So, you want to learn the origins of numerology. Good. So do I.
And, I also want to write more. So, here I am. Setting out to make the most accessible, pallatable and most importantly tolerable 'scroll' on numerology's history - fit for the next Great Library of Alexandria.
"When one teaches, two learn."
- Robert Anson Heinlein, naval officer, aeronautical engineer and science fiction author
history, noun: the whole series of past events connected with a particular person or thing.
This means, as far as I'm aware, that the task at hand is a behemouth. But, someone has to do it; that, ideally, is not a media publication or charlatan selling your emails when you input them into their numerology calculator.
Why is it a behemouth? Because numerology is one of the languages of the universe* and different key figures are relevant to its history through various periods in our civilisation spanning 1000s of years (though the word itself "numerology" is not recorded in English before circa 1907).
“Everything is numbers and to know numbers is to know thyself.”
- Pythagoras, ancient philosopher (c. 570 – c. 495 BC), polymath, eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism and father of numerology
*if, upon reading that numerology is one of the languages of the universe, you find yourself recoiling, remember that that is the reason why our job is to understand things.
"Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas."
Translates from latin to english to: "Fortunate is he, who is able to know the causes of things."
- verse 490 of Book 2 of the "Georgics" (29 BC), by the Latin poet Virgil (70 - 19 BC)
So, we now know that "numerology" is a modern (western) terminology for a language that our civilisation -- and likely those before us (but I'll leave that to Graham Hancock) -- were magnetised to.
And that I'm magnetised to it, here in 2024. You probably are, too. So, it's a serious subject.
Yet, I'm already name-dropping pythagoras and going as far back as circa 570 BC.
And, what about Chaldean numerology? Babylonian numerology? Indian numerology?
What about them indeed.
Well, it's time that I wrap up this introductory section, find a way to index the contents of what's about to unravel, and start to unravel it. Strap in.