How a Life Path number is calculated
Reduce your birth month, day and year each to a single digit, add the three together, and reduce once more — keeping 11, 22 and 33 as they are.
Those three exceptions are the master numbers. Most numerologists never reduce them further, which is why two people born days apart can end up with very different charts. Our calculation follows that convention, and the cascade above shows you exactly where it applied.
One detail worth stating, because calculators disagree on it. We reduce each part of the date by its value, so a master number is caught before anything is added: November is 11, the 22nd is 22, the 29th reaches 11 through 2 + 9. The other convention adds the digits of each part first, which makes November a 2 and the 22nd a 4. Both are in print. Ours is the one that keeps this page and the birthday number telling the same story about the 11th.
Numerology is a tradition, not a science. We present it as the former and never as the latter. That's also why the working is always shown.
All twelve Life Path numbers
Life Path compatibility
12 12The full compatibility chartOpen the chart →Life Path numbers — frequently asked
Reduce the birth month, the day and the year each to a single digit, add those three together, then reduce once more. A birth date of 1987-03-24 gives 3, 6 and 7, which sum to 16, which reduces to 7. The calculator above shows every step of that on your own date.
They're the master numbers. The convention, standard in numerology since the early twentieth century, is to leave a doubled digit whole because the tradition reads it as the same theme running hotter. An 11 still carries the 2 reading underneath, which is why some numerologists write it as 11/2.
No. Only the calendar date is used. That's one of the differences between numerology and astrology, where the hour and the location matter a great deal.
Two things vary between calculators, and both are conventions rather than mistakes. The first is whether the month, day and year are reduced separately before being added or the whole date is summed in one go; we reduce separately, which is what most numerologists do. The second is how each part is reduced. We reduce by value, so November is 11 and the 22nd is 22 and the master numbers survive to the addition. Books that add the digits of the part first get 2 and 4 instead. Across every date from 1930 to 2029 those two rules give a different Life Path for 2.53% of birth dates, and different working on screen for 14.24%.
It can't. It comes from a date that has already happened. Numerology has other numbers that move — a personal day, a personal year — but the Life Path stays put.
No. Numerology is a tradition of meaning rather than a method of prediction, and no number here affects a draw, an interview or anything else with real odds attached. We keep that line the same on every page of this site.