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Twenty Three (The Number: Coincidences Involving '23')

Re: Railway Line Deaths and the Age 23

ToneLeMoan said:
I consider myself a sceptic to the point of not calling myself a Fortean, that is to say I'm not quite open-minded enough to consider it anything more than a coincidence.
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We have you now.................... mwah mwah mwah :hello:
 
So heres the freaky thing for me: I just started looking at this thread and Gold, who started it, has 23 posts :shock:
 
23

Can anybody explain the signifigance of the number 23. I currently live at a no.23 and keep having people say aaahhh 23, it couldnt be any other number

help

I dont understand!
 
Here is "13" pages of "23.

edited by TheQuixote: removed link as both threads are now merged
 
I started reading this thread, glanced down, and noticed it was 03:23....
Looked again and notice that I joined FT on the 23rd of December.
 
I was reading a book by Bill Drummond (big 23 fan) on a flight recently, and when I checked into the hotel, I was pleased to find the room I was given was 23. :eek:
 
From www.wannlearn.com
Not exactly psychic, but pretty weird!
Consider these facts:
William Shakespeare is believed to have been born on 23rd April 1564.
A memorial at Holy Trinity Church, Stratford-upon-Avon, records that he died on 23rd April 1616.
Shakespeare's plays were first performed in 1588, when Shakespeare was 23.
The First Folio of Shakespeare's works was published in 1623.
Now 23 + 23 = 46
The King James Bible was first published in 1611, when Shakespeare was 46.
"WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE" is an anagram of "HERE WAS I, LIKE A PSALM".

Now try this:
Obtain a King James (Authorized Version) Bible, and turn to PSALM 46.
Write down the 46th word from the beginning.
Write down the 46th word from the end.

Amazed? You should be!

If you have followed the procedure correctly,
the answer you will get is:

SHAKE SPEAR
 
Pss.46
[1] God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
[2] Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;
[3] Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
[4] There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
[5] God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.
[6] The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.
[7] The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
[8] Come, behold the works of the LORD, what desolations he hath made in the earth.
[9] He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.
[10] Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
[11] The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
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fyi. :eek:
 
I would also encourage you to search for: fort's psalm
on google..
 
Well, it's definitely not my imagination:

gfort2ao.gif


...or is it?
 
Canadian Security of Information Act -

paragraph 23 is about Conspiracy

Code: 
            OFFENCES
               Conspiracy, Attempts, Etc.
Conspiracy, attempts, etc.
 23. Every person commits an offence who conspires or attempts to commit, is an accessory after the fact in relation to or counsels in relation to an offence under this Act and is liable to the same punishment and to be proceeded against in the same manner as if he or she had committed the offence.

2001, c. 41, s. 29.
 
Soooooooo here is a question:

RAW says this all largely comes from William Burroughs but are there non-RAW sources for this?

I must admit I thought this was an easy one as I had read it... somewhere but have drawn a complete blank.

I did a quick search in book at Amazon.com and found nothing.

Has anyone got a Burroughs biog? One would think it'd be odd enough to be worth mentioning.

As RAW maks such extensive use of false documents I am lft with th nagging suspicion this may actually be part of the "game."
 
I am pretty sure that Burroughs makes sort of knowing references to the phrase 23 skidoo in various of his writings and explains somewhere (I know, I'm useless, sorry) about a series of coincidences he noticed involving the number and the name Clark which led to him keeping records of 23s.
In Cosmic Trigger (1) RAW explains that the number seemed to play a large part in his own personal initiatory/illuminatory/just-going-fucking-nuts-atory experience.

/edit/ searching the web for the Burroughs 23/Clark story doesn't seem to throw up any definitive Burroughs source... maybe this is just one of those 'known things' ... Burroughs was big on reality as a memetic virus ;)
 
_Lizard23_ said:
/edit/ searching the web for the Burroughs 23/Clark story doesn't seem to throw up any definitive Burroughs source... maybe this is just one of those 'known things' ... Burroughs was big on reality as a memetic virus ;)
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Exactly. I'm sure I read about this well before RAW but I'll be damned if I can find out where.
 
Hello there - I've not posted here for a few years now but just had to reply to this.

Burroughs didn't actually write about the 23 enigma, he did however make scrap books collecting occurances of 23 More info on my website here:

http://pi.twentythree.us/23enigma/synchro23.htm
 
I don't know if anyone has yet mentioned this on this thread (can't be arsed to trawl back through 14 pages) but...


Has anyone noticed that the makers of Lost seem to have picked up on the 23 enigma? It's one of the mysterious series of numbers that had to be entered into the computer in the hatch.
 
There are other examples: Mr Eko recites Psalm 23.

phi23 said:
Hello there - I've not posted here for a few years now but just had to reply to this.

Burroughs didn't actually write about the 23 enigma, he did however make scrap books collecting occurances of 23 More info on my website here:

http://pi.twentythree.us/23enigma/synchro23.htm
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I did read that and was going to drop you a line. What is the source for that though and is that an actual picture of his scrapbook?
 
Psalm 23 is, of course, famous for being the most famous Psalm, and read a lot at funerals, so it might just be coincidence.
 
H_James said:
Psalm 23 is, of course, famous for being the most famous Psalm, and read a lot at funerals, so it might just be coincidence.
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Psalm 23 also comes up in V for Vendetta and it is the only 23 I've spotted in a work absolutely stuffed to the gills with the Law of Fives.
 
Patti Smith, a well know friend of Burroughs, recites it on 'Privelage (set me free)' off Easter. But I think it's non-meaningful in the 23 context.
 
H_James said:
Patti Smith, a well know friend of Burroughs, recites it on 'Privelage (set me free)' off Easter. But I think it's non-meaningful in the 23 context.
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Ah but it is meangingful:

1. If it is an intentional reference to 23

2. If it is another strange appearance of 23

You can't lose ;)
 
I just tried an experiment.
I thought I'd check up on the wikipedia link above on 23 skidoo which was quite informative.
Then I thought I'd push it a bit and clicked on the random article link another 22 times to see what it came up with.

Hmmmm. Not much it seemed.

'Kidds Store, Kentucky is a hamlet in extreme northeastern Casey County near the intersection of KY 906 and U.S. Route 127. It was named for the community's first postmaster, Elias Kidd. He also ran a store and gristmill in the area. Its post office operated from 1887 to 1954.'


So out of curiosity, I'd thought I'd google Elias Kidd and got THIS as the second result under the original wiki link...


'May 23 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia1929 - The first talking cartoon of Mickey Mouse, The Karnival Kid, was released. ... 1682); 1617 - Elias Ashmole, English antiquarian (d. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_23 - 89k - Cached - Similar pages'
 
Interview with the leading actress for the Number 23 in one of the sections of the independent - has a few little fortean twists:

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/film ... 272686.ece

Virginia Madsen: How 'Sideways' turned her life around
By Lesley O'Toole
Published: 16 February 2007

Little more than a decade ago, Virginia Madsen's Los Angeles house was being repossessed and the only acting offer she had was to star opposite rats. "That was the lowest of many low points," says Madsen, laughing. She made her name as an Eighties film babe (Dune, Class, Fire with Fire) and then disappeared. Her Hollywood comeback in 2004's Sideways was cemented when she won an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, and a slew of job offers, none entailing interaction with vermin. Sideways cannot, though, claim all the credit for Madsen's rapidly altered fortunes.

"It was me. I created the change in my life. I turned my life in a different direction and really started living with intention. Anyone can do that, and certainly some of the greatest minds in the world do it." She is talking about the power of visualisation; of trying to entice what she wanted into her life. "It's like what Jim Carrey did, standing on Mulholland Drive for night after night saying, 'I'm the biggest star in the world.' I always loved that story."

Madsen subsequently made no secret of her appreciation for Carrey. "Everyone who knows me was sick of hearing about it. 'Yes, we know you love Jim. God!' Then my agent called one day and said, 'You've never going to believe this'." It was an offer to star opposite Carrey in The Number 23, a psychological thriller based on what is termed "the 23 enigma". A Google search returns more than three million matches detailing the freakish occurrence of the number in almost every aspect of life, every juncture of history. While Carrey is obsessed with the phenomenon, Madsen is more circumspect.

"I am one of those people who knows about the yeti and UFOs. I always tune into TV shows about that stuff because I think they're so much fun. Anyway, I did this thing called the Law of Cupcakes. I decided I would only think about cupcakes and then I wrote down the word 'cupcake'. Lo and behold, they began to appear everywhere. I got out of a cab and there was a grand opening of a cupcake place. I turned on CNN and there was a story about how cupcakes are now all the rage. I got a present from my agent when I started this film: a basket of cupcakes. And then, best of all, the first day on the set there was actually a crew guy walking round wearing a T-shirt with a cupcake on it. With a big arrow pointing to the cupcake. My mum always says God has a wonderful sense of humour and I do think all these things are riddles, a joke God has played on us. They are not going to be solved."

Since her success in Sideways, Madsen has made five films and most recently appeared in this country in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. "I walked on to the set my first day and Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin were on stage singing. My hair was standing on end. And I just sort of sat down in the back seat of this theatre and cried like a baby because I honestly couldn't believe I was there. That was really the moment that felt like the culmination of everything that I'd worked for. The realisation just flooded in that I'd made it to where I wanted to go."

Madsen is now so booked she says she doesn't even have time for a boyfriend. "There was one really nice man and he dropped me off after our second date and said, 'When can I see you again?' I said, 'Oh, in three months', because I was going off to make another film. So he's now engaged to someone else and I missed that boat. But hey, I'm that girl now - career first and see you in a few months." For now she must make do with her Carrey crush. "Oh my God, he gave me such a kiss in the film. He totally made the heart go 'Oooh!'" She sees my surprise at her openness. "You know, I'm more confident, more secure, more daring now."

In The Number 23, Madsen plays two characters, one a traditional wife and mother, the other a vamp. "I had to train so hard for that and just not eat. I ate soup. And jelly. It was so awful. But I have to say it's still kind of fun to transform yourself physically for a role."

She says the lull in her career was in part self-created. "My bread and butter had become these TV films. And then I became known only for that, for being the TV babe. And I really didn't want to be there. So I had to say no to my bread and butter and that's when I really went broke." She borrowed money to pay the mortgage, from friends and her actor brother Michael. "Most of my friends are writers and actors so they were all broke but some of them loaned me dribs and drabs, enough to get by for a few months. And sometimes a great job came along. There was a beautiful Tom Selleck Western, which paid me really well and that saved me for another year and a half."

And then Madsen became her own personal trainer. She resolved to return to acting school, start working out and make herself the best person she could be. "I was undergoing a sort of transformation after coming out of a cocoon. I was reading, I had a spiritual programme and I was teaching art at my son's school which was the most fulfilling thing I'd ever done. I just knew my life would turn around.

"I started calling casting agents and saying, 'Hey, you haven't seen me for 10 years. Let me just come in and tell you what kind of parts I'm looking for.' It created a momentum and I was auditioning really well. People said, 'My God, she blew me away.' But they still didn't cast me. And then Alexander [Payne] did for Sideways and everything turned around."

Born in Chicago, Madsen was drawn to drama at school and from the age of 12 pursued it with a precocious tenacity. When she was old enough, she moved to Los Angeles to follow her dream. She quickly won her first role in 1983's teen sex romp Class opposite Rob Lowe, which called for full nudity, and she was subsequently naked in three more films. Understandably, Madsen's reputation - the hot blonde - was at odds with the one she idealised.

"I really hated all that. I wasn't comfortable with being called sexy. It had very little to do with who I was or my personality. I'm actually quite modest as a person. The funny thing now that I'm in my forties is that I'm not uncomfortable about that image at all. I love getting dressed up and that stuff. I work hard and I love what I see in the mirror. I've even heard Paris Hilton said I was hot."

What advice might she give the aspiring actress in Hilton? "What you do now will show later. Look, I will fight ageing every step of the way but I will do it through physical fitness and keeping my mind and body and spirit as healthy as I can be. I've been blessed with good genes."

Madsen will pass hers to son Jack, 12 (by her ex-boyfriend, model and actor Antonio Sabato Jr). "Antonio and I built new houses a block from each other, so if [Jack] is not with me, he's literally down the block."

As thrilled as she is about her career (she also has a voiceover business), Madsen seems happier out of the spotlight. "The mundane is the exotic to me. I love doing domestic things like cooking for the neighbourhood kids, just making a mess. I do feel like a juggler, though, like those old-fashioned guys who spun plates on a stick. Inevitably one or two will break but I do the best I can."

'The Number 23' opens on 23 February
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The secret of the number 23 is:

-the secret of science

-the secret of magick

-the secret of the Law of Fives

-the secret of tarot

-the secret of bible interpretation

-the secret of film interpretation

-the secret of art interpretation

-the secret of art

-the secret of rorschach tests

-the secret of metaprogramming

-the secret of body dismorphia

-the secret of consciousness

-the secret of bigotry

-the secret of Finnegans Wake

-the secret of poetry

-the secret of palmistry

-the secret of optimism

-the secret of history interpretation

-the secret of music appreciation

-the secret of beauty

-the secret of hermeticism
 
Mighty_Emperor said:
Psalm 23 also comes up in V for Vendetta and it is the only 23 I've spotted in a work absolutely stuffed to the gills with the Law of Fives.
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Then again, 2+3=5... ;)
 
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