Dreaming of the Beast . . . or . . . A Beast Dreaming

This photo was shot in Paris a few years ago, a somewhat amusing sign of our times. I'm not overly superstitious or obsessed with conspiracy theories or religious dogmatisms of any stripe, in fact I'm getting rather fed up with reading about religion in the press so much of late, the subject seems to have become a fixation for many, I wish people could be a little more discreet with their personal visions of unfathomable mysteries.
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But I have always loved mathematics, as one small realm where a little order and logic reign, as opposed to chaos and ill-logic. So I was quite pleased to find this website about what is known in some circles as The Number of the Beast. It appears that the number 666 has quite a number of fascinating mathematical properties related to it that Mike Keith, the author of the web page linked to here has gone to great lengths to demonstrate. And just from a purely mathematical point of view, his work is quite beautiful in the simplicity of these numerical truths. Here is just one example of the long list of properties related to the number 666 that Mike Keith has assembled; but I encourage you to visit his site for more . . .
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There are exactly two ways to insert '+' signs into the sequence 123456789 to make the sum 666, and exactly one way for the sequence 987654321 :
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666 = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 567 + 89
666 = 123 + 456 + 78 + 9
666 = 9 + 87 + 6 + 543 + 21
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But if you want to delve deeper into the biblical reference, just turn to the last section of the Bible, the Book of Revelations", and start with chapter 13, verse 18. . .
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Oh, and just one last example from Mike Keith's excellent website :
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Finally, we close with an observation that makes a commentary on the folly of attaching a too-specific meaning to the number 666. If the letter A is defined to be equal to 36 (=6·6), B=37, C=38, and so on, then:
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The sum of the letters in the word SUPERSTITIOUS is 666
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