The Number 23

By Gaz under Movies, Ramblings

As night descended quickly during our journey from Las Vegas to San Diego on Friday, we stopped for the night at Elsinor, about 70 miles shy of our destination. It was February 23rd, release date of Jim Carrey’s new movie, The Number 23, which I had been looking forward to ever since I saw the trailer last autumn.

I wasn’t disappointed, the movie was excellent throughout. The cinematography was at once stark and beautiful, with a clear distinction between the fantasy scenes with over exposed colours, and the reality scenes in natural colours… but as the film progresses and Carrey’s character, Walter Sparrow, begins to lose his grip on sanity it becomes harder to distinguish between the two. And it’s fun watching Sparrow find the number 23 everywhere, wondering where the next occurence will be; the film starts on his 32nd birthday — 23 reversed; the letters of his name transposed to numbers and added together make 23; he wakes up from a nightmare at 2:30am….

My theory is that the human brain has evolved over millions of years to match patterns, and much like how after buying a new car you didn’t think many people owned but then start seeing everywhere on the road, on the TV and so on, once you attention is focussed on something you will begin to notice that thing all the more. Try closing your eyes for several seconds, relax and imagine the colour red holding it in your minds eye the whole while. Once you open your eyes, red items in your field of vision will “pop out” as your brain continues looking for red. Another example is that I have a bemused attachment to the number 666, which you may have notice already if you’ve been following my blog for even a short while. In any case I notice 666 occuring in my life all the more often simply because I’m looking for it.

Much the same with 23, I came out of the film thinking about it, and noticed that the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie was advertising its release date on March 23rd; the digits of my birthday (03/03/1970) add up to 23; the clock was reading 8:50 as I left the theatre, the hands on the clock reflecting the positions of 2 and 3; if I take the the letters of my name where A=1, B=2… Z=26, then my names (Gary, Victor and Vaughan) equate to 51, 87 and 74 respectively, adding the digits of those gives 6, 15 and 11, and totalling those makes 32, the reverse of 23. Try it yourself, it’s not too hard to find a way to reach 23 from almost anywhere if you take a little time I wonder whether I’ll start noticing 23 or 666 more often from here on in?

Curiously, according to Wikipedia 23 has strong arcane links to synchronicity and magic and is mentioned repeatedly by Aleister Crowley and Robert Anton Wilson in connection with the Illuminati, as does the The Principia Discordia along with the number 5 (sum of the digits 2 and 3) key to drawing a pentagram.

Related Articles

1. Free Masonry in Sedona