Billy and I just saw them
live and I just got to hang out with Sweeney.
Had a great four hour dinner with Matt and his
girlfriend j R. And j R works for Supreme and
(03:17):
was telling me all about it. Well, that's fantastic. I
have someone I'd like to shout out. Let's do it.
I'd like to shout out listener Jimmy McCleod, who deend
out took um guitar lessons from the same Toledo metal band.
Guitar that's me. I saw that that was ramusic in Toledo.
I was like, oh my god, this is all absolutely correct,
(03:38):
And he said yes. Indeed, like this guy was in
attentive at best. He would just go out and and
talk to people in the store in the middle of
in the middle of the lessons, I was like, yeah,
that's right, so thank you for that. That was putting
all those pieces together for me. My brain don't work
so so good. Yeah, multiple shoutouts. Is there anything else
we can talk about that's not numerology. I've got one
(04:00):
other one. This is a long time overdue, but our
friends at Flathead Flathead Like Cheese sent us an entire
wheel of their hopping mad Gouda, which is maybe the
best cheese anyone's ever made. Good stuff, and I believe
they give discounts to stuff you should Know listeners or
every once while they have the stuff you Should Know
(04:20):
sale or themes sales. So flat Head Like Cheese because
they're great, and thanks to the Loses for introducing us
to them. It's right me, Mike, Okay, that's it for
shout outs, Bunny, all right, that's it. So how do
we even get oh supreme right, all right, let's talk
about numerology. So there is a thought among some people
(04:44):
that numbers have these mystical properties. That's the basis of
the whole thing, the basis of the whole thing, and
that that some people even think that these numbers, like
all things on the planet, have an inherent vibration and
a unique vibration. And if you guide your life by
numbers that have vibrations that are in sync with one another,
(05:08):
then you can lead a more complete life and lead
your best life. Yeah, and the way that ties into
numbers is the idea that that numbers basically run everything.
That that that the properties that an individual number has
can be attributed to things that are associated with that number.
(05:29):
And you can break everything down into a number. And
if you can break something down, if you can divine
something's number, you can figure out what lies ahead for them,
what their personality types going to be, what their challenges are,
um and it depending on some numerology systems, you could
figure out what you're lucky day is, what numbers you
(05:51):
should play in the latto, like all sorts of different stuff.
But the idea goes well beyond, you know, like picking
something at roulette. It's it's like the idea numerology is
very much akin to astrology, where based on your name,
your date of birth, and a few other factors that
are inherent to you. If you combine those into a number,
(06:12):
you can figure out what number you're associated with, and
hence what your destiny will be. That's basically the general
basis of all numerological systems, right, and that The father
of Western numerology is Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher born in
(06:32):
five sixty nine BC who studied numbers and studied music
and art and all kinds of things. But I think
one of the things Pythagoras like to do is say, like, hey,
you can actually take the the pluck of a of
a leer string and you can break that down into
(06:53):
a number, Like that unique vibration of that note has
its own number that we can assign to it. That
was huge, Yeah, I mean he was coming at it
through some interesting angles at first, I think, And this
was in five sixty nine, This was the twenty first century.
This is when this probably sounded about a good as
good as anything. Yeah. Pythagoras and his followers known as
(07:14):
the Pythagoreans, they that that that school, and I think
Southern Italy um like they were. They were some of
the first people to really apply a study of mathematics
UM and geometry in particular. UM. I think beforehand, geometry
was I saw it described as basically a loose set
(07:34):
of principles that that you could use to like build
a house with or something like that. It wasn't like
a like math in and of itself until Pythagoras came
along and they started realizing like, oh wait, like math
exists on its own, like it's its own thing, and
started studying it like that, and started finding it everywhere,
and started like, like you said, you know that I
(07:55):
saw um a description that the that that Pythagoras and
the Pythagoreans figured out that um, that music like resonant,
like music that's not discordant, but the good stuff UM
is uh like it follows whole integers, and that he
(08:17):
figured it out by hearing how different hammers in a
blacksmith's shop harmonized. And he went and looked, and he
saw that they were those hammers were related mathematically. One
was say, a one pound hammer, and the other one
was part of a whole integer, like a half pound hammer.
And he realized there's such a thing as octaves, and
that like, these were the discoveries they were making and
(08:39):
so as did some really cool stuff. It is and
like just stuff we take for granted is like just
a matter of fact today, like they were figuring out.
They also seemed to have taken a lot of maybe
mushrooms at the time. And then it got weird. They
were drinking reindeer p I'm not sure, but they really
went down the rabbit hole with numbers and start did
(09:01):
finding these things everywhere, and came to the conclusion that
numbers were the basis of the fabric of existence in
life and the universe and everything, and that the the
the answer to the purpose of life, the perfect purpose
of existence, was forty two. All right, I think that's
a good set up, Thank you. All right, well's let's
take a break now and we'll talk more. We'll maybe
(09:23):
shout out some more personal friends and friends of the show,
and then we'll also talk about numerology. Alright. So you
(09:58):
mentioned the Pythagoreans, the people who us into and followed
Pythagoras there in southern Italy and studied with him. They
also came up with some some legit bedrock math that
we still think of today and used today. Like if
you've ever heard of the Pythagorean theorem. It's still very
popular in math class. In maths. Yeah, everybody's got that
(10:19):
T shirt when they're in sixth grade. Uh huh uh
and that's the old uh. In a right triangle, the
square of the length of the hypothenuse is equal to
the some of the squares of the other two sides.
A squared plus B squared equals C squared. And it's
it's interesting that they were coming up with all this
(10:39):
bedrock stuff and this really cool stuff about figuring out
mathematical mathematical proportions of musical harmonies like you were talking about,
and like, I'm so down with all that. And then
someone goes, hey, you know, if you add up a
series of odd numbers beginning with one, the result is
always going to be a square number. And everyone went, oh, man,
(11:03):
that's right. And then Pythagoras said, yeah, all his number.
And then they all together said, all his number, that's
exactly how And from there things got a little weird,
and some people here, all his number and they say, well,
that means that you can just measure everything in the
entire world and you can describe it in terms of
(11:26):
math and numbers and proportions. Fair enough, that's basically the
basis of our understanding of like geometry and physics. Yes,
and then other people said no, no, no no, all his number,
man means like everything in the world is made of numbers.
That tree is a number. You are a number because
they're licking those toads. Yes, and in the background of
(11:47):
reindeer peas quietly into a bucket. So bucket is then
distributed into small mugs. That's that second part of all
his number is um. That's that's the basis of numerology.
And that's where it kind of veers away from science.
And I was reading this, Um, Veers, it takes a
really hard turn. Ye, didn't that what Veers means? I
(12:12):
think veer is a very gentle turn. Oh, I thought,
I think, okay, Corene's away from science. Yeah, there what
you're looking Okay? All right? Um, So I saw a
really interesting article on b v D M B B
B b v D b b g D open mind.
I can't remember, um, but they were they were talking
(12:32):
about Pythagoras and the Pythagorines and how they're like this
full chrome where numbers went from mystical things having a
mystical quality to bringing them into science and then taking
it right back into mysticism again, which is really odd,
but that's that's really what happened. And it was part
partially because they got so wrapped up in the idea
(12:53):
that all his number and they were a really weird
group of people. They met their end really violently, um
in southern Italy, uh, where their their school was sacked
and burned. At least fifty of them were killed. Um.
But like you said, they had created like a real
foundation for our understanding of math and the idea that
(13:14):
math was this thing that exists out there waiting for
us to discover and that it has a lot to
do with our life. But that the mystical qualities associated
kind of died with Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. That's right, Um,
I guess I mean, should we get into a little
bit of kind of what they were laying down there? Yeah, alright,
(13:35):
So they were studying these mathematical concepts and they said,
all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna sort
numbers into buckets, into categories. Not not the reindeer p bucket,
but into mathematical categories, so levers we can pull. Yeah,
let's just say, let's say one, four, and nine are
square because, uh, if you take pebbles, the corresponding number
(13:59):
of little pebbles or rocks or whatever, you can arrange
them into a square. Again, geometry coming into play. Um, one, three, six,
and ten are triangular because one, three, six, or ten
little pebbles can be arranged into regular triangles. The use
of one is both the square and a triangle. It's like,
I dispute that too. You're gonna have to pick one
(14:21):
or the other. Pythagoreans alright, so it would be falling
apart for you already if you were back there, just
there though, just there everything else. I was like, yeah, yeah,
all is number, Give me some more, baby, Uh, two,
six and twelve or oblong. So the corresponding number is
a rectangle. And so they're doing this kind of thing,
and then they start getting into non numerical stuff and saying,
(14:45):
all right, odd numbers are masculine. Even numbers are feminine. Uh,
the number one is creative because if you add multiple ones,
you can create any other number. Bro, what what else
is there? Well? To um, so odd is masculine, even
are feminine. Like you said, so two is the first
(15:06):
feminine number. It represents duality there two. Um. Three is
the first masculine number because like you said, one is
its own thing. It's a creator number. And so uh
five yeah, five is the is represents marriage because it's
where the first masculine number in the first feminine number.
(15:29):
Um add up to just stuff like that, Like these
people clearly a way too much time on their hands
to think of something like that, um. And so like
each number one through nine, this is very important because
we didn't say it earlier when we introduced numerology, but
in numerological systems, one through nine are the prime and
(15:52):
I don't mean that mathematically, the most important, the most used,
the most useful numbers, right, Um, So one through nine
are the ones to focus on, and that also came
directly from the Pythagoreans. They focused mostly on the numbers
one through nine as well, right uh. And I think
a goal for a lot of these charts is to
(16:13):
get your number down to one of those single digits eventually, right. Yeah,
that was for for most systems, and with most numbers
we'll talk about it, but yes, you ultimately want to
get it down to one of those single digit numbers. Yeah, yeah,
because you can't be ten because ten is a sacred number.
Because someone said, you know, if you add up the
first four digits, it equals ten. Bro, And they did
(16:38):
stuff like that. They did stuff like that. But also
I just want to point out one of the other
things they did that. I'm like, I didn't even know
these existed, so I'm I'm still impressed. They were the
first ones to detect perfect numbers. And a perfect number
is a number where the divisors add up to form
the number. So six is a perfect number because if
you add as divisors devisors being one, two, and three,
(17:01):
they add up to six. So I mean there is
some neat stuff that is actually I think useful that
came out of it. But yes, other of other other
stuff is like, yes, ten is sacred because if you
add up one to three and four it comes up
to ten. It's like, what about five, six, seven, eight,
and nine? Jack, just canna ignore those? Yes, yes, we
are yes. The number ten also led to the list
(17:24):
of ten fundamental opposites um a few of which are
one and many rest in motion good and evil stuff
like that. Yeah, straight and crooked, sure, light and dark,
straight and crooked, yin and yang. That's not in there,
is it? You had to look? All right? So look,
(17:44):
here's the thing. Because there was a really ironic end
to the Pythagoreans because they look too hard into numbers
and how numbers related to the universe, that they actually
found that everything doesn't fit into some neat and tidy
box like they thought. And supposedly one of the Pythagoreans
(18:08):
was kind of hanging around doing some equations and formula
at some point and tried to come up with the
square root of two and discovered the existence of irrational numbers.
And an irrational number is a number that has a
non repeating, non terminating decimal. It just goes on infinitely
like pie is an irrational number. The square root of two,
(18:30):
like the Pythagorines figured as an irrational number, and it
can't be represented in a simple fraction like every other number.
Rational numbers is what they're called. And apparently when they
found this out, it kind of like their worldview crumbled.
Do all his number thing crumbled because they couldn't figure
out how this would apply to like an orderly, beautiful universe. Um.
(18:52):
And apparently they even before they were sacked and burned
and killed. They the school kind of like fell into
dark times once they figured out there were such things
as irrational numbers. Yeah, that's what happens when you're in
a cult. Yeah, kind of your face with reality and
it usually doesn't go very well. So after the death
(19:13):
of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, um, the mysticism, all this
stuff kind of faded away a little bit and was
resurrected in the eighteen hundreds, um, kind of notably with
the writings of a book from Mrs l. Dal Baallyette
a k A. Josie. I don't get it that was
(19:34):
her name, Okay. I think her husband's name was l.
Dal Her name was Joseph Jane Josie Balliette. So I
was looking up anything on this this person, and like
she is just nowhere. Um. But she wrote a bunch
of books, but very little is known about her except
she died at age eighty four in Atlantic City. I
(19:55):
read very interesting. But she was the first one to
kind of come along and say vibrations, right. Yeah, And
you know, there were there were other people that were
writing books and stuff. It didn't like completely completely go away.
But I think these books that talked about vibrations and
that talked about music and numbers and colors being you know,
because there's a little bit of synesthigious sort of thrown
(20:17):
in here as well. If some of this kind of
sounds familiar with colors and numbers representing like the same thing.
And so she was talking about everything and all these
numbers having vibrations. Uh, people, food, a tree, a bicycle,
anything has a vibration. And if you and this idea
that I spoke about earlier, if you want to live
(20:39):
in harmony in the world, then your environment should and
the numbers of your environment that have been assigned need
to match your own vibration in your own number. And
you know, this is where it definitely this is kind
of what we think of as modern numerology at this point. Yeah.
One thing, one interesting thing about vibrations, especially sleep about
(21:00):
like an old timey nineteenth century writer, new age writer
basically talking about vibrations, um is that that's that's actually
the basis of some of the theories of how subatomic
particles behave vibrations, like string theories, based on the idea
that subatomic particles are actually vibrating strings of energy that
(21:21):
vibrate at different frequencies, and that those differing frequencies produce
their shape or their form um, which is I just
find that endlessly fascinating that it's almost, in some weird
way predicted string theory. But is it just one of
those things where it's like, yeah, I mean vibrations, especially
(21:41):
if you're into things like music, Um, it's not like
that far of a stretch or was it like, yeah,
they were tapped into some sort of weird preternatural understanding
of subatomic physics. Yeah, super interesting. Pythagoras also believed that
this vibration could have had some thing to do with
what was called the music of the spheres, which is
(22:03):
what he believed like the planets were embedded in these
transparent physical spheres, and the distance between them corresponded to
these musical ratios, and these are the sounds that the
planets that these vibrations that the planets in the Sun
make while orbiting the Earth. Were the little off on
that one when they wasn't that on the Golden Records?
Didn't Carl Sagan create like an homage to that on
(22:25):
the Golden records. I think so I knew it sounded familiar.
We talked about it before. I do also want to
shout out a company if you're looking to get a
kind of the best wind chime that you can buy. No,
there's a company out of Boston called Music of the Spheres.
Oh cool, and they're amazing, like you can get it's
(22:46):
I've got several sets in different places and they they're
just I wanted to shout them out for a while,
because when someone just makes something great, you know this,
This ain't no uh big box wind chime. Wind chimes
are us these beautiful sounds. No, it's a Music of
the sphere. So so wait a minute. You're you're poking
fun at people who are talking about how ten is
(23:07):
a holy number because one through four it up to
ten and you have multiple wind chimes at your house.
I love wind chimes. I got one of those big
doggers at my camp, like way up in a tree,
and these things, I mean, it took a lot to
get them up there. They're heavy, but they're like five
ft long. They're these I'm sure the girls are really
happy you've moved in. Hey, we still bears despite the chime.
(23:31):
Oh is the bear back? Has it been back? No?
But I put the chime up and the bear came afterwards,
So I think they're attracted to it. I got you
sase bears come get a picnic basket. So, uh, where
are we here? Well, we're talking about modern numerology, right, Yeah,
I guess we should talk a little bit about I mean,
(23:53):
should we take a break and then talk about that?
I think you're right, Chuck, I think all right, we'll
take a break and we'll talk about sort of modern
numerology and how we come up with our own numbers
and what that even means right after this? All right,
(24:32):
So we talked to talk about how one through nine
are inherently important to UM modern numerologists and the Pythagoreans
to right correct, and that each of those numbers one
through nine has its own vibration, and those vibrations give
that number certain property. And I'm talking properties like um leadership, harmony, karma, wisdom, curiosity,
(24:56):
like intangible but important properties that humans could conceivably possess
numbers in these numbers, different numbers inherently have. That's right,
And depending on what system you're using, there is going
to be a chart that where a letter corresponds with
(25:17):
the number is usually and can be as easy as
A as one, B as two, and so on and uh,
like we said, there there are a lot of different
kinds of charts. So depending on which system you're using,
you're going to use that chart and and what you're
gonna do is eventually end up with that single digit number.
So unless there are a couple of exceptions of that, right, well, yeah,
(25:42):
we'll get to those. But there there are a couple
of different numbers that you can get. You can use
your name like your first, middle and last name by birth. Um.
I saw here in this article where it said you
have to use your birth name. Nicknames and change names
don't count. But I also saw other places where when
you change your name and that changes your destiny and
(26:02):
so you're supposed to refigure that. I saw one place
that allowed for nicknames in addition to given names, but
almost everywhere else said no, your birth name is the
one that's important. And the reason they gave is the
same reason that's in this article. That before you're born,
you basically communicate to your parents what your name should be,
(26:24):
so that your given name is going to suit your
your numerological number and that you're destined to have. Yeah,
that's where you get it from. That's where your parents
get your name from. Is actually from you little psychic
baby in the womb. Yeah, And I think the idea
is if you use your name to come up with
a number, Like there's a couple of different numbers. There's
your name number and then your birthdate number, and your
(26:46):
name number is kind of your personality and the interview
where your birth number is your what can has been
referred to as like your life path number or your
destiny number. And using these two numbers, you can kind
of if you're into this kind of thing, you can
make decisions on how to move forward in your life
(27:06):
and align these numbers with the rest of your life. Yeah.
I saw the destiny number and will explain how you
get that. That's derived from your name. That that's how
you'll reach the goals that are part of your life
path number. Right, So, um, it's actually really interesting stuff.
Um to start with the destiny number also called the
(27:27):
expression number. Um, you take that full name. Uh. From
what I saw from birth, I hadn't seen that You're
you're choosing a different name, altered your path that's pretty interesting. Um.
But if you stick with just your your chosen name,
it has to be your full given name at birth, first,
middle and last name. And if you'll have the middle name,
that's okay. You can just see your first and last
(27:48):
name and that when you add up the numbers UM
from the corresponding letters UH from from each of your names,
you come up with UM three members. You add this together,
so for example, Chuck, your first name, Charles is thirty.
Wayne comes up to twenty three. Brianthagoras is my other
middle name, briant Um adds up to twenty six. If
(28:12):
you add those together, you get seventy nine. Well, seventy
nine is virtually meaningless as far as numerology is concerned,
so you want to add seven and nine, you get sixteen,
getting closer, but still not not really useful. So you
had one in six and now we finally come to
your true destiny number, Chuck, which is seven. Right, So
(28:33):
seven is my uh destiny number. And if you look up,
you can look up like attributes for each of these numbers.
And this is where it's basically I mean, if you're
thinking this sounds like astrology and horoscopes or the zodiological
birth calendars. Like, you're right, all of this stuff is
kind of that. So seven means uh is magic, wisdom, intelligence, mystery, solitude,
(29:00):
that's you all over. What's your number? I'm a nine,
and interestingly there's different. Well, I'm a nine from my
life path number. I'm not sure from my name number.
All right, so we're both nines on the life path number,
which I looked up a thing that said your life
path number is a number of completion resolution. Those with
(29:21):
number nine and this for both of us tend to
have a humanitarian and almost a utopian quality to their being.
Because we're compassionate and philip philanthropical, we are likely to
be drawn towards global issues that deal with the helping
of the whole human kind in the world. But Josh,
we need to be wary of over extending ourselves and
(29:41):
sacrificing too much of ourselves uh, and losing the greater
perspective in the pursuit of pursuit of our goals. We
have to learn to say no sometimes. In other words, yeah,
we've gotten better about that over the years, and that
is definitely and that well, that's because we're there following
our our um, we're following destiny numbers towards our life
(30:01):
path number. So what that you just kind of like
said of something I think is really important to point
out about numerology that you're gonna encounter if you get
a numerological reading, is the number has the best of
you and the stuff you need to avoid. It's all
encompassed in that one number. And you have multiple numbers,
so each of those have things to avoid, things to
(30:24):
focus on, things to improve on, things to things that
are going to challenge you in your life, which I
find pretty interesting. Yeah, And you know it gets more
complicated than that too. If you want to drill down.
There are numerologists you use these big charts and diagrams
that end up kind of looking like at astrological charts.
And you know that's when they're sort of drilling down to, um,
(30:48):
how you relate to people in your family maybe, or
to the person you're married to, or if you want
to find if you want to find a romantic partner,
or avoid negative tendencies, or just find out what you're
lucky number lucky day is. Yeah, and also there's um
some systems that I've seen multiple places that just rely
almost like shorthand on the date of your birth, So
(31:13):
the day of the month that you were born on,
like that's it. So like I was born on July fifteen,
so that would make me a six. And that's it.
That's what they use. They don't do the name thing.
They don't do your whole birthday. They just do the
day of the month that you were born on, almost
like much much more like a zodeological sign or astrological
sign um. And so as a six, I can do
(31:35):
things like I need to look for foods that are pale,
purple and blue. Those are going to vibrate with me
most most harmoniously. I should live in a city, maybe
Madras or Baton Rouge, surprising to me. And then I
should associate mostly with number fives. It turns out that
I'm most harmonious with them. Is you me a five?
(31:57):
I don't know. I know she's a three, I think
because yeah, she's thirty, so she's a she's a ten.
That's very nice, Emily, and we are ten's that's why
we married them. Let's just go with eleven. Mine goes
to eleven. Uh, I love that um. And this is
this is actual in the House of works article. I
(32:18):
can't believe you found one that we haven't mined yet.
But this is from Tracy Wilson. Are are still colleague
almost in former because we just don't see them anymore?
Which of the of the virus? But are you about no, no, no,
over at stuff you miss in history class with Holly right,
are you about to out her from as as a numerologist? No,
(32:40):
as a determined Harry Potter fan. Oh, I didn't even
think about that. This all makes sense. Now there's a
lot of Harry Potter in this There is a lot
of Harry Potter, and this articles all makes sense now.
Casey's defense was written in two thousand eight, when like,
you know, the kind of thing that's super hip. But uh, yeah,
(33:03):
it's pretty funny how much Harry Potter pops up. Yeah,
she's Harry Potter as the example of like forming that
or finding Harry Potter's number and all that. And in
the intro to she talks about her maiam e practicing
or rhythmancy. Yeah, which is a big deal in Harry Potter.
But I brought it up because Tracy referred to uh,
and she's probably not the first, but she referred to
(33:25):
numerology as a version a kind of applied mysticism, And
I like that definition basically where you correlate a mystical
symbol with somebody's life. Uh. I think that kind of
says it best. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of
things you could do UM that kind of fall under
the New Age umbrella as far as like numerology astrology,
(33:48):
where you can you can look at it a couple
of ways, like you can give responsibility responsibility for your
life over to your numerological number or your astrological sign,
associate with some people and stay away from other people
or certain foods or whatever, and just kind of like
not have to think about life quite as much or
(34:09):
make your own decisions. That's like the bigger criticism of
New Age stuff, But there's a much more generous way
of interpreting it too, and saying like, you know, if
you're feeling a little lost or unmoored or unrooted and
you're trying to like figure out what direction to kind
of set your compass in, you could do worse than
you know, doing your numerological sign and being like, oh,
(34:31):
I should focus on being more creative and need to
look out for UM. Being too dependent on others. Does
that apply to me? Maybe it does. Let me just
kind of go forth from there. And I wouldn't recommend
doing in a daily numerological thing or anything like that,
But I'm saying like, in some ways New Age stuff
can be harmful because it kind of takes it takes
(34:53):
the purpose out of life for a lot of people.
But in other other ways it can kind of be
a guide. And just the same way that like religio
in or Friends or um a television show that you
think is speaking directly to you, can you know I
hear you? Do you? I do? Uh? I mean we're
kind of at that point. I guess about some criticisms
(35:14):
and one thing Tracy does mention And I think this
is just more as an example, not as specifically as
applies to the practice of numerology, but just people believing
like in a special number in their life and how
they always see that number. Uh. You know, I I
know people that see numbers and think that they mean
something like there's a certain number and I always see it,
(35:36):
And you know that's sort of that confirmation bias at work. Yes, generally,
where you notice that number more, you're really seeing all
kinds of numbers. But you notice eleven eleven on the
clock because you've told yourself that eleven eleven means something
to you, or that it does. You know you've heard
that it does, and you and you don't think about
all of the other times that you've seen on the
(35:58):
clock all day, or all the numbers you see all
the a long and you know that's fair enough. Um.
I think another criticism of numerology is that it's the
whole thing is based on an invented system of counting,
grouping by ten. And that's not even the first or
I mean, I was about to say the most legitimate.
(36:21):
I guess it was. It's not the original system of counting.
It was just made up by people to begin with.
It's the basis of the metric system. I would say
it's legit, well, not illegitimate, but it was. It was
invented by humans, right, yes, And it's not the only
way that we know how to count. Same as that
like using the the English alphabet to divine your future,
(36:41):
because you're applying in number an Arabic numeral to the
to a letter from the English alphabet. Those aren't the
only number systems or the only alphabet system, so like, yes,
it's made up, and you could make a case like
that A numerologist might make is say, well, you were
born English king in an English speaking country that uses
(37:02):
Arabic numerals, so of course that's going to apply to you. Um,
I haven't heard what the response would be for like
if you were born in China, where the average person
needs to know about two thousand different characters in their
alphabet to to make their way through life. Um, like
how that would apply to numerology? Um, but yes, the
(37:23):
basis of this whole thing is like this is like
there's just so many holes you could drive a truck
through every single one of them. But if it's providing
some sort of comfort or um I even guidance to
somebody who's and it's not hurting them, hurting other people,
damaging their lives or shortening or narrowing their prospects, then
I mean, what's is it harmful? I don't know, I
(37:46):
could be missing something in that sense. I know what
you mean. And and even if you're if someone would
be like, yeah, but what about these people that pay
money and flush their money down the toilet? Problem with
a numerologist Another person might say, well, you know what,
I think that it's a waste of money talking to
a therapist who doesn't know you, or they could say
they're stimulating the economy. Well, the point is it's you know,
(38:11):
if the person walks away from that experience happy and satisfied,
then it's a it's a victimless crime. It's not a
crime at all. It's it's someone paying money for something
that they feel like they got something out of. If
you walk out there and you're like, what a rip off,
I can't believe it. They had ten dollars too for
someone to look into a crystal ball or to read
my numerological chart like, then it's a problem. But if
(38:34):
if you want to spend your money that way, we're
not gonna yuck your yum. If you feel good about it,
good on you. Yes, I have one caveat to that though, Okay,
it makes me anxious about about this just signing off
on that, and that is that I feel like this
resurgence and numerology we're seeing, like I'm sure most of
(38:54):
the people who are like the younger people are into
it today don't realize that like it was huge in
the seventies, and then I apparently was huge in the
nineteenth century. It was like like that, it just keeps
coming back at certain times in certain ways. Is that
this time that it's come back around, is it's correlated
with this again, this this death of trust and expertise
and in its anti science sentiment, And in that way,
(39:18):
I don't like anything that promotes an anti science sentiment
or um makes you believe that your opinion is just
as good as somebody who's gone and studied whatever you're
talking about for a dozen super yes, So in that sense,
I do not endorse it if it if it does
kind of promote that. But again, if we can just
bring it back to if it's just making them happy
(39:38):
then you know, and it's not harming them or society
in general, then I'm good with that. Alright, great, like
that matters, I guess I took. My big takeaway from
this article was at the very end Tracy kind of
snuck snuck in a cool fact that I never knew
was that the we the reason that we here in
the West count things in groups ten or it's sort
(40:00):
of a tin based system, is probably because we have
ten fingers, and that the old English language and The
old English words for numbers reflect this groups of ten
and the eleven. The word eleven means one left, and
twelve is an abbreviation of two left ye, like one
(40:22):
left over ten, two left over ten, and then thirds.
That's the fact of the show for me right here
at the bey. I think you're right, Chuck, I totally agree. Uh.
And that means that we should be seeing twelve in
twelve in twelve. In is how I'm gonna say twelve
from now on, I'll be like, look it up and
then think about thirteen two. That's like three, ten, four, ten, five, ten, Yeah, yeah,
(40:49):
twelve in twelve twelve. Even if you want to know
more about numerology, I guess go visit the Bustle or
numerology dot com and see what you think. See if
it's right for you. But God help you if you
stop believing in expertise or become anti science, because that
is not a good thing anybody. Um, but thinking for
yourself is as well. So maybe we can figure out
(41:10):
a way to balance all of that together. Since I said,
let's figure out a way to balance all that together,
it's time for listening mail. This is from Cassie Sounds
like Lassie in Statesboro, Georgia. Oh, yeah, down there, that's right.
So this was in reference to the Georgia lizard that
(41:32):
we had quite a few people right in it is
is not a leopard, gecko or whatever you said it was.
That is everyone's wrong but me, okay, because they don't
have those in this country. Uh, they're big in Pakistan apparently.
But well that's what I'm here. Yeah, that's probably it
from my time living in Pakistan. I've never had a
reason to send an email till now, guys, but here
(41:54):
it is in response to the short stuff on chameleons.
Chuck was going on about the skinks and Joshua's saying
that they're geckos. I'm pretty sure that he's wrong because
way back in ninety nine, my family moved to Georgia
for Minnesota, and I was living in Minnesota. I worked
at a pet store that sold lizards among other animals,
had chamellions, iguanas, geckos and is it pronounced anal a
(42:15):
n o l e uh leave the gun take the annually?
Oh boy, well that's ANNUALI Uh. The reason I'm saying
this is because when we moved to Georgia started seeing
these annolis or anals anals can't be anals everywhere. My
(42:36):
twelve year old brain was cooking up a scheme to
catch them and sell them for the going rate back
in Minnesota, which is twenty dollars each. Uh wow, that
is that's those are nineties dollars. I know those are
grunge dollars. I learned that it was against a lot
of own native species in Georgia, so I didn't go
through with that plan. If you read this email and
you get a chance, search Annulli and see if that's
(42:59):
the szard and that is indeed the lizard Cassie, So
thank you and others for for figuring that out for us.
Very nice. Thank you. Cassie rhymes with Lassie. Um, Cassie
said that right, You didn't say that, that's yeah, she said.
I was like, she's check. Well, if you want to
be like Cassie rhymes with lassie, you can write to
(43:20):
us and tell us your name and what it rhymes
with and maybe we'll end up reading your email on
listen to mail, wrap it up, spank it on the annually,
and send it off to stuff podcast at I Heart
radio dot com Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(43:41):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
and there's Chuck, and Chuck's a seven and I'm a nine,
and this is stuff you should know. Yeah, did you
(00:22):
figure your years out? Are you a nine? Uh? It
depends on my UM seven nine for my birth. I'm
a nine for my UM birth as well my life
cat number. We're both nines, but you're a you're seven
for your destiny number if I figured years out, Hey,
we're all that. That means this all makes sense now, Yeah,
(00:45):
that's why we were meant to be together on the show.
It was preordained by the spirit herself. So we're talking
about numerology, which I guess an overarching definition would be, um,
it's a pseudo scientific practice in which people base things
(01:06):
on numbers, like your destiny and who your romantic partner
should be, and maybe what job you should have and
stuff like this. Uh. And I just want to say
at the beginning of this that there are many different
kinds of numerology, and depending on where you're from, and
there are many different methods and many different charts, and
like we're not going to get too far into the
(01:27):
weeds on those because it's all fake, because it would
just be a super long, like four our episode on numerology.
So this is kind of just an overarching how you know,
that's what we do. It's it's basically how what numerology
is and how it works, and and not all the
specificities of each system. Yeah, because your brain starts to
(01:49):
melt a little bit when you start getting into all that,
and they're all kind of the same. It's just different
variations of sort of the same thing. And I think
the fact that there's so many variations there are supposed
to arrive at a press slice figure kind of also
warns the person to take the whole thing with a
grain of salt. But it's apparently way more popular in
twenty one century America than I realized. How is it?
(02:12):
Oh yeah, I man going to Bustle and The Cut,
and um, there's numerology dot com and there's a lot
a lot of sites that have if they're not like
overtly dedicated to numerology, they have like whole sections dedicated
to numerology and all that stuff. So the cool kids
doing it, I think. So I can't tell if it's
(02:33):
the Millennials or gen Z or I don't know, but
you're not on their Supreme sweatshirt talking about numbers. That's right.
I just met someone who works with them, who works
for Bustle for it, works for Supreme, and we should
shout out to it's uh master guitar player and is
this stuff you should know? Fan Matt Sweeney, who in
(02:56):
the mid nineties had the indie rock sort of math
rock band and Chavez and now has played with everyone
from Johnny Cash to Adele. I know him from his
work with Bonnie Prince Billy and I just saw them
live and I just got to hang out with Sweeney.
Had a great four hour dinner with Matt and his
girlfriend j R. And j R works for Supreme and
(03:17):
was telling me all about it. Well, that's fantastic. I
have someone I'd like to shout out. Let's do it.
I'd like to shout out listener Jimmy McCleod, who deend
out took um guitar lessons from the same Toledo metal band.
Guitar that's me. I saw that that was ramusic in Toledo.
I was like, oh my god, this is all absolutely correct,
(03:38):
And he said yes. Indeed, like this guy was in
attentive at best. He would just go out and and
talk to people in the store in the middle of
in the middle of the lessons, I was like, yeah,
that's right, so thank you for that. That was putting
all those pieces together for me. My brain don't work
so so good. Yeah, multiple shoutouts. Is there anything else
we can talk about that's not numerology. I've got one
(04:00):
other one. This is a long time overdue, but our
friends at Flathead Flathead Like Cheese sent us an entire
wheel of their hopping mad Gouda, which is maybe the
best cheese anyone's ever made. Good stuff, and I believe
they give discounts to stuff you should Know listeners or
every once while they have the stuff you Should Know
(04:20):
sale or themes sales. So flat Head Like Cheese because
they're great, and thanks to the Loses for introducing us
to them. It's right me, Mike, Okay, that's it for
shout outs, Bunny, all right, that's it. So how do
we even get oh supreme right, all right, let's talk
about numerology. So there is a thought among some people
(04:44):
that numbers have these mystical properties. That's the basis of
the whole thing, the basis of the whole thing, and
that that some people even think that these numbers, like
all things on the planet, have an inherent vibration and
a unique vibration. And if you guide your life by
numbers that have vibrations that are in sync with one another,
(05:08):
then you can lead a more complete life and lead
your best life. Yeah, and the way that ties into
numbers is the idea that that numbers basically run everything.
That that that the properties that an individual number has
can be attributed to things that are associated with that number.
(05:29):
And you can break everything down into a number. And
if you can break something down, if you can divine
something's number, you can figure out what lies ahead for them,
what their personality types going to be, what their challenges are,
um and it depending on some numerology systems, you could
figure out what you're lucky day is, what numbers you
(05:51):
should play in the latto, like all sorts of different stuff.
But the idea goes well beyond, you know, like picking
something at roulette. It's it's like the idea numerology is
very much akin to astrology, where based on your name,
your date of birth, and a few other factors that
are inherent to you. If you combine those into a number,
(06:12):
you can figure out what number you're associated with, and
hence what your destiny will be. That's basically the general
basis of all numerological systems, right, and that The father
of Western numerology is Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher born in
(06:32):
five sixty nine BC who studied numbers and studied music
and art and all kinds of things. But I think
one of the things Pythagoras like to do is say, like, hey,
you can actually take the the pluck of a of
a leer string and you can break that down into
(06:53):
a number, Like that unique vibration of that note has
its own number that we can assign to it. That
was huge, Yeah, I mean he was coming at it
through some interesting angles at first, I think, And this
was in five sixty nine, This was the twenty first century.
This is when this probably sounded about a good as
good as anything. Yeah. Pythagoras and his followers known as
(07:14):
the Pythagoreans, they that that that school, and I think
Southern Italy um like they were. They were some of
the first people to really apply a study of mathematics
UM and geometry in particular. UM. I think beforehand, geometry
was I saw it described as basically a loose set
(07:34):
of principles that that you could use to like build
a house with or something like that. It wasn't like
a like math in and of itself until Pythagoras came
along and they started realizing like, oh wait, like math
exists on its own, like it's its own thing, and
started studying it like that, and started finding it everywhere,
and started like, like you said, you know that I
(07:55):
saw um a description that the that that Pythagoras and
the Pythagoreans figured out that um, that music like resonant,
like music that's not discordant, but the good stuff UM
is uh like it follows whole integers, and that he
(08:17):
figured it out by hearing how different hammers in a
blacksmith's shop harmonized. And he went and looked, and he
saw that they were those hammers were related mathematically. One
was say, a one pound hammer, and the other one
was part of a whole integer, like a half pound hammer.
And he realized there's such a thing as octaves, and
that like, these were the discoveries they were making and
(08:39):
so as did some really cool stuff. It is and
like just stuff we take for granted is like just
a matter of fact today, like they were figuring out.
They also seemed to have taken a lot of maybe
mushrooms at the time. And then it got weird. They
were drinking reindeer p I'm not sure, but they really
went down the rabbit hole with numbers and start did
(09:01):
finding these things everywhere, and came to the conclusion that
numbers were the basis of the fabric of existence in
life and the universe and everything, and that the the
the answer to the purpose of life, the perfect purpose
of existence, was forty two. All right, I think that's
a good set up, Thank you. All right, well's let's
take a break now and we'll talk more. We'll maybe
(09:23):
shout out some more personal friends and friends of the show,
and then we'll also talk about numerology. Alright. So you
(09:58):
mentioned the Pythagoreans, the people who us into and followed
Pythagoras there in southern Italy and studied with him. They
also came up with some some legit bedrock math that
we still think of today and used today. Like if
you've ever heard of the Pythagorean theorem. It's still very
popular in math class. In maths. Yeah, everybody's got that
(10:19):
T shirt when they're in sixth grade. Uh huh uh
and that's the old uh. In a right triangle, the
square of the length of the hypothenuse is equal to
the some of the squares of the other two sides.
A squared plus B squared equals C squared. And it's
it's interesting that they were coming up with all this
(10:39):
bedrock stuff and this really cool stuff about figuring out
mathematical mathematical proportions of musical harmonies like you were talking about,
and like, I'm so down with all that. And then
someone goes, hey, you know, if you add up a
series of odd numbers beginning with one, the result is
always going to be a square number. And everyone went, oh, man,
(11:03):
that's right. And then Pythagoras said, yeah, all his number.
And then they all together said, all his number, that's
exactly how And from there things got a little weird,
and some people here, all his number and they say, well,
that means that you can just measure everything in the
entire world and you can describe it in terms of
(11:26):
math and numbers and proportions. Fair enough, that's basically the
basis of our understanding of like geometry and physics. Yes,
and then other people said no, no, no no, all his number,
man means like everything in the world is made of numbers.
That tree is a number. You are a number because
they're licking those toads. Yes, and in the background of
(11:47):
reindeer peas quietly into a bucket. So bucket is then
distributed into small mugs. That's that second part of all
his number is um. That's that's the basis of numerology.
And that's where it kind of veers away from science.
And I was reading this, Um, Veers, it takes a
really hard turn. Ye, didn't that what Veers means? I
(12:12):
think veer is a very gentle turn. Oh, I thought,
I think, okay, Corene's away from science. Yeah, there what
you're looking Okay? All right? Um, So I saw a
really interesting article on b v D M B B
B b v D b b g D open mind.
I can't remember, um, but they were they were talking
(12:32):
about Pythagoras and the Pythagorines and how they're like this
full chrome where numbers went from mystical things having a
mystical quality to bringing them into science and then taking
it right back into mysticism again, which is really odd,
but that's that's really what happened. And it was part
partially because they got so wrapped up in the idea
(12:53):
that all his number and they were a really weird
group of people. They met their end really violently, um
in southern Italy, uh, where their their school was sacked
and burned. At least fifty of them were killed. Um.
But like you said, they had created like a real
foundation for our understanding of math and the idea that
(13:14):
math was this thing that exists out there waiting for
us to discover and that it has a lot to
do with our life. But that the mystical qualities associated
kind of died with Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans. That's right, Um,
I guess I mean, should we get into a little
bit of kind of what they were laying down there? Yeah, alright,
(13:35):
So they were studying these mathematical concepts and they said,
all right, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna sort
numbers into buckets, into categories. Not not the reindeer p bucket,
but into mathematical categories, so levers we can pull. Yeah,
let's just say, let's say one, four, and nine are
square because, uh, if you take pebbles, the corresponding number
(13:59):
of little pebbles or rocks or whatever, you can arrange
them into a square. Again, geometry coming into play. Um, one, three, six,
and ten are triangular because one, three, six, or ten
little pebbles can be arranged into regular triangles. The use
of one is both the square and a triangle. It's like,
I dispute that too. You're gonna have to pick one
(14:21):
or the other. Pythagoreans alright, so it would be falling
apart for you already if you were back there, just
there though, just there everything else. I was like, yeah, yeah,
all is number, Give me some more, baby, Uh, two,
six and twelve or oblong. So the corresponding number is
a rectangle. And so they're doing this kind of thing,
and then they start getting into non numerical stuff and saying,
(14:45):
all right, odd numbers are masculine. Even numbers are feminine. Uh,
the number one is creative because if you add multiple ones,
you can create any other number. Bro, what what else
is there? Well? To um, so odd is masculine, even
are feminine. Like you said, so two is the first
(15:06):
feminine number. It represents duality there two. Um. Three is
the first masculine number because like you said, one is
its own thing. It's a creator number. And so uh
five yeah, five is the is represents marriage because it's
where the first masculine number in the first feminine number.
(15:29):
Um add up to just stuff like that, Like these
people clearly a way too much time on their hands
to think of something like that, um. And so like
each number one through nine, this is very important because
we didn't say it earlier when we introduced numerology, but
in numerological systems, one through nine are the prime and
(15:52):
I don't mean that mathematically, the most important, the most used,
the most useful numbers, right, Um, So one through nine
are the ones to focus on, and that also came
directly from the Pythagoreans. They focused mostly on the numbers
one through nine as well, right uh. And I think
a goal for a lot of these charts is to
(16:13):
get your number down to one of those single digits eventually, right. Yeah,
that was for for most systems, and with most numbers
we'll talk about it, but yes, you ultimately want to
get it down to one of those single digit numbers. Yeah, yeah,
because you can't be ten because ten is a sacred number.
Because someone said, you know, if you add up the
first four digits, it equals ten. Bro, And they did
(16:38):
stuff like that. They did stuff like that. But also
I just want to point out one of the other
things they did that. I'm like, I didn't even know
these existed, so I'm I'm still impressed. They were the
first ones to detect perfect numbers. And a perfect number
is a number where the divisors add up to form
the number. So six is a perfect number because if
you add as divisors devisors being one, two, and three,
(17:01):
they add up to six. So I mean there is
some neat stuff that is actually I think useful that
came out of it. But yes, other of other other
stuff is like, yes, ten is sacred because if you
add up one to three and four it comes up
to ten. It's like, what about five, six, seven, eight,
and nine? Jack, just canna ignore those? Yes, yes, we
are yes. The number ten also led to the list
(17:24):
of ten fundamental opposites um a few of which are
one and many rest in motion good and evil stuff
like that. Yeah, straight and crooked, sure, light and dark,
straight and crooked, yin and yang. That's not in there,
is it? You had to look? All right? So look,
(17:44):
here's the thing. Because there was a really ironic end
to the Pythagoreans because they look too hard into numbers
and how numbers related to the universe, that they actually
found that everything doesn't fit into some neat and tidy
box like they thought. And supposedly one of the Pythagoreans
(18:08):
was kind of hanging around doing some equations and formula
at some point and tried to come up with the
square root of two and discovered the existence of irrational numbers.
And an irrational number is a number that has a
non repeating, non terminating decimal. It just goes on infinitely
like pie is an irrational number. The square root of two,
(18:30):
like the Pythagorines figured as an irrational number, and it
can't be represented in a simple fraction like every other number.
Rational numbers is what they're called. And apparently when they
found this out, it kind of like their worldview crumbled.
Do all his number thing crumbled because they couldn't figure
out how this would apply to like an orderly, beautiful universe. Um.
(18:52):
And apparently they even before they were sacked and burned
and killed. They the school kind of like fell into
dark times once they figured out there were such things
as irrational numbers. Yeah, that's what happens when you're in
a cult. Yeah, kind of your face with reality and
it usually doesn't go very well. So after the death
(19:13):
of Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, um, the mysticism, all this
stuff kind of faded away a little bit and was
resurrected in the eighteen hundreds, um, kind of notably with
the writings of a book from Mrs l. Dal Baallyette
a k A. Josie. I don't get it that was
(19:34):
her name, Okay. I think her husband's name was l.
Dal Her name was Joseph Jane Josie Balliette. So I
was looking up anything on this this person, and like
she is just nowhere. Um. But she wrote a bunch
of books, but very little is known about her except
she died at age eighty four in Atlantic City. I
(19:55):
read very interesting. But she was the first one to
kind of come along and say vibrations, right. Yeah, And
you know, there were there were other people that were
writing books and stuff. It didn't like completely completely go away.
But I think these books that talked about vibrations and
that talked about music and numbers and colors being you know,
because there's a little bit of synesthigious sort of thrown
(20:17):
in here as well. If some of this kind of
sounds familiar with colors and numbers representing like the same thing.
And so she was talking about everything and all these
numbers having vibrations. Uh, people, food, a tree, a bicycle,
anything has a vibration. And if you and this idea
that I spoke about earlier, if you want to live
(20:39):
in harmony in the world, then your environment should and
the numbers of your environment that have been assigned need
to match your own vibration in your own number. And
you know, this is where it definitely this is kind
of what we think of as modern numerology at this point. Yeah.
One thing, one interesting thing about vibrations, especially sleep about
(21:00):
like an old timey nineteenth century writer, new age writer
basically talking about vibrations, um is that that's that's actually
the basis of some of the theories of how subatomic
particles behave vibrations, like string theories, based on the idea
that subatomic particles are actually vibrating strings of energy that
(21:21):
vibrate at different frequencies, and that those differing frequencies produce
their shape or their form um, which is I just
find that endlessly fascinating that it's almost, in some weird
way predicted string theory. But is it just one of
those things where it's like, yeah, I mean vibrations, especially
(21:41):
if you're into things like music, Um, it's not like
that far of a stretch or was it like, yeah,
they were tapped into some sort of weird preternatural understanding
of subatomic physics. Yeah, super interesting. Pythagoras also believed that
this vibration could have had some thing to do with
what was called the music of the spheres, which is
(22:03):
what he believed like the planets were embedded in these
transparent physical spheres, and the distance between them corresponded to
these musical ratios, and these are the sounds that the
planets that these vibrations that the planets in the Sun
make while orbiting the Earth. Were the little off on
that one when they wasn't that on the Golden Records?
Didn't Carl Sagan create like an homage to that on
(22:25):
the Golden records. I think so I knew it sounded familiar.
We talked about it before. I do also want to
shout out a company if you're looking to get a
kind of the best wind chime that you can buy. No,
there's a company out of Boston called Music of the Spheres.
Oh cool, and they're amazing, like you can get it's
(22:46):
I've got several sets in different places and they they're
just I wanted to shout them out for a while,
because when someone just makes something great, you know this,
This ain't no uh big box wind chime. Wind chimes
are us these beautiful sounds. No, it's a Music of
the sphere. So so wait a minute. You're you're poking
fun at people who are talking about how ten is
(23:07):
a holy number because one through four it up to
ten and you have multiple wind chimes at your house.
I love wind chimes. I got one of those big
doggers at my camp, like way up in a tree,
and these things, I mean, it took a lot to
get them up there. They're heavy, but they're like five
ft long. They're these I'm sure the girls are really
happy you've moved in. Hey, we still bears despite the chime.
(23:31):
Oh is the bear back? Has it been back? No?
But I put the chime up and the bear came afterwards,
So I think they're attracted to it. I got you
sase bears come get a picnic basket. So, uh, where
are we here? Well, we're talking about modern numerology, right, Yeah,
I guess we should talk a little bit about I mean,
(23:53):
should we take a break and then talk about that?
I think you're right, Chuck, I think all right, we'll
take a break and we'll talk about sort of modern
numerology and how we come up with our own numbers
and what that even means right after this? All right,
(24:32):
So we talked to talk about how one through nine
are inherently important to UM modern numerologists and the Pythagoreans
to right correct, and that each of those numbers one
through nine has its own vibration, and those vibrations give
that number certain property. And I'm talking properties like um leadership, harmony, karma, wisdom, curiosity,
(24:56):
like intangible but important properties that humans could conceivably possess
numbers in these numbers, different numbers inherently have. That's right,
And depending on what system you're using, there is going
to be a chart that where a letter corresponds with
(25:17):
the number is usually and can be as easy as
A as one, B as two, and so on and uh,
like we said, there there are a lot of different
kinds of charts. So depending on which system you're using,
you're going to use that chart and and what you're
gonna do is eventually end up with that single digit number.
So unless there are a couple of exceptions of that, right, well, yeah,
(25:42):
we'll get to those. But there there are a couple
of different numbers that you can get. You can use
your name like your first, middle and last name by birth. Um.
I saw here in this article where it said you
have to use your birth name. Nicknames and change names
don't count. But I also saw other places where when
you change your name and that changes your destiny and
(26:02):
so you're supposed to refigure that. I saw one place
that allowed for nicknames in addition to given names, but
almost everywhere else said no, your birth name is the
one that's important. And the reason they gave is the
same reason that's in this article. That before you're born,
you basically communicate to your parents what your name should be,
(26:24):
so that your given name is going to suit your
your numerological number and that you're destined to have. Yeah,
that's where you get it from. That's where your parents
get your name from. Is actually from you little psychic
baby in the womb. Yeah, And I think the idea
is if you use your name to come up with
a number, Like there's a couple of different numbers. There's
your name number and then your birthdate number, and your
(26:46):
name number is kind of your personality and the interview
where your birth number is your what can has been
referred to as like your life path number or your
destiny number. And using these two numbers, you can kind
of if you're into this kind of thing, you can
make decisions on how to move forward in your life
(27:06):
and align these numbers with the rest of your life. Yeah.
I saw the destiny number and will explain how you
get that. That's derived from your name. That that's how
you'll reach the goals that are part of your life
path number. Right, So, um, it's actually really interesting stuff.
Um to start with the destiny number also called the
(27:27):
expression number. Um, you take that full name. Uh. From
what I saw from birth, I hadn't seen that You're
you're choosing a different name, altered your path that's pretty interesting. Um.
But if you stick with just your your chosen name,
it has to be your full given name at birth, first,
middle and last name. And if you'll have the middle name,
that's okay. You can just see your first and last
(27:48):
name and that when you add up the numbers UM
from the corresponding letters UH from from each of your names,
you come up with UM three members. You add this together,
so for example, Chuck, your first name, Charles is thirty.
Wayne comes up to twenty three. Brianthagoras is my other
middle name, briant Um adds up to twenty six. If
(28:12):
you add those together, you get seventy nine. Well, seventy
nine is virtually meaningless as far as numerology is concerned,
so you want to add seven and nine, you get sixteen,
getting closer, but still not not really useful. So you
had one in six and now we finally come to
your true destiny number, Chuck, which is seven. Right, So
(28:33):
seven is my uh destiny number. And if you look up,
you can look up like attributes for each of these numbers.
And this is where it's basically I mean, if you're
thinking this sounds like astrology and horoscopes or the zodiological
birth calendars. Like, you're right, all of this stuff is
kind of that. So seven means uh is magic, wisdom, intelligence, mystery, solitude,
(29:00):
that's you all over. What's your number? I'm a nine,
and interestingly there's different. Well, I'm a nine from my
life path number. I'm not sure from my name number.
All right, so we're both nines on the life path number,
which I looked up a thing that said your life
path number is a number of completion resolution. Those with
(29:21):
number nine and this for both of us tend to
have a humanitarian and almost a utopian quality to their being.
Because we're compassionate and philip philanthropical, we are likely to
be drawn towards global issues that deal with the helping
of the whole human kind in the world. But Josh,
we need to be wary of over extending ourselves and
(29:41):
sacrificing too much of ourselves uh, and losing the greater
perspective in the pursuit of pursuit of our goals. We
have to learn to say no sometimes. In other words, yeah,
we've gotten better about that over the years, and that
is definitely and that well, that's because we're there following
our our um, we're following destiny numbers towards our life
(30:01):
path number. So what that you just kind of like
said of something I think is really important to point
out about numerology that you're gonna encounter if you get
a numerological reading, is the number has the best of
you and the stuff you need to avoid. It's all
encompassed in that one number. And you have multiple numbers,
so each of those have things to avoid, things to
(30:24):
focus on, things to improve on, things to things that
are going to challenge you in your life, which I
find pretty interesting. Yeah, And you know it gets more
complicated than that too. If you want to drill down.
There are numerologists you use these big charts and diagrams
that end up kind of looking like at astrological charts.
And you know that's when they're sort of drilling down to, um,
(30:48):
how you relate to people in your family maybe, or
to the person you're married to, or if you want
to find if you want to find a romantic partner,
or avoid negative tendencies, or just find out what you're
lucky number lucky day is. Yeah, and also there's um
some systems that I've seen multiple places that just rely
almost like shorthand on the date of your birth, So
(31:13):
the day of the month that you were born on,
like that's it. So like I was born on July fifteen,
so that would make me a six. And that's it.
That's what they use. They don't do the name thing.
They don't do your whole birthday. They just do the
day of the month that you were born on, almost
like much much more like a zodeological sign or astrological
sign um. And so as a six, I can do
(31:35):
things like I need to look for foods that are pale,
purple and blue. Those are going to vibrate with me
most most harmoniously. I should live in a city, maybe
Madras or Baton Rouge, surprising to me. And then I
should associate mostly with number fives. It turns out that
I'm most harmonious with them. Is you me a five?
(31:57):
I don't know. I know she's a three, I think
because yeah, she's thirty, so she's a she's a ten.
That's very nice, Emily, and we are ten's that's why
we married them. Let's just go with eleven. Mine goes
to eleven. Uh, I love that um. And this is
this is actual in the House of works article. I
(32:18):
can't believe you found one that we haven't mined yet.
But this is from Tracy Wilson. Are are still colleague
almost in former because we just don't see them anymore?
Which of the of the virus? But are you about no, no, no,
over at stuff you miss in history class with Holly right,
are you about to out her from as as a numerologist? No,
(32:40):
as a determined Harry Potter fan. Oh, I didn't even
think about that. This all makes sense. Now there's a
lot of Harry Potter in this There is a lot
of Harry Potter, and this articles all makes sense now.
Casey's defense was written in two thousand eight, when like,
you know, the kind of thing that's super hip. But uh, yeah,
(33:03):
it's pretty funny how much Harry Potter pops up. Yeah,
she's Harry Potter as the example of like forming that
or finding Harry Potter's number and all that. And in
the intro to she talks about her maiam e practicing
or rhythmancy. Yeah, which is a big deal in Harry Potter.
But I brought it up because Tracy referred to uh,
and she's probably not the first, but she referred to
(33:25):
numerology as a version a kind of applied mysticism, And
I like that definition basically where you correlate a mystical
symbol with somebody's life. Uh. I think that kind of
says it best. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of
things you could do UM that kind of fall under
the New Age umbrella as far as like numerology astrology,
(33:48):
where you can you can look at it a couple
of ways, like you can give responsibility responsibility for your
life over to your numerological number or your astrological sign,
associate with some people and stay away from other people
or certain foods or whatever, and just kind of like
not have to think about life quite as much or
(34:09):
make your own decisions. That's like the bigger criticism of
New Age stuff, But there's a much more generous way
of interpreting it too, and saying like, you know, if
you're feeling a little lost or unmoored or unrooted and
you're trying to like figure out what direction to kind
of set your compass in, you could do worse than
you know, doing your numerological sign and being like, oh,
(34:31):
I should focus on being more creative and need to
look out for UM. Being too dependent on others. Does
that apply to me? Maybe it does. Let me just
kind of go forth from there. And I wouldn't recommend
doing in a daily numerological thing or anything like that,
But I'm saying like, in some ways New Age stuff
can be harmful because it kind of takes it takes
(34:53):
the purpose out of life for a lot of people.
But in other other ways it can kind of be
a guide. And just the same way that like religio
in or Friends or um a television show that you
think is speaking directly to you, can you know I
hear you? Do you? I do? Uh? I mean we're
kind of at that point. I guess about some criticisms
(35:14):
and one thing Tracy does mention And I think this
is just more as an example, not as specifically as
applies to the practice of numerology, but just people believing
like in a special number in their life and how
they always see that number. Uh. You know, I I
know people that see numbers and think that they mean
something like there's a certain number and I always see it,
(35:36):
And you know that's sort of that confirmation bias at work. Yes, generally,
where you notice that number more, you're really seeing all
kinds of numbers. But you notice eleven eleven on the
clock because you've told yourself that eleven eleven means something
to you, or that it does. You know you've heard
that it does, and you and you don't think about
all of the other times that you've seen on the
(35:58):
clock all day, or all the numbers you see all
the a long and you know that's fair enough. Um.
I think another criticism of numerology is that it's the
whole thing is based on an invented system of counting,
grouping by ten. And that's not even the first or
I mean, I was about to say the most legitimate.
(36:21):
I guess it was. It's not the original system of counting.
It was just made up by people to begin with.
It's the basis of the metric system. I would say
it's legit, well, not illegitimate, but it was. It was
invented by humans, right, yes, And it's not the only
way that we know how to count. Same as that
like using the the English alphabet to divine your future,
(36:41):
because you're applying in number an Arabic numeral to the
to a letter from the English alphabet. Those aren't the
only number systems or the only alphabet system, so like, yes,
it's made up, and you could make a case like
that A numerologist might make is say, well, you were
born English king in an English speaking country that uses
(37:02):
Arabic numerals, so of course that's going to apply to you. Um,
I haven't heard what the response would be for like
if you were born in China, where the average person
needs to know about two thousand different characters in their
alphabet to to make their way through life. Um, like
how that would apply to numerology? Um, but yes, the
(37:23):
basis of this whole thing is like this is like
there's just so many holes you could drive a truck
through every single one of them. But if it's providing
some sort of comfort or um I even guidance to
somebody who's and it's not hurting them, hurting other people,
damaging their lives or shortening or narrowing their prospects, then
I mean, what's is it harmful? I don't know, I
(37:46):
could be missing something in that sense. I know what
you mean. And and even if you're if someone would
be like, yeah, but what about these people that pay
money and flush their money down the toilet? Problem with
a numerologist Another person might say, well, you know what,
I think that it's a waste of money talking to
a therapist who doesn't know you, or they could say
they're stimulating the economy. Well, the point is it's you know,
(38:11):
if the person walks away from that experience happy and satisfied,
then it's a it's a victimless crime. It's not a
crime at all. It's it's someone paying money for something
that they feel like they got something out of. If
you walk out there and you're like, what a rip off,
I can't believe it. They had ten dollars too for
someone to look into a crystal ball or to read
my numerological chart like, then it's a problem. But if
(38:34):
if you want to spend your money that way, we're
not gonna yuck your yum. If you feel good about it,
good on you. Yes, I have one caveat to that though, Okay,
it makes me anxious about about this just signing off
on that, and that is that I feel like this
resurgence and numerology we're seeing, like I'm sure most of
(38:54):
the people who are like the younger people are into
it today don't realize that like it was huge in
the seventies, and then I apparently was huge in the
nineteenth century. It was like like that, it just keeps
coming back at certain times in certain ways. Is that
this time that it's come back around, is it's correlated
with this again, this this death of trust and expertise
and in its anti science sentiment, And in that way,
(39:18):
I don't like anything that promotes an anti science sentiment
or um makes you believe that your opinion is just
as good as somebody who's gone and studied whatever you're
talking about for a dozen super yes, So in that sense,
I do not endorse it if it if it does
kind of promote that. But again, if we can just
bring it back to if it's just making them happy
(39:38):
then you know, and it's not harming them or society
in general, then I'm good with that. Alright, great, like
that matters, I guess I took. My big takeaway from
this article was at the very end Tracy kind of
snuck snuck in a cool fact that I never knew
was that the we the reason that we here in
the West count things in groups ten or it's sort
(40:00):
of a tin based system, is probably because we have
ten fingers, and that the old English language and The
old English words for numbers reflect this groups of ten
and the eleven. The word eleven means one left, and
twelve is an abbreviation of two left ye, like one
(40:22):
left over ten, two left over ten, and then thirds.
That's the fact of the show for me right here
at the bey. I think you're right, Chuck, I totally agree. Uh.
And that means that we should be seeing twelve in
twelve in twelve. In is how I'm gonna say twelve
from now on, I'll be like, look it up and
then think about thirteen two. That's like three, ten, four, ten, five, ten, Yeah, yeah,
(40:49):
twelve in twelve twelve. Even if you want to know
more about numerology, I guess go visit the Bustle or
numerology dot com and see what you think. See if
it's right for you. But God help you if you
stop believing in expertise or become anti science, because that
is not a good thing anybody. Um, but thinking for
yourself is as well. So maybe we can figure out
(41:10):
a way to balance all of that together. Since I said,
let's figure out a way to balance all that together,
it's time for listening mail. This is from Cassie Sounds
like Lassie in Statesboro, Georgia. Oh, yeah, down there, that's right.
So this was in reference to the Georgia lizard that
(41:32):
we had quite a few people right in it is
is not a leopard, gecko or whatever you said it was.
That is everyone's wrong but me, okay, because they don't
have those in this country. Uh, they're big in Pakistan apparently.
But well that's what I'm here. Yeah, that's probably it
from my time living in Pakistan. I've never had a
reason to send an email till now, guys, but here
(41:54):
it is in response to the short stuff on chameleons.
Chuck was going on about the skinks and Joshua's saying
that they're geckos. I'm pretty sure that he's wrong because
way back in ninety nine, my family moved to Georgia
for Minnesota, and I was living in Minnesota. I worked
at a pet store that sold lizards among other animals,
had chamellions, iguanas, geckos and is it pronounced anal a
(42:15):
n o l e uh leave the gun take the annually?
Oh boy, well that's ANNUALI Uh. The reason I'm saying
this is because when we moved to Georgia started seeing
these annolis or anals anals can't be anals everywhere. My
(42:36):
twelve year old brain was cooking up a scheme to
catch them and sell them for the going rate back
in Minnesota, which is twenty dollars each. Uh wow, that
is that's those are nineties dollars. I know those are
grunge dollars. I learned that it was against a lot
of own native species in Georgia, so I didn't go
through with that plan. If you read this email and
you get a chance, search Annulli and see if that's
(42:59):
the szard and that is indeed the lizard Cassie, So
thank you and others for for figuring that out for us.
Very nice. Thank you. Cassie rhymes with Lassie. Um, Cassie
said that right, You didn't say that, that's yeah, she said.
I was like, she's check. Well, if you want to
be like Cassie rhymes with lassie, you can write to
(43:20):
us and tell us your name and what it rhymes
with and maybe we'll end up reading your email on
listen to mail, wrap it up, spank it on the annually,
and send it off to stuff podcast at I Heart
radio dot com Stuff you Should Know is a production
of I heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
(43:41):
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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