Cast & Chart

Personal Year number

9

Numbers describe tendencies in a symbolic tradition. They cannot decide health, money, law, marriage or children.

About this number

Nine closes the popular round, and practitioners describe it with words of finishing: clearance, conclusion and release before another 1. Walton in 1914 had called 1 the beginning of the numbers and 9 their ending, though he applied that to the digits themselves.

Older meanings of 9 disagree more than most. Sepharial's 1911 list is grim, Walton's account is warm, and Agrippa's 1651 English finds incompleteness in a number that stops one short of ten. Taylor's 9 day mixes public performance with a plain instruction to hold no grudge.

Balliett's 1917 book offers a related custom that counts days: a Spiritual Birthday, found by matching the digit of a calendar date to the digit of the birth force. Early writers tried several ways of tying numbers to the calendar, and the Personal Year is simply the one that stuck.

Where this text comes from

Statements credited to an older writer follow the scanned text named here and are paraphrased unless quoted. The modern readings are labeled as modern and come from none of these works.

Our own plain wording. It is not a translation of any single source.