Numbers
32
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Origin 1908 to 1965
Thirty-two is two to the fifth power. Sefer Yetzirah, the earliest work of Jewish speculative cosmology, opens by declaring that God created the world through thirty-two wondrous paths of wisdom, and specifies them as the ten sefirot and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The book's date is genuinely disputed, with mainstream estimates running from the third to the sixth century and a minority arguing for a later Islamic-era composition. Buddhist tradition lists thirty-two lakshanas, the major bodily marks of a great man, applied to the Buddha. A full adult dentition is thirty-two teeth. In digit-reduction numerology it reduces to 5.
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) Modern Numerology
Reduction in the Modern SystemThe modern system leaves 33 unreduced rather than reducing it to 6 (3 + 3 = 6). Its own already-cited rival-attribution fact states this directly: 33 is a master number, not to be reduced to a single digit, the third and rarest of the three (with 11 and 22) said to carry a heightened vibration in its own right, even though its own description draws on the resonance of 6 in reading its character. 1 Status
Standing as a Comparative CategoryLargely abandoned as a comparative category 1 Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceThirty-two is the count with which Sefer Yetzirah begins: thirty-two paths of wisdom, ten sefirot and twenty-two letters. The number is a sum and not a symbol, it exists because ten and twenty-two are what the text enumerates, and the later scheme of thirty-two paths on the Tree of Life is an elaboration of that opening sentence. 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah: the thirty-two paths and the twenty-two letters 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 Thirty-Two Paths of Wisdom
Thirty-two is two raised to the fifth power, and in the Kabbalah it is the number of the paths of wisdom by which the world was made. The Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, opens by declaring that God engraved creation in thirty-two paths, the ten sefirot, the primal numbers of emanation, together with the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet, ten plus twenty-two making thirty-two. On the diagram of the Tree of Life these become the ten nodes and the twenty-two connecting paths, so that thirty-two names the complete structure of the created order in Kabbalistic thought. The number is reinforced by a further observation: the Torah begins with the letter bet and ends with lamed, which together spell lev, heart, whose value is thirty-two, so the Torah is said to run from heart to heart.
Sefer Yetzirah's count of thirty-two paths of wisdom, ten sefirot and twenty-two letters, is a sum rather than a symbol in its own right, ten plus twenty-two making thirty-two because that is what the text enumerates rather than because thirty-two was independently chosen for its properties; the later scheme of thirty-two paths mapped onto the Tree of Life, ten nodes and twenty-two connecting paths, is accordingly an elaboration of that opening sentence rather than a separate tradition arriving independently at the same figure.
The Marks of a Great Being
Buddhist tradition describes the body of a Buddha or a universal monarch as bearing thirty-two major marks, the mahapurusha-lakshana, from the wheel-signs on the soles of the feet to the crown protuberance and the tuft between the brows; these are enumerated in the early texts and shape the iconography of Buddha images across Asia. The human adult also has thirty-two teeth, a fact folded into the marks in some lists. As a power of two, thirty-two reduces to five, and numerological readings treat it accordingly, but its two great traditional uses, the thirty-two paths of the Sefer Yetzirah and the thirty-two marks of the great being, are among the most developed number-schemes in Jewish and Buddhist thought, each mapping a totality onto the number.
Balliett's 1908 chart reduces thirty-two to five, change and the senses in the standard modern keyword list; Cheiro's 1926 Book of Numbers, Florence Campbell's 1931 book and Juno Jordan's 1965 systematisation all carried that root reading forward without developing a distinct compound meaning for thirty-two the way Cheiro did for numbers such as twenty-seven, so the American chart adds comparatively little to a number whose weight, in Jewish mysticism and in Buddhist iconography alike, is already fully accounted for above.
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 thirty-two paths of wisdom.
Sepher Yetzirah, the Book of Formation. translated by William Wynn Westcott.
About This Passage
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The thirty-two paths of wisdom with which Sefer Yetzirah opens, being the ten sefirot together with the twenty-two letters.
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
The thirty-two paths of wisdom.
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 chapters on Pythagoras and on Pythagorean number theoryView the Source 3. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
Gershom Scholem, Schocken Books, 1961the chapter on early Jewish mysticism, on Sefer YetzirahView the Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007s.v. Sefer Yezirah (32 paths)View the Source Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. the marks of a Buddha (32 lakshanas)View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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