Silly coincidences

A couple weeks ago I mentioned a blog post by John Michael Greer on numerology, which has to be the least plausible form of divination I've ever heard of. But Greer is an interesting fellow, so I continue to follow what he writes. And today he posted another one, here.

This one is specifically about how to calculate your "birth number" and what it is supposed to mean. How to calculate is easy: write out your birthdate in numbers and add them up. Suppose you were born on July 4, 1976: then your birth number = 7 + 4 + 1 + 9 + 7 + 6 = 34, and 3 + 4 = 7. So you would be a 7. And his post gives a long paragraph about what it means for your personality and destiny to have "7" as a bith number. (Normally when you get a two-digit answer you add the digits to get a one-digit result. But there is an exception for 11 and 22, each of which gets its own description.)

I'm not going to quote any of his descriptions: you can go read his post for that if you want to. But I was struck by a number of coincidences, by which I mean pairs of people I know who both have the same birth number.

Hosea: 22, which has its own description but shares a lot in common with 4.
Brother: 4

Wife: 8
Marie: 8

[The description of an 8 is very close to what Wife used to be like before she got so sick and basically became a whole different person.]

D: 9
Debbie: 9

Schmidt is also a 9, come to that, but I don't think of him in quite the same way that I think of D or Debbie. 

Son 1: 6
Son 2: 6

[I suppose this could explain why Son 1 has made a point of taking in Wife to make sure she has a roof over her head.]

The descriptions don't always work. My mother comes out as a 5, which doesn't describe her at all. But maybe that's what she used to be like before I was born …? No idea. (My dad was a 7, in case you wondered.)

[Update a year and a half later: I revisit my mother's birth number in this post from May 2023, in which I conclude that it makes a lot more sense than I thought at first.]

But my brother and I are both 4 (more or less); my sons are both 6; my first two girlfriends (Marie and Wife) were both 8; my two romances immediately after Wife (D and Debbie) were both 9. I mean, sure, the odds for finding a pair here or there probably aren't that bad. But it sure looked a little funny.

Maybe I should stop talking about this now.