Meaning
The top row as the Russian tools draw it joins character, health and luck, and the school reads its total as purposefulness: how fixed a person's aims are and how hard they are pursued. No digits is read as aims that come from other people; one as goals set and soon given up; two as realistic drive matched to means; three as strong drive with an unclear direction; four as goals first and the means found later; five as everything thrown at the goal; and six or more as ambition that has burnt out into talk.
In our own words, the row describes how a person holds an aim: lightly, realistically, or so tightly that the aim becomes the point. Two of its cells carry the traditional names Health and Luck, which in this line count only as digits.
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, none. No fixed aims; goals come from other people. Dates: no date of 1900 to 1999, 0.6 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 1, weak. Goals set, and soon given up. Dates: 1.2 percent of 1900 to 1999, 3.9 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 2, normal. Realistic drive, matched to means. Dates: 5.6 percent of 1900 to 1999, 11.7 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 3, strong but unstable. Strong drive with an unclear direction. Dates: 14.6 percent of 1900 to 1999, 21.8 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 4, strong. Goals first, the means found later. Dates: 22.9 percent of 1900 to 1999, 22.8 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 5, maximal. Everything thrown at the goal. Dates: 26.2 percent of 1900 to 1999, 19.4 percent of 2000 to 2099.
- 6+, overload. Ambition burnt out into talk. Dates: 29.5 percent of 1900 to 1999, 19.8 percent of 2000 to 2099.
What fills the line
The row's total is mostly the count of 1s, which every twentieth-century date supplies in its year; the 4s and 7s are scarce, each empty in about four dates in ten. So the row is full for the 1900s, where 29.5 percent of dates reach six or more, and lower from 2000, when the 1s thin out: the average falls from 4.73 to 4.09.
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)
- Purposefulness (целеустремлённость); the English name is ours sourced
- Thresholds
- 0 none; 1 weak; 2 normal; 3 strong but unstable; 4 strong; 5 maximal; 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)
- "Practicality": 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 1, 4, 7 and read the total on the line's own thresholds; the line is Purposefulness.
- Afisha and a few others
- The same cells, drawn with 1 2 3 across the top, so that this row is drawn as a column.
- 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 Practicality": a strength when all three cells hold date digits, a weakness when all three are empty; no bands.
- EsoTerrier
- The row describes how a person holds an aim: lightly, realistically, or so tightly that the aim becomes the point. Two of its cells carry the traditional names Health and Luck, which in this line count only as digits.
Claims about it
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The purposefulness 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 Practicality" 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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In a couple the man should have the stronger top row.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A gendered rule of web calculators, not traced to Alexandrov. We use no rule by sex.
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A difference of 0 or 1 between two people's totals on this line means good compatibility.
unverifiedWhat the record shows: A practitioners' rule of thumb across Russian compatibility sites, not traced to Alexandrov's text and never tested. We compare no squares.
