by Brahn th’ Blessed
I thought this title might be more easily remembered. Its actually an article about the power and arcane mysteries of… not yet… let it ripen… numbers. Yes, numbers. Another article about numerology. Yeah, me too. There are only ten Arabic Numerals—they are 0.1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9. That’s it. Astrology only has twelve zodiac signs, but it’s got twelve houses too, and its got aspects: conjunctions, quincunxes (quincunxes alone are reason enough to go astral over astrology!), sextiles and semi-sextiles, trines, squares, and oppositions. And everyone knows their Sun Sign, their Moon Sign, and their Rising Sign! You go, Astrology!
But back to the subject of this article, Me Knee Allah Gee, or rather numbers. What use are numbers? Well for one, you can do fantastic math with numbers, such math as I have no interest in putting you through. But all I want you to do is play with numbers, have some fun with numbers, and discover some astounding secrets about numbers that you were never taught in any high school or college math course. While I was making Cs and Ds in my high school math courses I was beginning to play with numbers and the Greek Alphabet, and other random nonsense that tickled my 16 year old fancy as I was prepared and packaged off to the Air Force for service to my country in Vietnam. They did that to high schoolers in those days. Spoiler: I never went to Vietnam.
The true name of this article is Meneology. That is what I called my study of numbers, my Game of Nines & Naughts. Of course, -ology is a suffix that simply means a study or search for knowledge. Mene- had other sources. In the dictionary I learned that it is the name of a Greek goddess of the Moon (also known as Selene), but especially a goddess of the Lunar Month. As I am a devotee of the Moon, and since Mene was said to have counted out the days of the lunar calendar month, and since I am also a calendrist who developed my own lunar calendar, this name resonated with me. But moreover because I knew the Biblical “handwriting on the wall” in 5-Daniel, Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin, in which Mene means “counted”. So I decided to call those ten Arabic numerals menes, but pronounced as “means”
One essential requirement of this study is that you know how to find the root number of any number, positive or negative, from zero (0) to the cube of 17,487,319,223,864,565, 004,276,331. By the way, I can show you how to make that challenge easy. Anyway, to find the root value, or mene of a number, any number, there are two methods and one very nice trick. We’ll do the trick first. The trick is “nines and naughts don’t count for aught.” This works with either of the two methods you may use to find the mene. You can just scratch out every nine or zero and any two or more numbers that add to nine or a multiple of nine. In the number above, I’m gonna scratch (1 & 8 = 9), (7 + 4 + 7 = 18), (9 = 9), (3 + 1 + 2 + 3 = 9), (8 + 6 + 4 = 18), (2 + 5 + 6 + 5 = 18), (00 = 0), (2 + 7 = 9), (6 + 3 = 9) and all I have left of that big ol’ number now is 431. I feel like spoutin’ some smack talk at that number. You’ll agree that this is a very useful trick. With a number that has a mene of zero/0 or nine/9, it becomes your choice whether to leave the nine/9 or take it out and call the mene zero/0.
Method One – Addition. In this method we add all the numerals of the number together, time and time again until the sum of the last numerals added together is only one numeral and we got no more to add. With this big number, we gonna add just a few at a time. 1+7+4+8+7=27, 3+1+9+2+2+3=20, 8+6+4+5+6+5=34, 0+0+4+2+7+6=19, 3+3+1=7; and that leaves 272,034,197. So we add some more. 2+7+2+0+3+4=18 & 1+9+7=17, leaving us with 1,817. Now we’re getting there. 1+8+1+7=17 & 1+7=[8], the mene of this big ol’ number is eight/8. So you see, doing those nines & naughts can save you a ton of work on the big numbers. The 431 that was left has the same mene, [8].
Method Two – Division. In this method, we divide the numeral by nine, and we’re not even worried about the integer quotient; it is the remainder that is the mene. So here we go.
17,487,319,223,864,565,004,276,331 / 9 = 1,943,035,469,318,285,475,147 r[8] – OR –
431 / 9 = 47 r[8]
Again we see that nines & naughts can save a lot of effort. We’ll make every effort to keep this simple but informative. However, it’ll be your job to do the work if you really wanna learn something astonishing about numbers.
Let’s get this show on the road. This all began for me back in high school (I was class of 67) so maybe 1965 or so. I had acquired a book on The Black Arts by Richard Cavendish which had a bit about every kind of magickal craft including numerology. Having learned how to find the root number of numbers, I started playing with doing that to numbers. One day I decided I’d reduce every number in a multiplication table to its root value. I’m not even gonna tell you what range of values the table should have. The more thorough your effort, the better you will find the basic mysteries of the numbers, the patterns, the rhythms, the replications. This simple exercise will put you face to face with a mystery and it will be up to you to grasp it, grok it, take it all in. I hope many of you who read this will comment and tell me what you find. I’ll follow up on this in just a week or so, but there’s lots more.
The writer was born with moonlight in his heart and is dedicated to her service. He is a pantheistic neoPagan mystic, the coordinator of Crows Nest, the Global CAW Cybernest, and an editor of Green Egg Magazine–by which magazine he was first introduced into the neoPagan community in 1972. He is also an Elder of the Essynian Witchcraft Tradition that he founded in 2021, and he is also the Most High Swami-Pajami at the Nashville Temple of Eris Discordiana & Towing Service…If You Need a Tow, Come Rain or Come Snow, We’re on the Go, And We Won’t be Slow!