Friday, May 23, 2008

White Magic Friday: 23 Skiddooo!

Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Look for our special Memorial Day Weekend Sale: Buy one deity, get another deity of equal or lesser value for free!*

I know exactly who started me down the road to Paganism. It was Robert Anton Wilson. And in keeping with his philosophy that there's no such thing as a coincidence, it was quite by coincidence that I learned of his writing and his line of thought.

Perhaps "line of thought" isn't the right phrase. I think he would have preferred "nebulous cloud of thought." He wasn't a linear kinda dude.

In his book Cosmic Trigger, Wilson talks about the number 23. And I've talked about it on this site before, and I've even run a photo of this guy here before.

EXHIBIT A: MICHAEL JORDAN, BEST NBA PLAYER OF ALL TIME


Here's the magical thing about the number 23. If you haven't noticed it before, after reading this you will start noticing it. Absolutely positively correct. Wait and see. It's gonna crop up all over the place.

There's all this complex numerology stuff about 23, because it's made up of prime numbers, and they add up to another prime number, etc. etc. and so on and so forth. But what Robert Anton Wilson noted (and Anne too) is that the minute you single out any number you're gonna find that number haunting you and taunting you.

Okay, so maybe it won't work for 4,273,849. But anything under 100, just trust me.

But you don't trust me. So here is the very true story of My First Encounter with the Number 23.

The very same day I read about the number 23 in Cosmic Trigger, I came home from work and got a phone call from Mr. Johnson. We were newly married at the time. He was on his way to the convenience store, and he asked me if he should pick up a lottery ticket. (We hardly ever played the lotto then, and we don't play it at all now.)

It was almost time for the lottery drawing. So I told him to plunk down a dollar on the number 023. He said he'd try, if they still were taking bets.

Readers, this is pinky swear truth. I turned on the t.v. 10 minutes later, and the winning daily number was called: 023.

Happy ending? Only in the movies, muchachos. Mr. Johnson just missed getting a ticket by a heartbeat.

It was some time after that, not too long I think, that Michael Jordan asked me what number he should choose for his Chicago Bulls jersey. He wanted to have a stellar career in the NBA, you see. So I told him about Cosmic Trigger, and Robert Anton Wilson, and the rest is history.

All right. All right. That last part isn't true. But the lottery thing is true. And it's also true that Jordan played his whole career as #23. Coincidence? I think not.

Put the number 23 to work in your life. Or don't. We at "The Gods Are Bored" aren't trying to tell you what to do.

FROM ANNE
THE MERLIN OF BERKELEY SPRINGS
5/23
*Offer not good on Judeo-Christian deities or demons, Isis, Sedna, Loki, statues from the Canary Islands, Venus, Pluto, Mercury, Coyote, Anansi, Chac and other Aztec deities, Sacred Thunderbirds, Kali, Krishna, the Salmon of Wisdom, assorted faeries and faerie products, hallucinogenic mushrooms, DC Superheroes, The Green Man, Chaos, Demeter, Pan, or assorted Price-Reduced Tikis. Offer cannot be combined with other coupons. Offer cannot be converted to cash or be used for the remission of sins. While supplies last.

7 comments:

sageweb said...

HmmmI have never liked odd numbers, but I like Fridays, and today is friday and it is also the 23rd...so there you have it.

Off to play the lotto.

yellowdoggranny said...

my daughter's birthday is today..5-23-73...good gamblers numbers..she was born 3 minutes till midnight 11:57----5-23-73
i have a think with 7 and series of 7's...things on my wall are either in 7's, 14's, or 21...they have to total up to a series of 7's...when i was a kid i was abused...if the memory starts to come back..i blind my eyes 7 times and it goes away..i do it for all bad things..just blink it away...but then im weird..

Big Tex said...

Okay, I'm a little creeped out right now: I turned 23 in 1994. The digits in 1994 add up to 23. Weird!

Alex Pendragon said...

You just gave me my next post! Stary tuned for number THIRTEEN!

Livia Indica said...

There's a movie "The Number 23" with Jim Carrey that's supposedly really good. In it he's reading a book about 23 and becomes obsessed with it as the book seems to be about him. Anyway, seems plenty of other people have picked up on it.

Athana said...

anne, you have the power of the faeries! No wonder they’ve moved in with you!

Anonymous said...

After reading RAW (ha! RAW I never noticed that before) back in the late 70's I went around for at least a year noticing 2+3, 23, 5, all that kind of stuff. I even wrote him a letter in my teenage adoration...