Advanced Numerology: A Deeper Look At The Hearts Desire Number

This post is about the Heart’s Desire, a.k.a the Soul Urge, the numerological sum of the vowels in your name. It’s not an article that defines your number, it’s is about the Heart’s Desire and how important it is to your happiness and prosperity.

Please note that I use either term for the deeper aspect of the inner self, although I think for today’s concerns and situation the Heart’s Desire is a more appropriate name for the strong inner force that drives us.

Before we begin, we need to talk about name numbers in general, one of the most controversial topics in modern numerology.

The Big Question

What name should be used when having a Numerology Chart made? That’s the most common question asked about Numerology. There is the name given at birth and the name you are most known by. Many have a married name, and some have more than one. Names are often changed, as in stage names or other pseudonyms.

The name you use is a matter of personal choice. All name numbers are about choice.

LifePath numbers are fixed by the date of birth and cannot be changed. They represent the circumstances you encounter and your default responses to them.

Name Numbers drive the way you express your decisions and choices. Within the context of your LifePath numbers, the name numbers give you the power to choose your focus and attitude, and these choices can change your circumstances.

The Power in your Name

Someone who complains about having bad luck, and blames their misfortune on the stars, the numbers, family curses, or whatever is operating on superstition-based “cognitive bias”, and not self-knowledge. They create the majority of their own misfortune due to unconscious beliefs about life. They may be victims of the causative power of thought, because numbers do not give misfortune or good fortune, they act within the context of the mind that they work with.

It may seem to be unfair to say that people create their own problems when every day we are all affected by war, natural disasters, disease, societal troubles and so on, but whatever we experience was co-created by us, the minds of millions and the unfathomable mind of nature. Most people live in a cloud of thoughts formed by the influences around them and are willing to accept whatever happens as normal or even good.

Don’t you feel better when things are going well for you? What would happen if you had the power to make your everyday experience your own? Have you ever been able to maintain a positive emotional state when something unexpected happens?

The Heart’s Desire is your creative power

This is what happens when the Heart’s Desire shines through your thoughts by rallying your emotions to the “cause.” It’s not like you can make all moment to moment experience miraculous and happy, but even a little progress in that direction brings fulfillment, and that’s the work of the Heart’s Desire.

When you read the best of new thought, self-help and inspirational literature, you’ll see that they all promote the idea that thought directed by your deepest desires is what causes success and happiness, not following other’s rules about what is good or bad.

Napoleon Hill, Roy Herbert Jarett and James Allen all are very explicit about how focusing on what you want creates thoughts that somehow have the power to make things happen. Neville Goddard taught that “out-picturing” our desires will make them solidify into a real experience. These methods all have one theme; knowing what your true desires are and wanting to fulfill them with a burning passion; that is the Heart’s Desire.

Neville explains the creative power in the most mystical way. He taught how to shift your identity and sensations to the creative power within you, rather than being lost in distraction. Hill and the others gave us practical exercises that help us know and concentrate on the deepest desire until fulfilling it becomes something you’re willing to do, no matter what it takes. Once the mind is focused this way, your thoughts become a channel through which the inner creative power flows.

The Soul Urge is the Heart’s Desire

Some religions, mystical teachings and philosophies believe that Souls incarnate on Earth to experience, to grow and to evolve. Numerology is secular and universal, so we call the Soul’s Urge to have, do and experience things of this world the Heart’s Desire.

Denying your Heart’s Desire leads to a life of wandering in the “whatever”, leaving your own psychic energies to stay asleep. It’s said that if you don’t create your own destiny, others will do it for you. Striving for the fulfillment of the Heart’s Desire awakens your power from its slumber and sets your feet firmly on a path of truth that is truly yours.

Why vowels?

In the ancient writings of many mystical traditions, the vowels were left out of written words, so that uninitiated people would not be able to understand or pronounce the sacred names that revealed the hidden secrets of the tradition.

They did that because the vowels are the “soul” or essence of names and words. The noun “dog” and the verb “dig” would be mistaken for one another unless the vowel defined the word.

The ancient Hebrews and Greeks had had nearly identical letter-number conversion methods. The Greeks wrote speeches and plays to have the maximum effect on their audiences. The keywords found in the spells and summonings of the Greek and Egyptian Magical Papyri were largely made up of vowels, since they believed that their sounds had power over the spirits who aided them in their pursuits.

The Hebrews removed vowels in written messages to prevent their enemies or foolish children from invoking the “names of god” accidentally. They also kept important business matters and spiritual teachings from those who did not “need to know.” They usually did this by using words or phrases that seemed like everyday languag but were coded so that their numeric values were the same as words and phrases from the deepest aspects of their hidden teachings. This is true of many languages, like Sanskrit and others.

Numbers are not causative

Numerology borrows from these older alphabet traditions, even though we use a modern system of transforming the English alphabet into numbers. From what we can trace back by writings and historical records, the “Pythagorean system” gained popularity from its use by the American Dr. Julia Seton in the early 20^th century. It was her and her disciple who first called the “number science” Numerology. Before them, there was a late Renaissance scholar named Agrippa who used the same numbering method, but in Latin. A student of his transposed it to the English alphabet about a century later, but he used the old English alphabet which was a bit different from ours.

It could be a work of his or Agrippa’s in which Dr. Seton found the idea of numbering the alphabet from 1-9 in the common order. She attributed it to Pythagoras, either because of incorrect historical knowledge or because of a personal mystical experience (spiritualism was quite popular in her time). What’s important is that this is the system we use today to convert the English Alphabet into Numerical equivalents, and it works well.

What Numbers “do”

Millions of actions, things, and even intangible objects are assigned to numbers. For instance, the 4 directions are stable no matter where you are on earth (except at the exact north or south pole), which is why qualities like stability, persistence and reliability are assigned to number 4. The numbers themselves do not have “powers.” They are just one way of recognizing categories of things that have similar qualities. They do not cause actions, but the purpose of an action or its effects can be seen by the number that the action, thing or effect is most closely related to. They describe, they do not cause.

All this is to say that numbers are not causative. It is the creative power within you, the power of your thoughts, words and deeds through which you express it that is the cause, and the things you gain or lose are the effects. All these things are in the category of one number or another.

Back to the big question:

So which name should you use? In my own practice, I have found that when a name has been changed, or if you use a shortened version of your original name, that using the full name at birth reveals hidden talents, abilities or qualities that you may ignore, have forgotten, or might not know of. This doesn’t mean you need to start using that name again, but it is well worth studying the Heart’s Desire from that perspective. The name that most people know you by should be fully analyzed so you can find out if your circumstances are what you have truly wanted or if they are helping you reach your current Chief Aim in life.

It’s also crucial that you take an account of your Soul Urge Challenge, since by simple symbolism, it has to do with the obstacles that limit the expression of the Heart’s Desire. “You can’t get what you don’t ask for” is the logic behind this concept. The Challenge to the Soul Urge is a fear, false idea or a misunderstanding that closes the mouth of the heart and inhibits the ability to know what your true desire is.

Finding the Heart’s Desire and the Soul Urge Challenge

The Heart’s Desire is found by creating a list of the vowels in your name. These vowels should include Y, because Y is always used as a vowel sound or to modify another’s sound. The Numerical values of the vowels are: A=1, E=5, I=9, O=6, U=3 and Y=7. For the name Mary James, we sum 1+7+1+5 = 8+6 = 14 and 1+4 = 5. When you study the Soul Urge, it’s best to work with the numbers 1 – 9 in the beginning, in order not to be led astray by explanations of the “Karmic” and “Master” numbers.

The Soul Urge Challenge is found by taking the difference between the first and last vowel. Always subtract the smaller from the larger, and if they are the same, this difference should be counted as 9, not zero. In the case above, we have 5-1=4 as the Challenge.