DC writes: “My husband sees the number 417 everywhere, has for many years. Someone emailed him this sacredscribesangelnumbers.blogspot.com. Does this fall under numerology or Angel initiatives, or ???”
I can confirm your suspicions, DC. Angel numbers are just another version of an age-old occult practice known as numerology.
For those of you who have never heard of them, “angel numbers” are supposedly number sequences that New Agers believe are communications from a person’s guardian angel or spirit guide.
“Your angels (or spirit guides) guide you through your thoughts, feelings, words and visions. They also show you ‘signs’ – that is, things that you see repeatedly with your physical eyes. One of the signs is repetitive number sequences,” says a woman from Australia named Joanne Walmsley who runs the above referenced website.
Joanne is also involved in psychic readings, runes, and other forms of divination.
For this reason, I wasn’t surprised to find prominent New Agers among her “sources”, who she refers to as “respected authors, therapists and spiritualists”.
Joanne goes on to explain how angel numbers work – which is a very complicated “reading” of the numbers based on things such as their placement in the sequence. For example, in sequences that contain more than three digits, the middle number(s) “represent the crux of the message and meaning,” she says.
She uses the number 376 as an example, saying that “the number 7 is to be looked at and deciphered first. Then each individual number – 3, 7 then 6 is to be looked at individually. The entirety of the number 376 can then be added and reduced to a single digit – 3 + 7 + 6 = 16 (1 + 6 = 7). This makes the number 7 the most relevant message and meaning of your repeating number sequences.”
Clients are encouraged to “use your intuition and inner-knowing to decipher your personal message. Your soul will resonate with the appropriate message/s.”
The use of numbers to divine the future or interpret a person’s character, which is precisely what angel numbers attempt to do, is known as numerology and because all divination is condemned by the Church (See Catechism No. 2116), it must be strictly avoided.
Your husband may very well be seeing a recurring number, but Satan, who is a fallen angel but still possessed of enormous preternatural powers, is more than capable of causing something like this to happen. He uses it as a way to rouse your husband’s curiosity and lead him into the clutches of occult practitioners.
Every time he sees that number, he would be better advised to thank and praise Our Lord Jesus Christ for the wonders of His universe – and leave it at that.
