The Numbers Racket

So this nice hippie lady was cooing over my garden from the sidewalk, and, as I always do, I invited her in. She was delighted. She liked every little thing and she particularly swooned over the raspberries, which were going like gangbusters. "Oh, would you like to pick some?" I asked. "I probably won't keep up. Let me get you a bucket." I got us each a bucket. We picked, we chatted.

Comes to pass that she considers herself very intuitive by nature, and has amplified her abilities by studying numerology. "What is numerology?" I asked, fairly certain, however, that it wasn't going to be anything I'd sign up for. My new friend was enthusiastic. Numerology was only the key to understanding one's role in the universe. She was all ready to demonstrate and asked me what my birthdate was, which I am always happy to divulge. [September 24, 1953, size ten, teal greens and turquoise.] She totted the numbers up.

"Oh! You're a three! Withdrawn, shy, distrustful, and a little on the stingy side," she said, decanting the bucket of raspberries into a paper sack and starting in on the re-fill. "That's unbelievable," I admitted.

"I know!" she exulted. "It's truly amazing. I'm naturally a skeptical person, but the more I read about it, the more I realized how real this is. Pythagoras believed in it, and he, like, invented math!" He was very mathy, that's true. He is credited with discovering the right triangle, which is huge. Before Pythagoras, everybody's tables fell over.

Dave popped into the back yard to meet our new friend. I explained what we were talking about and suggested he toss his own birthday into the hopper. The raspberry lady performed her calculations. "Two. You're like an economics guy, right? Like a financial wizard, maybe a banker?" Dave is not allowed to pay the bills. It's only been recently we allowed him to have his own checking account.

"That's unbelievable," he admitted.

"I know!" she said. We'd picked most of the berries by then, and I told her to come back in a couple days if she wanted more.

"Thanks for all the information," I told her. "The really amazing thing to me is that Pythagoras was able to get his own numbers right. How did he even know he was B.C.?"

"I know!" she said. "Spooky, isn't it?"

I had to look into this numerology business. It was even spookier than I thought. Pythagoras is reported to have been born between 580 and 572 B.C. I think this says more about his mother's abilities than it does his, but true to form, she gets barely a mention. Some oracle or other had predicted, when she was pregnant, that she would give birth to a wise and beautiful man. (Or at least an eight-year-old.) I took a look at a stone bust of him, and he did indeed have chiseled features.

So Pythagoras believed that everything in the universe worth knowing could be expressed mathematically, and that one's own numbers revealed much about oneself, including one's past lives. The best website I was able to find, based on the saturation of rainbow colors in the wallpaper, also made mention of Edgar Cayce, the "Sleeping Prophet Of Virginia Beach." As the Napping Diva of NE 29th Avenue, I had to investigate further.

Cayce was a psychic who reportedly had the "ability to put himself into some kind of self-induced sleep state by lying down on a couch, closing his eyes, and folding his hands over his stomach." This was stunning. I just so happen to have very similar abilities, except that I tend to list to the side and drool a little. Cayce was also reported to have been able to read the Akashic Records. I had to look that up. Turns out the Akashic Records are like a library of everything that has ever happened; like, as Wikipedia has it, a "universal filing system which records every occurring thought, word and action." It's the Internet! Which is just what I was using! Unbelievable. Well. I was sold.

I plugged some of my numbers into the online numerology form and read the results avidly. It cautioned me to avoid depression, jealousy and worry. You can't hang a price tag on that kind of advice. Then: "You aren't the type to retire because you need to keep expanding and enlarging." I felt really let down. I am not only retired, but totally the type, and if I'm still expanding and enlarging, I don't see how it's any business of the Numerology website.

I'm not going to give them my credit card numbers.