Numbers
10
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Origin 1908 to 1965
Ten is the decad, the number of completion and perfection to the Pythagoreans, who held it the holiest of all because the first four numbers arranged as the sacred tetractys sum to ten, so that the whole of creation is folded within it. Ten closes the cycle of the single digits and, reducing to one on a higher octave, returns to the beginning enriched by all that came between, unity raised to a new order. It stands for wholeness, fulfillment, and the completion of a cycle before its renewal. In tarot it is The Wheel of Fortune, card ten, the turning of fate and the endless round of rise and fall. Its keywords are completion, attainment, the closing of one round and the opening of the next, and the initiative of one now tempered by experience. As a compound number it carries the pioneering drive and self-reliance of its root, one, made mature and self-aware. Ten is the full circle that becomes a new point of departure.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period1908 to 1965 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Origin Period500 BCE to 300 CE 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Origin PeriodThe arithmological reading of the first numbers, one as source, two as division, four as justice, seven as virgin, ten as completion, reaches us through Platonic and Neopythagorean writers of the centuries after Plato. Burkert's finding is that it cannot be traced to Pythagoras himself, whose activity was religious rather than mathematical: the doctrines were credited backwards to him. 2 Origin PeriodThe system that gives a number a personality, and a person a number, was assembled in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century out of New Thought material. Balliett's The Philosophy of Numbers appeared in 1908; the chart positions, pinnacles and cycles were added by her successors over the next fifty years. 1 Place of OriginThe Greek world, and above all the Greek cities of southern Italy where the Pythagorean societies were established; the arithmological literature itself is later and largely eastern Mediterranean. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Place of OriginThe United States, and specifically the New Thought circuit of the north-eastern seaboard; Balliett worked from Atlantic City. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Attributed Author / CompilerAttributed by the tradition to Pythagoras. Burkert's study is the standard demonstration that the number-doctrines carrying his name are the work of later hands, and that almost nothing in them can be shown to go back to the sixth century BCE. The attribution is recorded because it is what the tradition says, not because it holds. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Attributed Author / CompilerMrs. L. Dow Balliett, who published the first version of the modern system in 1908 and to whom Dudley devotes a chapter. What later authors added, the pinnacles, the challenges, the cycles, the personal year, is theirs, and this atlas's own numerology-position entries cite four different authors between 1908 and 1965 for what is presented as one system. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Origin of the NamePythagorean numerology is a twentieth-century label. The system it names has no demonstrable descent from Pythagoras, from the Pythagorean societies, or from the ancient arithmological literature; the letter-value chart it rests on was drawn up in the United States after 1900. The name borrows a pedigree, the oldest move in the subject. 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors) Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceSefer Yetzirah opens by counting: thirty-two paths of wisdom, being ten sefirot belimah and twenty-two letters. Of the ten it says "ten and not nine, ten and not eleven", which is the first enumeration of the sefirot anywhere and the point from which the whole later kabbalistic structure is built. 10 is one of those ten. 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah, where the ten sefirot are first enumerated Meaning in the Attesting SourceTen is the tetraktys: one plus two plus three plus four, drawn as a triangle of ten points, and by far the best attested piece of early Pythagorean number lore. The oath of the society is sworn by it, and the acusma that asks "what is the oracle at Delphi?" answers "the tetraktys, which is the harmony in which the Sirens sing". The decad closes the series and the count begins again. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore Modern Numerology
Reduction in the Modern SystemThe modern system reduces every number above nine by adding its digits: 1 + 0 = 1. Whatever the system says of 10 it therefore says of 1, because it holds no separate doctrine for the higher numbers. The stated exceptions are 11, 22 and 33, which it leaves unreduced and calls master numbers. 1 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 1 Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern UseNumerology has been sold since Balliett as a basis for decisions: which name to take, which date to marry on, which house number to buy. Dudley's survey of what numerologists sell is the standard critical account and its finding is blunt, numbers have power over minds, not over events. These entries record what the tradition says, not advice. 1 Learn More
The Base and the Decad
Ten is the base of the counting most of humanity uses, an accident of having ten fingers, and much of its symbolism follows from being the number at which the count returns to one and begins again, completeness followed by a fresh cycle. The Pythagoreans held it the holiest number and represented it as the tetraktys, the triangular figure of ten points arranged in rows of one, two, three and four, whose row-sum is ten; they swore oaths by it. Ten is the sum of the first four numbers and so was felt to contain them. In the Hebrew Bible the round number of a complete set is often ten: the Ten Commandments, the ten plagues, the ten generations from Adam to Noah, the minyan of ten required for communal prayer. The decimal completeness of ten is the reason it so often marks a whole.
In Cheiro's own 1926 scheme of compound numbers, ten is titled the Wheel of Fortune and read as a number of honour, self-confidence and the rise and fall of fortune, the wheel that turns; it is one of the numbers his book carried forward largely unchanged by the later systematisers, Florence Campbell in 1931 and Juno Jordan in 1965, both of whom kept Balliett's 1908 chart and Cheiro's reading of ten intact even as they added new figures elsewhere. As a compound number ten itself reduces further, to the single digit one, so the wheel-of-fortune reading sits alongside, rather than replacing, the tetraktys and the round biblical tens already described above.
Tens Across the Traditions
The pattern of ten as a full set recurs widely. In the Kabbalah the divine unfolds through ten sefirot, the emanations diagrammed as the Tree of Life, a scheme set out in the Sefer Yetzirah and elaborated in the Zohar. Hindu tradition gives the dashavatara, the ten principal descents of Vishnu, from the fish to the still-awaited Kalki. Sikhism recognises ten human Gurus before the Guru Granth Sahib assumed the office. The Ten Commandments anchor Jewish and Christian ethics, and Jesus tells parables of ten virgins and ten coins. Buddhism counts ten fetters and, in the Zen tradition, ten ox-herding pictures charting the path to awakening. The recurrence is not coincidence so much as convenience: in a base-ten culture, ten is the natural size for a list meant to feel exhaustive.
Sefer Yetzirah does not simply list ten sefirot in passing, it insists on the figure: "ten and not nine, ten and not eleven" is the text's own phrase, the earliest enumeration of the sefirot in Jewish mysticism and the point from which the later Kabbalistic Tree of Life is built. Walter Burkert's study of the Pythagorean tradition draws the opposite lesson from the same territory, that the arithmological reading of the first numbers, ten as completion among them, reaches modern readers through Neopythagorean writers centuries after Plato and cannot be traced to Pythagoras himself, whose own activity was religious rather than mathematical.
In the Texts
Sefer Yetzirah 1:1 (Westcott)Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formationcreation, letter and number
In two and thirty most occult and wonderful paths of wisdom did JAH the Lord of Hosts engrave his name: God of the armies of Israel, ever-living God, merciful and gracious, sublime, dwelling on high, who inhabiteth eternity. He created this universe by the three Sepharim, Number, Writing, and Speech.
The ten sefirot.
Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation. translated by William Wynn Westcott.
About This Passage
Sefer Yetzirah 1:4 (Westcott)Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formationnumber
Ten are the numbers of the ineffable Sephiroth, ten and not nine, ten and not eleven. Learn this wisdom, and be wise in the understanding of it, investigate these numbers, and draw knowledge from them, fix the design in its purity, and pass from it to its Creator seated on his throne.
Fixes the sefirot at ten.
Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation. translated by William Wynn Westcott.
About This Passage
Sefer Yetzirah 1:9 (Westcott)Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formationcreation, letter and number
These are the ten emanations of number. One is the Spirit of the Living God, blessed and more than blessed be the name of the Living God of Ages. The Holy Spirit is his Voice, his Spirit, and his Word.
Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation. translated by William Wynn Westcott.
About This Passage
Correspondences & Relations
Numerology Meanings
Born on the tenth, the first compound day, the root is one and the compound adds the zero, which the tradition reads as amplification rather than a meaning of its own. The gift is initiative given extra weight and a wider field: the same self-starting capacity as the first, understood as operating on a larger scale.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Sefer Yetzirah counts ten sefirot belimah and insists on the number: ten and not nine, ten and not eleven.
Ten of Coins carries the rank number 10 within its suit.
Ten of Cups carries the rank number 10 within its suit.
Ten of Swords carries the rank number 10 within its suit.
Ten of Wands carries the rank number 10 within its suit.
Disciplines That Use This
The modern numerological system assigns this number a meaning, which is why the atlas records it as a subject in its own right, though this does not endorse what the discipline says about it. This link shows only that the discipline works with this particular number; the readings of the number itself belong to whichever tradition holds them.
Passages on This
Fixes the sefirot at ten.
Sources
1. Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras Wrought
Underwood Dudley, Mathematical Association of America (Spectrum series), 1997on the pedigree claimed for modern numerologyView the Source 2. Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos und Platon (Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism)
Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1962the chapter on the acusmata and on the tetraktysView the Source 3. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Gershom Scholem, Schocken Books, 1961the chapter on early Jewish mysticism, on Sefer YetzirahView the Source The Mystery of Numbers
Annemarie Schimmel, Oxford University Press, 1993s.v. ten; the tetraktys and the DecadView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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