I've had an ongoing relationship with the number 23 since I read Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger and Illuminatus Trilogy. Since that time (about 13 years ago) I have had two major periods of strong 23 synchronicities, one from 1992 to 1995, and another that has just begun a few months ago. For me, the 23 phenomenon (and synchronicities in general) seem to begin just before a major transitional period in my life. I generally have taken it as a sign that I'm on the right path, that magick is afoot, and the Goddess is abiding my progress.
I've come to associate strongly with 23 and have only in the past few years come to understand what it's meaning is (at least to me). It's always been linked to death - not in the sense of morbid finality but, rather, as the process of transformation (like the Phoenix rising from the ashes of it's own imolation). Many times it has come alongside the scorpion for me as a symbol of this putrefaction. I've come to see 23 as a glyph for the movement from 2 to 3 - 2 being the dualistic, binary paradigm we have carried for millenia (yes/no, right/wrong, black/white, on/off, etc...), evolving into a higher relational mode characterized by 3 (social relativism, quantum mechanics, fuzzy logic), where duality no longer suffices. This can also be viewed as the alchemical process of bringing spirit into matter (A.A.). Like the formula of IAO: Isis Apophis Osiris - the two prior aeons of Isis (binah, form, goddess) and Osiris (chokma, energy, god) unite in bliss to create the new aeon of Horus, the warrior child. In my mind, then, 23=IAO - the evolution from the past aeons into the new aeon.
Either that or it's all just a coincidence. Fnord. |
