MH17 and the 23/17 Phenomenon

As I'm sure many of you are aware by now, the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 MH17 was shot down on July 17 over war torn eastern Ukraine. This is the second Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 to go missing this year, following the mysterious disappearance of Flight 370 (a passenger on MH17 posted a picture of a downed Malaysian aircraft on Facebook in reference to the earlier disappearance shortly before take off). Already this is looking like it will become a major international incident, but I hesitate to speculate before more information has been released. Suffice to say, fingers are being pointed everywhere at this point.

Naturally the Ukrainian government has blamed Russia and accused Putin of sponsoring terrorism. Putin has in turn blamed the Ukrainian government but likely has a firmer case than the NATO Quislings (to say nothing of the neo-Nazi militias presently sporting the emblem of the Black Sun) presently "governing" the nation. There are also reports that Putin's personal jet was traveling a path similar to that of MH17, but this is likely a hoax. 

the Ukrainian Right Sector using the Black Sun emblem on their riot shields

For now I would simply like to focus upon the numerology of this event, which is quite curious. The number 777, which designates the Boeing model number, is of course highly significant in Christian numerology as it is sometimes claimed to represent Christ as well as being the antithesis of 666 (the mark of the anti-Christ). 777 is also import in Thelema, however. Of it, Aleister Crowley writes:

"Useful in a similar way, as affirming that the Unity is the Qliphoth. But a dangerous tool, especially as it represents the flaming sword the drove Man out of Eden. A burnt child dreads the fire. 'The devils also believe, and tremble.' Worse than useless unless you have it by the hilt. Also 777 is the grand scale of seven, and this is useless to anyone who has not yet awakened the Kundalini, the female magical soul. Note 7 as the meeting-place of 3, the Mother, and 10, the Daughter; whence Netzach is the Woman, married, but not more."

(Gematria, Aleister Crowley, pg. 49)

Crowley

Note: Kundalini is the serpentine force said to be awakened by Tantra and other such practices. But moving along.

More compelling is the appearance of the number 17 throughout this event. The flight number was 17 while the crash occurred on July 17 (a date with much significance in Russian history). Even stranger is that the plane was first flown on July 17, 1997, which was seventeen years to the day of today's crash. The number seventeen of course has a host of esoteric references linked to it.

"In Islamic tradition, seventeen is the number of the liturgical gestures... employed in the five daily prayers and it is also the number of words used in the call to prayer. In Muslim folklore, the symbolic number seventeen constantly recurs, especially in legends, 'more particularly the seventeen pieces of advice whispered into the king's ear during his coronation and the seventeen components of the standard...'

"In Shi'ism, above all, and through its influence in the religious epic poetry of the Anatolian Turks,

a quasi-magical importance attaches to the number seventeen....Shi'ite mystics from a very early period held the number seventeen in veneration, a veneration stemming from far earlier Pythagorean speculations based upon the Greek alphabet.... Seventeen was the number of those who were to be brought to life again, each of these individuals being bound to be given one of the letters of the alphabet from which the supreme name of God was composed.

"This is not unrelated to the Star, the seventeenth arcanum of the Tarot, which is a symbol of change and rebirth and what Dr Allendy explains as 'deliverance from Karma...' Furthermore, according to the Sufi alchemist Gabir ibn Hayyan, the shape... of all things in the world is seventeen. Seventeen stands for the very foundation of the theory of balance and should be regarded as the law of equilibrium in all things.

"The number seventeen is especially important in the tradition of trade-guilds, which recognize seventeen initiates or companions of Ali, seventeen patrons of the founders of the Muslim guilds begun by Selman-i Farsi, and seventeen major guilds...

"The Ancient Greeks regarded seventeen as standing for the number of consonants in the alphabetic, successively broken into nine (the number of mute consonants) and eight (the number of semi-vowels or semi-consonants). These numbers are also closely related to their theory of music and to the harmony of the spheres.

"As we have observed at the outset, seventeen and seventy-two are first the sum and second, the product of eight and nine. Furthermore, the sums of the digits comprising these two numbers give eight for seventeen (1+7) and nine for seventy-two (7+2). Nine and eight constantly recur in Ancient Greek numerological speculations, whether it be on the planes of grammar, of music (the ratio nine to eight is represented by the median cords of the lyre), of prosody or of cosmology. 

"The Ancient Romans seem to have regarded the number seventeen as unlucky since an anagram of the letters of which it is composed (XVII) gives the word VIXI, I have lived."

(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pgs. 866-867)

In this case it certainly seems to have been unlucky. But as indicated earlier, the number seventeen has long been associated with resurrection as well. Probably the most well known incidence of this is that of the Egyptian god Osiris, who was said to have been resurrected on the seventeenth of the month of Athyr. For more information on the number's association with resurrection, check here.

As noted above, seventeen is also the number of the Tarot trump called The Star. This trump has been associated with Sirius, the Dog Star, which holds much occult significance. More information on this topic can be found here.

Seventeen has also been linked to the "23 enigma." Of it, Robert Anton Wilson once wrote:

 "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.

"Burroughs began collecting odd 23s after this gruesome synchronicity, and after 1965 I also began collecting them. Many of my weird 23s were incorporated into the trilogy Illuminatus! which I wrote in collaboration with Robert J Shea in 1969–1971. I will mention only a few of them here, to give a flavour to those benighted souls who haven’t read Illuminatus! yet:

"In conception, Mom and Dad each contribute 23 chromosomes to the fœtus. DNA, the carrier of the genetic information, has bonding irregularities every 23rd Angstrom. Aleister Crowley, in his Cabalistic Dictionary, defines 23 as the number of 'life' or 'a thread', hauntingly suggestive of the DNA life-script. On the other hand, 23 has many links with termination: in telegraphers’ code, 23 means 'bust' or 'break the line', and Hexagram 23 in I Ching means 'breaking apart'. Sidney Carton is the 23rd man guillotined in the old stage productions of A Tale of Two Cities. (A few lexicographers believe this is the origin of the mysterious slang expression '23 Skiddoo!'.)"

Wilson

Originally, however, Wilson had linked the 23 enigma to 17 and referred to it as the "23/17 phenomenon." Wilson initially described this in the fictional Illuminatus! Trilogy he co-wrote with Robert Shea. There it was written:

"... Maybe something important is going to happen in the year 2317? I couldn't check that, of course... so I went back to 1723, and struck golden apples. That was the year that Adam Smith and Adam Weishaupt were both born (and Smith published The Wealth of Nations the same year Weishaupt revived the Illuminati 1776.)

"Well, 2 + 3 = 5, fitting the Law of Fives, but 1 + 7 = 8, fitting nothing. Where did that leave me? Eight, I reflected, is the number of letters in Kallisti, back to the golden apple again... Naturally, it came as no surprise when the 8 defendants in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, which grew out of our little Convention Week Carnival, were tried on the 23rd floor of the Federal Building, amid a flurry of synchronicity – a Hoffman among the defendants, a Hoffman as judge; the Illuminati pyramid or Great Seal of the U.S. right inside the door of the building; and a Seale getting worse abuse than the other defendants; five-letter names and proliferating – Abbie, Davis, Foran, Seale, Jerry Rubin (twice), and the clincher, Clark (Ramsey, not Captain), who was torpedoed and sunk by the judge before he could testify."

(The Eye in the Pyramid, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson, pg. 237)

Later on Shea and Wilson suggest the 23/17 phenomenon may be linked to the "40 enigma."

"That brings me to the 40 enigma. As pointed out, 1 + 7 = 8, the number of letters in Kallisti. 8 x 5 = 40. More interestingly, without invoking the mystic 5, we still arrive at 40 by adding 17 + 23. What, then, is the significance of 40? I've run through various associations – Jesus had his 40 days in the desert, Ali Baba had his 40 thieves, Buddhists have their 40 meditations, the solar system is almost exactly 40 astronomical units in radius... But I have no definite theory yet..."

(ibid, pgs. 239-240)

So, was there a 23 present at the downing of MH17? You bet: 23 of the passengers killed were Americans. This certainly makes for a rather ominous sign. But there may be far, far more to come dear readers. Until then, stay tuned.