How many people believe in numerology

The 6th century Byzantine physician Aetius Amidenus employed numerology in his cures for various ills. His prescriptions for gout, for example, changed with the months. He prescribed, among other remedies, milk in September, garlic in October, cabbage in December and abstinence in July. Both the 11 the number of that day and the 5 have played significant roles in American history".

The number , the Biblical "number of the beast", has long been feared by hexakosioihexekontahexaphobics. He also predicted that the world would end in October His name: Damien.

Quoted in The Mirror the next day, dad Mike said: "It was a devil of a birth - a bit of a horror show". Tom Chase, an American New Age writer, used astrology and the Bible to calculate that the antichrist would emerge, followed by an asteroid collision and within a year or two the battle of Armageddon.

The antichrist, according to Chase, is Vladimir Putin. Filming of the horror classic The Omen, in which the family of a boy, called Damien, are unaware he is the son of Satan, was beset by a series of unexplained numerological crises. Gergory Peck, star of the original, and screenwriter David Seltzer took separate flights to the UK for filming, but both planes were struck by lightning. The Italian goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon was condemned for wearing a shirt bearing the number In neo-Nazi numerology, the figures mean Heil Hitler, H being the eighth letter in the alphabet.

Buffon denied any knowledge of the link, claiming: "I have chosen 88 because it reminds me of four balls and in Italy we all know what it means to have balls: strength and determination. Marcus du Sautoy, a distinguished Oxford professor of mathematics, believes athletes like Beckham who wear "powerful" prime numbers on their shirts perform better than those who do not. Outlining his theory in a lecture earlier this year, Du Sautoy said: "Sport is about psychology and if you genuinely believe there is something powerful about your number then there is no doubt you will play better.

Last February a numerologist was jailed for the murder of a Hull driving instructor. Martin Brown, 42, had scrawled his birth date, the number of his victim's house and the planned murder date on a matchbox found in the area years later. The evidence helped secure Brown's extradition from Australia, where he had moved after the murder. Numerologists believe a single-digit number derived from one's date of birth reveals a lot about one's personality.

Finding your "soul number" involves adding the digits of your birth day, month and year. Mahatma Ghandi and Thomas Edison are among a select group of "exceptional" beings whose dates of birth correspond to the "master numbers" 11 and She talks me through her mystical process.

Then I look at the possibilities and help people to unblock the blockages to where they want to go. If numerology is where the spiritual, the intangible meets mathematics how does it actually work? Everyone's ' life path' number will be different.

We start with my birthday which is So 2 is the macro and 8 is the micro of your life. Romy maps my life out in 9 year cycles and uses my birthday to tell me about what may or may not happen in the future. I tell her that I felt pretty low this morning as I left the house and she looks at the date and does a similar interpretation.

For instance, we work out that most of the challenges I will experience between now and the age of 34 will be related to the number 4. I leave Romy feeling uplifted. Despite the fact that scepticism is my modus operandi her energy and passion stays with me for the rest of the day.

As with reading your star sign, looking at your life through the lens of numerology is oddly addictive and inexplicably comforting. As a generation it does feel like we are, on the whole, what you might call spiritual but not religious. As pollsters Ipsos Mori have found every generation holds a lower level of religious attachment to their elders. Secular Spirituality — in the broadest sense — has been on the rise for some time however, anecdotally at least.

Romy tells me that this year is going to be a 'good year for me where things come together'. My number this year is a 3 and there is going to be success without struggle she says, 'there will be choices that are beyond your control The picture which emerged is much more complex than the simple binary distinction between belief and disbelief suggests. My samples were small, and each one represented a snapshot of a particular group, which makes it difficult to generalise.

But all suggest that when we ask a variety of questions we arrive at different answers. How many people believe in astrology? So why do people believe in astrology? The problem we have is in establishing reliable research. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in.