The numbers are not quantities. They are names for planets.

Numerology can be defined simply as the science of numbers that bears on fortune. But it is not a matter of employing numbers in any form you please and expecting luck to follow.

Divination of a past, a present and a future requires thorough study of the influence of the basic numbers from 1 to 9 — how they shape human lives — and research into astrology, palmistry and the other occult subjects alongside. In addition to scriptural knowledge it needs an in-depth study of thousands of individual lives, and of what became of them.

The numbers we use to classify people, 1 through 9, are not quantities. They are symbols standing for the planets of our solar system, which in turn stand in a definite relation to human beings. As there are good and bad people in the world, there are favourable and unfavourable numbers — and employed in everyday undertakings they give success or failure accordingly.

What a competent numerologist actually does is narrower and more checkable than the popular idea of it. He establishes whether a client's date of birth and the sum of the values assigned to the letters of their name are in harmony with one another — whether the person stands under positive vibration or otherwise.

The Hindu seers had a thorough knowledge of the planets, their orbits and their influence. They gave the world its numerals in Sanskrit thousands of years ago, and those numerals spread far enough that they were later mistakenly called Arabic. They also gave the world zero. And they gave it the occult sciences — astrology, palmistry, numerology, physiognomy — with instructions for using them to lead a healthy and settled life.

But the language was esoteric and the teachers were few. In the modern period, as the Puranas had predicted, English became the common tongue, and numerology was codified by teachers and authors: Sepharial, Cheiro, and — last but not least — Pandit Sethuraman of India.