People who believe angels speak to them through receipts

Ellie Muir, The Independent

Every time 41-year-old Leila Green sees the time 11:11 written on a clock, she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. For her, it’s a sign that she’s being protected by angels. So when 11 November rolls around each year, she takes things very seriously. “I like to follow my intuition on that day,” she explains. “If someone I haven’t been in touch with for ages just pops into my head — maybe there’s a reason that I need to connect with that person.” She often looks to “angel numbers” for guidance and support. Just last month, Green purposefully booked her driving test for 11:11 in the morning. She’d failed numerous attempts before, but this time around successfully passed. “It put me in a more positive mindset to take the test,” she says. “It’s the feeling that I’ve got the universe on my side.”

“Angel numbers” are sequences of figures – such as 111, 222 or 888 — that casually appear in our daily lives, with believers convinced that their presence signifies a hidden message from an angel, a spirit guide or the universe itself. And if you look closely enough, repeated angel numbers are everywhere: on car number plates, receipts, clocks, our screens, and within telephone numbers. On TikTok, there are countless videos of people proclaiming the mystical meaning of these sequences, or instructing you how to calculate your own special figure (reached by adding up the digits in your birth date). Hollywood is obsessed with them, too: Katy Perry’s new album, 143, is named after her own angel number. Kylie Jenner often wears a gold “222” necklace. Jennifer Aniston has “11:11” tattooed on the inside of her wrist. In an era that experts say is being defined by “digital spirituality”, angel numbers have never been so ubiquitous.

As a card-carrying member of Gen Z — a generation unafraid of experimenting with concepts like manifestation or star signs — I’ll confess that the topic of angel numbers crops up in many conversations I have with friends. I often make a wish when I see a clock at 11:11, even though I’m not fully sold on the concept. At the Tesco checkout last week, my flatmate celebrated when her basket total came to £5.55. “I’ve been seeing fives everywhere recently,” she told me. “I think it’s a lucky sign to enter the lottery or something.” Depending on where and from whom you get your information, each angel number holds a different meaning. Seeing the sequence “111” can represent good luck, a new opportunity or the ability to achieve your goals; “222” relates to balance, harmony and intuition; “333” is symbolic of growth or change. But it’s open to interpretation based on what’s happening in your life, just like reading your astrological horoscope.

When I speak to 50-year-old Inbaal Honigman, she tells me that she continually finds solace in angel numbers. She recalls being abroad with her four children and feeling stressed and exhausted, until she saw a long sequence of twos on her lunch receipt. “Holidays abroad with four children are not easy,” she sighs. “I was sat there after ordering the food, thinking ‘we’re never going abroad again’. Then I got the receipt and there was this angel number — 222.222 — in the local currency. It was amazing. It was a confirmation that everything was fine.” Honigman prefers to look for signs on receipts or bills, rather than on her phone screen, because it feels more authentic. “My recent phone bill had a serial number printed on it, which contained ‘333’,” she says. “I took it as a sign of a little blessing. It’s a little bit like finding a fiver on the floor after you’ve made a decision — it’s the universe gifting you something.”

Richard Abbott is a numerologist and spiritual teacher who helps people find spiritual meaning in numbers. He tells me that angel numbers can be understood as protective energies. “It doesn’t have to be a literal angel in the sky with wings,” he explains. “These numbers might be a key or connector to a particular angel or protective energy.” Numerology, which is traced back to ancient Greece, is based on the idea that numbers carry mystical meaning. And under that practice, duplicated numbers are very significant. “If you get a repetition of the numbers, then you’re getting a really strong and intense amount of energy, which is acting as a protective shield for you in that domain of your life,” he explains.

Abbott thinks that angel numbers have become so popular because we live in a digital world surrounded by screens. When Abbott was growing up, he says there weren’t many digital clocks. But now, numbers are constantly glaring at us. “We’re getting lifts that go up certain floors that are numbered, we get on flights that have certain seat numbers, we have cinema seat numbers,” says Abbott. “There are more numbers than there has ever been.”

As a numerologist, Abbott is an interpreter of numbers, almost like a tarot reader. He might add together a client’s date of birth to get their angel number, or find the numerical value of their name instead, if A = one and B = two, and so on. He assures me that many of his clients are successful business people who are “following the path that numbers lay out for them”.