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The Number of the Beast
By David F. Godwin
FATE :: October 2005

As Lon DuQuette says in his article, there have been countless attempts since the first century a.d. to get this name or that to add up to 666, thereby proving the subject of the inquiry to be none other than the Beast of Revelation.

If you can't do it by numerology, maybe you can do it by counting. For example, George Walker BushJr consists of three names, each of six letters: six-six-six. If "BushJr" seems awkward, use the German spelling of the last name: Busche.

Most efforts to "beast" somebody involve stretches like this.

In the novel War and Peace, the hero Pierre Bezuhov decides that Napoleon must be the Beast. He numbers the French alphabet 1 through 9, 10 through 90, and - instead of 100 through 900 as is done with the Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic alphabets - 110 through 160. By this method, he gets l'empereur Napoleon to come out to 666.

Aleister Crowley may be the only prominent individual to make a concerted effort to get his own name to enumerate to 666. He did it in a fairly straightforward manner, using Hebrew letters and numerology (gematria) and using the Hebrew heh (H) for the letter E in established cabalistic convention: A L H Y S (samekh) T (teth) H R H K R O (ayin) V L H Y. Of course he had to add a middle initial E (for Edward, his birth name), which he never did otherwise.

You can get "Bill Gates III" to be 666 by adding up the ASCII equivalents of the letters - except that III is 3.

If you number the English alphabet A = 100, B = 101, C = 102, and so on, then Hitler = 666.

Another method is to number the alphabet by multiples of six: 6, 12, 18, 24, and so on. Then you can pick up Kissinger, Rockefeller, New York, and others.

The number 666 really is everywhere. In Hebrew, the letter waw (or vav) carries the sound of w. It also represents the number six.

Almost every Internet address that we use every day carries the initials of the World Wide Web: WWW ... 666 ...

Read the rest of this article in the October 2005 issue of FATE

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