Modern numerology reduces fifty-eight to four and reads it as a number of order, work and material stability, the four reached through a five of change and an eight of worldly power. This reductive reading, internal to the twentieth-century system, is the whole of the number's symbolic content. Fifty-eight is best described as an integer without significant tradition, sourceable only through the standard machinery of numerological reduction.
Chinese numerology, unlike the older Western symbolic traditions surveyed above, does in fact find real content in fifty-eight, or in any number containing the digit eight: ba is a near-homophone of fa, to prosper or make a fortune, the single most favoured digit in Chinese numbering, sought after in phone numbers, license plates and addresses at a documented price premium; the candid Western verdict that fifty-eight carries no traditional symbolism therefore holds only within the traditions that verdict was written to summarise. In chemistry, fifty-eight is the atomic number of cerium, the most abundant of the rare earth elements despite the group's name, and the element used in the flint of a standard cigarette lighter, where an alloy of cerium and iron throws the spark. Cerium's name predates the lighter by decades, chosen in 1803 after the dwarf planet Ceres, discovered just two years earlier, in the era's fashion for naming new elements after newly found celestial bodies.