05:05 is the mirror hour at the very start of the day, written 505 as a number. It holds the digit five twice, with a zero that strengthens it. Added up, 5 + 0 + 5 = 10, and 1 + 0 = 1: the digit one, which in numerology stands for beginning and independence. Nothing is announced by it. Its subject is a first step, and a different one from last time.
What 05:05 means
Two additions are needed here: 5 + 0 + 5 = 10, and then 1 + 0 = 1. One is the number of the first step. The reminder in it is that something long postponed is ready to be begun, and begun by the person who has been postponing it.
Five past five is the edge of the day. 05:05 is noticed by early risers, by people heading for the first train, by anyone up before the rest of the house. The day at that point is entirely unused: no messages answered, nothing yet gone wrong. That is the reminder in it. A beginning does not need a new year or a Monday; an ordinary day that has not started yet is as blank as any.
On the display itself there are fives, the number of change and freedom, with the zero lending them force. Here lies the second layer, and it qualifies the first. Five holds that a routine can be changed, often for the better. So the start in question is not the old attempt made once more with gritted teeth. It is a start made by another door.
05:05 in love: if you are in a couple
One, in matters of love, is about honesty with yourself: say plainly what you want. The fives of 05:05 add something new to the wanting. In a settled couple it is easy for both people to wait politely for the other to propose anything out of the ordinary, and so for nothing out of the ordinary to be proposed.
Say one of two people has been curious about an evening pottery class for a year and keeps hoping the other might suggest it. There is no need to wait. Later today, once the day is properly under way, put it in a sentence that starts with a decision: “I'm going to try the pottery class on Wednesdays. There's a place for you if you fancy it.” The start is yours either way, and the invitation is real.
05:05 in love: if you are single
A single person seeing 05:05 learns nothing from it about who they might meet. One is the digit of acting on your own account, and its particular courage is being willing to be a beginner. The fives add that the thing begun can be quite unlike anything done before.
There are adults who would love to learn to drive, or to ride a horse, and are held back mainly by the thought of being the oldest novice in the room. When the morning has properly begun, find out when one beginners' session takes place and write the time down where it can be seen. That is the entire step. Where it leads is not something numerology pretends to know.
05:05 at work
Take the task on yourself and do not wait for permission: so says one about work. The fives suggest where to apply it. Most workplaces have a procedure everyone agrees is clumsy and everyone goes on following, each waiting for someone with authority to announce a better one.
Imagine a weekly figure that is copied by hand from one sheet to another every Friday, and has been for years, though a simpler way is obvious to whoever does the copying. One's suggestion is to try the simpler way once, today, on your own portion only, and show a colleague the result next to the old one. A working example persuades faster than a proposal. If it turns out worse, the old method is still there.
The inner meaning of 05:05
Spiritual accounts of 505 talk of transformation and of a turning point reached. Ours is a smaller claim. One asks which change you are waiting for somebody else to start. A good many fresh starts fail for a dull reason: they are the same start as before, made in the same way, with only the date altered.
Worth asking at the start of a day: what have I begun the same way more than once, and what would a different first step be?
Where 05:05 turns up
05:05 greets early risers from a phone, a clock radio, a station board before the first train or a bakery's oven timer. Elsewhere 505 is a bus route, a room number or a model number stamped on a tool. The digits carry the reading; the setting is incidental.