All our feelings and thoughts
Expressed in ones and in oughts.
In endless spiraling chains
You can't decode or explain,
Cause you are so analog.
God dog I eye I god dog.
In the regime of a solid state
Wheels spin when you iterate.
k is x squared minus one
But .54321
When x is taken times two
That's when we're coming for you.
- Steven Trask & Cheater, "Random Number Generation"
(Hedwig and the Angry Inch Soundtrack)
This page is intended to be an eccentric dictionary of numeric references and allusions. Feel free to stick in numbers of 100 and higher that also have some cultural significance. The suggested format is just a word or two to suggest in which context the number is important. A Google search on the keyword and the number should be significant. For example, it's probably enough to put "666: The Bible" or "666: The Devil" and let people figure out the rest on their own.
Many of the initial entries were taken from [this site] and may be questionable. Please consider making questionable or speculative entries with a question mark. Please also refrain from trivial, silly, or dull "references" like area codes.
- 0: Nothing; the Void; world-egg, before-time.
- 1: power; The One; the original meaning of the swastika, hydrogen; the lonliest; Transcanada Highway
- φ: golden mean
- 2: balance, opposition; duality; the Tao.
- e: natural logarithm base (Euler)
- 3: points to define a plane, three-body problem; the Holy Trinity; any god/dess trinity; the three fates: past, present, future; three strokes intersect; axes of movement.
- π
- 4: compass points; seasons; bad luck in China and Japan, due to being a homonym for "death"; simplest Pythagorean solid; Aristotealean elements; a nibble.
- 5: starfish structure; elements; the five Taoist elements; the "fifth element" of Quintessence; Akasha; the five vital breaths of Tattwas; refer to pentacles, their place in nature, and the Microcosmic Man; the five divisions of the world (north, south, east, west, center); the Holiest of Holies; the Pentauch
- 6
- 7: the number given to sages; the seven chakras; the seven colors of the rainbow; the seven paths of the Sufi; the seven planets of the Greek system; John Dee's heptarch; favored time signature of Turks, gypsies and Laika; the points of three intersecting strokes; points on the Faerie Star; [tru7h]; Cascade
- 8: the eight Trigrams; the bits in one byte; Gardnerian Witchcraft's eight-spoked wheel of the year; The Eightfold Model of Consciousness; The Eight Basic Winner/Loser Scripts
- 9: pride before the fall; revolution; Taoist psychic channels; disks.
- 10: spheres of the sephiroth "world tree"; SI base.
- 11: Uri Geller; Spinal Tap; the non-existent path of the Sephiroth; Uqbar.
- 12: zodiac, timekeeping, Israel, jury, Western chromatic scale, (too many to list)
- 13: good/bad luck (occidental); bar mitzvah; US colonies; cicada broods.
- 14: Osiris, JS Bach; acupuncture meridians; UHF
- 15: Numbers Band
- 16: Ancient Egyptian for coitus = "1616"(?); European geomancy; bits in a word; 24=42; Minimum purchasing age
- 17: Tantrism, Robert Anton Wilson, [MIT], Swedish obscenity, haiku, Dostoevsky, ICP, [Yellow Pig Day], [see here]; cicada broods; final Apollo mission
- 18: legal age; Moby
- 19: Stephen King
- 20: icosahedron; letters of the Druidic tree alphabet
- 21: legal age; blackjack; letters of the Enochian alphabet
- 22: paths of the sephiroth; major arcana of the Tarot
- 23: Robert Anton Wilson, skidoo; pairs of human chromosomes
- 24: hours; Futhark runes; Greek letters
- 25
- 26: English alphabet
- 27: "moleed"
- 28: lunar cycle
- 29: leap year
- 30: journalism "end"; aethyrs of the Enochian cycle; dice
- 31: flavors
- 32: bits in a double word, footsteps, TMBG
- 33: Freemasons, Smashing Pumpkins, human vertebrae, RPM, "say cheese" in Spanish(?), age of Christ
- 34
- 35
- 36: Decans of the Zodiac
- 37: Kevin Smith, "moleed", age at which OR's father died, Celsius body temp
- 38
- 39: steps
- 40: thieves
- 41: JS Bach
- 42: Douglas Adams; letters in the name of God (Yoga)
- 43
- 44: robbers
- 45: RPM
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49: miners, Pynchon
- 50: gold; hertz
- 51
- 52: cards; weeks
- 53
- 54
- 55: speed limit
- 56: modem
- 57: Heinz,
- 58
- 59
- 60: time-keeping, Numbers Band, Babylonians, hertz
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64: hexagrams in the I Ching; the first number which is both a square (82) and a cube (43)
- 65
- 66: American highway,
- 67: Summer of Love
- 68
- 69: sex, Bill and Ted
- 70: smallest "weird" number, Boards of Canada
- 71
- 72: Seventy-two fold name of God [Exodus 14:19-21]
- 73
- 74
- 75: Numbers Band
- 76: trombones
- 77
- 78: shellac RPM
- 79
- 80: fourscore/quatre-vingt
- 81: Tai Husan Ching
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85: Bus that goes by OR and XOR's habitat pod
- 86: soda jerks, Get Smart
- 87
- 88: fascism, Back to the Future, lucky in Chinese
- 89
- 90
- 91: Enochian Watchtowers
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99: Nena, Get Smart, cops, mechanic
- 101: Orwell, college
- 111: Lord Nelson, cricket
- 138: hermaphrodite 69
- 143: "I love you"
- 149: monolith
- 150: three times fifty, Gaelic for "zillions"
- 173: Amanita
- 180: about turn
- 222: Television
- 242: dance music, UN Security Council Resolution
- 256: binary
- 333: Zoe
- 360: full circle
- 365: earth-sun (approx.)
- 366: "a year and a day", Coligny calendar days
- 404: not found
- 411: information
- 420: cannabis
- 451: temperature at which paper burns
- 452: Thomas Dolby; Haruki
- 506: station janitor
- 520: Broadcasting Corporation of Newfoundland
- 666: the Devil
- 667: The Six Day War
- 700: onyx steps
- 747: aerospace
- 801: The True Wheel; Manzanera et al; alpha and omega
- 808: dance music (also 909, 303)
- 911: emergency number
- 1000: Chinese/Japanese for "zillions"
- 1885: The last spike
- 1917: Bolshevik Revolution
- 1933: E-Prime
- 1961: Greys Established
- 1984: Orwell, Reagan, Newspeak
- 1987: Harmonic Convergence
- 2012: Mayans, Viridian
- 2038: Y2K for many UNIX systems (2^31 seconds from 1970-01-01);
- 2112: Rush
- 2600: phreaking
- 23,000: exact number of prime numbers less than 2^18
- 142,857: anagrams
- 144,000: years in a Wheel; polar star cycle
- 21,963,283,741: the only number such that if you represent it on the PDP-10 as both an integer and a floating-point number, the bit patterns of the two representations are identical
- The number of God:
- 94143243431512659321054872390486828512913474876027
- 67195923460238582958304725016523252592969257276553
- 64363462727184012012643147546329450127847264841075
- 62234789626728592858295347502772262646456217613984
- 829519475412398501
- i
- googolplex
- the transfinite
- infinity
Suggested Reading
Moore, Alan, et al., Promethea: Book 2 [Wildstorm 2000]: long quest with lots of numbers
Whitcomb, Bill, The Magician's Companion [Llewellyn 1997]: organizes magic into category, by number
WikiPedia:List_of_numbers