Meaning
The right column joins luck, duty and memory, and the school reads its total as talent. Up to one digit is read as no gift to lean on, so that diligence must get the same result; two as gifts present but hard to bring out; three as talent that can turn into unexpected ability; four or five as a defining gift; and six or more as too many gifts to use.
In our own words, the column describes how readily a person's abilities show, not whether they have any.
Every band, in our words
The line is read by the number of digits in its three cells, on thresholds of its own. Our reading of each band follows, with the share of dates that fall in it over every day of the twentieth century and of the twenty-first.
- 0–1, weak. No gift to lean on; diligence gets the same result. Dates: 6.4 percent of 1900 to 1999, 25.0 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 2, normal. Gifts present but hard to bring out. Dates: 16.7 percent of 1900 to 1999, 28.9 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 3, strong but unstable. Talent that can turn into unexpected ability. Dates: 30.8 percent of 1900 to 1999, 25.4 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 4–5, strong. A defining gift. Dates: 41.1 percent of 1900 to 1999, 19.5 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 6+, overload. Too many gifts to use. Dates: 4.9 percent of 1900 to 1999, 1.2 percent of 2000 to 2099.
What fills the line
Every twentieth-century year puts a 9 in this column, so 41.1 percent of dates from 1900 to 1999 reach the band read as a defining gift. From 2000 the 9 is gone: the average falls from 3.41 to 2.40, the share in that band halves to 19.5 percent, and a quarter of dates total one or less, the band read as no gift to lean on. On the tradition's scale the twenty-first century would look less gifted, which is the arithmetic again.
What this page leaves out
The school compares two people's lines for compatibility and teaches transitions between cells; we compute neither. Births from 2000 are read on the classic formula, with the "+19" variant as a labelled option.
Health (cell 4), Luck (cell 7) and Money and everyday life (the column 4-5-6) are the tradition's names, kept as names: nothing in the square is a medical or financial statement or forecast, and nothing on this page is medical or financial advice.
Correspondences
Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.
- Line name (Alexandrov school)
- Talent (талант); the English name is ours sourced
- Thresholds
- 0–1 weak; 2 normal; 3 strong but unstable; 4–5 strong; 6+ overload: the common Russian scheme; whether they match Alexandrov's own in every band is open disputed
- Readings of each band (EsoTerrier)
- Written fresh in our own words; the Russian sites' readings repeat Alexandrov's books and are not translated our construction
- Arrow in the Western birth chart (Phillips, as summarised)
- "Activity": the same three cells in a grid flipped top to bottom, date digits only sourced
How the schools read it
- Alexandrov's school and the Russian tools
- Add the digits in cells 7, 8, 9 and read the total on the line's own thresholds; the line is Talent.
- Afisha and a few others
- The same cells, drawn with 1 2 3 across the top, so that this column is drawn as a row.
- Practitioners of "+19"
- For births from 2000 the digits counted change, and with them the total. A convention, offered by us only as a labelled option.
- Templeton and Phillips
- The "arrow of Activity": a strength when all three cells hold date digits, a weakness when all three are empty; no bands.
- EsoTerrier
- The column describes how readily a person's abilities show, not whether they have any.
Claims about it
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The talent line is Pythagorean.
falseWhat the record shows: Pythagoras wrote nothing and no early source has a digit square. The eight lines are the Alexandrov school's addition to the Russian square, in print from 1999.
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The square's lines add up like those of a magic square.
falseWhat the record shows: In a magic square, such as the Lo Shu or Dürer's of 1514, every line makes the same sum. Here a line is the number of digits in three cells, and its total varies from date to date.
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Phillips's "arrow of Activity" for these cells is an arrow of Pythagoras.
falseWhat the record shows: The grid of date digits with its arrows comes from Hettie Templeton in Sydney, 1940, carried on by David Phillips. Pythagoras is the brand, not the source.
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The right column fixes how talented a person is.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: The tradition's name and reading, given as the tradition's, in our own words.
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People born from 2000 are poorer in qualities because their squares hold fewer digits.
falseWhat the record shows: An artefact of the arithmetic: a year beginning 20 has fewer and smaller digits than one beginning 19. The sparseness belongs to the date, not the person.
