The 42 Enigma

Ive been a huge fan of Robert Anton Wilson for the past year or so that Ive been aware of his magnificent all-too-breif visit to our world.

Wilson popularized the number 23 as being a strange attractor and said that he was first made aware of the numbers enigmatic power by William Burroughs and was then on surrounded by synchronicities relating to the number 23. This phenomenon then became somewhat widespread enough for someone to make "the number 23" movie with Jim Carry as its main character.

For those unfamiliar with the enigma read below.

"William S. Burroughs was cited by Wilson as being the first person to notice the 23 enigma: Wilson, in an article in Fortean Times, related the following story:
I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23." From Wikipedia on the 23 enigma.


I beleive the number 23 along with many other numbers are sort of embedded in our consciousness because they are very strong rhythms in the universe.

The axis of the earths rotation is tilted at 23.5 degrees
The human gestation cycle is 23 days
Blood takes 23 seconds to circulate
Human sex cells have 23 chromosomes
The human brain contains roughly 23 billion neurons, each linked to as many as 10,000other neurons.
The Sirius stars rotate at 23.5 rotations per minute
July 23rd Sirius rises at its apex over egypt marking the new year

December 23rd the suns southward movement stops for two days until its reborn the twenty fifth and begins to move northward as christmas or the winter solstice.

December 23rd 2012 marks the end/rebirth of the mayan calander the Tzolkin

2/3 = .666 biblical number of the beast
2x3=6
6/2=3
theres 365 days in a year 3x6+5=23

i pulled these from wikipedia articles

In Abhidharma, the number of anomalous generic types (of a possible 72) - e.g., events are considered sui generis because they are not reducible to either mind or matter - is 23.

The 1998 German film 23, starring August Diehl, tells the real-life story of computer hackers inspired by Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy.

The 2007 film The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey, is the story of a man becoming obsessed with the number 23 while he reads a book of the same title that seems to be about his life. Jim Carrey named his production company JC23.

Industrial group Throbbing Gristle recounted in great detail Burroughs and Clark's meeting and the revelation of the significance of 23 in the ballad "The Old Man Smiled."

A September 1952 issue of the comic book Black Magic by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon contained the story "23" that recounted bizarre coincidences associated with the number 23.

The television series Lost contains an oft-repeated sequence of numbers, one of which is 23.

Principia Discordia, the sacred text of Discordianism, holds that 23 (along with 5) is the sacred number of Eris, goddess of discord.

Michael Jordan wore number 23, with the exception of a short period of time, when he played professional basketball with the Chicago Bulls and, later, the Washington Wizards.

23 skidoo was a 20th Century American slang phrase.

Dr Pepper is advertised as having 23 flavors.

Mr. Hong-Tow a Japanese physiologist would often paint the number 23 on his body

23 plays a prominent role in the plot of the Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson.

oh and star trek takes place in the 23rd century.

Just to name very few of these common threads in the logosphere.
And thanks Bob.

Anyway its my own personal theory that when the human consciousness expands its awareness of nature, language and the self that many rhythms and themes rise into the forefront of the awareness but seemingly with no catalyst.

I think that the use of consciousness expanding drugs help communicate messages from the unconscious that apply to the rhythms of the universe around the person at a given time under specific circumstances. So the human is kind of like a genetic receptor or DNA-ntennae that communicates incoming messages from the present and catalouges them unconsciously into seperate archetypes/memories or functions in the brain.

It goes on and on look into it 23 is a naturally occuring rhythm in the universe and as soon as your aware of it, it will turn up in some interesting places. Numbers and ideas are deeply embedded in our unconscious awareness and im sure 23 was known to our ancient astronombers/numerologies/scientists to be a common theme.

My strange attractor has been the number 42 showing up all over the darn place. As i delved further into numerology and the occult all numbers i saw spoke different meanings to me but 42 was the first number i personally was finding all over.

The 42 Enigma

Wikipedia on 42
Forty-two is a composite number; its factorization makes it the second sphenic number and also the second of the form {2.3.r}

The eight digits of pi beginning from 242,422 places after the decimal point are 42424242.

Given 27 same-size cubes whose nominal values progress from 1 to 27, a 3×3×3 "magic cube" can be constructed such that every row, column and corridor, and every diagonal passing through the center, comprises 3 cubes whose sum of values is 42.

The angle for which light reflects and a rainbow appears.

According to the history channel. If one were to create a tunnel through the earth connecting two cities the gravity propelled trip would take 42 minutes regardless of the choice of cities.

Messier object M42, a magnitude 5.0 diffuse nebula in the constellation Orion, also known as the Orion Nebula

The New General Catalogue object NGC 42, a spiral galaxy in the constellation Pegasus
In January 2005, Asteroid 2001 DA42 was given the name Asteroid Douglasadams, named for the author Douglas Adams who popularized the number 42 and died in 2001. With even his initials in the provisional designation, Brian G. Marsden, the director of the Minor Planet Center and the secretary for the naming committee, said, "This was sort of made for him, wasn't it?"

Heres some of my favorites

The number 42 appears in various contexts in Christianity. There are 42 generations (names) in the Gospel of Matthew's version of the Genealogy of Jesus; it is prophesied that for 42 months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth (Revelation 13:5); 42 men of Beth-azmaveth were counted in the census of men of Israel upon return from exile (Ezra 2:24); God sent bears to maul 42 of the youths who mock Elisha for his baldness (2 Kings 2:23), etc.

42 also occurs in other religions. There are 42 principles of Ma'at, the Ancient Egyptian personification of physical and moral law, order, and truth. In the judgement scene described in the Egyptian and the Book of the Coming/Going Forth by Day (the Book of the Dead (which evolved from the Coffin Texts and the Pyramid Texts)), there are 42 Gods and Goddesses of Egypt, personifying the principles of Ma'at, who ask questions of the departed, while Thoth records the answers, and the deceased's heart is weighed against the feather of Truth (Ma'at). These 42 correspond to the 42 Nomes (Governmental Units) of Egypt. If the departed successfully answers all 42, s/he becomes an Osiris.

In Judaism, the number (in the Babylonian Talmud, compiled 375 AD to 499 AD) of the "Forty-Two Lettered Name" ascribed to God. Rab (or Rabhs), a 3rd century source in the Talmud stated "The Forty-Two Lettered Name is entrusted only to him who is pious, meek, middle-aged, free from bad temper, sober, and not insistent on his rights". [Source: Talmud Kidduschin 71a, Translated by Rabbi Dr. I. Epstein]. Maimonides felt that the original Talmudic Forty-Two Lettered Name was perhaps composed of several combined divine names [Maimonides "Moreh"]. The apparently unpronouncable Tetragrammaton provides the backdrop from the Twelve-Lettered Name and the Forty-Two Lettered Name of the Talmud.

42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabalistic tradition. In Kabbalah, the most significant name is that of the En Sof (also known as "Ein Sof", "Infinite" or "Endless"), who is above the Sefirot (sometimes spelled "Sephirot").[3] The Forty-Two-Lettered Name contains four combined names which are spelled in Hebrew letters (spelled in letters = 42 letters), which is the name of Azilut (or "Atziluth" "Animation"). While there are obvious links between the Forty-Two Lettered Name of the Babylonian Talmud (see further up this page) and the Kabbalah's Forty-Two Lettered Name, they are probably not identical due to the Kabbalah's emphasis on numbers. The Kabbalah also contains a Forty-Five Lettered Name and a Seventy-Two Lettered Name.

42 is a common magic number used by programmers. In the TIFF image file format, the second 16-bit word of every file is 42, which is used together with the first word to indicate byte order. In the reiser4 file system, 42 is the inode number of the root directory.

Tower 42 is a skyscraper in the City of London, formerly known as the NatWest Tower.

The Natwest Tower now tower 42 is the home of the Scotish Royal Illuminati/Rothschild bank.

In Japanese, 4 (shi) and 2 (ni) are together pronounced like "going to death" (死に). Because of that, in Japan, 42 is considered as a disastrous number.This happens in Hong Kong too, as 42 sounds like "easy death" in Cantonese.

In New York City, 42nd Street is a main and very popular two-way thoroughfare. Landmarks on it include the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, the main branch of the New York Public Library, and Times Square. The New York City street is also the setting for a movie by the same name (which also gave fame to its eponymous title song), and which later inspired a musical adaptation, 42nd Street.

The Kumars at No. 42 television series. In 2003, Sanjeev Bhaskar hosted a BBC show nominating The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as Britain's Best Loved Book.

Many occurrences of the number 42 in pop culture can be attributed to homage to Douglas Adams's book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the number 42 is The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. According to the fifth Hitchhiker volume, Mostly Harmless, 42 is the location of Stavromula Beta. Thus, 42 may be the world's longest written riddle, since the riddle of the question to the answer was raised in the first volume, and not answered until the final page of the fifth, and then passes unnoticed by the story's ever-bumbling characters. Douglas later (1994) created the 42 Puzzle, a game based on the number 42.

Shakespeare's plays and Carroll's Alice, which has 42 illustrations. In Chapter XII, the king explains "the oldest rule in the book": "Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court". Carroll also uses the number in The Hunting of the Snark.

Lewis Carrol wrote the synchromystic mindfuck Alice in Wonderland that was used in mind control experimentation as well as a source of many inspired hollywood themes.

42 is one of The Numbers on the television show Lost, along with 4, 8, 15, 16 and 23. *
A made for TV movie 42: Forty Two Up - a documentary wherein the director revisits the same group of British-born adults after a 7 year wait. Lost is followed on some blogs as a synchromystic oracle spewing synchronicities.

"42" is an episode of Doctor Who, set in real-time lasting approximately 42 minutes.

In the television series and movie The X Files, lead character Fox Mulder lives in apartment number 42

In the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation the starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D) has 42 decks. And also takes place in the 23rd century

42 is the 2nd sphenic number in mathematics

The first case of two consecutive integers which are sphenic numbers is 230 = 2×5×23 and 231 = 3×7×11.

42 is also the second of the form {2.3.r}. 23 again!

Whats 6x7? YEAH!