The
figure six (6) is rotationally equivalent to the numeral '9' (the
two figures together composing a system of twin-spirals). Six participates
in a figural set - including the (lower-case) letters b, d, and q,
plus (upper- and lower-case) P - of particular and distinct interest
to figural grammarians, who have suggested that the ur-form of both
six and nine were continuously involutionary spirals.
The
figure '6' designates the number six, third even number, and second
non-prime (with prime-factors 2 and 3).
Six
is the first 'perfect' number, equivalent to the sum of its factors
(1, 2, and 3), and revered as such by Pythagoras.
Six
digitally cumulates to twenty-one.
Numeric
Keypad direction: East.
Despite
its 'perfection,' six is perhaps the darkest of the elementary decimal
numbers, due to its association with chance (the six faces of the
die), ill-omen (indicated by the ambivalence of the word or prefix
'Hex'), and occult intuition (the 'sixth sense').
The
six lines of the I Ching hexagram designate the six stages of change
discovered by archaic Taoism (which are numerically equivalent to
the cyclic-sequence of digitally reduced binary-powers, with values:
1, 2, 4, 8, 7, 5).
In
the Christian world the number six is ominously coloured by its triplicate
reiteration - 666 (or six hundred three-score and six), the Number
of the Beast of Revelation - which has preoccupied Christian qabbalism
throughout the greater part of the last two Millennia. Six-hunded
and sixty-six is the triangular cumulation of thirty-six (itself the
second power of six). The division of modern bar-codes into blocks
punctuated by (three) sixes has been taken by some as an uncanny fulfillment
of the biblical prophecy [Rev XIII:17] 'that no man might buy or sell,
save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number
of his name.' (Since thirty-six is the digital cumulation of eight,
however, it is to that number - and not six - that this entire complex
should ultimately be referred).
The
number sixty (60) - decimal escalation of six - has acquired prominence
due to its extraordinary and influential importance to Sumero-Babylonian
culture, from whom the modern world has inherited the sexigesimal
principle of division (into minutes and seconds) still current within
both chronometry and geometry.
/ccrulogo.gif){kind=small}
Cybernetic culture research unit /wave.gif){kind=small}