Have you guys seen this yet? I found it via a great blog called Technoccult, where somebody in the comments suggested that it looked like a combination of “Conspiracy Theory,” “The Ring,” and “Pi”. Never saw “Pi” but anyway I think this movie looks pretty damned cheesy. But I have been waiting for somebody in Hollywood to catch onto the sort of mental decay that can happen within the realm of conspiracy theory research. It definitely is a real thing which occurs but which has little resemblance to this fictionalization of it.
Anyway, excuse my ignorance here, but what the hell is the deal with all this “23″ bullshit anyway? I know a big faction of counter-cultural circles gravitate towards it, but I can’t say as I’ve ever been interested enough to find out what they are talking about or where it came from. Maybe somebody can fill me in!
What do you guys think of this trailer? Be candid as I’m sure the movie studio marketing people tracking this demographically-targeted conversation will appreciate it! (I’m just conjecturing about that, sure, but it does actually happen. Read more about it here)
I would be interested to see a conspiracy-theory movie that tackles the more “hard-core” topics that somebody like Jeff Wells covers. Seems like that would make a better horror movie than a bunch of numbers!
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23 Comments
Some trace the 23 thing to Arthur Koestler’s interest in synchronicity, but many counter-culture people who know anything about it trace it back to William Burroughs’ Tangier experiences, and the scrapbooks he kept at the time. From blather.net:
Burroughs kept a scrapbook of “23s”. Robert Anton Wilson did a lot to propagate the number’s obliquely occult connotations in the Illuminatus trilogy that he co-wrote with Robert Shea in the 70s, and then the whole Temple Ov Psychick Youth phenomenon associated with Genesis P-Orridge did a huge amount to slip the number into occulture during the 80s (Psychic TV once released 23 albums each month for 23 months, each time on the 23rd). It spread out during the late 80s / early 90s rave movement - at that time it was at an interesting stage where it was popping up everywhere as a kind of playful covert nod towards a whole diverse modern tradition of interest in the esoteric. I remember The Drum Club, and the Spiral Tribe sound system were quite obsessed by it.
I was pretty obsessed by it during the early 90s, and it certainly worked as an interesting “attractor” for synchronicity, and a slippery shorthand for a certain current in recent overlaps between culture and the occult. I think it not only functioned in the simplistic way of getting obsessed about there being something “real” behind its significance, but also in the sense that it called attention to itself as a self-fulfilling obsession, and thus the power of such a focus of energy and attention (I think this is part of why it appealed a lot of people associated - even just conceptually - with Chaos Magic).
It seemed to run its course through the 90s, and you’d often see it cropping up in hip TV shows with a frequency that made you wonder whether it was just playing tricks again or (more likely these days), the makers of the show were slipping it in consciously. Now I guess a Joel Schumacher film about it functions as a clear final nail in its coffin. Then again, who knows? It’s a pretty maddening, slippery thing.
The 23 thing was first (to my knowledge) put forward in Cosmic Trigger volume one by Robert Anton Wilson, a book I think everyone should read. He started noticing a pattern of 23s in his life and he observed that the harder he looked, the more 23s he found, so it was an example of taking a view of reality into one’s own hands in a way, I suppose. He also puts 23s in his other stuff, like The Illuminatus! Trilogy, for one.
The movie looks cheap and flashy.
I think it’s usually a freak set of events that may have caused someone to have found importance in seeing a coincidence of a particular number. Personally, I think that if someone focuses on a particular number, then they are creating a program in their mind using logic & fuzzy-logic to constantly seek out, anylize, and cross-check; and then the numbers jump out as if they are trying to tell you something. The other thought is it could be a sporadic attraction, much like how I’ll be reading Douglas Rushkoff’s books, and he shows up near town at a conference I was going to attend anyway, or how I’ve been focusing on Neuro-Linguistic Programming, and someone in one of the bookstores at the bottom of the hill where I live, set up an NLP course. I’ve been keeping quite about my nlp studies, so it’s not like I socially influenced it into existence. I’d probably suggest that it’s a combination of the two; attraction & keen-awareness.
One of my neighbors (Andrew) down the hall is very much like the character portrayed in that film. He even tries to blur the lines between numerology & actual events. Somewhow it makes sense to him, but whenever he tries to explain in-depth, it seems like he’s working up allot of energy just to notice something minutely frivolous. What personal gain &/or understanding does he obtain from constantly being on the lookout for these strange esoteric connections between numbers & events. It seems like he could’ve spent his time, energy, and awareness on something a little more useful both in the short & long term. I’ve actually got to run, but here’s a few wikipedia links that may be a starting point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_%28number%29#In_numerology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_23_enigma
23 Squidoo, baby!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_23_enigma
…and what RAW is riffing on is the Discordian “Law of Fives”…
(see the relevant subheading in the article at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordianism
)
2+3=5, you see…
And “twenty-three skidoo!” is all part of the Big Picture, as well…
best,
s.
I’m surprised you don’t know this, Tim.
One of the many definitions I’ve heard over the years (in addition to the above comments) was that Crowley was really heavy into achieving the 23rd level of consciousness through magick. If I’m not mistaken (and I might be, since my interest in it is merely cursory) some other things associated with the 23rd level are the color blue and marijuana.
I don’t know if it’s true for most RAW readers but after getting tuned into the whole 23 deal in the early 90s, and after reading nearly every book RAW had written, I started noticing the 23 pattern everywhere. Sometimes it was downright spooky and annoying at the same time. After awhile I stopped trying to find 23s - trying to find is exactly what it is - because frankly it began to seem detrimental to my sanity. Right before I tuned it all out, I had experienced a continuous wave of 23 sightings/revealings lasting about a week straight. Then, while driving down the street I had a blowout on one of my tires. I pulled over (thank God I wasn’t driving on the highway) and proceeded to change the tire. I realized I was situated half on the curb and half on the sidewalk, directly in front of 23 Mountain Rd! I just started laughing like there was no tomorrow. It all came to a head at that moment. It seemed like the Universe itself was playing with me. Same sort of thing RAW relates in Cosmic Trigger as well.
I’m not surprised Hollywood would make a movie about something like this. I’m also not surprised that Jim Carrey would be the lead. He is into this sort of stuff. He’s probably a longtime fan of RAW, no doubt. Another movie he did a few years ago, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, ties into the whole Montauk Project theme. There’s a scene in the movie where he arrives at Montauk, Long Island on a train and you see it clearly on the sign; I noticed it immediately and started watching the movie in a different light. Most people didn’t understand the movie, but it makes more sense when you realize what it intends to allude too.
I think it might be a faithful representation of what RAW went through during his 23 enigma adventures. The way he describes it in the Cosmic Trigger series, you can almost picture him in the same state as portrayed in the clip by Carrey. A couple of times he writes something to the effect that he thought he was loosing his mind.
Yeah, me too. It’s just one of those gaps I have had in my reading, you know? Funny how they happen. Thanks everyone for a very useful breakdown of it here - especially Gyrus.
One of the things I have really come to appreciate from this website is the way that knowledge is embedded in shared networks, teams of people. No one person may have all the pieces, but by learning to accurately access and cultivate the other members of the group, you have access to a tremendously larger and richer range of information.
Good call on the Eternal Sunshine connection. Great movie! I have also personally explored a little bit of the old Montauk Air Force base at Camp Hero when I was in high school. We didn’t find much of anything but it was a great adventure!
The key thing Wilson said about the 23 enigma is that “any number can be made to relate to 23 - *depending on the ingenuity of the observer*”.
The whole point is that once you start looking for 23s (or any bloody thing), they pop up. How much is because we’re attuned to noticing them, how much to synchronicity (which of course is still observer-created, being defined as ‘meaningful coincidence’) and how much to actually changing the universe in any way is of course the interesting point.
Cool! I wish I had had places like that to explore while growing up.
That’s the REALLY interesting point. I plan on writing about this later, but I think what Wilson is trying to identify via the “23″ phenomenon is what Philip K. Dick might have recognized as shifting points orthogonally between timelines
http://www.greylodge.org/occultreview/glor_010/dick_world.htm
As I said, more on this later. But for now, check out Mark 5:
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark%205%20;&version=9;
Sorry, this probably seems totally off-topic at first glance if interpreted in a rational way. I am working on the language to contain what I mean here without ruining the mystery of it.
The point is that Jesus shifted orthogonally between a timeline where the girl was dead and where she was only sleeping. This seems to be the way most of his “miracles” function.
the observer created universe…………………………………………………..
once you start looking you can find connections from anything to anything else. the number 23 is one of those things.
what would you like to create?
Yah, yah…..Cosmic Trigger. What a fun read. The number 23…hmm, sign of the Illumanati, supposedly even greater spiritual significance surrounding those numbers….not to mention the fact that they’ve been my favorite numbers even before I read any of Robert Anton Wilson’s works back in the day. Still, the movie is going to be trite, insipid popcorn fluff….thanks entirely to Joel Schumacker at the helm.
Oh, and Tim. . .what you said about knowledge being embedded in shared networks, and that we all have a piece of the truth that…when brought together….gives us an almost infinite wellspring of knowledge. I love that. Reminds me of a Star Trek TNG episode that my father brought up the other day. Now, I never watched the show. . but he said there was this episode where they were on a quest for Truth or somesuch, and they found bits and pieces of it hidden away in various planets. That different people possessed a tiny bit of this Great Truth, but no one person had it completely. Hell, since I didn’t watch the episode…I’m not sure how relevant it is to this converstation. Perhaps other Star Trek fans know of what I’m referring?
It’s one thing to say that it’s a psychologically influenced phenomenon, but another to actually be *inside* that phenomenon, where the psychological explanation is utterly unconvincing. This is especially aggravating since you somehow automatically sound like a psycho when you try to tell other people about this crap. It’s like there’s this stereotype about what “crazy talk” sounds like and if the other person decides you’re beginning to resemble it, even slightly, they automatically turn into a condescending ass and toss out everything you said without a second thought. It’s like an immune system.
Seeing 23s in rapid and meaningful sequence is a disturbing and very REAL occurence, and you don’t even have to look for them — it’s like once you sink into the 23 current, they start popping up and sometimes it’s like a 16-hit combo and you’re all like omfg!!1 is this teh matrix!!!1@?/
I don’t mean “real” in the conventional sense. I mean real in the sense that there’s something to the general phenomenon that somehow goes beyond the one experiencing it; the number itself may very well be irrelevent, but who knows? A noble doubt is a persistent one and I’m so full of them when it comes to synchronicity. I have no satisfactory explanation for it.
But yeah, fuck that movie. More fuel for the cultural immune system. I’m on slow internet so I can’t see the trailer, but let me guess: it’s going to be a cautionary note about the “dangers” of associative thought processes and schizophrenia. When people saw A Beautiful Mind, they didn’t see “a beautiful mind” they saw that psycho and his imaginary friends almost drowning a baby. I might make a similar criticism about Pi, but I won’t because it actually had respect for its material and only resembles those other “descent into madness” movies superficially.
a descent into madness? no……it`s how our minds actually work in this universe. for some reason our consciousness is able to synthesize the energy information of external reality into a stable consistant consensus reality that allows us to interact with everything we see. occasionally we see a different effect, a glitch possibly, in ourselves or in the external, whereby things operate differently.
if you assume we are working perfectly all the time, which nlp does, then you have to draw different conclusions regarding delusions or occult effects. ufos, ghosts, numbers, coincedances, abduction scenarios…………..all become reports of altered states of perception with thier own validity.
science doesn`t want this effect getting around mind you. it makes cubicle life that much more difficult to bear.
if we could begin to run our consciousness in a slightly different way, much like hackers and phreaks and system modders, then we can experience life in a different, “customised” way………where things work out better for us.
i think that`s what the wiccans and the goths and other outsiders are trying to do. they get an early glimpse of a different way of living and creating and try to chase it through ritual and dress.
why not? it beats dressing like britney or justin……………….a slippery slope to a suburban wasteland.
Yeah, that is absolutely what it is!
Preach on brother!
Holy shit! How comforting! I can’t believe I’ve never heard anyone say that before. It’s so damned simple.
All I can add is that for me it is interesting u posted something on number connections on 11/11, since that number has been my “23″.
It’s a 23 related number - the 23rd hour is also known as 11 pm.
People go on about this number connection at length, and I don’t want to but there is definitely something to it - however the “something” is quite elusive.
11/11 this weekend was extremely significant for me as well, and included HUGE off the charts synchronicity hits on both 3:33am and 3:33pm related to Jesus
The weird part of me posting this on 11/11 though, was that I actually posted it several days before so that it would publish in advance. It published on 11/11 only because it was when I was up to in writing ahead for the next few days.
Definitely something to it. Seems like maybe I provoked it by posting this…
Here is another explanation of the significance of 23:
2 + 3 = 5
5 is the number of the Microcosm because it represents the 4 natural elements (Earth, Air, Water, Fire) ruled by the 5th element of Human Spirit. This is represented by the Pentagram.
2 x 3 = 6
6 is the number of the Macrocosm because it represents the 6 known planets of the ancients (Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Saturn, Jupiter). This is represented by the Hexagram.
The 5 and the 6 can both be used to refer to the central Sphere on the Qabalistic Tree of Life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_of_Life), Tiphareth. Tiphareth is the Sphere that represents the “Christ Center,” or the god (or “Genius”, “Divine Inspiration”, or “Holy Guardian Angel”, etc.) that lies within us. It is the 5th Sphere from the bottom of the Tree (”from the Microcosm”, if you will) and the 6th Sphere from the top of the Tree (”from the Macrocosm”, if you will).
5 and 6 combine to make 11, which is the number of letters in the word Abrahadabra.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrahadabra:
“Abrahadabra … represents the uniting of the Microcosm with the Macrocosm—represented by the pentagram and the hexagram, the rose and the cross, the circle and the square, the 5 and the 6, etc.—also called the attainment of the Knowledge and Conversation of one’s Holy Guardian Angel.”
So the 2 and the 3 are basic building blocks of the 5 and the 6, which are key elements of the integration of the Self (K & C of the HGA, as in the quote above), which is the first main step in most Western magical traditions.
Fr. IET
(”Iustus et Temperatus”)
http://www.otojapan.org/
Care to elaborate?
Guess who made the 23rd comment! ha ha
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[...] February 24, 2007 by cadeveo On Feb. 23rd, a movie starring Jim Carrey, the #23 will find release in movie theatres nationwide. When I first saw the trailer for it on Tim Boucher’s site, I mechanically reacted with a feeling of disgust. Robert Anton Wilson, sage agnostic and gonzo philosopher dies, and the 23 meme he first helped to spread with the Principia Discordia (along with Kerry Thornley), The Illuminatus Trilogy (written with Robert Shea) and Cosmic Trigger now gets rebranded as some terrifying symbol of psychosis and paranoia and as, I imagined, yet another tale about how some knowledge is dangerous and should therefore be avoided out of hand. Sure, potential psychosis and paranoia can play a part in the 23 meme, but that’s only part of it—the other parts include the realization that “what the perceiver perceives, the prover proves,†(if you are looking for the Illuminati’s number or Jesus or your Isht everywhere, your mind will entrain to that frequency and you will then perceive that which you seek). This leads to the further, powerful realization that one can play the artist of one’s reality within limits, set by the nature of our sensory apparatus and their limited modes of perception—and that includes whatever “maps†or templates the mind is fond of overlaying on the Real. And acknowledging the caveat in the last part of that sentence can lead to the realization that the Real remains mysterious, ineffable and unknowable—once really get that, not just intellectually, you can really transcend the mechanical, the limited, the “lower†aspects of your mind, emotion, intuition and behavior if you so choose. At the very least, you’ll have a greater sense of humor, greater flexibility in dealing with every day life and will trade in arrogance and self-righteousness with a more genuine humility, love and compassion for yourself, others and everything around you. (Or so I hear—my knowledge tends to be merely intellectual, which is to say, no Real knowledge at all, but my gut says the potential to Really Gno exists.) The number 23 meme also represents change or transformation and, whether deliberately or inadvertently, it shows up in quite a few movies serving just that purpose, at least that’s how I perceive it. [...]