Why the letters carry the values they do.

There is more than one system of numerology, and they disagree. The Pythagorean method assigns values to letters in simple alphabetical order — A is 1, B is 2, and so on around the wheel. It is easy to learn and, in this school's view, arbitrary.

The Chaldean system assigns values by sound rather than by position. Letters that carry a similar vibration carry the same number, which is why the groupings look irregular to anyone expecting the alphabet in order.

It also stops at eight. Nine is never assigned to any letter — the Chaldeans held it sacred and would not attach it to ordinary speech. Nine therefore arrives only as a sum, never as a component, and this is exactly why it behaves as it does: nine multiplied by any number returns to itself.

The other distinction is the compound number. Most popular numerology reduces a name straight to a single digit and reads that. The Chaldean method reads the compound — the total before reduction — because 26 and 17 both reduce to 8, and they do not mean remotely the same thing.

The classical texts give readings for the compounds up to 52 and stop. Pandit Sethuraman extended them to 108, drawing on the scriptural and spiritual works in his own library. That extension is the single largest technical contribution this school has made, and the reason its readings differ from every book that preceded it.