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Magic Numbers

10:24 / 13.10.05

A colleague of mine wears a number 7 on a necklace. At lunch the other day, I asked her about its significance. ‘Seven’s my lucky number’, she said. ‘How’s it been lucky for you?’ I asked. ‘Nothing in particular, I don’t think’, she replied, racking her brain.

Now, I scoffed a bit in my mind but it got me thinking. I don’t have a lucky number per se, but there are certain numbers that I like in a strange, intangible way – and plausibly, now think about it, in the same way that she likes the number 7. I’ve always liked the number 24, for instance, and have done for as long as I can remember. A while ago I found a drawing of some boats on a stormy sea I must have done when I was about 5. All the boats had flags on them, all bearing the number 24. This isn’t a numerology thing, by the way, at least not consciously. I don’t really understand what numerology and all this 23 stuff is all about.

I also like the number 500. I don’t know why, something about the way it looks maybe. I’m not sure, it seems like an odd thing to like, which is why I started this thread.

So, do you have a lucky/favourite/magic number? How did you get it, what do you like about it, how come you feel that way about a number?

10:29 / 13.10.05

I've always like the number 4 when playing football - I try to wear that shirt, the team I play for at the moment hasn't got a number 4 shirt, so I wear the 14.

Also, 21 seems to be quite apparent in my life, and I've always liked that one.

10:33 / 13.10.05

Do you have any idea at all what you like about 4, Benny?

10:45 / 13.10.05

I know what you mean Smoothly. I always have shapes (or solidness) for each number - I guess it's similar to Synethesia only not a confusion of the senses.

I like various numbers but can't really tell you why except to say they are more "solid" than other numbers.

10:49 / 13.10.05

i used to make all my military or team paint jobs lucky sevens, but that was because i liked the way the number can be drawn.
easily.

i also had a school number when i was wee.
that was 84.
all my shit was emblazoned with 84 for four years and i still notice it more than other, similar numbers.

i also like the way five looks(not 5 so much) and i couldnt tell you why. i like to fuck around with the idea of five in drawings and designs for things.

oh, and 37337, naturally.

10:51 / 13.10.05

My lucky / favourite / magic number is eleven.

Main reason: Although I´m not an official thelemite, I´m really fond of the Liber Al. And in the first chapter it says:
"My number is 11, as all their numbers who are of us." I, 60

That rang true for me somehow and of course I started looking for 11 in my life:

My first name has five, my last name six letters.
I was born in november, and if you add all the numbers of my birthdate in pairs (for example 23.12.1966 as 23+12+19+66), it´s 121 = 11².
If you add day, month and year it´s 2002, which is 182*11. And 1+8+2 is 11 again.

And 11 turns up all the time in real life. For example at the movies, I get seat 11 in row K.

Eleven is my 23.

P. Horus Rhacoid

10:51 / 13.10.05

I have reactions to numbers similar to Jub's. 'Solidness,' in my case, often depends on the number of factors a number has. So, I dislike even numbers especially, and numbers that have a lot of obvious factors- multiples of three or five, for instance. Primes, of course, I like best. I really like the number 7- it's large enough to be interesting in a way that 5, 3, and 2 aren't. I also am attached to 17, though that is partly because that's the number I wear on my ultimate team.

10:52 / 13.10.05

Sorry Smoothly, just rushed that off.

Not sure about the number 4 - in footballing terms, I think it makes me feel like I'm more likely to defend and be creative in a way that, say, wearing 2 makes me think of defensive and little else, and 11 makes me think of creative and nothing else. I don't think it's too much to do with association with other players, although traditionally 4 is worn by defensive midfield players, so perhaps it's a sense of taking some of that established responsibility? But as a shape I like it, it's continuous and crosses itself, but not in a round way (like 8) there is something I like about that.

As for 21 - so many birthdays, mine included, fall on this day (I have about 5 or 6 friends that share 21st birthdays. But it also has come in at random times, like at school when I put in for my work experience travel expenses (which amounted to about four pounds) I was number 21 on the list, and the envelope contained 21 pounds, which was nice.

pointless & uncalled for

11:10 / 13.10.05

I'm not in any real sense superstitious. However I do like the number eight. Written in English, as a digit or even in Cantonese it seems to be the only complete number, others feel as if they have something missing. I like the absence of straight lines and glyphic similarity to infinity.

It doesn't crop up in wierd synchronistic ways but maybe that's because I'm not looking for it.

Not sure what this disposition is supposed to mean but please feel free to enlighten me.

11:24 / 13.10.05

I like the absence of straight lines and glyphic similarity to infinity.

Same here! Number 8 for those reasons aswell, and maybe because of the Eightfold path in Buddhism. It was funny to look at the thread title too, and then see that there'd been 8 replies. The wierd thing for me was that I liked 8 because it had no beginning or end, and only later found out that it was also the symbol for infinity.

pointless & uncalled for

11:33 / 13.10.05

Just thinking about it I always envisaged the space/time continuum as a mobius strip in the form of a number eight. Rifts would cause a break and the two trailing ends would chase each other while chaoticly spewing insequential possibilities.

11:46 / 13.10.05

do you only like four when it looks like the classic 4, as in this font?
or do you like it in its other incarnations as well?
i'm thinking of calcluator fours specificallty, but i guess there are others.

and how much does a seven being crossed change its appeal?

12:21 / 13.10.05

I always liked 43.

12:25 / 13.10.05

7 is my number. I was born on the 7th July which as I child I thought was by far the best day of the year. I even thought other children would be jealous of my birthday. Of course, it's not such a lucky date now.

12:26 / 13.10.05

how do you feel about the continental seven?

12:34 / 13.10.05

Completely baffled, if truth be told Toksik. Google suggests it's a knife block, something to do with Star Trek, and some trip where you climb the tallest mountain on each continent.

12:36 / 13.10.05

He means the 7 with a bar through it, I think.

12:42 / 13.10.05

Ah.

No strong feelings either way really. I did experiment with it myself in my teens but it didn't really suit my handwriting. I think it's a Godsend in France though, where the 1s often look like 7s.

12:49 / 13.10.05

I like crossed sevens - looking at some sums I did earlier while paying a bill, the 7s are all crossed.
I like 23, but that's just because it's my birthday, and makes me think of barbelith! And 51, because a girl I admired at primary school lived at number 51 on a posh street and it's always felt faintly aspirational ever since.

12:54 / 13.10.05

i did indeed.
avec le wee line sur le down bit.

i like that seven for scrawled artwork, but respect the nice flowiness of the more english speaking seven for design stuff.

horses, courses.

does anyone like any really big numbrs?
apart from 666, obviously.

12:59 / 13.10.05

does anyone like any really big numbrs?

My dad's lucky number is something in the order of 6734 or something. I'll find out. I'm not sure where he got it from, although it did prove to be genuinely lucky when he used it to enter a competition to guess how many parts went into making a particular camera, and won it.

13:06 / 13.10.05

I like the idea of a favourite number being really long, if only to baffle people who ask you about it.

"Hey, what's your lucky number?"
"370103793974089208.20348"

13:16 / 13.10.05

13:19 / 13.10.05

I'm quite partial to 256. Not sure why, though I think it has soemthing to do with Snow Crash.

13:23 / 13.10.05

Toksik, I do only like the classical 4, funny. The open 4 and calculator 4 make me feel odd, like when people do 2's with a swirl in them. Not wrong, but just somehow not right.

13:50 / 13.10.05

I cross my sevens (probably a legacy of crap and illegible handwriting-- at least people can distinguish one digit).

But my lucky number is 5, ever since I was a child. No real reason. I suppose I always think of it as good and solid. Like on a die or domino-- I like those five dots there-- a sense of completion. By contrast I actively avoid the number 4, which has an emptiness to it, not least on dice and dominoes.

14:27 / 13.10.05

Being that my birthday is the 28th day and was in 78, I have a fondess for numbers ending in 8. And also because my first name has four letters, I like four letter words and names. I like the looks of the number 2, I think because it's weirdly mutable. Given all the even numbers involved n my personal data (also including the month), I generally like even numbers better than odd.

I've always, for as long as I can remember, disliked the number 9. Especially the looks of the numeral, ugh. And I have strange, strongly ambiguous feelings about 5.

14:39 / 13.10.05

Ooh, I like the number 5. My favourite digit to write, certainly.
I don’t like it as much as I like 500 though. But 5000 does nothing for me. It’s all very strange.

14:52 / 13.10.05

Not strange at all:
The 5€ note is the one with the smallest value, and the 500€ is on the other end of the scale.