6️⃣ The superstition 6️⃣ of numerology 6️⃣

Write down the number 3 and no one will bat an eye. Write down the number 13 and people will question what you’re doing. Why you gotta jinx us?

Write down the number 6 and people might raise an eyebrow. Write down 666, and people will soil themselves. They’ll run screaming from the room believing you’re about to summon a demon. Da Debil! He raisin da Debil!

You can raise the Devil by writing down a number, in 2000 years, JC ain’t shown his face.

Do people even know why they’re afraid of these numbers? Do they have any first hand experience on why they should be afraid or cautious?

Why is 13 bad, but 12 and 14 are fine? Why is 6 fine, 66 is conceding, and 666 is stepping over the line?

Why do so many athletes turn the number 13 upside down during a competition? Why have some participants even withdrawn from an event instead of wearing 666? What are they afraid of and who started this nonsense?

First of all, why are people afraid of 13? Does it actually have something to do with the myth surrounding the Templars? Is it related to the legend surrounding the Vikings? Is it from one of the many other myths associated with 13?

There’s the problem, it doesn’t have an origin story, it’s not rooted in any sort of fact or tangible evidence. It’s all legend and myth where it could be “this” or it could be “that.” It could be this other, or yet this other, other, other thing. Since it has no real origin, it’s time to stop giving in to it.

This idea of 13 being unlucky is so ingrained in culture that planes don’t have that aisle, movie theaters skip over that seat, and buildings don’t list that floor. Interesting notion, but whether or not they list it, that floor is still number 13. I want to stay in room 13, on floor 13, on Halloween night! I would say with 13 guests, but that’s just silly.

There are plenty of examples where people won’t fly, get married, travel, or even go to work on the 13th, especially if it falls on a Friday.

It was a gag on television when the Munsters lived at 1313 Mockingbird Ln. But, now 13 gets associated with evil and conjuring demonic forces and dark energy.

Where did all this come from, if anywhere? It should be easy to pinpoint right?

Some say it’s because the Templars got rounded up on October 13, 1307, which happened to be a Friday? Translation – Legend has it…

Is that a real story, or is it this other related to a novel entitled Friday, the Thirteenth?

Or is it related to the Friday the 13th, slasher movie franchise? The novel by Thomas William Lawson came out almost 80 years before the slasher films.

Is it related to the 13th guest at the Last Supper?

Is it related to the mischievous god Loki being the 13th guest at a dinner party in Valhalla? Valhalla, which doesn’t exist, and Loki, who also doesn’t exist?

Too many origin stories so we’ll consider them all fake.

Is it simply because 12 is so cool? 12 months in a year. The day broken in 2 12 hours parts? 12 zodiac signs? 12 apostles? A dozen roses is the perfect gift?

12 is even, 13 is odd, so it throws everything out of balance?

But, everyone is scared of 13, right? Negative, 13 is really only considered unlucky over here in the West. Other cultures don’t care about 13 and assign others numbers as unlucky, because of their own wacky and unverifiable origin stories.

But, 13 is now ingrained in culture as negative because of all the horror movie tropes – Friday the 13th, 13 Ghosts, Thirteenth Floor, Thirteen at Dinner, and the list goes on and on. Even Scooby-Doo got in on the action with it’s own 13 Ghosts.

Just like the Ouija, people are scared because they saw it in a movie.

Then we have 666, which is obviously rooted in (and only in) the Bible, with the passage “his number is six hundred and sixty-six.” What is his number? Ticket number? House address? Address of the building where he plans and hatches his nefarious deeds? The amount of money he owes from cheating at cards?

And who is the “he” it refers too?

This supposedly refers to the anti-Christ, a person or beast that’s never identified. This person is so important, so dangerous, the identity gets wrapped in an idiotic riddle.

I need you to look out for this dangerous fugitive.
Who is he, what does he look like?
I can’t tell you that.
Thanks, very helpful.

At the time, anti-Christ was someone not on the Christ train. Considering how the vast majority of people thought Christianity was stupid that’s a whole lot of suspects. It’s still a whole lot of suspects.

However, depending on how you interpret that passage, the number is also interpreted as 616, so dubious and pointless right from the start.

But, does 666 refer to a man or a beast?

Who is this beast? Was it Emperor Nero? Was it a Pope of the past that pissed people off? Is it a number assigned to some branch of the government that doesn’t exist anymore?

None of the above. It’s not assigned to anyone or anything.

The origin of 666 is pretty lame. It’s a single line in a book where people assign values and do trick math so that anything and everything equals 666.

Further, this 666 reference only exists in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, written as a hallucination. It got slipped in hundreds of years later as Bible “bonus” material.

You have to ask, why not 665? Why not 456? How about 126, 420, 888, or 555? I mean if we’re making up random numbers, why choose 666? That’s the problem, there’s no answer.

666 bottles of beer on the wall…

The Book of Revelation is an interesting story, but not one word of it is rooted in reality. If published today it would get ridiculed as the drug induced ravings of a frustrated author. More to the point, it wouldn’t get published, nobody would waste the paper.

At best it would appear as a self-published Kindle title, with comments asking what kind of drugs the author was on. Maybe it would show up as a blog post on some conspiracy theory website. QAnon believers are the kinds of idiots to latch onto the story.

Point is, the reference and the Book of Revelation are ridiculous.

What we do know is that, through ignorance, it’s now associated with demonic forces, and Satan himself, a guy that doesn’t actually exist. Unfortunately, that association isn’t going to change any time soon. We can put men on the moon, rovers on Mars, but people still think a number has some magical power over them.

The negative connotations of these numbers are laughable. There can be a hundred origin stories or none. It could have started a thousand years ago or in the 80s with slasher movies. It’s from a book, no a movie, no a dinner party gone wrong.

You could spend your life going down the rabbit hole of searching the Internet and books for the meaning of 13, 666 and a slew of other numbers. You’ll find commonalities, wild theories, and outrageous claims. You won’t definitive proof.

Again, 13 is only considered unlucky for a very small group of people. And these same people believe in a lot of other incredibly ridiculous things.

Sure, people freak out about 666, but they don’t know the origin, other than it’s in the Bible. They don’t know who it refers to, and have never had any actual negative influences from it. They were shown the Bible, told to be afraid, so they are.

The reality is, these are just numbers, no more powerful, dangerous, lucky or unlucky as any other number.

I mean 12 cookies are good, but 13 is even better.

Getting $12 isn’t bad, but getting $13 is obviously better, even if just by 1.

Getting a bonus of $600 is a pretty sweet, but I won’t turn down $666, because it’s obviously more. And more is always better than enough.

Let’s also remember, 13 is the first stage of being a teenager. When you’re 12 you’re a child, but when you’re 13, you’re a teenager, on your way to being an adult, that’s something special. I remember turning 13, it was exciting, I was no longer a “kid.”

Friday the 13th is a halfway decent movie franchise, nothing more.

Thirteen at Dinner is good mystery by Agatha Christie, one of the best mystery writers of all time, and a personal favorite of mine.

666 is nothing more than the number that comes after 665 and before 667. Nothing happens if you write it down. Nothing exciting happens if numbers add up to 666. You don’t win or lose races if that’s your number. Rather uneventful if you ask me. It has nothing to do with mocking the trinity, or trying to be better than God, that’s a cheap attempt at creating meaning where none exists.

Beyond that, it’s just a number. Numbers only have meaning to people who assign them meaning.

Some think 7 is lucky number. For others it’s 8, because it never ending like infinity or the Mobius strip. To certain groups, 69 is “lucky” and a hot bit of business. One fellow wrote that 42 holds all the answers to the universe. Maybe it does. Who’s to say which is correct? Besides common sense…

666 is a number a guy made up. Was “beast” really a negative connotation? We use that term for people all the time.

Because it needs to be said, despite what people think, there is no 666 in Disney, or in Taco Bell. Nor are you releasing demonic forces when you Unleash the Beast with Monster Energy. That’s a special bit of psychosis.

It’s just an archaic reference from a book of fairy tales and not worth listening to.