Numerrillogical Musings

Numerrillogical Musings
or,
Token Chaos

For those of you who aren't from New York (or are but care not to admit it), we have one Hell in a subway system (reread that last bit if you didn't notice anything odd about it). For the privilege of riding this system, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has decreed that it will cost an additional 25 cents, bringing the total up to a reasonably whopping buck fifty. This, not surprisingly, is making the folks who ride said subway system rather cranky. It has also been quite significant for those who have the eyes to see the signs.

The new tokens are of a new design, with a pentagon cut out of the middle.
New York City is known colloquially as ``The Big Apple'' (with five burroughs, natch), so now we have apples and pentagons flopping about together, a hodge-podge in the offing.
A heretofore random-seeming reference made in the Principia has been shown to be something of a prophecy. The pertinent line is from the Pentabarf, and reads ``And every Golden Apple Corps is the beloved home of a Golden Worm.'' Well, if the subway system isn't the worm in the apple, then I can't imagine what could be.
The fare hike itself has sparked not only upset but a ridiculous amount of internal confusion, with a slew of bills, riders and kvetches being tossed about. I quote from the Daily News as to what is on the horizon (taking out some relative times and putting in absolutes):
- 11/12/95 (Aftermath 24) Fare rises 25 cents, to $1.50, and new token with five-sided hole replaces the bullseye token.
- 11/14/95 (Aftermath 26) Metropolitan Transportation Authority's appeal of a federal district court decision knocking down the fare increase as racially discriminatory is scheduled in 2d Circuit Court of Appeals.
- 11/16/95 (Aftermath 28) Appeals panel will receive written arguments from the MTA and the New York Urban League and the Straphangers Campaign, which won the preliminary injunction that blocked the hike. A ruling could be made that day.
- If Urban League and Straphangers win in appeals court, fare goes back to $1.25 until federal Judge Robert Patterson can hear the Urban League and Straphangers lawsuit.
- If MTA wins in appeals court, $1.50 fare stays in effect until the trial in Patterson's court, unless the appeals panel throws out the original lawsuit.
- If the Urban League and Straphangers win in Patterson's court, fare could be rolled back to $1.25 and the MTA ordered to reimburse riders.
- If the MTA wins in Patterson's court, $1.50 fare stays.
phew Everybody get that?
The papers have been consistently referring to Goddess -- on November 11th (Aftermath 23), the New York Daily News proclaimed ``Chaos Looms for Subway Riders,'' and again on November 12th blared ``Hefty Hike -- Tokens of Confusion.'' The self-same heavily-read newspaper had, in the comics of its November 12th edition, a thinly-veiled reference to our Sister Church, the Lyrians.

So here we have cryptic references which seem to partially refer to a couple-a something-or-others and a whole lotta confusion getting ready to hit New York like a Hammer of Bonking. If that ain't the Hand of Goddess, I'll eat my straight-jacket.
So, thoroughly convinced that there was Something Afoot, I decided to see if the present Discordian Year (3161) had anything special about it, to be causing such an uproar and leaving such Signs and Portents laying about where someone might step in them.
What I discovered was, to put it mildly, completely wonko.

Numerrillogical Exposition
or,
Louis Farrakhan, Eat Your Heart Out

At first glance, the year is something special: 3161 = 3+1+6+1 = 11, or five plus five plus the fifth part of five. Highly significant, clearly. However, this suggestive result prompted me to consider some of the other properties which pertain to five which might be hidden further in this epoch-shattering year. Of course, five is a prime number, so I began my inquiries there.
3161 is itself the product of two primes, 29 and 109. 2+9 gives us the ominous 11 again -- but this in incidental to its further significance as five times five plus five minus the fifth part of five. This was evidence that I was on the correct track -- a track which began with the reiteration of something known (the 11) and moving on to something even more significant. 1+0+9 returns 10, or five plus five.
These primes themselves are intersting -- 29 is the 11th prime (again showing the way is correct by grouping 29 and 11), whereas 109 is the 30th prime. 1+1=2, and 3+0=3, indicating the Holy 23 on its way to 2+3=5. Now, 29 is the number of days in the female cycle, whereas 23 is the number of days in the male cycle, which adds a new generative aspect to the flow of numbers.
The numbers get even more meaningful, as, following the clues left by Goddess in the prime numbers, I noted that the 31st prime is 116, and the 61st prime is 281. 1+1+6=8 and 2+8+1=11; 8+11=19, and 1+9=10, again the powerful five plus five. In this realization is the return from the hall of the divine to the realm of the material, as the significance of the numbers begins to drop -- again I pass by the holy 11, as I walk the path back to the mundane.
And, to complete the path, 31 is the 12th prime and 61 is the 19th, which results in 1+2+1+9=13, and 1+3=4, or five minus the fifth part of five.
      But no! 121+9 is 130, and 1+30 is 31, or five times five plus five plus the fifth part of five -- a powerfully creative number, containing as it does five iterations of five, and using only the Creative Mathematical operators in its process. The division operator represents the analysis of what is known into understanding of its components, the ``salve'' of the alchemical formula ``solve et coagula.'' The addition in this is the ``coagula,'' the forming of new knowledge from the combination of simpler concepts; this gives us the entire formula of ``solve et coagula,'' the formula of increase of knowledge, represented in the number 6. This is the formula of typically human knowledge, in the form of discovery/analyzation/synthesis. It is the number of Creative Order, which is symbolized by the Pentagon.
      Next is five times five, which makes use of the multiplication operator, which is the symbol of the intuition which leaps over the more common addition. Since the number Five is used as representation of Goddess, the formula five times five is then then intuitive leap that Divinity itself makes to come into self-knowledge, yea, e'en as Goddess turned to see Herself, and in so seeing Herself and shouting ``What the fuck?'' brought forth Creation. This, then, is the formula of Divine knowledge, coming spontaneously and without form. It is the number of Creative Disorder, which is symbolized by the Golden Apple.
      In bringing these two together, we find 6+25, the formula of mankind coming to the knowledge of Goddess and Her self-intuition -- the formula of mankind paradoxically discovering, within his Rationality, the power of Intuition. In this way does rational knowledge come to mesh with intuitive gestalt, and thus does man take its part in the Spontaneously Ordered Disordering of the Pentaverse. All this is symbolized in a single number -- 31.
      This is a form of the Classic Formula which was first manifest in 3125, when Lord Omar and Malaclypse the Younger first brought the knowledge of Goddess back to a world that sorely needed it (the 31), and Goddess once more looked upon Herself (and saw, much to Her omniscient surprise, that She was Us and We were Her) (there's the 25 -- and, if my little schtick about Her omniscient surprise is on the mark, with mankind getting to know Goddess and Goddess getting to know Herself and finding that She's us, then the 31 and the 25 are, after a fashion, the same; presumably, this is why the modern age of Discordianism was born in 3125), said ``Oh, what the fuck,'' and allowed it all to Break Loose again, for the first time ever.

That's what the numbers say, anyway, and therein one finds yet another mystery -- the numerrillogical investigation itself takes on the Cosmological form (well, one interpretation of it, at least [Lord Omar would almost certainly wish to have words with me concerning my interpretation, in fact]), beginning with sheer silliness in Primal Chaos, moving by turns through Confusion and Discord, and thence into the stagnating Beauracracy and finally into the doldrums (yea, e'en the ``humdrums'') of the Aftermath, which then ushers forth a New Chaos, made stronger by its labors in the Underworld.
      So what's going on? Well, when you start putting pentagons (in the tokens) together with apples (as in ``The Big'') during the season of the Aftermath in a numerrillogically significant year, you're gonna set off some rather confusing resonances, and you have to expect that Goddess is going to have a wee bit of fun at your expense. But that's just the explanation of the signs that have cropped up, whose real function is to point out that this is one heck of a significant year -- a year which might have gone by unremarked if not for the blaring trumps that Our Lady scattered about in our little city, hoping that someone would notice.
      That's what 3161 is, folks. A reminder, a bit of hope, a twinge of nostalgia, a promise of the return of Chaos and, lest we forget, 25 fucking cents more to ride the choo-choo.
      And, as always, Goddess prevails. Hail Eris.