TOWARD A CELTIC NUMEROLOGY
       ==========================
             by Mike Nichols


'...I have been a word among letters.'
          --the Book of Taliesyn, VIII


    What's in a word?  Or a name? 
What special power resides in a word,
connecting it so intimately to the
very thing it symbolizes?  Does each
word or name have its own 'vibration',
as is generally believed by those of
us who follow the Western occult
tradition?  And if so, how do we begin
to unravel its meaning?  Just what,
exactly, is in a word?  Well, LETTERS
are in a word.  In fact, letters
COMPRISE the word.  Which is why
Taliesyn's remark had always puzzled
me.  Why didn't he say he had been a
'letter among words'?  That, at least,
would seem to make more logical sense
than saying he had been a 'word among
letters', which seems backwards. 
Unless...

    Unless he was trying to tell us
that the word is NOT the important
thing -- the critical thing is the
LETTERS that make up a word!  The
Welsh bard Taliesyn was, after all, a
pretty gifted fellow.  He certainly
put all the other bards at Maelgwyn's
court to shame.  And over the years,
I've learned never to take his
statements lightly -- even his most
enigmatic statements.  Perhaps he was
really suggesting that, in order to
understand the true meaning of a word
or name, one must first analyze the
letters that comprise it.  Of course,
this is certainly not a new theory. 
Any student of arcane lore would at
once recognize this concept as
belonging in the opening remarks of
any standard text on numerology.  But
to read the same meaning behind a line
of poetry penned by a 6th century
Welsh bard may be a bit surprising. 
Is it possible that the Celts had
their own system of numerology?

    Let us begin the quest by asking
ourselves what we know about
numerology in general.  Most of our
modern knowledge of numerology has
been gleaned from ancient Hebrew
tradition, which states that the true
essence of anything is enshrined in
its name.  But there are so many names
and words in any given language that
it becomes necessary to reduce each
word to one of a small number of
'types' -- in this case, numerological
types from 1 to 9 (plus any master
numbers of 11, 22, etc.).  This is
easily accomplished by assigning a
numerical value to each letter of the
alphabet, i.e. A=1, B=2, C=3, and so
on.  Thus, to obtain the numerical
value of any word, one simply has to
add up the numerical values of all the
letters which comprise the word.  If
the sum is a two digit number, the two
digits are then added to each other
(except in the case of 11, 22, etc.)
to obtain the single digit numerical
value of the entire word, which may
then be analyzed by traditional
Pythagorean standards.

    The problem has always been how to
be sure of the numerical value of each
letter.  Why SHOULD A equal 1, or B
equal 2, or Q equal 8?  Where did
these values come from?  Who assigned
them?  Fortunately, the answer to this
is quite simple in most cases.  Many
ancient languages used letters of the
alphabet to stand for numbers (Roman
numerals being the most familiar
example).  Ancient Hebrew, for
instance, had no purely numerical
symbols -- like our 1, 2, 3, etc. --
so their letters of the alphabet had
to do double duty as numbers as well. 
One had to discern from the context
whether the symbol was meant as letter
or number.  This was true of classical
Latin, as well.  Thus, in languages
such as these, it is easy to see how a
number became associated with a
letter:  the letter WAS the number.

    It is a bit more difficult to see
how the associations in 'modern'
numerology came into being.  The
modern numerological table consists of
the numbers 1 through 9, under which
the alphabet from A through Z is
written in standard order:


   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9
   ---------------------------------
   A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I
   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R
   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z


This arrangement seems somewhat
arbitrary, at best.  At the very
least, it is difficult to sense any
'intrinsically meaningful'
relationship between a letter and its
numerical value.  After all, our
modern alphabetical symbols and our
modern numerical symbols (Arabic) come
from  two completely different sources
and cultures.

    For this reason, many contemporary
numerologists prefer the ancient
Hebrew system because, at least here,
there is a known connection between
letter and number.  However, when we
attempt to adapt this system to the
English language, a whole new set of
problems crops up.  For one, the
entire alphabet is arranged in a
different order and some of our modern
letters have NO Hebrew equivalents. 
Thus, based on the Hebrew alphabet,
the only letters for which we have
numerical values are the following:


  1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8
  ------------------------------------
  A    B    G    D    H    V    Z    P
  Y    K    L    M    N    W
  Q    R    S    T


    Obvi usly, a modern numerologist
wouldn't get very far with this table.
 In order to compensate for the
missing letters in the Hebrew system,
most modern textbooks on numerology
'fill in' the missing letters by
'borrowing' numerical values from the
Greek alphabet, thus mixing cultural
symbols in an eclectic approach that
is not entirely convincing.

    Another problem is the exclusion
of the number 9 from the table --
which modern textbooks often 'explain'
by saying that the Hebrews did not use
the number 9, since it was a 'sacred'
and 'mystical' number.  The real
truth, however, is far less esoteric. 
The fact is, the Hebrew alphabet DID
have letters with the numerical value
of 9 -- the letters Teth and Sade. 
But, since Teth and Sade do not have
equivalents in our modern English
alphabet, the 9 value must be left
out.

    And finally, it is once again
difficult to see any INTRINSIC
relationship between a Hebrew letter
and the number it represents.  Why
should one symbol stand for 1, or
another for 2, or yet another for 3,
and so on?  The whole superstructure
seems somewhat shakey.

    But let us now turn our attention
to a Celtic alphabetic system called
the 'Ogham'.  This alphabet is written
by making a number of short strokes
(from 1 to 5) below, above, or through
a 'base line' (which in practice
tended to be the edge of a standing
stone).  Thus, A, O, U, E, and I would
be written, respectively:


 ---/----//----///----////----/////---


Of course, in this system it is easy
to see how a letter becomes associated
with a number, since the numerical
value of each letter is implicit. 
Thus, A=1, O=2, U=3, E=4, and I=5. 
(It is true there is much disagreement
and confusion among modern scholars as
to how the Ogham alphabet should be
rendered.  Further, a number of
different Oghams seem to have been
employed at various times by different
Celtic cultures.  But this confusion
usually centers on whether the strokes
should be above, below, or through the
base line -- NOT on the number of
strokes used.  On that point, there is
general agreement.  And though
orientation to the base line is
important, it is not essential to our
discussion of numerology, since we
need only concern ourselves with the
NUMBER of strokes used.)

    Thus, based on the work of such
scholars as P.C. Power, S. Ferguson,
D. Diringer, I. Williams, L. Spence,
and D. Conway, I have synthesized the
following table of Celtic numerology:


   1       2       3       4       5
   ---------------------------------
   A       D       T       C       I
   B       G       U       E       N
   H       L       V       F       P
   M       O       W       J       Q
           X               K       R
                           S       Y
                                   Z


Using this table, the student of
Celtic numerology would then proceed
to analyze any word in the generally
accepted manner.  One should not be
concerned that the numbers 6, 7, 8,
and 9 do not appear in this system, as
the Ogham alphabet had NO letters with
these values (as opposed to the Hebrew
alphabet which DID have letters with
the missing 9 value, as mentioned
earlier).  Another consideration is
that the Ogham alphabet is just that
-- an alphabet.  It never represented
any particular language, and
historically it has been employed by
many different languages.  Again by
contrast, the Hebrew alphabet was
structured for a particular language
-- Hebrew -- and many problems arise
when we attempt to adapt it to a
language for which it is not suited.

    Although the Ogham alphabet only
has letter values from 1 through 5,
all of the numbers from 1 through 9
(plus any master numbers of 11, 22,
etc.) will be used in the final
analysis (just as in the Hebrew
system).  To understand how this
works, let us try an example.  We will
use the name of the Welsh goddess
Rhiannon:


   R + H + I + A + N + N + O + N     
   5 + 1 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 5 + 2 + 5 = 29
                           2 + 9 = 11


    Most numerologists will agree that
11 is a 'master number' or 'power
number' and therefore it is not
further reduced by adding the two
digits (although, if one does this, 1
+ 1 = 2, and 2 is considered the first
even and feminine number in the
numerical sequence, certainly
appropriate for a Welsh Mother
Goddess).  Viewed as an 11, the
analysis is usually that of someone
who is on a 'higher plane of
existence' (certainly appropriate for
a goddess), someone who brings
'mystical revelation'.  Often this is
someone who feels slightly distant
from the people surrounding him or
her, and who has trouble feeling any
real empathy for them (which seems to
fit a faery queen who has come to live
in the land of mortals).  Also, this
is sometimes the number of the martyr,
or of someone unjustly accused (which
is certainly true of Rhiannon's story
as told in the 'Mabinogi', in which
she is falsely accused of destroying
her own son).

    By way of contrast, the 'modern'
system would have Rhiannon be a 3, a
somewhat inappropriate masculine
number (not that all feminine names
should always yield a feminine number
-- but one would at least expect it to
do so in the case of an archetypal
mother goddess).  The Hebrew system
would yield an even more inappropriate
4, that being the number of the
material world and all things physical
(and since Rhiannon hails from faery,
she is definitely not of this material
plane.)

    By now, some of my more thoughtful
readers may think they see some
inconsistency in my approach.  Why
have I gone to so much trouble to
point up the flaws in traditional
systems of numerology (even going so
far as to suggest an entirely new
system), only to fall back on
interpretations of the numbers that
are strictly traditional?  The reason
is this:  all of my objections thus
far have been limited to METHODOLOGY. 
When it comes to interpreting the
meaning of the numbers, I have no
quarrel with the traditional approach,
since here we enter the field of
universal symbolism.  All systems of
numerology, be they Hebrew, modern,
Oriental, or whatever, tend to attach
the same interpretive meaning to the
numbers.  When Three Dog Night sings,
'One is the loneliest number that
you'll ever know...', it is a
statement which is immediately
understood and agreed upon by people
from widely diverse cultures.  And the
same holds true for all other numbers,
for we are here dealing with
archetypal symbols.

    It is worth repeating that,
although I believe this system to have
a firm theoretical basis, it is still
in an embryonic state -- highly
tentative, highly speculative.  To the
best of my knowledge, it is also an
original contribution to the field of
numerology.  While some writers
(notably Robert Graves in 'The White
Goddess') have dealt with the
numerical values of Ogham letters, I
believe this article is the first
instance of employing it specifically
as a system of numerology.  I have
spent many long hours working with
Celtic numerology -- putting abstract
theory to use in practical application
-- but much work remains to be done. 
For this reason, I would be happy to
hear from readers who are interested
in the subject and who would like to
share their own experiences and
thoughts.