The Fortean Times has republished a 1977 article by Discordian philosopher Robert Anton Wilson on the phenomena surrounding the number 23.

Reading all the different coincidences associated with the number, it’s easy to see why it has attained such a mythological status in the Discordian religion.

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.

The article suggests that this was unearthed from the archives partially because Mr. Wilson passed away recently and partially because of the release of the recent Jim Carrey film, The Number 23.

Whatever the reason it was unearthed, it was a good read. I wish I’d found it back in January. You can feed your hunger for the number 23 over on Flickr, where someone’s created a 23 Flickr group.