Babylonian Numerology – From 5000 Years ago to now

If only you would know the magnificence of the 3, 6, and 9, you would have a key to the Universe. If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.“

~Nikola Tesla

Intro

Babylonian numerology can also be known as Chaldean numerology. After the people who created it.

The resurgence of numerology in the 1970s lead many to believe that this is a relatively new age concept, the opposite is true however, Numerology is one of the most ancient mystic sciences for helping us understand and analyse the world around us, and to help us try and understand the deeper truth of the universe we’re a part of.

The most mainstream and current form of numerology we use today stems all the way back to the ancient city of Babylon, which is modern-day Iraq and just a stone’s throw away from modern-day Baghdad.

From the beginning, Numerology was founded on the core concept that our human lives are fundamentally interconnected with everything in the universe and that the universe is guided by energies that can be decoded through the power and study of numerology by the interpretation of the numbers that are discovered all around us, mathematical codes engrained into every part of the observable universe.

Each number represents a unique kind of energy which we can then use to translate directly into our own lives and help guide us and give us a deeper understanding of our true selves, our destiny and our role in the universe.

The First Babylonian Numerologists

In the earliest days of numerology, very few understood the complexity involved in deciphering the laws of numbers. But it was those few people from ancient Babylonia, Egypt, and Athens who laid the basis for ancient science. It’s a long-practiced form of numerology similar to tantric numerology.

It was studied by the brightest minds for thousands of years in these lands. Numerology was a major science in the most advanced of civilisations and they credited the prosperity and long success to the study of numerology and practice of numerology to predict and understand the deeper truths in the world around them.

Let’s dig deeper to find out how and when did it start.

The Babylonians created, studied and practised astronomy and astrology. It was their wisdom and understanding of the cosmos and the world around us of it that led to the modern mode of numerology created by Pythagoras.

This fundamental form of numerology, beginning in Babylon, passed through Hindu and Arabic teachings for millennia, it became an integral part of ancient civilisations and was deeply integrated into Greek, Arab and Egyptian societies and traditions.

From thousands of years ago, The Chaldeans, Mayans, Celts and Egyptians, and many more cultures since have all used numerology to some degree to help understand their place in the universe and to try to grasp an insight into what the future may hold for them.

Who created Babylonian numerology?

Pythagoras is commonly given the title of the creator of numerology in ancient Greece in the years (500BC), and although he is the father of modern numerology and helped popularise it through the western world through his studies and teachings, he did not create numerology.

There is no simple answer to who created numerology. Its origins are deep, further back several thousand years, and the source of this divine knowledge is much more mysterious.

The oldest historically recorded form of ancient numerology is called Babylonian, more commonly known in modern times by the term Chaldean Numerology due to its popularisation by the Chaldean rulers of Babylon. This is where the journey begins, approximately 5000 years ago with the ancient Babylonian empire, which is located along the Euphrates river in present-day Iraq.

The Foundation that Babylonian numerology was built on

It is understood that the concept of Babylonian numerology was created through the analysis of patterns in the world around us, movements of the planets and the observable universe along with their highly advanced mathematical ingenuity.

It’s easy to consider people from 5000 years ago to be much less advanced academically. However, the Babylonians in the middle east were incredibly advanced in mathematics and science, much more than we can imagine, in fact, the Babylonians are the ones credited as the people who created numerology.

The Babylonian’s basis for the creation of numerology came from their divine system of understanding and from their belief that the heavens and the earth were not separate, but were one, and that time was not linear but curved in a way that the future and past could impact the present,

The few surviving Babylonian texts show how they used the beauty of math, geometry and numbers found in the world around us to create a language we can use to decipher the divine. They assigned numbers for everything from the cosmos, and physical objects in the world, to nature and beyond. These numbers would be assigned in relation to the specific vibration or frequency of the object.

From stars, gods, plants, valuable objects, metals, and other objects. The assignment of numbers would be the energy or frequency they would feel from the vibrations of its essence. One important fact is the total disappearance of the number 9. it is yet to be known since it doesn’t appear in Babylonian numerology. This points to the potential importance of life path number 9.

But it was those few people who laid the basis of a science of which effects are everlasting till the existence of numbers. This may sound surprising to some, but ancient numerology was actually a major science in the most advanced of civilisations, from the ancient Babylonians, Egyptians and greeks, this could possibly be a reason for their rapid progress and prosperity. Let’s dig deeper to find out how and when did it start.

A lot of this ancient knowledge was lost and suppressed through the ages due to religious dogmatism and the late roman empire, we have only recently recovered elements of what the Chaldeans understood about the universe and the role of numbers in our lives, however, luckily it has just about survived the ages.

The Rise and Fall of Chaldeans

The Chaldeans of a land called Chaldea at the time were the ancient people who ruled Babylonia from 625 to 539 BC under what was to be known as the Neo-Babylonian Empire, they were known for their study and practical use of the ancient Babylonian numerology and astrology, it was fundamental to their society.

Although Babylonian numerology was already practised for a long time here, the Chaldean rulers were the first to use ancient numerology as the basis for their rule and it was ingrained into every part of their society. It flourished under the Chaldean rule and took centre stage.

This is why Babylonian numerology is more commonly known, even today as Chaldean Numerology.

They only had a short spell in charge of Babylon, their rule over the land came to an end when the first Persian empire (Achaemenid Empire) invaded and began the fall of the great and historical empire of Babylon. After the fall of Babylon, the term Chaldean and Chaldea lost meaning in relation to the people and the land that they once ruled.

Under the new Persian rule, the term Chaldean simply then referred to a class of people who were known to be experts in astrology, astronomy, numerology charts, incantations, sorcery, witchcraft, and the mystical arts. Although their empire fell into the hands of the Persians, their people still held their beliefs and practised, studied and spread babylonian numerology around neighbouring lands.

There are numerous myths and legends about the source of this wisdom that the ancient Babylonians discovered and studied and the Chaldeans practised.

One such myth involves the descendant of the new conqueror of Babylon, a Sumerian god, and a king-to-be.

The Legend of King & Gods

The legend begins with the Sumerian god by name of Enki, who was the god of creation and intelligence, who was also known as Poseidon in Greek mythology and one of the Anunnaki, he was a direct descendant of An and Ki, the god of the heavens and the goddess of the earth.

In this myth, in 705 BC in modern-day Iran, the son of a Persian king and Queen then known as Perseus was visited in the dead of night by a wandering stranger, this stranger revealed himself to be the god Enki, he had come with an important message.

In this first meeting, Enki advised that the parents of the soon-to-be king change the name of their son, to the name of Achaemenes, the parents did not understand why, but they would not second guess the god Enki. What was unknown to them at this time is that the name meant that through the then-unknown science of Babylonian numerology.

A changing of one’s name would reconfigure the numerical frequency with the universe and forever alter the young prince’s destiny.

After this meeting, the newly named Achaemenes rapidly developed, he became a powerful speaker, highly respected at a very young age among the people and he attracted and created massive wealth for the empire, he quickly ascended to the throne at 16 when his father stood down from the throne after seeing how powerful of a leader his son had become.

During the height of his rule and influence over his massively prosperous kingdom, the myth states that he was then believed to have once again met the god Enki, who this time, realised that the king had been fulfilling his destiny to become a great leader, imparted a fundamental knowledge of the universe.

The kind discovered that numbers hold the secrets woven into the fabric of the universe and be understood through the language of Babylonian Numerology.

The legend behind the king is that the knowledge and understanding of how numbers shape the world around us, and our destiny gave him and his descendants the knowledge and power they needed to create the seed for their vast and massively prosperous empire for centuries to come.

This empire prospered until it was visited by the god Enlil who sought the destruction of mankind, and who in the Epic of Gilgamesh, is recorded as the god who caused the great flood that sought to destroy every living thing on earth.

Enlil visited the descendant of Darius the Great in 320 BC, the new king of the empire Darius III. Here Enlil told the new king that if he changed his name, his empire would prosper even more, and he would impart more knowledge about how to improve their ancient numerology system. So Darius III obliged and changed his name.

Within 6 months of changing his name, and therefore destiny. A young king by the name of Alexander of Macedonia marched upon the kingdom, commonly known as Alexander the Great. Although Alexander was massively outnumbered.

He flooded in like a deluge and piece by piece destroyed the last remnants of the last of Achaemenid Kingdom, through massive misfortune in a battle for King Darius III, who was then hunted down and met a grizzly fate at the hands of his cousin who handed his body over to Alexander as an offering.

This trickery from the god Enlil is thought to be the cause of the end of the Achaemenen empire.

The Fact in the Fiction

This is an interesting myth based on some elements of historical fact, one of the descendants of Achaemenes, Cyrus the Great II would go on to be the conqueror of the Chaldeans in 539BC and take Babylon into the Achaemenian kingdom.

Another and as far as Babylonian numerology is concerned, the most important descendant of the Persian king Achaemenes in this story, is Darius the great, he ruled the kingdom when it was the greatest empire that ever existed and covered from the lands of Egypt to Greece, all the way to the borders of China

At the height of his power, Darius the great integrated Babylonian numerology into the constitution and fabric of the empire and it prospered for centuries, their people practised Babylonian numerology freely and it was understood that it gave people access to their destiny, he allowed it to prosper and spread through the lands.

They also built monuments to gods of many beliefs, such as Egyptians, who also believed that the name held the key to the numbers and vibrations of destiny which could be revealed through ancient numerology.

The hard truth of the matter and a fact we know today is that a large part of the Babylonian knowledge and scripture of Babylonian numerology was now lost, as Alexander the Great and his army destroyed and burned down temples and libraries that held the keys and scripture to this ancient Babylonian knowledge.

However, of this ancient knowledge, luckily it had spread far enough, and all was not lost as many of the fallen Persian empires fled into India and took their knowledge of Babylonian Numerology with them. The Persians who fled are in modern times called the Parsis, for centuries they continued to keep their traditions and knowledge of Babylonian Numerology alive.

The exodus of Numerology & the Vedas

Babylonian Numerology left the land of its creation it began to spread to every corner of the world and evolve over the coming centuries. This original form of that ancient Numerology leads to the Pythagorean system of Numerology that we know and use today.

This only came about after the greeks got access to the ancient knowledge of the Babylonians,, after Alexander the Great conquered the land and archimedean empire and although lots of the Babylonian scripture was destroyed in the destruction of the civilisation, the influence and knowledge that was freely practised and shared had spread far enough.

The greek scholars began to spread this knowledge throughout the world. They entered India via the Indus river via modern-day northeast Afghanistan to where the displaced Chaldean people fled to safety after their defeat.

The greeks began to study ancient science directly from the Chaldean people and from what little was left in their land, now ruled by Alexander. The Greeks then began to study and practice ancient numerology, and of course, eventually, popularise it for the western world.

In India, the knowledge exchange between the Chaldeans, Vedic scholars and greeks took place, Vedic scholars were those who studied the Vedas scripture, which are the writings that form the basis for the Hindu religion began teaching the greeks about their beliefs and understanding of the universe, in turn, the greeks shared their newfound Babylonian knowledge of Babylonian Numerology with the Vedic scholars in India.

At the peak of their empire, Alexander the Great ruled over 44% of the world’s population, this allowed ancient astrology and numerology to spread like wildfire, all the way from Babylon (Chaldean) to Egypt (Egyptian Numerals) and finally onto Greece where the most used system was created, the Pythagorean system.

Babylonian numerology and its influence on Egyptian society

The Egyptians had their own cultural interpretation of ancient numerology, although the fundamentals always stay the same, frequencies and vibrations of the world around us, translated into the language of numbers, and then used in a practical way.

The ancient Egyptian people focussed numerology around the concept that everything in the natural world in animated by unseen forces, which we now know to be true today, the movement of every atom and particle was driven by this unseen force.

What seems like an impossible engineering feat, even by today’s standards, the Egyptians used their understanding to create the ultimate tribute to the power of numbers and their relation to the cosmos, the construction of the pyramids was created using the principles of ancient numerology, in fact, the calculation of the angle of the slopes of the pyramid is that of a quadrangular triangle.

Which is now credited as the Pythagorean theorem, however, strangely the pyramids were built many over 1000 years before Pythagoras was born. Leading us to believe that he also learned this knowledge when he was studying numerology in ancient Egypt and it was credited to the greeks.

Discovered on Egyptian papyrus was the focus of the studies of Pythagoras’ time in Egypt as he studied their knowledge. of numbers, his goal mentioned on the Papyrus was the following

“Rules for inquiring into nature and for knowing all that exists, every mystery, every secret.”

The importance of numerology in every corner of Egyptian society can be seen in all their buildings and artworks, there is numerological symbolism in everything they did, they were another civilisation of understanding the power and truth of the numbers.

Expand on each system and divide it into timelines, with excellent graphics linking each.

Pythagoras and Babylonian Numerology

It was between the years 570 – c. 495 BC, the famous Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras studied the Babylonian numerology system deeply in Egypt for over 20 years, which was the intellectual capital of the world in those times. Although Pythagoras has no written documents that survived to this day and age, his work on the study and practice of ancient Numerology still lives on.

The core belief that he held was that numbers are given by the universe and create order by means of a numerical formula. The numbers woven into the fabric of all things they understood held the key to pure and divine truth and described the world more accurately than any other observation of study made.

From Pythagoras’ twenty studies and interpretation of the Babylonian scripture on Babylonian numerology, he believed that the world was built on the laws, language and power of numbers.

This would mean that everything in the universe can be translated and understood through the language of numbers and math. Something that science has since proven to some degree with the study of geometrical patterns and mathematical laws observed throughout the entire universe.

Pythagoras’ most inspiring period came when he created a school in Crotone, Italy. Which through the study of numbers and how it could unlock the deeper truths of the universe and help guide our individual and collective destiny. This is where he refined the Babylonian model of numerology and made it more practical in our daily lives for understanding what the universe has in store for us.

He did make some technical changes to the Babylonian numerology system. For example, the Pythagorean number system, which was the idea of using his interoperation to assign a numerical system to letters is commonly used in modern-day numerology.

Another influential greek philosopher who studied how numbers explain the world around us was Plato, who believed the relationship between numbers could reveal things like the perfect harmony in nature, this is evident in music as the ratio of 2 to 1 produces the perfect audio harmonies, called the octave.

He describes how combining ratios from the first 7 numbers would express the harmony and balance of the universe. This powerful knowledge and its study was beginning to cause some upset to groups who sought more control over this divine knowledge and the study of numbers.

The death of Numbers, the trail runs cold

The ancient people of Babylon who fled and carried the knowledge of Babylonian numerology with them trough out the world and into India are known today as the Parsis.

They continued teaching and practising for centuries, but it became less and less popular over time, and this was in a large part due to the suppression of the state church and disapproval from the late Roman empire. This suppression almost managed to eradicate the knowledge into the dark corners of the earth.

After the golden age of numerology and the incredible work the greeks and Pythagoras had done to refine the ancient knowledge from both Babylon and Egypt, there was a group of powerful and influential people who saw this study of divine knowledge as a threat to everything they held as dear.

In the very early years of Christianity, the founders who were called the church fathers of the Christian church tried to suppress the study, and acknowledgement of numerology and constantly condemned the study, practice and rise of numerology that came from Babylon to Pythagoras and beyond.

Although they believed in the power of numbers to be fundamental to our understanding of the world around us, which is evident as the role of numbers plays a significant part in the Christian bible, they sought to undermine any belief system that relied solely on numbers. For this reason, in the early centuries AD they would not fully commit to the belief that numerology played a role in the world around us.

This reluctance of the now-dominating roman church to accept or allow the practice of numerology came to a head, and the trail on the study of numbers was about to go cold for several centuries.

In the new home of the roman empire, Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul., the Roman Emperor Constantine sought to finally put an end to any line of thought that did not fit in with the beliefs of Christianity. This was to be decided at the now-famous Council of Nicea

It was in the year 325 A.D that Constantine, called a council to unify the beliefs of Christianity and to make sure that they were all singing from the same hymn sheet so to speak, the top bishops joined the council and they decided there and then the future beliefs of the church and to ensure that any belief that was not approved by the state church would be a civil violation.

It was decided that anything that did not fit in with the Christian story and was agreed upon by the church authority would be outlawed in the Roman empire. They created a field of unapproved beliefs within the empire, this included the study and pursuit of knowledge of astrology, divination and of course numerology. However, some of the Greek orthodox churches continued to pursue this ancient knowledge.

Once again religious dogmatism tried to suppress the pursuit of universal truth in numbers. Pythagoras was not the only prestigious philosopher who believe in the power of mathematics and studied numerology, almost 1000 years after his death.

However, it was still being studied scientifically and understood on the fringes, in spite of the potential for persecution from the church-state. It is apparent that even though the church said one thing, they believed in numerology deeply, in the 3rd century, a Christian saint by the name of St. Augustine of Hippo believed that everything had numerical relationships and they could be revealed by divine grace

“Numbers are the Universal language offered by the deity to humans as confirmation of the truth.” – St. Augustine of Hippo (AD 354–430)

The Rebirth of Babylonian Numerology

When science and the arts began to prosper again during the renaissance and with the creation of the Gutenberg printing press in 1440, this allowed ideas to spread through books which could be hidden and passed down through generations, helping to keep the knowledge alive and with so many copies of books on the subjects spreading through the world, it became impossible to suppress the knowledge forever.

Along with the work done on the advancement of numerology by Pythagoras, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) was a famous polymath, physician, legal scholar, theologian, and occult writer.

Created his masterwork called Occult Philosophy (1533) this book detailed the power of numerology and its practical uses once again, it also helped lay the foundation on which modern numerology is based.

During this time in the Renaissance, many people including artists like Leonardo da Vinci used the divine power of numbers to guide his artwork, by using the golden ratio and Fibonacci mathematics found throughout the world around us and the greater universe.

Artists and writers used and connected symbolic meanings to different numbers. Such as writers use certain and repeat a certain amount of sentences, phrases and words in their works, all to represent the true meaning of the text, the readers who see these patterns could understand the true meanings intended by the author of the works.

Cheiro Writes Babylonian Numerology

It was in the 1800s a mystic from Dublin, Ireland was born named William John Warner, more commonly known as Cheiro. In his later years, he became a renowned and very popular Astrologer, Clairvoyant, Palm Reader and Numerologist.

As a young man, Chiero travelled to find and visit the Parsis in India and to gather as much of the ancient Babylonian Numerology wisdom as he could. He met with gurus who still practised it and carried the traditions and knowledge through their bloodline tracing all the way back to the ancient Babylonians.

Upon his return from the journey to India, he came back with a deep understanding of Babylonian numerology and the skills and intuition to practice it, it was at this time that he created his seminal work, Cheiro’s Book of Numbers”.

This covers the basic principles of Babylonian numerology and helped to spread the knowledge of the ancient art throughout the western world, once again, sparking to life the study and practice of modern-day numerology.