23 enigma

The number 23 appears in the practice of numerology.

Discordianism

The "23 Enigma" is the Discordian belief that all events are connected to the number 23, given enough ingenuity on the part of the interpreter. It can be seen in Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus! trilogy (they're called the "23/17 phenomenon"), Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (they're called "The Law of 23s" and "The 23 Enigma"), Arthur Koestler's Challenge of Chance, as well as the Principia Discordia. In these works, 23 is considered either lucky, unlucky, sacred to the goddess Eris, sinister, sacred to the unholy gods of the Cthulhu Mythos, or strange. Discordians regard this as a corollary of the Law of Fives. As with most numerological claims, the 23 enigma can be viewed as an example of apophenia, selection bias, and confirmation bias. In interviews, Wilson has acknowledged the self-fulfilling nature of the 23 enigma, implying that the real value of the Laws of Fives and Twenty-threes lies in their demonstration of the mind's power to perceive "truth" in nearly anything.

"When you start looking for something you tend to find it. This wouldn't be like Simon Newcombe, the great astronomer, who wrote a mathematical proof that heavier than air flight was impossible and published it a day before the Wright brothers took off. I'm talking about people who found a pattern in nature and wrote several scientific articles and got it accepted by a large part of the scientific community before it was generally agreed that there was no such pattern, it was all just selective perception."

— Robert Anton Wilson sees the clustering illusion everywhere, not just 23, Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, Sounds True, December 2001.

In the Illuminatus! Trilogy, he expresses the same view: that one can find a numerological significance to anything, provided "sufficient cleverness."

Supposed Origins

Burroughs was cited by Robert Anton Wilson as being the first person to notice the 23 numerological phenomena, or "23 enigma," as it sometimes called:

I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.

—Robert Anton Wilson, Fortean Times

Industrial group, Throbbing Gristle recounted in great detail Burroughs and Clark's meeting and the revelation of the significance of 23 in the extensive ballad "The Old Man Smiled", a staple of the group's live performances.

Film and TV references

• The 1998 German film 23, starring August Diehl, tells the real-life story of computer hackers inspired by Wilson's Illuminatus! Trilogy.
• The 2007 film The Number 23, starring Jim Carrey, is the story of a man becoming obsessed with the number 23 while he reads a book of the same title that seems to be about his life. Jim Carrey named his production company JC23.