When your number is up

I got through this life by sometimes (when lost) simply paying attention to patterns to steer  me, and that includes what Jung called synchronicities (i.e. coincidences that seem to carry some kind of significance or meaning, over and above ‘mere coincidence’).

I don’t intend to go into a discussion of this right here, rather note a recent cluster of ‘significance’ as an example.

The two members of the KLF recently announced that they will create some kind of event in August 2017 (23 years after burning a million pounds in a strange media event).    I turn to John Higgs’ wonderful book about the whole strange story - The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band who Burned a Million Pounds -

and enjoy it all over again.

That reminds me that I bought a limited edition of a book from Mr. Higgs at the Cosmic Trigger play event in Liverpool in 2014 - Standing on the Verge of Getting It On - so I dig it out, as it seems related to the wonderful social history of the period he  included in the first book.     I have copy 43 out of a limited edition of 111.   I didn’t ask him, at the time, what significance that number had.

As I read through, an extraordinary man called Brian Barritt walks in on one of the musicians who is reading “Cosmic Trigger” and he says “I appear on page 111 of that book”. 

[This is not true of current editions, where you find Brian on page 115, or 116 – although there is a reference on page 111 of the old New Falcon edition to John Lilly mentioning ‘angels’  (Cosmic  Coincidence Control Centre) – and page 111 of the most recent release,from Hilaritas Press has material about cabalistic numerology and communication with Higher Intelligence.]

So I dig out my signed copy of Brian’s book – The Road of Excess - that I bought from him through the mail and feel surprised to see he lived at number 111 of a street in London.

Which triggered memories of studying online with Robert Anton Wilson (hereafter ‘Bob’) who was, among other things, a Joycean scholar, and we did some work on Finnegans Wake, in which the number 111 appears quite frequently.  Bob seemed to think of it as indicating Renewal and Creativity.   Joyce links it to Anna Livia Plurabelle (the feminine influence in the book), who also represents the River Liffey.  The book not only contains a myriad of puns (the river of life, for instance) but also offers a series of coded materials (possibly drawn from Cabbalism) and numerology, ALP = 111.   [the Hebrew A or aleph=ALP=111]

Other variations with the same value include APL (apple?), LAP, PAL, etc.

Again, I don’t want to side-track into all of that material here and now.

I don’t know a lot of numerology, so decide to Google it, and found that people consider 111 as an ‘angelic’ number.   Given that Cosmic Trigger covers a period when Leary and Wilson thought they were getting messages from ‘alien beings’ or higher intelligence, or their Holy guardian Angel (or something)  I perceive some kind of connection.

And in that same research, I saw a reminder of the odd fact that Robert Anton Wilson died on the 11^th January, 2007 (11/1 in the UK, or 1/11 in the USA, as a palindrome it works both ways).  Even odder, given that I only just noticed this (a heads up from DJ Fly Agaric) Bob managed to die on the 101^st birthday of Albert Hofmann (inventor, discoverer of LSD, who was still alive and well, at the time, as I described in a post on our shared blog).   As we are now approaching the tenth anniversary of Bob’s death, that makes it Uncle Albert’s 111^th birthday on Wednesday!

These things go on, and although some seem done consciously (like creating 111 copies of a book), I start to perceive particular significance when unrelated areas also get drawn into the net.  For instance, my hobby is magic, and a few weeks ago I ordered a DVD about close-up magic called (I kid you not) “LAP” and am right now awaiting delivery.   [Update:  11/01/2017   Of course, this DVD arrived today, just after I posted to our group blog.]

Steve (DJ Fly) took this a step further, when he turned to Finnegans Wake (which always gets published, in all editions, with the same page numbering):

If the page numbers are significant then dates can be determined from them. The first time I saw this type of correlation is of page 111 of the Wake with Robert Anton Wilson's death on January 11th.

...peraw raw raw reeraw puteters out of Now Sealand in spignt of the patchpurple of the massacre, a dual a duel to die to day, goddam and biggod, sticks and stanks, of most of the Jacobiters...

That not only contains references to RAW (another nickname for Robert Anton Wilson), "to die to day", but also to RAW patatows (a pretend currency we invented to amuse him).

Here’s Bob himself:

"This 1:11 business turns out to be more curious than we realize at first, even if we note that it is connected with Bloom's son, who died at age 11 days, Shakespeare's son Hamnet who died at 11 years and the 22 (2x11) letters in the Hebrew alphabet or the 22 words in the first sentence of Ulysses. If ALP and APL invoke all this, the LAP, a further permutation, invokes the LAP where a Freemason wears his apron, as in Aleister Crowley's BOOK OF LIES, Chapter 54, in which some Freemasons guess that the lost Mason Word is AMO, whose number is 111, and some guess that it is LAP which also has the number 111. (By Cabala, AMO=A which is 1, M which is 40, and O which is 70, 1+40+70=111, while LAP=L or 30, A or 1, and P or 80, and 30+1+80=111.) William York Tindall, a Joyce scholar who likes to count, has noted that many long sentences in FW have 111 clauses. Anna Livia Plurabelle's untitled "mamafesta" in Chapter Five has 111 alternative titles; when sad, she is described as "wan wan wan"; in Chapter 8, she has 111 children. Most books on Cabala hint at transcendental meanings in the fact that the Hebrew A or aleph=ALP=111 when spelled in full as aleph-lamek-pe."    

from Wilson's book Coincidance  (a new edition of which I find myself helping to proof-read right now).

Here's another little piece of the jigsaw.   Julian Cope appears in both the Higgs books mentioned above, and has done the definitive work on stone circles, megaliths, etc.  The Modern Antiquarian.

So imagine my surprise, in my Google trawl, when I came across this:

 ...echo in the conjunction of archaeoacoustic research focused on megalithic tombs and the frequency of the number 111 in Finnegans Wake: ‘the majik wavus has elfun anon meshes’ (FW 203.31): the magic wave has 11+1 meshes.

...‘the ride onerable’ (FW 328.13) – three ones – of ALP’s gematric value, 111 Hz is also a natural resonance frequency identified for Neolithic tombs and chambers in Ireland and Britain, which cluster mostly within the ‘myrioheartzed’ (FW 331.23) range of 110-112 Hz (Mills 2014: 66-67). In the context of ‘chambermade music’ (FW 184.4) this frequency has consciousness-altering effects: at 110-112 Hz the patterns of activity over the prefrontal cortex abruptly shift, resulting in a relative deactivation of the language centre, with regular exposure to resonant sound at that frequency ‘turning on’ an area of the brain that relates to mood, empathy and social behaviour.

All of which, as ever, leaves me puzzled.  What I may take from it comes from pages I would normally ignore (I don’t have a lot of respect for much of the New Age stuff online).  If the frequent appearance of 111 in your life has to do with Manifestation and Prosperity, then it seems a good idea to stay optimistic and positive – so as to manifest the good stuff…  A reasonable message, after the horrific year just passed.