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Numerologists Quake in Fear! Hitchhiker’s Guide Sees All, Tells All!

Rev. Jesse

12:17 / 13.10.02

So as it happens, Douglas Adams was the greatest numerologist of his day.

Why you ask? Well, what’s seven squared minus seven (or (7x7)-7)? That’s right.

And of course we all know what 777 indicates.

Anyone know if the old DA was into sacred numerology at all?

-Rev. Jesse

Nietzsch E. Coyote

21:56 / 13.10.02

Thank you for giving me a reason to re-read the series. Can it be a coincidence that he wrote 5 books.

illmatic

07:14 / 14.10.02

If I remember Douglas Adams was a right sceptic about anything religous - I think he might have been a member of the Humanist society, very straight, not too imaginative take on anything religous like a lot op people with a heavy science/computer background. A bit like Iain Banks in this regard. God only knows what he would have made of crazed magicians reading numerological significance into his work, hah!

cusm

19:12 / 14.10.02

I think its entirely possible that in being a doubter yet looking to spontaneously express a symbol for "life the universe and everything" it is possible that he hit on a numerological element quite by accident, but also in quite a ledgitimate way. If 42 was naturally occcurring rather than a produce of DA trying to make a calculation, it in a way makes it more ledgitimate. Its certainly a fin number to play with.

As some quick games and relations:
7x6=42
2x3x7=42
42/2 = 21
2+1 = 3; 4+2=6 6/2 = 3

Nigel Pennick has a proof of the gemetria of 42 somewhere, I'll have to dig that up.

reFLUX

19:26 / 14.10.02

er...what does 777 mean?

SMS

00:59 / 15.10.02

Another bit worth investigating: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a trilogy in five parts. 3=5

remorse

01:40 / 15.10.02

23=why

illmatic

07:01 / 15.10.02

777 is the sum of all the paths on the Tree of Life ie. the numbers 0-22 (attributed to Tarot Trumps).
23 is mysteriously one more than the 22 - is it the secret hidden path ...
no, no really. I think it first emerged in the experiements of William Burroughs who was keeping scrapbooks of disasters (as you do) and say the number 23 kept emerging. Robert Anton Wilson picked this up somewhere along the line, and it became a cipher to him, as he was going through his own Trials, representing either communications from Sirius or his own insanity (or both). All this is detailed - and a lot more besides -in his book Cosmic Trigger.

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