Meet the people who believe angels are speaking to them through their shopping receipts

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.”

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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”. “You wouldn’t believe the degree to which this is practised among serious people,” he says. “My clients are some very professional people who are intelligent, who are doing well, and making things happen in the world.” If his clients start seeing repeated numbers, Abbott will tell them to not look away. “It’s the universe trying to tell you something, or offer you some kind of protection. It’s a good thing, roll with it and it’ll take you to a better place.”

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To be clear: scientifically and mathematically speaking, angel numbers are a load of nonsense. And even in some spiritual communities, angel numbers have been debunked. In an article published earlier this year in The Cut, Doreen Virtue, who is said to have coined the term “angel numbers” in 2004 and made a career profiting from it through books and TV appearances, admitted that the concept is “garbage”.

“It was very fortune cookie stuff, very generalised,” she said. “I knew someone whose mom was dying, and the number 444 was a comfort to her. She thought that meant her mom would live, and she didn’t. It may be reassuring to think angels are with you, but to say, ‘I don’t have to take action, because the angels are going to do the work,’ or ‘the angels told me this is going to be OK’ – that’s false hope.”

Abbott is well aware of this criticism – and says that using angel numbers requires exercising common sense. “Just because you’ve looked down and seen ‘11:11’ on your phone once, it might not mean anything… it might just mean that you’re hungry,” he says. “What I’m interested in is when it’s happening a lot... when you’re going about your business in a normal way and you keep seeing these numbers pop up all of the time. Then there is something that’s trying to be communicated to you, and that becomes meaningful.”

While most angel number devotees won’t be aware of the fact that the very woman who coined the term has since disowned it, there is still a growing movement of people attempting to untangle what numbers mean. Green, an entrepreneur who was raised in a spiritual home, is aware that angel numbers aren’t something you can wish upon passively.

“It’s more of an active process of getting clear about what you want,” she says. “Like, what order are you putting into the universe that day? And how will you make it happen? It’s a sign to take positive action towards that goal. There’s no point saying you want your dream home and not bothering going to the estate agents.”

Personally speaking, I can’t say that any of my 11:11am wishes over the years have done much for me. But for others like Green, it makes them feel good, and it gives them guidance when they need it. And there’s no real harm in people finding hope in a mystical concept. Even if that concept was plucked out of thin air in 2004.

Wait. 2-0-0-4? I keep seeing those numbers everywhere…