Tonight's guest, Glynis McCants explains how to compute your Lifepath Number and your Attitude Number on this page(1) on her website. The use of numerology is actually one of the most ancient of divination tools. Some believe it began with the early Babylonians. According to the book, Divining the Future (2) by Eva Shaw, the use of numerology was widespread in ancient Egypt, and continues to be used there today.
Pythagoras, the Greek mathematician who lived around 550 BC, is considered to be the father of numerology, as it's used today. He observed that the numbers 1 through 4 add up to 10, and that numbers larger than 9 could be reduced to a single digit by adding the numbers together. Pythagoras was quoted to say "the world is built upon the power of numbers." Indeed, he believed that the entire universe could be expressed by the principles and harmony of numerical systems, and "that they were the key to understanding the unknown," Shaw noted.
The mystical Kabbalah also applies the use of numbers, correlating them with different letters of the Hebrew alphabet. Interestingly, both the Greeks and the Hebrews believed that 10 was the perfect number and they related it to creation.
--L.L.(3)
1. http://www.numberslady.com/num.html
2. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0816029377/ctoc
3. http://archive.coasttocoastam.com/info/about_lex.html