Against the Waves of Grain: the United States and National Numerological Expression

by Ashley M.N.

ESSAY 1: AN INTRODUCTION

I am writing this on the morning of the 2024 US Presidential election, in which the country largely voted to appoint an oligarch-approved autocrat. I don’t really bother saying his name in this space: while Matrix 9D is protected against defilement, what we name and what we choose not to name matters. Even here. There is great power in silence, not-naming, un-naming, and re-naming. Which is why I will refer to the incoming second-term president as The Autocrat. We all understand what that means here. We lived it out when he was appointed to office in 2020, a foundational year that set the stage for what we woke up to this morning.

But the seed of this piece was actually planted upon my realizing that, as far as observing and tracking US collective energies goes, I was neglecting three important calculations - the birth year of a nation, its ruling number, and the subsequent 9-year cycle measurement known as the Personal Year in personal numerology. Allow me to introduce these concepts, which I’m formally coining the Nation Number, Governing Number and National Year Number, and demonstrate why they matter.

The Nation Number of any country is - effectively - its Life Path Number, renamed. “Nation Number” is more apt than just calling it a Life Path Number: where we understand a Life Path to articulate what a person is meant to learn and explore, political bodies are not inherently growth-oriented. Nation-building usually involves gathering around a core set of ideals, visions, and motivations, sure. But it is important to distinguish political bodies from the bodies that each of us have chosen to inhabit. Nations seldom grow, evolve, and (morally) ascend beyond the ideals that originally founded them. We would do well to dispense with that concept now.

The Governing Number of any country is what numerologists call the Ruling Number, which is the sum of a date of birth. Ruling Numbers differ from Life Path Numbers: a Ruling Number shows us the number that influences a person’s life overall, and may indicate the number directly correspondent to the person’s spirit. It is the number helps us understand the seed of their will-to-be. The Life Path number, by comparison, shows us what a person is meant to learn or achieve by incarnating at the time that they did, among the cohort that they did. Among other things. I’ll save further extrapolation upon this for a separate piece.

The National Year Number is effectively a Personal Year Number in a nation-level context. We use Personal Year Numbers to identify where someone is in any given 9-year cycle, the first one beginning upon birth. They can tell us what to expect, what to protect against, what to focus on, and what may have happened before. Change, growth, transformation and impactful events are not contained to a 9-year cycle, however; things don’t just F5 the moment someone rolls into a Personal Year 1, leaving them free of the issues of the previous 9 years. A Personal Year 4 when you were a kid may impact a Personal Year 4 in your college years, and so on.

Doing The Math

TL to R? Skip down to The US, by the Numbers

To calculate any Nation Number, obtain the date upon which the government of that nation officially and decisively established itself, either locally or on the world stage. July 4, 1776 is the official “birthday” of the United States, so we’ll use that. The formula for calculating any Life Path or Nation Number is:

LP/NN = (m + m) + (d + d) + (y + y + y+ y)

You simplify each bracket down to a number between 1-9, unless the sum turns out to be 11 or 22. Therefore:

US Nation Number = (7) + (4) + (1 + 7 + 7 + 6)

US Nation Number = (7) + (4) + (21)*

US Nation Number = (7) + (4) + (3)

US Nation Number = 14**

US Nation Number = 5

Let’s also quickly calculate the Governing Number, called the Ruling Number in personal numerology:

RN/GN = m + m + d + d + y + y + y + y

US Governing Number = 7 + 4 + 1 + 7 + 7 + 6

US Governing Number = 32***, which becomes 3 + 2

US Governing Number = 5

And then finally, let’s see what National Year the United States is in. We can do this by running the same formula used to calculate a Personal Year in personal numerology:

Personal Year = (natal m + m) + (natal d + d) + (current y + y + y + y)

Therefore:

National Year = (natal 7) + (natal 4) + (2 + 0 + 2 + 4)

National Year = (7) + (4) + (8)

National Year = 19, which becomes 1 + 9

National Year = 1, formed by a 10

Viewing the National Year as a 1 can yield a different perspective than if you were to view it as a 1. I’ll save the nitty gritty of that for a separate post, and explore the US’s National Year as a National Year 1.

The US, By The Numbers

Let’s briefly explore what those calculations above actually mean for us. If the first two bits seem a little confusing, try to think of it this way: where a Nation Number can tell us about the “software” that a country runs on for the entirety of its existence, the Governing Number tells us about its operator.

Governing Number 5: The Conqueror, the Colonizer, the Collector

The United States has a Governing Number 5: a number of intense passion, outbursts, sensitivity, explosions, sudden changes, and competition. It is a fast-flowing, fast-cutting number that leads people to prioritize feeling and experiencing, not thinking and ruminating. Whereas the number before it, 4, tends to restrict, 5 comes busting out past the gates, racing and rushing to be free. However: although 5 may be a number associated with freedom, it is not associated with liberation. Liberation is often not found until you’ve hit a 9.

Governing Number 5 can point to a nation formed by the strong drive to conquer, cut loose, and express itself. It indicates a nation that, at its core, resists restriction, limitation, confinement; it can be antagonistic or even hostile to what other nations regard to be propriety, civility, and order, particularly if those things do not serve the nation’s interests. It is a nation that is expressive, hungry, collaborative. It is not easily satisfied with what it has available to it, constantly seeking new resources, opportunities, and experiences. Diversity is a trait common to 5 energy, which nations governed by it will tend to benefit from even if not actively seeking it out.

Nation Number 5: Onwards, Outwards, Inwards

The US having a Nation Number of 5 further compounds the above. Nation Number 5 tells us that the will of the national collective tends to be directed towards dominance, competition, progress (for good or for ill), and change. 5 also is the number of rebellion, violence, riots, rapid communication, and highly-communicable conditions - and so a people with that as its Nation Number will also pour an abundant amount of energy into those activities.

Further, while Nation Number 5 makes room for (and seeks) a lot of expansion, it is not a number that promotes stability, instead generating near-constant ripples, conflict, and shifts of direction. A 5 can peter out and lose strength just as quickly as it exploded into being, unless it has the energy and ability to expand or go where it wants. Without that expansion or a similar viable alternative, a nation with 5 energy will lose political will and begin to collapse. This inclines them towards being incredibly meddlesome, albeit not in ways that are often seen directly and not in ways associated with those governed or defined by an 8. Whereas 8 uses technicalities, agreements, tight-knit diplomacy and litigation, 5 employs skirmishes, direct conflict and aggression, warfare, upheaval, and that which can be shared and circulated quickly. This includes culture and commerce.

When a country with Nation Number 5 begins to fail, its hunger will lead it to devour itself.

The Birth and Growth of a Nation: National Year 1

Despite years marked by a 1 being perceived as “beginnings,” they are often bridge years, connecting the past to the future. If we allow 9 to transform us, it is 1 energy that then forces us to find ways to operate as this new transformed thing. If we are carrying something from the previous 9-year cycle with us, a 1 year often makes that possible. If we have left everything behind, well? We still have come face-to-face with a bridge that we promised to cross once we came to it. It is only a matter of how to get to where we seek to be.

On a national level, then, 1 years are years in which there’s often a spilling over of energy, momentum, and drive - the collective must go, go, go, come hell or high water. 1 energy also tends to do the following: unify, dominate, or leave behind. This is why people who have a 1 somewhere in their numbers often benefit from deepening their well of patience…it can be a rather shallow thing, unless tempered by experience or other numbers in a person’s chart. The same is true for nation-states. This lends a sense of profound urgency to political activity, more than what could be considered average.

National Year 1, like Personal Year 1, can also lend itself to great vision, the unorthodox, and unprecedented directions. Or, unprecedented intensity. There may not always be enough to get a task started in 1 completely finished, but there’s usually enough to make significant headway. National projects started during a 1 are likely to be highly idealistic, usually reflecting the best or most prominent aspect of the country’s Governing Number.

The United States in the Context of a Collective Year 8

As mentioned before: every collective that agrees to use the Gregorian Calendar is under the influence of that calendar’s patterning and flow. Therefore, the United States is currently among many countries in being under the auspices of a Collective Year 8.

Collective Year 8, like Personal Year 8, tends to express itself similarly to the traditional Vedic definition of karma: as a sum of all prior actions. Whether this sum is benefic, malefic or neutrally dispositive towards the collective depends on the tenor of all past actions taken. This is why people have come to associate Collective Year (and Month!) 8 with “fuck around and find out,” as the “finding out” can unexpectedly happen after many years of fucking around.

Periods marked by 8 energy can be characterized by profound struggle, especially when it comes to agreements, contracts, litigation, and the law. Like 6, it can be a number associated with bondage; whereas 6 binds by feeling, 8 binds by defining. The guilt trips and appeals to sentimentality that work in 6 are ineffective in 8; if you want to be effective during an 8 period, you must often have power, will, controlling interest, a majority, the ability to navigate cleverly without those things, or the ability to take them from someone else. This is one of the many reasons why I consider 8 to be the numerological sponsor of capitalism as a phenomenon and drive.

Additionally, 8 energy tends to help us become very, very aware of cycles that lend themselves to repetition. Caught in a weird pattern? You may not see it til an 8 period. Took too long to act on something? You might not realize it til an 8, at which point things may be quite hard, but things might be fine by 9. When stuck, 8 makes that ever-apparent, giving us the insight that we need to make the appropriate changes when a 9 period makes that possible.

And more positively, 8 seasons can be periods of great reciprocity and in-kind activity, and great blessings. They can bring sweetness, achievement, and a lot of joy under the right circumstances. They also often promote and support spiritual growth, reflection, and transformation.

So truly, 8 is not always a state of failure, defeat, or struggle. In a number of contexts, 8 can bring about the possibility of fairness and balance. 8 often houses the development of ethical and moral systems that are later put to the test (and truths) in 9. And 8’s revelatory power can further support the manifestation and achievement of justice, making patterns of trespass and wrongdoing more vulnerable to transformation-by-prosecution. This prosecutorial process is not always human-made, human-defined, or human-sympathetic.

And so we have the United States - brash, hungry, United States - struggling with itself massively as this Collective Year energy sits overhead. Remember, fives don’t like restriction; they respond poorly to calls for their restraint. On a cultural level, we’ve seen so many celebrities and public figures here exposed for wrongdoing and also placed on one form of trial or another. There have been great calls for change, and an ample amount of response to those calls - remember, National Year 1 lends momentum. But the United States is the United States, after all; maladaptive fives are accountability-resistant. Which is why, despite the idea of progress and positive change galvanizing so many people, even more used their vote to drag the collective backwards.

America is running, good people. Running, as fast as it can, from itself.

The Autocrat as Numerological Consequence

This article is a very long-winded way of helping people understand the “why” of an Autocrat political victory. And also, a very long-winded way of helping people to prepare more effectively navigate the current spirituo-political landscape.

When faced with a restructuring/adjustment demand that goes too strongly against its core nature, or requires too substantial an amount of redirection, a political entity will move to defend itself. This defense will not sit solely in one party, or one subculture; the Governing Number is like a spore that extends tendrils into every corner of the political collective it rules. Sometimes this works out, and a political body overcomes whatever adverse threat would have caused collapse. But other times…what you get is what we got.

As part of this defensive reflex, a collective in such an afflicted state may raise an idol through which its will can be exerted, and for which its ills can be blamed. This, because it is more energetically efficient than expending psychic energy on grappling with the complexity - or inconvenience - of making that collective will to serve a virtue greater than what it has. So while on the whole, Statesider core culture generates innovation, creativity, connectivity, even - it does not acquiesce easily to its more pressing, antisocial tendencies. The Autocrat embodies the worst of 5 energy’s tendencies while acting as a battering ram for the collective to express the rest.

Ultimately, it is sustained, small-ripple changes that are most effective in shifting the expression - and therefore, politics - of a nation-state ruled by 5 energies. Too much, and the collective fights or gathers the momentum for a swing back into its most convenient direction; too uninteresting, too unengaging, and the collective ignores what is offered.

Closing Remarks

This is essay is not meant to be an exhaustive treatise - I could write a small book on the numerological situation of the United States, as well as why we got here. It does, however, lay some of the groundwork for future writing on the US and how to navigate it using a numerological understanding.

I’m also aware that this is not a comforting read, either: one of the featured conditions of this current numerological climate is struggle with what is in the glaring absence of what should be, a struggle that often brings about an extraordinary amount of fatigue. This is because of concept I call “numeric tension” - the difference between two operant numerological forces, which then goes on to generate its own distinct phenomena.

But my prayer is that in knowing the name of the forces we have beheld - numerologically - we are more prepared for what only appears to be shocking twists and turns of our time. Further, in knowing what numerological season the US is currently in, we can more adequately grasp our circumstances. And perhaps better them, too.

May none of the sacrifices of the just be in vain.

Next Essay: A Theory of Numeric Tension