24.5.2009

Lennon's 'Nine' Lives

    

    Lennon's 'Nine' Lives

http://www.netsaga.is/media/files/Ep-IdM11-1.mp3

    I expected to be told after the show, but the presenter pointed at one of the cameras fucused on us and I heard, although I could not see past the studio lights, the voice of its operator. Another camera swung around and picked him up so I was able to see the man behind the voice on the monitor. Still operating his camera and with other crew members' good-naturedly, heckling his performance, he mentioned some details of John Lennon's involvement with the number 9-the Beatle was born on 9 october 1940 and Sean, his and Yoko's son, was also born 9 October. It was an intriguing anecdote.

    Anecdote?

    As a result of hearing it, I spent the next few months immersed in research into the mystery of numbers, which is revealed so often through coincidence-synchronicity, as Jung preferred to call it. Among the things the research revealed was that, like Lennon, most of us have a specific number that dogs our lives to a greater or lesser degree. Depending on your temperament, it can mean a little-one of life's eccentricities-or it can a lot- a marker of significiant events in our life. In Lennon's case it was the latter.

    For those who do take it seriously, their number can serve as a useful guide to the future. That this is so is one of the mysteries of numbers and their numinous-that is, supernatural-qualities.

    Back to Lennon, whose life was a prime example of the one-number rule, as well as numbers'numinosity and synchronicity. It all began with his conception, at 9 Newcastle Road, Penny Lane, Liverpool. (The number nine is considered to have more than its share of those numinous elements, one reason being that if you add it to itself it reproduces itself: e.g. 9+9=18,1+8=9. Further if you multiply 9 by any number it always reduces to a number 9: e.g. 9x6=54, 5+4=9. In numerology, groups of numbers are generally reduced in this way to a single digit to reveal various meanings.) Anyway, John's mum, Julia gave birth to him when she was 27. On 9 February 1944 (add those figures together and reduce to a single digit), his father, Freddie set out on a sea voyage which resulted in a lengthy absence and the breakup of his and Julia's marriage.

    The Beatles' first album, Please, please me, went to no. 1 exactly nineteen years later, 9 February 1963. Their second tour, which put them on the map, began on 9 March 1963. Lennon and his first wife, Cynthia had a son, Julian who was born on 8 April 1963-one day premature. Yoko Ono had a miscarriage of Lennon's child on his birthday, 9 October 1969. The Beatles signed an important agreement on 29 December 1974, basically dissolving their partnership, after Lennon had refused to sign it on 19 Des.

    Now for some final intriguing nine influences: Lennon's last home, the Dakota building was on the corner of 72nd street, Manhattan (7+2=9). The number of his and Ono's apartment in that building was also 72. Sam the son of Marlene Hair, Yoko's only close friend and confidante while living at the Dakota, was also born on 9 October. Lennon released a record called Revolution 9.

    Lennon did not die on a ninth day-officially. He was declared dead at 11.15 pm on 8 Des. 1980. This last point puzzled me. If numinosity had worked in such a way that so much of his life was predicated on the number 9, why the irrational lapse which left Lennon dead less than an hour away from a ninth day? Did it have some unfathomable connection with the birth of his son, Julian, a few hours before the ninth?

    Lennon's assassin, Mark Chapman, shot the Beatle outside the Dakota building at 10.50 pm on the 8th. The doorman at the apartment took one look at Lennon who was gurgling blood and vomiting, and dialled the emergency number for an ambulance: 911, the number that had for many years been 999. The ambulance raced Lennon across town to the Roosevelt hospital, where a team of surgeons fought to save him. Lennon had virtually no pulse. He had three bullet holes in his chest, two in his back and two in his left shoulder. He had lost nearly 80 % of his blood.

    The Beatle was in wretched physical condition. He should have died instantly. But he survived, almost perversely, untilafter 11 pm that night. One day I happened to be discussing the story with numerologist Eileen Whittaker. 'Why', I concluded frustatedly, 'should Lennon not have been killed on the 9th in the first place and if not, why did he seem to linger? Whittaker asked me exactly what time Lennon had died.

    At 11.15 pm on the eight.

    She smiled. -In numerology the influence of the following day begins at 11 pm the previous night.

    On the Beatles'Australian tour in 1964, John Lennon was asked if the hysterical crowds that mobbed them in every city worried him. -You could get shot, he responded.

    Everyone thought it was another example of his quick wit.

 

    

    7onald 7eagan

    According to Robert Ripley in the Book of Chances (1989), ex-president Ronald Reagan saved 77 people from drowning during his 7 years as a life-guard at a resort near Dixon, Illinois. The book uses this as a starting point to show how the number 7 kept cropping up in Reagan's life. He celebrated his seventieth birthday seventeen days after his first inauguration; he was wounded by would-be assassin John Hinckley on his seventieth day in office, the bullet fired by H. ricocheting off Reagan's seventh rib.

    Reagan made his film début in 1937 and became president of the Screen Actors'Guild in 1947. He began his term as Governor of California in 1967 and was re-elected in 1970. His formal acceptance speech for the Republican presidental nomination was made on the seventeenth day of the seventh month 1980. At the end of his second term in the White House he was 77.

 

    

    7incoln 7oo

    Significant 7 has long been attributed to Abraham Lincoln-the 16th (1+6=7) president of the US. Even if the following does stretch credulity, it shows one way of tracing a pattern of a personal number. Each of Lincoln's names contains 7 letters. He lived 7 years in Kentucky and 7 years in Salem. In the army he was a private (7 letters) and a captain (7). He was elected 7 times, sworn into Congress on 7 Des 1847, held 7 offices in succession. His ancestors came from Hingham (7) in Norfolk (7), England (7). He served 7 years in the state legislature. He appointed 7 cabinet ministers, watched 7 states secede and died a few min. after 7 on the 7th day.

 

    The Third President

    The third US president was dogged by a number: 3. Thomas Jefferson was born 13 April 1743, the third child and the third Thomas in the family. He became the third president, but not before he wrote the Declaration of Independence at the age of 33. And not before he lost the 1796 election by 3 votes.

    He died at the age of 83, on 4th July 1826, the 50th anniversary of American Independence Day. Another American president also died on that date: John Adams, the second president. Incidentally, 4 July was significant for yet another president, Calvin Coolidge, the thirtieth president who was born on 4 July 1872.

 

    Drei Guy

    Not only American presidents are dogged by a particular number or numbers. Count Otto von Bismarck, the first German chancellor, studied at 3 schools, was ambassador to 3 countries, served 3 kings, foughr in 3 wars, signed 3 peace treaties, fathered 3 children...His coat of arms consisted of a three-leaved clover and 3 oak leaves.

 

    For Those with Titles

    To assess character and predict a person's future, numerologists generally use birth dates and/or the sum of a person's name made up from numbers given to each letter of the alphabet.

    However, some numerologists work on the basis that it is not always the given name that can be 'counted' to provide character and prediction readings. One reason for this is that some people are better known by their title. In such cases, the the name and title are used for numerological calculations.

    Yet another factor is that some numerologists look for further insights into a person's significant number. The consonants are generally accepted as a guide to personality, while the vowels represent the 'hidden' you. Any good book on nemerology will explain this in far more detail. My purpose here is to test such things on the basis of their application to coincidence. I returned to my 'model', Lennon for example of the use of both title and consonants under what is known as rhe Chaldean system:

 

    BEATLE LENNON

     251 435 3 5 5575

    Using only the consonants of Beatle, the number comes to 'his' number, 9. Using only the consonants from Lennon, the number comes to 18, 1+8=9- and we have the numinous power of 9 reproducing itself as supernaturally returning us to Lennon's birth number.