The pinnacles in numerology

The pinnacles are the four great seasons of a life. They don't describe a single number or a fixed trait, but four climates that follow one another with age, each with its own weather and its own harvest. They are worked out from the birth date: the month, day and year reduced and combined in different ways, so that each stretch of years carries a figure summing up what tends to flower in it.

The first pinnacle is the longest and covers youth, the stage where you learn who you are by trying things out. The second and third are shorter, nine years each, and usually fall over the building of adult life: work, bonds, a home, whatever gets raised by hand. The fourth is the last and the calmest, the one that walks with the long maturity, when what was sown starts to bear fruit without so much effort.

The underlying idea is simple and old: life doesn't ask the same thing at twenty as at fifty. Each pinnacle names the task of its stretch, what that period favors and what it asks you to be ready for. Reading them doesn't foretell the future. It sorts a biography into chapters and tells you, for the one you are living now, what is worth tending and what is worth letting go.