Over the past few years, I’ve consulted a witch, given a lock of hair to a wizard, ‘met’ my guardian angel, manifested like mad, learned to meditate and hug trees, been submerged in a barrel of ice, visited a silent retreat and consulted a psychic, hypnotherapist and relationship counsellor.
All in the name of attempting to combat my low self-esteem, crippling anxiety, lovelessness and resulting unhappiness. Not one helped: I was still waking at 4am, negative thoughts spiralling.
But I never give up. Last year was uniquely awful; I fell head over heels in love with a handsome man, who then cheated on me with multiple women. So, I decided I must take action in order to avoid further catastrophe and heartbreak. On reading that actress and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow consulted a numerologist earlier this year, my interest was piqued.
Gwyneth, 52, was apparently trying to make sense of changes in her life, too, after becoming an empty-nester and losing a beloved dog, a home and people who were ‘not right’ for her.
Put simply, numerology is the study of numbers, based on the belief that they exert a powerful influence over all our lives.
Your own personal numbers are revealed by adding up those in your birth date and assigning each letter in your full name a number, too (A equals 1, B 2, C 3 etc.). Not only do these numbers reveal our character traits but can predict events in our future and even allow us to find our purpose in life. Supposedly. It sounded different to the usual New Age nonsense – far too much maths for that, surely? And it seems I’m not the only one who thought so.
After years of carrying too much responsibility, enduring unhappy marriages, uninspiring careers or the feeling that there just must be more to life, more and more midlife women are said to be using numerology to bring about much-needed change.
But does it actually work?
Liz Jones says after reading that actress and lifestyle guru Gwyneth Paltrow consulted a numerologist earlier this year, her interest was piqued
I met with my own numerology expert, Sonia Ducie, in January. So, seven months on, do I feel happier, more fulfilled and able to make better decisions?
Certainly, what Sonia told me about my ‘Life Path’ has turned out to be eerily prescient. It’s fair to say that I was more than a little sceptical when I first met her.
The daughter of a mathematician father, she has taught numerology for 32 years. She now helps a host of blue-chip businesses, couples going through IVF (‘Very often patients start on the wrong cycle and that’s like going out to sea in a storm . . .’) and soon-to-be parents who want to choose a name for their child that will help them fulfil their destiny.
Increasingly, though, she has been guiding midlife women like me to take the plunge in one direction or another.
Ahead of our meeting, Sonia had asked me to send her my date of birth (05/09/1958) and full name: Elizabeth Ann Jones. When I met her on Zoom, she held up two sheets of paper, densely covered in numbers, charts and arrows she had deduced from that information alone.
First up was my ‘Life Path Number’, the result of adding up the date of my birth (5 + 9 + 1 + 9 + 5 + 8 = 37). This, she told me, meant I like to push myself, love nature, animals and writing, and am strong, self-reliant, sensitive.
My ‘Soul Number’ (what lies beneath) was 32. For this she added up the vowels from my full name and revealed that I’m creative, and that I value peace and quiet.
My personality number was 5, taken from my day of birth, meaning I like adventure, am a good communicator, have a low boredom threshold and am gregarious. (Gregarious? I’m the most introverted person you’ll ever meet.)
The numbers from my first name indicated I’m a mover and shaker but find it hard to trust.
‘The numbers in Jones can bring heavy-duty responsibility and the need for constant re-evaluation, re-organisation and self-assertiveness,’ Sonia told me. ‘It’s also highly creative. Paul McCartney has that same number. His music touches everyone. As does your writing.’
Had she Googled me?
I was starting to doubt the process until she gave her overall pronouncement: ‘When you rise, you rise. When you fall, you fall. It can be extreme.’
Liz Jones met her own numerology expert, Sonia Ducie, in January
Undeniably true; I went from owning a £2.5 million Georgian mansion in London to being made homeless a decade later.
But how would all this navel-gazing help me to move forward? In particular, how would it teach me to avoid my usual pitfalls?
Namely, men like the one I met at a party last July who said he loved me and wanted to live with me. Yet was cheating with not one but two other women. Would I have been able to avoid him, and the heartbreak, if only Sonia had crunched my numbers before we met?
The number of our first date was 7 – July 19, 2024 (7 + 1 + 9 + 2 + 0 + 2 + 4 = 25; 2 + 5 = 7) – showing I was looking for change, vitality and new motivation. And my numbers in August last year meant I was susceptible to being emotional: I fell in love.
But the cheating scoundrel himself? When I gave Sonia his date of birth, she found him to be ‘self-obsessed, self-indulgent, can be devoted one minute, unavailable the next… he has the capacity to love… himself!’ Bingo!
On a roll, I asked Sonia about my sister, who not only took money from me but turned every family member against me? ‘Her focus is about being right, being critical and judgmental,’ she said. ‘She’s overpowering and persuasive.’ Correct.
I then asked her about the date I was made bankrupt, too: May 10, 2017. The number was also 7, meaning I needed a plan, a new way to keep moving in a constructive direction. ‘It was alchemy,’ she said. ‘When everything’s melted down, coming to a head.’
Numbers, she told me, could have warned me turmoil was to come.
So what about 2025? Sonia declared it should be about streamlining, simplifying, laying foundations, freeing me up to start again.
I needed to look at my finances, health, diet and fitness. Find some bloody joy. This year, she said, would all be about ‘the midwife’ and ‘birth of the light’. My ‘child’ would be a new project, which, it turns out, was bang on.
As of this summer – armed with the new-found feeling of optimism (well, Sonia said I am good enough to be a success!)– I am launching a vegan dog food range.
As a vegan myself, I have long felt bad about feeding my three border collies meat. Before, this would have remained a pipe dream, but with Sonia’s words ringing in my ears, I made contact with the dog rescue charity one of my collies came from who have helped me devise recipes with a Michelin-star vegan chef.
As my numbers confirmed, I do have a deep passion for animals and nature; I am also creative and ambitious.
Sonia also said I would learn how to meditate to help ground me: my personality number, 5, indicates I am impulsive, take risks and, as a journalist for more than 40 years, I have always raced to file on deadline. She said I needed to slow down in my personal life, too.
Meditation is something I ‘pooh-poohed’ because I’m always too busy, thoughts spiralling. But, since July this year, I’ve been having weekly therapy, including breathing and meditation, which I now find calming.
My therapist, Bianca Best, deals specifically with women facing burnout. We practise deep breathing to ground me, but also talk about relationships, work, men – everything.
She has become a trusted friend and I never make new friends: I’m way too shy. But in numerology 2025 adds up to 9 – the year of new beginnings.
Sonia also predicted that August would be about home-making and, again, she was right here.
I’ve just finished the ground floor of my ancient vicarage that I moved into a year ago. I now have oak parquet in the sitting room and, by accident, discovered under the concrete in the kitchen/dining room the huge, creamy original, 18th-century flagstones, saving me a fortune.
Sonia also predicted that August would be about home-making and, again, it seems she was right here according to Liz
Before, I always felt that I didn’t deserve a lovely home, that I would be found out, have it taken away again. Now, spurred on by being told I am deserving, I’m finally able to relax, take ownership. I can sit in my courtyard garden without feeling guilt that I’m not working or weeding.
My numbers also indicated I needed to find joy and rest in my daily routine, so as well as meditation I have been trying to improve self-care. I treat myself to a long walk, plus a soak in Bamford salts each evening, and even light my expensive candles.
When I told Bianca the therapist that I went out for lunch but felt compelled to rush home, she said: ‘That’s good; you have a sanctuary you yearn to snuggle in.’
The numbers urged self-preservation in other ways, too. Sonia has helped me be more wary of others. Not just to be less generous, but to trust less. For example, when I met a man earlier this summer, I made sure it was in a public place. Something that wouldn’t have crossed my mind before.
Read More
Our expert guide to the best anti-ageing and slimming swimwear for your 40s, 50s and 60s
And I certainly didn’t sleep with him two hours after meeting – as I had done with the cheating scoundrel.
Numbers also told me to stop giving away nice things, time and money to make people like me: I am good enough.
So I’ve put the brakes on my generosity. A friend came to stay, gifting me a Diptyque candle. The old me would have given it to my employee; the new me has kept it. And I’m learning not to throw money around, too: I gave my gardener a very strict budget for plants, no longer playing the big ‘I am’.
Sonia used my first name number to expose my inner desires: all I really want is peace and safety, which is true.
I have toned down my reckless tendencies driven by fear. In the past, I agreed to the most outlandish newspaper assignments: ‘Yes, I will cover that earthquake in Pakistan. Yes, I will pose, pitched against model Marie Helvin, in a bikini.’ With this in mind, I have also given up riding my rescued racehorse. Before, I would gird my loins, get on her, and could not wait to dismount, shaking. We are now both far less stressed.
Overall, though, my most burning question was: would I find love this year? Or should I just be happy being single? Embrace my animals and my home?
Ever since the numbers of that first date last July revealed I was looking for change and vitality, I’ve been open to finding love.
And Sonia told me: ‘Come September, you’ll be even more magnetic and sexually adventurous. The potential is there. You’re likely to be drawn by the person next door.’
Oh God, my ex-fiance! He was literally the boy next door. The first man I met when I was 21 and he was doing up the adjacent property. We didn’t get together until 30 years later and I dumped him last summer.
I can’t go back there, can I? He’s currently blocking me on email and text, but… Only a few more weeks until we find out whether the numbers really don’t lie.
- See numerologyworld.org and biancabest.com
CASE STUDY: I earn six figures and found love post-divorce. I’m proof living in alignment with your numbers really works . . .
Ordinarily an optimistic person, I had become someone who cried on the way to my boring PA job every day, painted a false smile on my face, did what I had to do and then cried again on the way home to my unhappy home life.
When my marriage collapsed in 2014, it was devastating. But it did mean that, at 42, I was free to rebuild my life again.
That’s when I returned to an old hobby which, within a matter of months, totally transformed my life.
Now, not only do I run my own private practice with a six-figure turnover, but I also remarried, this time to a wonderful man who is the perfect match for me – balanced, emotionally available and my biggest cheerleader.
Vicky Rawcliffe has re-married and is fulfilled in her business
My secret? Numerology.
I had first discovered a book on the ancient practice while working in my dad’s bookshop in Lancashire when I was a teenager. I remember sitting with the other girls who worked in the shop, calculating our numerology ‘Life Paths’ and being wowed by the results.
My own revealed my Life Path as a 7, which means I’m always searching for meaning beneath the surface, craving time for reflection and inner growth. It showed that my destiny number is a 7 too, confirming that I was meant to trust my intuition and embrace my spiritual curiosity.
For the first time, I felt truly seen: a thinker, a creator, a dreamer with big visions who wants to grow and help others grow in the process.
Yet, after university, I shelved all this and took the well-trodden path of a steady job as a PA in London and marriage to a man who wasn’t a good fit for me. Unsurprisingly, by my mid-30s I felt stuck. But it was only when my marriage ended in my early 40s that I dug out those old numerology books.
Soon, I was spending every spare minute immersing myself in their ancient wisdom, determined to piece together who I truly was — and who I could become. My numbers revealed I had ignored my intuition for too long. When I calculated my ex-husband’s numbers, our charts showed conflicting priorities and very different approaches to life.
In 2017, I re-trained as a holistic therapist, gave up my PA job and started offering reiki, reflexology, facials and massage from my spare room. Within a year, I was winning awards and earning well over £50,000, far more than I ever had working for anyone else.
In March 2021, while my treatment room was closed because of Covid, I began officially offering numerology as a service via video call. Word spread quickly and my client list exploded.
I went on to launch workshops, create digital guides and soon found myself coaching other therapists on how to blend numerology with holistic healing. Before long, my business was turning over six figures — something I never dreamed possible back in my PA days.
I have found that numerology is particularly empowering for women in their 40s, 50s and beyond. It provides clarity and gentle guidance at an age so often associated with chronic stress and burnout. We might be longing for change, be it a new job, relationship, location or general mood. This ancient wisdom helps give us the confidence to go ahead and make the leap.
Finding love again was its own adventure. I had met Mark through work years before. When our friendship began to spark into something more, I did what any numerologist would do — I worked out his chart before agreeing to a first date! Mark’s Life Path number is a Powerhouse 8, which brings dynamic, ambitious energy. Our numbers showed real potential for partnership and transformation, and understanding them gave me the courage to trust my intuition and open my heart, instead of falling back into old patterns.
Our relationship moved quickly – and true to my adventurous 5 Maturity Number (a new energy which comes alive in your 40s), we eloped to Las Vegas in 2019. Between us, we have three wonderful children, and our blended family is living proof of how life – and love – transforms when you finally start living in alignment with your numbers.
As told to Sadie Nicholas. See vickyrawcliffe.com