Glossary

A Soul Name is a sounding name derived from a person's birth date and birth name — not freely chosen, but reconstructed from given data. In the Heartbeat of Earth tradition it emerges from the meeting of Pythagorean numerology, the Kabbalistic angelic system of the 72 Shemhamphorasch, the power animal from shamanic perception, and the astrological Sun-Moon degree. It does not replace a civic name. It is a second, inner name through which a person can remember who they are beyond their biography. The Soul Name is understood as a tone, not a label.

Read more: What is a Soul Name? →

In Pythagorean numerology, the Soul Number is the digit sum of the vowels in the birth name, reduced to a single digit or to a Master Number (11, 22, 33). It describes what a person seeks at the deepest level — what moves the heart before any action follows. Unlike the Life-Path Number, which comes from the birth date, the Soul Number is born from the spoken name. It is treated as a quiet, intimate indicator: the question behind the questions. In Soul-Name work it is one of several building blocks, never the only one.

Read more: Calculate your Soul Number →

The Life-Path Number is the digit sum of all numbers in the birth date, reduced to 1–9 or to a Master Number. It is considered the keynote of the biography — the theme that recurs across a lifetime, regardless of profession, place, or phase. Traditions ascribed to Pythagoras distinguish nine archetypes (the pioneer, the mediator, the creator and so on). The Life-Path Number is not deterministic; it is more like the key in which a life resounds. In Soul-Name derivation it is one of the first values the work begins with.

Read more: Life-Path Number 7 — the seeker →

The Personality Number is the digit sum of the consonants in the birth name. It describes how a person comes across to others — the impression made before a single word is spoken. While the Soul Number shows the inner movement, the Personality Number shows the surface: clothing, posture, opening words, social role. In Pythagorean numerology, Soul Number, Personality Number and Expression Number together form the so-called name core. None of the three is enough on its own — only their interplay yields a coherent picture of the person behind the name.

In Pythagorean numerology, the Master Numbers are 11, 22 and 33. They are not reduced to a single digit because tradition holds that they carry their own vibrational quality. 11 is regarded as the number of intuition and revelation; 22 as the number of the master builder, who realizes great things in the outer world; 33 as the number of the compassionate teacher. Master Numbers are associated with higher tasks and equally higher inner demands. They are not a distinction; they are an intensity. Whoever carries a Master Number in their Life-Path or Soul Number has the choice of whether to take on the full vibration.

Read more: Master Number 33 — meaning →

Numerology is the study of the meaning of numbers. It assumes that numbers do more than describe quantities — that they carry qualities, base vibrations that recur in letters, names, dates and cycles. Numerology is neither a natural science nor a fortune-telling art. It is an interpretive system, comparable to astrology or the I-Ching tradition. The numerology used in Soul-Name work is the Pythagorean school, which assigns the digits 1–9 to the 26 letters of the Latin alphabet and from this derives values for names and dates.

Pythagorean numerology is the most widely practiced numerological school in the West. It is attributed to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (c. 570–495 BCE), although the form used today was standardized in the United States in the early twentieth century. Each letter A–Z is assigned a digit from 1 to 9 (A=1, B=2, …, I=9, J=1, …). From name and birth date the system derives the Life-Path Number, Soul Number, Personality Number and Expression Number. It differs from Chaldean and Kabbalistic numerology, which use other letter assignments.

Kabbalah is an esoteric-mystical tradition within Judaism whose principal works (Sefer Yetzirah, Zohar) emerged between the 2nd and 13th centuries. It describes the structure of creation through the Tree of Life with its ten Sephirot, and treats the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as formative powers. For Soul-Name work, the most relevant branch is the system of the 72 Shemhamphorasch angels, derived from three verses of the Book of Exodus. Kabbalah is used here not as a religious confession but as the source text of a particular angelic typology whose 72 names have been carried for centuries.

Shemhamphorasch is a Hebrew term meaning "the explicit name" — the full, unspeakable name of God. In Kabbalistic tradition this name is assembled from three verses of Exodus (14:19–21), each containing 72 Hebrew letters. Read in the correct pattern, these verses yield 72 three-letter names, each associated with an angel. In Soul-Name work, the 72 Shemhamphorasch angels are accessed through the 5° grid table of the astrological birth degree. In this way every person carries a Day Angel and a Night Angel.

Read more: The 72 angels of Kabbalah →

The Day Angel and Night Angel are two of the 72 Shemhamphorasch angels assigned to a person through their birth chart. The Day Angel is determined by the degree of the Sun on the day of birth; the Night Angel by the degree of the Moon. In the Kabbalistic angelic system, the Day Angel stands for the outer power that carries you while you are awake, acting and visible. The Night Angel works in sleep, in dreams, in the unconscious — quieter, but no less present. Both bear Hebrew names and are linked to specific qualities such as courage, reconciliation, clarity, wisdom.

In shamanic traditions, a power animal is a spiritual being in animal form that accompanies a person and makes a particular quality accessible — the patience of the bear, the far sight of the eagle, the transformative capacity of the snake. Power animals are not chosen; they appear, usually in dreams, visions or on a shamanic journey. In Soul-Name work, the power animal is sought in a guided perceptual practice in the lineage of Core Shamanism and then heard as its own voice within the name. It does not replace therapy or guidance; it complements them.

Read more: Your power animal →

Core Shamanism is an approach developed by the American anthropologist Michael Harner in the 1970s. From ethnographic studies of more than a hundred shamanic cultures around the world, Harner extracted the techniques that recur cross-culturally — the steady drum, the shamanic journey, work with power animals and teachers in the otherworld. He removed the culture-specific elements and made the method accessible outside indigenous traditions. Core Shamanism is taught today through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies and forms the basis of power-animal work in the Soul-Name tradition.

The Sabian Symbols are a set of 360 short images — one for each whole degree of the zodiac. They were created in San Diego in 1925 through the collaboration of astrologer Marc Edmund Jones with the medium Elsie Wheeler. Each symbol is a single, often enigmatic image — for example "A woman reading a letter" or "An arrow flying through a window." The symbols are used in astrological interpretation to describe a degree qualitatively, beyond the pure logic of signs and aspects. In Soul-Name work, they color the reading of the Sun-Moon degree.

The Moon Sign is the astrological zodiac sign in which the Moon stood at the moment of birth. While the Sun describes the conscious self, the Moon describes the emotional, habitual, nourishing inner life — what a person needs in order to feel safe. The Moon Sign changes every two and a half days; it therefore requires an exact birth date and, ideally, a birth time. In Soul-Name work, the Moon degree yields the Night Angel and contributes to the tonal coloring of the name. The Moon Sign is often more formative than the Sun Sign, but less visible from the outside.

The Ascendant is the degree of the zodiac rising on the eastern horizon at the moment of birth. It changes every four minutes and can therefore only be calculated with an exact birth time. Astrologically, the Ascendant stands for the way a person enters the world — the outer shell, the first gesture, the temperament in early contact. It often differs noticeably from the Sun Sign: a quiet Cancer person can carry a loud Aries Ascendant. In Soul-Name work the Ascendant is supplementary information, not a core building block.

In its present-day usage the term archetype goes back to the Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung (1875–1961). Jung described archetypes as universal primordial images of the collective unconscious — recurring patterns such as the wise one, the child, the shadow, the anima. They appear cross-culturally in myths, fairy tales, dreams and religions. In Soul-Name work the term is used pragmatically: for the underlying patterns described by Life-Path Number, power animal and angel. An archetype is not a role someone plays, but a field of resonance in which a person stands more or less strongly.

Resonance originally describes, in physics, the way one body begins to vibrate in response to a frequency from outside. Carried over into Soul-Name work, resonance means: a name, a tone, an image meets something inner — and something answers. The term is deliberately sober. It promises no magical effect; it describes a perception. A Soul Name does not work because it is spoken, but because a person recognizes it as true. Resonance is therefore the only honest promise of effect: either it sounds, or it doesn't. No one can force resonance.

Tikkun is a Hebrew term meaning, roughly, "repair" or "rectification." In Lurianic Kabbalah (Isaac Luria, 16th century), Tikkun Olam — the repair of the world — names the human task of returning scattered divine sparks from the material world to their source. Tikkun thus implies both an inner and an outer practice: awareness, attention, ethical action. In Soul-Name work the term is used sparingly. It describes the idea that a person arrives in this life carrying a particular pattern they have the chance to clarify across a lifetime. Not a fate, more an invitation.

Soul Type is not a classical numerological term but a working concept used within the Heartbeat of Earth tradition. It refers to the broad pattern in which a person's core values — Life-Path Number, Soul Number, Day Angel, power animal — sound together. There are several such types, treated not as fixed categories but as orientation. A person can move through elements of several Soul Types over a lifetime; the dominant type only describes where their center of gravity currently lies. The quiz on yoursoulname.com gives a first hint — the full reading emerges only inside the personal Soul Name PDF.

Persona comes from the Latin and originally denoted the mask worn by an actor in antiquity. C. G. Jung adopted the term for the role a person plays in the social world — the image cultivated outwardly to remain connectable. The persona is neither a lie nor a flaw; it is a necessary bridge between inner and outer. It only becomes a problem when a person identifies with it and loses the self underneath. In Soul-Name work, the Soul Name is a counterweight to the persona — not its replacement, but its quiet complement.