How to Calculate Your Life Path Number

In numerology, your life path number is a single digit (or a master number) derived from your date of birth. Practitioners treat it as the most important number in your chart, said to describe your natural strengths and the general direction of your life.

It's a belief system rather than science, so there's no evidence it predicts anything. People use it for fun, reflection, and as a lens for thinking about themselves — which is the spirit to approach it in.

Reduce each part of your birth date to a single digit, then add those together and reduce once more. 'Reducing' means adding the digits of a number until one digit is left.

There's one exception to reducing: the numbers 11, 22, and 33 are called master numbers and are left as they are rather than reduced to 2, 4, or 6. If any step or the final total lands on one of them, you keep it.

For example, a birth day of the 29th reduces to 2 + 9 = 11, which stays 11. The calculator applies this rule automatically and shows the full reduction so you can see exactly how your number was reached.