If you believe any of this stuff (the jury is still out) then 666 as the number of the Anti-Christ makes sense because, well, 6 is the number of man and 3 is the number of God, so three sixes would be man trying to be God, but not succeeding because God's perfection is represented by the number 777 and it is clear that 666 will never be 777, no way, José.
I sound more like Billy Ray Barnwell every day (samples of his writing here and here).
None of this matters in the slightest except that last month on my birthday I turned 77, so I am now, by a certain kind of reckoning, not merely perfect but perfectly perfect. The only way I could be any more perfect is if I live to be 777, which won't happen any time soon, if ever.
I do want to thank
- It is the sum of the first eight prime numbers:
2 + 3 + 5 + 7 + 11 + 13 + 17 + 19
- It is the sum of three consecutive squares:
42 + 52 + 62; that is, 16 + 25 + 36
- It is the atomic number of iridium.
Wikipedia says of this element, "A very hard, brittle, silvery-white transition metal of the platinum group, iridium is the second densest element (after osmium). It is also the most corrosion-resistant metal, even at temperatures as high as 2000 °C. Although only certain molten salts and halogens are corrosive to solid iridium, finely divided iridium dust is much more reactive and can be flammable." Any similarities you may think you detect between the characteristics of iridium and moi are purely coincidental.
- It is the boiling point of nitrogen on the Kelvin scale (°K). For your information, 77°K equals minus 195 degrees Celsius (°C) and minus 320 degrees Fahrenheit (°F).
- In the United Methodist Hymnal (1989 edition), hymn 77 is "How Great Thou Art"
- Psalm 77 in the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) is headed as being "To the Chief Musician" and in the New International Version (NIV) as being "For the Director of Music".
I close this post by inviting all of you to the next meeting of Narcissists Anonymous, time and place to be announced later.
How interesting. I have long wondered how many of the numerical superstitions came to be.
ReplyDeleteSeventy Seven Sunset Strip.
ReplyDeleteSeventy Seven Sunset Strip.
Seventy Seven Sunset Strip.
The street that wears a fancy label
That's glorified in song and fable.
The most exciting people pass you by
Including a private eye...
Called Robert H. Brague
Whose name rhymes with "plague"
I assume that Narcissists Anon is held in a mirrored hall...
ReplyDeleteHmmm. '77 was the year I graduated from high school. That makes me young enough to be your....blogger friend!
ReplyDeleteIf you believe any of this stuff (the jury is still out)"
ReplyDeleteThe jury is still out on what, whether magical numbers exist, or whether repetitive symbolic representation exists?
"...666 as the number of the Anti-Christ makes sense because, well, 6 is the number of man and 3 is the number of God, so three sixes would be man trying to be God, but not succeeding"
Firstly, have you heard that the unlucky 666 might have really been 616? Secondly, isn't this kind of reasoning sort of like that done by the Israeli fellow (a mathematician I think he was) who wrote a book about the messages he found in the Bible by skipping words? It was later determined that one could just as easily find hidden messages in any book by doing the same thing. A similar sort of mindset was at work in finding spooky similarities (many of them having to do with numbers) between the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/linkin-kennedy/). In other words, it is not a case of finding meaning but of bending over backwards to impose meaning, something which is always very easy to do (especially if one doesn't mind shading the truth and misrepresenting a text's stated intention), which is where I was going with my question about the jury being out on what? I really don't understand what it is that you're withholding judgment on.