Arithmancy (class)

Arithmancy is a Hogwarts subject taught by Professor Vector. It is Hermione Granger's favourite subject and involves complicated number charts, but nothing else is known about the subject.

The Agrippan Method
The letters A-Z are assigned numerical values 1-9 as follows:

Based on these values, the value for a person's name is calculated. If the result is greater than 9, the values of the digits in the number are added up until it is reduced to a single-digit number. This is a system used to predict the strengths and weaknesses in a person, by using the heart number, the life number, and the personality number. The heart number is determined by adding together only the vowels in a person's name. The social number is calculatd by using only consonants. The character number is determined when both vowels and consonants are used. A similar approach is to use the numbers from a person's birthday to derive their character number. Each of these numbers is considered to have a suitable predictive meaning. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa first applied the concept to the current Latin alphabet in the 16th century and it has been widely used. It is often called “Pythagorean,” but is not connected to Pythagoras.

[edit] The Chaldean Method A lesser known method is the Chaldean method (in this context, "Chaldean" is an old-fashioned name for the Aramaic languages and their speakers). The most significant difference between the Agrippan method and the Chaldean method is that the number 9 is not used in the calculations. This method is otherwise similar to the Agrippan method, but the letters were assigned values as follows (partially based on equating Latin letters with letters of the Hebrew alphabet):