Maybe you have already landed on some website, typed in your date of birth and two seconds later received a table full of digits. One cell holds four ones, another a single five, a third holds nothing at all, and next to them it says you have a strong will, a good memory and a special attitude to work. You read the first point and say: “Yes, that’s me.” At the second you raise an eyebrow slightly. By the third you want to ask the author whether they happen to know someone else with the same birthday. In the end the most interesting question remains: how on earth did one date lead to all of this?
The Pythagoras Square is actually fairly easy to calculate, and you can do it yourself in a few minutes. The more interesting part begins after the calculation, because a single digit on its own says little. What matters is how many times it repeats, what is missing and how the separate cells meet one another. That is exactly when the table starts to look less like nine boxes of numbers and more like a character.
The name of Pythagoras makes it sound as if the ancient Greek mathematician personally sat with birth dates, counting who has three twos and who is left without a six. The story is not that simple. The method carries his name by tradition, and the modern system, known as the psychomatrix, is linked above all to the numerological school of Alexander Alexandrov.
The idea is easy to grasp: a few additional numbers are derived from the date of birth, and then you count how many times each digit from 1 to 9 appears. This forms nine cells, linked to different qualities of character — will, energy, interest in knowledge, physical resources, logic, attitude to work, luck, sense of duty and memory.
This is a numerological method of self-knowledge. It is not a scientific test and it does not predict what will happen to you next Thursday. It is more interesting to use it as a mirror: what you recognise in yourself, what you express differently, and how two qualities that sound wonderful on their own manage to create remarkable trouble for you together.
Let us take a person born on 12.03.1985. We will calculate their square by hand so you can see where every digit comes from, instead of pressing a button and taking whatever appears on trust.
First we write down all the digits of the date of birth and add them up: 1 + 2 + 0 + 3 + 1 + 9 + 8 + 5 = 29. This gives the first working number — 29. Then we add up its digits: 2 + 9 = 11, which is the second working number.
For the third, we take the first working number and subtract twice the first significant digit of the day of birth. The day is 12, its first digit is 1, doubled it becomes 2, so 29 − 2 = 27. If someone was born on, say, the 7th (07), we use 7, because the leading zero does not count. Finally we add up the digits of the third number: 2 + 7 = 9. So the four working numbers for our example are 29, 11, 27 and 9.
For people born after 2000 there is a variant of the method in which the third working number is found with a different formula — 19 is added to the first. Different numerological schools do not use exactly the same rules, so two calculators can give different results without either one necessarily being “broken”. When comparing, the most important thing is to know which system the calculation follows.
Once we have the working numbers, we put together the digits of the date of birth and the digits of 29, 11, 27 and 9. Zeros do not count. Then we simply count how many ones there are, how many twos, how many threes and so on up to nine. For our person the result is four ones 1111, three twos 222, one three 3, no fours at all, one five 5, no sixes, one seven 7, one eight 8 and three nines 999.
The digits are placed in a square of nine cells. The first column holds 1, 2 and 3, the second 4, 5 and 6, and the third 7, 8 and 9. For our date it looks like this:
Now we have a person with many ones, many twos and nines, one each of three, five, seven and eight, and two completely empty cells. If we stop here, we know what the square looks like. Once we start reading it, it becomes considerably more interesting.
The ones relate to character and will, and they are easy to spot in an ordinary “Whatever you decide.” One person really means “whatever you decide”, while another says it and then delivers a forty-minute presentation on why your decision is wrong. The more ones there are, the stronger the wish usually is to set one’s own direction and defend one’s decisions.
The twos are linked to energy. This is the difference between the person who comes home from work thinking “Nobody talk to me until tomorrow” and the one who asks at six in the evening: “So where are we going next?” More twos are traditionally read as a larger energy reserve, although even the best reserve can be spent magnificently on things that were never part of the plan.
The threes speak of curiosity, knowledge and the way you learn. One person reads the instructions first, another opens them only after the cupboard is already assembled and three screws are left over. Both can reach a result; the road there is simply different.
The fours are linked to physical resources and one’s attitude to the body. In numerology they are seen as part of a person’s natural store of strength, but the square cannot say whether someone is healthy, nor can it replace a medical assessment. The more interesting question is how naturally you sense the limits of your own resources and whether you stop in time, or realise you have overdone it only when your body has already lodged an official objection.
The fives relate to logic and the ability to connect causes with consequences. It is that “If we do this, then that will happen” which comes almost automatically to some people. Someone else first does the thing, then sees what happened and finally concludes: “Right, next time I won’t do it this way.” That, too, is a way to learn.
The sixes concern work, practicality and one’s attitude to repetitive tasks. Some people see ten identical tasks and simply start with the first. Others look at them for a while, make a coffee, rearrange the desk and decide that before the tasks it is extremely important to check something that has been waiting to be checked since March.
The sevens are traditionally linked to luck and those situations where something seems to arrive right on time. You call at the last moment and it turns out a place has just become free. You meet someone by chance and the conversation brings an opportunity you were not even looking for. A person with sevens still has to get up from the sofa, because fate does not deliver everything by courier. In the system, sevens show how often circumstances seem to lend a helping hand.
The eights are linked to responsibility and a sense of duty. For one person “I promised” means “I’ll try”, while for another it means that even if they already regret it, it is snowing and they have a temperature, they will still show up at 8:30, because they said they would be there.
The nines relate to memory and taking in information. More nines can give a very strong memory, but that does not guarantee you will always know where you left your keys. It is entirely possible to search for your phone for ten minutes and at the same time remember word for word what someone told you in the summer of 2017, including the pause before the last sentence.
That is exactly why the count matters. A digit shows the theme, and its repetitions show how strongly it is expressed.
With few ones, a person adapts and gives way more easily. This can be a wonderful quality, until one evening you hear yourself saying “No problem, whatever you like”, and two hours later you are explaining at home in detail why there actually was a problem and you did not want it that way at all.
With more ones, the will grows stronger. In our example we have 1111 — a person who finds it hard to let go of a decision once it is made. If they set a goal, this is a wonderful engine. But if the argument started over which route to the sea is shorter, the same wonderful will can turn the trip into a scientific conference with maps, kilometres and exhibits of evidence.
This applies to every cell. More twos can give a strong energy reserve, but a person also needs somewhere to direct it. Many nines can give an excellent memory, which also has two faces — you remember what you need, but along with it you may keep a remark that everyone else in the conversation consigned to oblivion long ago.
The empty cell is often what worries people most. You see a nice row of digits, then one big nothing, and the first thought is: “Great. Apparently I don’t have this at all.”
In the psychomatrix an empty cell is seen rather as a quality that does not come automatically and is often built through experience, habits, surroundings and conscious decisions. That is exactly why the empty space can turn out to be one of the most interesting parts of the square.
In our example the four and the six are missing. The empty four traditionally draws attention to physical resources and the need to look after one’s rhythm consciously, instead of treating the body as an employee obliged to be at work around the clock. This is not a medical assessment, and no conclusions about health can be drawn from the square.
The empty six is linked to one’s attitude to work and routine. Such a person can do an enormous amount of work when they see meaning in it, and at the same time look at a pile of monotonous tasks for three days in the hope that meanwhile the tasks will develop a sense of responsibility of their own.
An empty cell does not mean the quality is missing forever. Many people develop exactly that quality remarkably strongly, because they learned it consciously instead of counting on it switching on by itself.
After the separate digits come the lines, and it is with them that the square begins to tell a fuller story. Rows, columns and diagonals are read, and the different combinations are traditionally linked with purposefulness, family relationships, habits, self-esteem, attitude to the material world, talent, spirituality and temperament.
The line 1–4–7 is linked with purposefulness, 2–5–8 with family, and 3–6–9 with habits and stability. The line 1–2–3 is read as self-esteem, 4–5–6 as the attitude to the material world, everyday life and practicality, and 7–8–9 as talent. The diagonals 1–5–9 and 3–5–7 are traditionally linked with spirituality and temperament respectively.
Let us go back to our person. The line 1–2–3 holds four ones, three twos and one three — eight digits in all. The line 4–5–6 holds only a single five. The result is an interesting combination: a strong sense of self and plenty of personal resources, while the practical line is almost empty.
Translated from the language of the table into human language, the conversation might sound like this: “I know exactly what I want.” “Great, and how will you do it?” “That’s the next question.”
That next question is more interesting than any single meaning. How does a person with a lot of will and energy manage everyday life if the practical line is weak? Do they start with a huge charge and then lose interest in routine? Do they earn well while organising the money is another story? Does the strong will make up for the weak line, or is it precisely what makes the person push in a way that complicates things?
The square shows the combination. Life shows how a person uses it.
This is why short automatic descriptions often sound true and insufficient at the same time. You may read “Four ones — strong character” and recognise yourself at once. But a person with four ones, one two and one nine will not express that character in the same way as a person with four ones, three twos and three nines.
In one of them the will can be quiet and steady. In the other it comes with a huge charge of energy and a memory that keeps what you decided and who said what on the matter back in 2017. A single cell gives one part of the story, and the combination shows how these parts work together.
And that is exactly why a real reading begins where the separate descriptions end.
The square shows which numbers are present, how strong the separate cells are and what the lines look like. What the table does not know is how all this has shown up in your particular life. It does not know how you grew up, what you learned, what work you chose, which people you let close to you and what you have already changed.
That is why you can see one part and immediately say “Yes, that’s me”, and wonder about another why you do not recognise yourself at all. And the second may well be more interesting. Does the quality show up in a different way? Have you developed it over the years? Does another strong cell make up for it? Or does this part of the method simply not describe your experience?
In the room “The Pythagoras Square” at FatedWays you can first calculate your square and see the cells and the strength of the lines. If you want to go beyond the table itself, you can ask your square a specific question, place next to it the square of a partner, a child or someone you work with, or choose a full reading, in which the cells and lines are read as one combination.
The reading for two is especially intriguing, because it quickly becomes clear why one person says “Let’s decide now” while the other has already spent twenty minutes weighing every possible option. One may have a strongly expressed quality that is empty in the other, both may be very strong in the same place, or they may share the same empty cell. This gives you one more way to look at the differences between you, without judging whether the relationship is good or bad.
The Pythagoras Square is a numerological method of self-knowledge. It is not a scientifically proven way to measure character, and it does not predict the future. It is most interesting as an occasion to observe yourself and check which parts of the reading you actually recognise in your life. FatedWays is not affiliated with Alexander Alexandrov. The interpretations in the game were developed for FatedWays.
Written by
tarot reader and palmist, creator of FatedWays
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