Dear Mark, You might find this a bit weird,
but my brother is obsessed with the number six and its religious implications.
He never plays the six in roulette, the lottery, six or 66 in keno, nor will he
play place the six in craps (as you often recommend) because of its association
with the devil. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Daniel S.
It’s tough,
Daniel, switching hats from a Math Guy to an amateur Psychologist, and while I
have never known anyone with just the obsession you describe, it is not uncommon
for someone to ascribe magical properties to something numerical. Your question
does remind me of a pit boss I once knew who when deciding on how the shift was
going to go for the casino that night, would roll three die; if they came up all
sixes, and the date was also odd, bad spirits surrounded the pit, and all hell
would break loose that evening.
While numerology has different meanings to different
people and situations, it is my impression that people tend to find magical properties
and wisdom in things they really don’t understand very well; like numbers:
no 13th floors in casino hotels; don’t light three cigarettes on a single match;
the 666/Satan foolishness; numerology; astrology; it’s a long list.
As
for 666/Satan numerology, the number 666 is a sign in the Christian Bible’s
Book of Revelations that supposedly says that the Beast or Satan is named,
can be identified with, or is connected to it. Yet, as Isaac Azimov pointed out
with charming clarity, in ancient Hebrew the same symbols were used both for
letters and for numbers, so that a given series of symbols could be read as a
word or as a number. It so happened that the three-consonant (vowels were not
written) word standing for the devil could also be read as the number 666, which
is still promoted among the credulous as the number of Satan or of the Beast.
People, still, and quite sincerely, find ways of deriving the number 666 from
the name or other features of a person or thing, thus proving its association
with Satan.
The assigning of values
to the letters of person’s name and totting them up to discover some significant
fact will always be popular with people who probably dropped out of eighth
grade math and have never been concerned with logic. I say, Daniel, keep placing
the six in craps, unless of course at your next Tarot card reading before a
casino visit the 15th card in the deck appears. It is the Devil card, which can
stand for a warning against the destructive consequences of your actions when
motivated by greed.
