Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Numbers

6

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Origin 1908 to 1965

Six is the hexad, the first perfect number in mathematics, equal to the sum of its own divisors (one, two, and three), and therefore an ancient symbol of harmony and completeness. It stands for love, responsibility, home, service, and the care that binds a community together. Its figure is the six-pointed star or hexagram, two interlocked triangles joining above and below, spirit and matter in balance, and in nature the perfect efficiency of the honeycomb. In tarot it is The Lovers, card six, the choice of union and the harmony of hearts. Its keywords are harmony, nurture, beauty, responsibility, and the healer's and homemaker's devotion. As a life-path vibration it produces the caregiver, the counselor, and the peacemaker, warm and dutiful, though its shadow is self-sacrifice, interference, and the martyrdom of those who give until they are drained. Six is balanced love in action, the most harmonious of the single digits and the number of the well-tended home.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1908 to 1965 1Tradition: Modern name numerology (Mrs. L. Dow Balliett and her successors)
Origin Period
500 BCE to 300 CE 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore
Origin Period
The 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 Period
The 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 Origin
The 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 Origin
The 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 / Compiler
Attributed 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 / Compiler
Mrs. 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 Name
Pythagorean 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 System
Six is already a single digit, one of the nine base values every higher number in the modern system is reduced down to by adding digits until one remains. The system applies no further reduction to it. 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Sefer 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. 6 is one of those ten. 3Tradition: Sefer Yetzirah, where the ten sefirot are first enumerated
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Six is the first perfect number in the strict arithmetical sense: its proper divisors, one, two and three, sum to six exactly. That property is a theorem, not a symbol, and it is the one piece of ancient number lore in this family that is simply true. 2Tradition: Pythagorean and Neopythagorean number lore
Rival Systems
A Rival System's Attribution
Modern planetary numerology: this atlas gives 6 the ruler Venus, from the table this atlas labels Chaldean. That table rules 4 by Uranus and 7 by Neptune. Uranus was not discovered until 1781 and Neptune until 1846, and both entered astrology only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. No Chaldean source can have assigned either to anything: the table is not old. 4Tradition: Modern planetary numerology, the scheme called Chaldean
Status
Standing as a Comparative Category
Largely abandoned as a comparative category 1
Contested Use
Contested or Appropriated Modern Use
Numerology 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
Six, the Perfect Number

Six has a distinction that is arithmetical fact rather than interpretation: it is the first perfect number, equal to the sum of its own divisors, since one plus two plus three equals six, and it is also their product, one times two times three. The Greeks and the biblical commentators alike found meaning in this, and the six days of creation were read by Augustine as fitting because six is perfect in itself, complete before the world was complete. Six is the number of harmony, balance and completion, the hexagon that tiles the plane and builds the honeycomb, the two interlocking triangles of the six-pointed star joining opposites in equilibrium. From this comes its symbolism of union, service, care and the harmonious ordering of relationships.

In modern numerology six is the number of home, family, responsibility, nurture and love, the caretaker, the harmonious domestic centre. That character reading belongs to the early-twentieth-century American system; what is ancient and checkable is the mathematical perfection of six, which esoteric writing usually gestures at without stating the actual property.

Sixes Across the Traditions

Six is most often the number of a completed work, and it is completed rather than final: the traditions that use it that way almost always have a seventh standing outside the count.

Genesis makes the world in six days and rests on the seventh, and the whole Jewish and Christian week is that arithmetic turned into a calendar. The Mishnah is arranged in six orders. Jewish liturgical thought also counts six directions, four horizontal and two vertical, with the worshipper at the centre making a seventh position that is not a direction.

Buddhist cosmology counts six realms into which a being may be reborn, from the gods down to the hells, and the earlier list of perfections a bodhisattva cultivates is six before later texts extend it to ten. Six is also the number of lines in a hexagram of the Book of Changes, which is why that system has sixty-four figures and not some other number.

The six-pointed star is a special case worth stating carefully, because it is usually told wrongly. Two interlaced triangles are an old and widely distributed decorative motif with no single meaning, appearing in Jewish, Christian and Islamic contexts alike. Its adoption as the specific emblem of Jewish identity is a late development, traced by Gershom Scholem to the early modern period and consolidated only in the nineteenth century.

For the Greek arithmologists six mattered for a different reason. Its divisors, one, two and three, add to six exactly, which makes it the first perfect number.

Correspondences & Relations

Numerology Meanings

A six in the given name makes the everyday strand of the Expression the caring one, and the literature reads it as a name people bring things to. Because this is the name used in ordinary contact rather than on documents, the six's pull toward responsibility operates in small daily encounters rather than in the large commitments the Life Path describes.

A six in the surname reads as inherited responsibility, a family in which someone is always looking after the others. The literature treats this as the strand behind obligations a person never agreed to and cannot easily set down. Where the birth-name rule holds, it stays in the chart permanently even if the family does not.

A six in the middle name puts responsibility for others into the private strand, where the literature reads it as care felt rather than displayed. It suits a person who does not present as nurturing and is nonetheless the one who notices. Because the middle name is often unused, this strand is frequently the least corroborated part of a chart.

Born on a day reducing to six, the assigned talent is for care and for making places habitable. The tradition treats it as a competence, not a duty, which distinguishes it sharply from the six as a Life Path, where the same digit is read as an obligation the person did not choose.

Born on the sixth, the gift is care and the making of a home, read without any compound overlay. The tradition assigns it responsibility that arrives early, often in childhood, and an eye for what is out of balance in a household or a room. It is the most domestic of the single-digit days.

As an Expression the six describes aptitude for care and for repair, whether of people, households or things that have broken. Teaching, medicine, counselling and the domestic arts are the usual readings, and the tradition adds craft and design on the grounds that the six is drawn to what is harmonious as well as to what is needed.

A six here names the obstacle of talent absorbed by obligation, capacity spent on people rather than on what it was equipped for. The difficulty is that the obligations are usually real. This measure is a modern extension of birth-date Challenge technique to the name.

A six as the first Challenge names an early difficulty around responsibility and standards: taking on what is not one's own, or holding others to a measure they did not agree to. The tradition reads it as the Challenge most likely to be praised as a virtue while it is doing damage.

A six over the first Pinnacle opens a period in which the opportunity arrives wrapped in obligation: family, home, and responsibility for someone else. The tradition reads it as the Pinnacle least often experienced as an opportunity at the time, and notes that what it offers is usually accepted before it is recognised.

A first vowel of O gives six, and the instinctive reaction is to see who needs help. The tradition reads this as a reflex toward responsibility, arriving before any assessment of whether the responsibility is one's own. It is among the more common First Responses, and the literature treats it as the most reliably useful in an emergency.

A six governing the first life-period gives a youth organised around family obligation, often with responsibility for others arriving too soon. The literature reads it as the cycle most likely to produce an adult who cannot stop looking after people. It describes the household rather than the child.

A six over the fourth Pinnacle sets home and responsibility for others as the condition of the final period. The literature reads it as the most domestic close available and notes that the obligations it describes are frequently for grandchildren or for a spouse in decline rather than for children.

A six governing the final life-period gives later years centred on family, home and the care of others, frequently of grandchildren or of ageing relatives. The literature reads the return here as belonging, and notes that the obligation the six carries does not lift merely because the working years have ended.

A six as the Major Challenge names a lifelong friction over responsibility and the standards one holds others to. Because it is the difference of two differences, a six here means the earlier Challenges were widely separated, and the literature reads it as a difficulty that intensified rather than settled.

As a Personality the six presents as warm and responsible, the person others approach with a problem. It is the most immediately reassuring of the surfaces. Its cost is being cast in that role before consenting to it: the impression recruits, and the tradition reads the overburdened six as someone who was volunteered by their own appearance.

A six here names a surface that recruits, an outward warmth that collects obligations before the person has agreed to any of them. The friction is between being approachable and being available. It is a modern derivation rather than inherited technique.

A six governing the middle life-period gives working years dominated by family and by obligation to others, whether or not that was the plan. The literature reads it as the cycle in which output is diverted into people, and treats the resulting reduced achievement as redirection rather than failure.

A six as the reduced Maturity number describes a life resolving toward care, home and responsibility for others. The tradition treats it as the most common maturity in practice and reads it as the point at which people's obligations, rather than their ambitions, become the shape of their life.

A six as the second Challenge names a later friction over responsibility, typically arriving with family obligations that expand beyond what was agreed. The literature reads it as the Challenge whose demands are hardest to refuse because refusing them looks like a moral failure.

A six over the second Pinnacle presents home, family and responsibility for others as the opportunity of the years after the first turnover. The literature treats this as the most conventionally timed placement in the whole scheme, and reads its difficulty as the closing of options rather than the weight of the duties.

As a Soul Urge the six wants to be needed, and to have a home worth defending. It is the most easily satisfied and the most easily exploited of the desires, because what it wants is readily supplied by anyone willing to depend on it. The literature reads the six's resentment, when it comes, as the bill for a want that was met too cheaply.

A six here names a desire to be needed that becomes a need to be needed, care offered until it obliges. The growth edge is giving without invoicing. The figure itself is a modern extension of the Challenge technique to the name's vowels rather than an inherited part of the system.

A six over the third Pinnacle presents responsibility for others as the opening of the middle years, commonly for both an older and a younger generation at once. The literature reads it as the placement in which the six's obligations are heaviest and least escapable.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Sextile, Aspects

The circle in sixths, 60 degrees, the sixth harmonic.

Source Harmonics in AstrologyJohn M. Addey

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.

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley
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 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
4. A History of Western Astrology
Nicholas Campion, Continuum, 2009on the discovery of the outer planets and their assimilation into astrologyView the Source
The Mystery of Numbers
Annemarie Schimmel, Oxford University Press, 1993s.v. six (the perfect number)View the Source
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