Day 23,666:  The Devil’s in the Details 

It’s a 666 day so it seems appropriate to talk about devilish matters as it will take me one thousand more days to get back to such a day again.  How did 666 become associated with the devil? It may actually be a numerological thing. According to uscatholic.org, it is somehow tied up with the Emperor Nero, a beastly emperor, whose name in Hebrew, when deconstructed numerologically equates to 666.

A second article from a site that seems devilishly interested in demonic topics correlates the Nero story but adds two more – including Jehovah’s Witnesses seeing 666 has falling short of seven, a sign of perfection. And to confuse thing more, the site goes on to cite: “In Kabbalistic Judaism, by contrast, 666 represents the perfection of the world and its creations: the world was created in six days, there are six cardinal directions, and they see six as the numerical value of one of the letters of God’s name.”The value of the number, it appears, changes mean dramatically depending on which religious interpretation you may choose.

A-Religion-of-Ones-Own 2Since there are no coincidences, today I listened to Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday podcastinterview with Thomas Moore – not the historical Sir Thomas More, but the contemporary American psychotherapist and ex-Catholic monk. His latest book is called “A Religion of One’s Own,” promoting the idea of finding your own calling, He’s definitively not anti-religion, but believes in taking ideas of meaning wherever you may find then to craft your own personal practice based on whatever religious, natural or other tenets in which you find personal meaning. I may have to get the book.

It’s interesting to me that he came to his current conclusions after being a monk and delving deep into his own religion’s practice. When you go deep as he did, two things can happen. You can go so deep that you cannot see any options of other practices — become a fundamentalist — or you come to such a deep understanding of your own basics that you can open up to other points of view.

It may be one reason I want to learn more about my birth religion. I don’t want to be more religious, but there’s something wholesome about understanding more of your own background’s basics.  It’s a process of being more accepting of yourself by more fully comprehending your tribal roots.