The night from April 30 to May 1 belongs to the witches’ holiday since time immemorial. Already an old Germanic tradition speaks of their meeting on the Brocken mountain in central Germany, where their lord Satan resided. It is associated not only with the traditional hell, but also with the number 666. A less well-known fact is that three sixes are very close to such a Christian sacrament as marriage.
Marie Klabáčová can be proud of the descriptive number 666.
| Photo: Deník/Petr Vaňous
You must have heard from someone married that marriage is hell. If the person in question was talking about a relationship that was sealed in the church, he might not be far from the truth. For more than ten years, section 666 has appeared in the Czech Civil Code, which in its first paragraph says as follows: “If a church marriage is to be concluded, the betrothed must first present to the wedding party a certificate issued by the registry office in whose administrative district the marriage is to be concluded.”
The origin and meaning of the number 666
But where did the number 666 actually come from? “It occurs in the 13th chapter of the Book of Revelation (Apocalypse), the last book of the Bible. It is an allegorical passage where it is written about a kind of mortally wounded evil beast that recovered and took over the government again, and that commissioned another beast to exercise power on its behalf. And about the other beast, it is written that its numbers, which mark a person, are 666,” said František Novotný from the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pardubice.
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The phobia associated with the number 666 is called hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. This is an irrational fear or worry associated with that particular number. People suffering from this phobia may avoid anything associated with the number 666, such as addresses, phone numbers or even dating events.
He added that the entire passage most likely refers to events in the Roman Empire at the end of the 1st century, when the book of Revelation was written. It seems most likely that the number 666 refers to the emperor Nero, who was already considered the embodiment of evil in his time due to the persecution of Christians.
“The number 666 was probably arrived at on the basis of so-called gematria, a technique in which numerical values are assigned to words written in the Hebrew alphabet, since each letter of the Hebrew alphabet also functions as a number. It is not without interest that in some of the oldest manuscripts of the book of Revelation, the so-called number of the beast is given as 616, which supports the hypothesis that the number referred to Nero. If we write the Greek variant of Nero’s name in the Hebrew alphabet, we get the number 666, if we write the Latin version, we get 616,” added Novotný.
However, this number entered popular culture mainly through the figure of the British occultist Aleister Crowley, who in the first half of the 20th century provocatively declared himself to be the Great Beast 666. From him, among other things, various directions of modern Satanism adopt this symbolism. “Already in the 90s, there was a popular conspiracy theory that the number 666 represents the letters WWW,” said Novotný.
Descriptive number and village
However, the number 666 also has funny and often unexpected connections with ordinary life. And not only in the already mentioned church weddings. Marie Klabáčová also has 666 as a descriptive number on her home in Hradec Králové. However, that she would be worried about the devil’s number or that he would sometimes run wild in the house devil, he doesn’t remember. “I’ve lived here for about a hundred years and it’s never been haunted in the slightest,” said the woman with a smile, adding that she didn’t realize how special her address was until today.
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Šárka Marešová Slezáková described her life in Hell, i.e. the one above Zdobnicí in eastern Bohemia. “I spent my youth and adolescence in Pekla (Peklo nad Zdobnicí) and in Roště (settlement), and I think that motivated me to continue my life, and only in the best way. My fiery zeal for new things comes from Hell, and Roshti to that… it’s just an added value and a connection that belongs together. If I throw in the fact that I was born in the month of June 6, I am slowly approaching the devil’s number 666,” said Slezáková.
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