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Other Works by Lionel & Patricia Fanthorpe
The Oak Island Mystery: The World’s Greatest Treasure Hunt
Satanism and Demonology
The Big Book of Mysteries
Secrets of the World’s Undiscovered Treasures
Mysteries and Secrets of Voodoo, Santeria, and Obeah
Mysteries and Secrets of Time
Mysteries and Secrets of Masons
The World’s Most Mysterious Castles
Mysteries and Secrets of the Templars: The Story Behind the Da Vinci Code
Unsolved Mysteries of the Sea
The World’s Most Mysterious Murders
The World’s Most Mysterious Objects
Death: The Final Mystery
The World’s Most Mysterious Places
The World’s Most Mysterious People
The World’s Greatest Unsolved Mysteries
This book is dedicated to all of our family and friends
who are interested in mathematics and numerology.
Foreword
The writer of this foreword was once described by his grandson as being almost technologically illiterate. There was no sense in taking umbrage as he was only stating the truth. He could have gone even further. He could have called me almost numerically bankrupt and he wouldn’t have been far from wrong. Numbers, as far as I am concerned, if they have secrets or ramifications, or influences on characters or events, others can have them. My apathy towards numbers goes back a long way in my life and I can trace its roots. As a very small child I was privileged to go to a very select fee-paying school. Every morning we did sums using a slate and pieces of chalk and every child who got all his sums right was rewarded with a piece of pink coconut ice. If my teeth came to suffer premature decay it was not due to excess of coconut ice! Like most of us, I learnt to struggle with maths enough to pass essential exams, but even today, faced with the choice of a cryptic crossword or sudoku, it will be the crossword every time. Words I love; numbers I gladly leave to others.
Why then, you may wonder, have I agreed to write the foreword to a book dealing exclusively with numbers, what they portend, their secrets, their influences on character or events, be they imaginary or real? The answer is simple: I read the book in proof form for my two author friends as I have done for many of their other works. Even at that stage, two reasons for recommending it to a wider reading public were immediately apparent.
First, unlike myself, some have always immersed themselves in numerology as a duck takes to water. It becomes their lifelong interest. It is well such people exist as it was their expertise that helped us win the last war. Numerical experts conspired to crack the enigma code and thus gain access to messages that the enemy deemed secret. All throughout the ages there have always been such gifted men and women, for whom all secrets are a challenge. Some spend a lifetime studying the stars above us. Others plumb the depths of the world’s great oceans. Some scholars devote their lives to seeking out and then deciphering the world’s most ancient manuscripts. Numerologists are just such like-minded people and there are many of them. To them, at least, this book is offered, and the authors hope it will cause many others to take interest in some of the mysteries it uncovers. The book, in some ways, is beyond me. It is not beyond others who will enjoy every page of it.
My second reason for endorsing the book is the immense volume of research it reveals. How do the Fanthorpes do it? Co-author Lionel works full-time, and yet, somehow, he and Patricia find time and energy to uncover so much hitherto known only to the few. They write about all sorts of people from so many countries and so many ages, often, seemingly, telling stories the rest of the world seem never to have heard.
Their scholarship is immense and meticulous and deserves to be shared with others. I hope that their labours get the support they deserve.
— Stanley Mogford, Cardiff, 2012
(The authors are deeply grateful to Canon Mogford for his help with proofreading and supplying this foreword. He is rightly regarded as one of the foremost scholars in Wales.)
Introduction
Numbers play an essential, integral part in all of our lives. The time and space in which we live and move are measured in hours, minutes, and seconds, kilometres and metres. How long until the next appointment? The next meal? The next day off? How far to New York, Toronto, London? We calculate with numbers, we work out the cost of everything using numbers, and we weigh and measure using numbers.
But there are other less obvious aspects of numbers. What do we mean when we think of “lucky” or “unlucky” numbers? Can numbers influence the environment? Can certain numbers make things happen? Can numbers warn us against dangers or lead us towards positive events?
These are the mysteries and secrets of numerology. This is the quest to discover what numbers really are and what they can really do. From a history of mathematics and numerology we explore the mysterious Fibonacci series, which has an enigmatic tendency to turn up in nature where it is least expected.
The more we investigate chemistry and physics at the macrocosmic and microcosmic levels, the more intriguing the numbers become.
Numerology goes back millennia. There were numerologists in ancient Egypt, and the great Greek Pythagoras was a numerologist as well as a brilliant, pioneering mathematician. The early Babylonians were numerologists, as were the philosophical Indians and fearless Norsemen. The wise men responsible for the Kabbalah and the writers and redactors who compiled the Bible were also deeply into the mysteries and secrets of numerology.
The Gnostics, in their relentless pursuit of wisdom, explored their own numerological mysteries and made exciting discoveries there.
Numerologists look for specific links with the numbers associated with names, places, and dates. When all 3 — such as a person’s name, the town where he was born, and the time of his birth — point in the same direction, the insight that these particular numbers reveals is hard to ignore.
Numerology also explores a person’s character type and looks for compatibility — or otherwise — between people. Would numerological analysis have warned Desdemona away from Othello, the husband who killed her? Cleopatra might have avoided Antony, and Belle Elmore might not have married Hawley Crippen.
The mysteries and secrets of numerology are closely linked with the mysteries and secrets of the Zodiac and astrology. There are also strange secret connections between tarot cards and numerology. The numbers of the major arcana can reveal a great deal to the skilled numerologist.
There are also persistent numerical features in folklore, legend, and mythology. These, too, would seem to have numerological significance.
Music, and especially folksongs, also have numerological associations.
So the persistent numerological questions remain mysterious and unanswered: do numbers influence people, places, times, and events?
— Lionel and Patricia Fanthorpe, 2012
1
What are Mathematics and Numerology?
Our broad understanding of mathematics is that it is a system of communication, calculation, and problem solving involving the use of numbers and allied symbols that represent processes such as addition, subtraction, multiplication,