Since the run-up to Barack Obama’s election as US President, there’s been talk that he might be the Antichrist.  You can understand the logic, especially if you’re a conservative Christian, who regards the Book of Revelations as pure prophecy.  A bright young man appears from nowhere, seduces everyone with his clever words, and once he’s got himself into a position of power, he starts doing the Devil’s work.  I suppose some Americans will regard the passing of the Healthcare Bill as final evidence that Obama really is the Antichrist.  What devilish machinations did he use to get it through congress?

However anyone who seriously claims that Barack Obama is the Antichrist of Biblical prophecy needs to address themselves to certain numerological issues.  After all, the Book of Revelations clearly states:

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

This famous verse is hinting at numerology, and the alphabet we need to look at is probably Hebrew.  If someone’s name, when converted to Hebrew, adds up to 666, then it might follow that they’re the Antichrist.  It was for this reason that the Emperor Nero was linked with the Antichrist – because under his reign, in the First Century AD, Christians suffered a high degree of persecution.

To illustrate this, if one converts Nero’s Greek name, NERON KAISAR (Nero Caesar) to Hebrew letters, we  arguably get QSR NRWN.  Each Hebrew letter has a number associated with it, for example the letter Qoph equals 100, and here’s what happens to QSR NRWN:

QOPH = 100
SAMEKH  = 60
RESH = 200

NUN = 50
RESH = 200
VAU = 6
NUN = 50

Add the seven numbers up, and you get 666.  Now some would say that a Hebrew ‘K’ should have been used instead of a ‘Q’, and that the final ‘N’ is equivalent to 700 not 50.  However these criticisms are beside the point – there is a route that can be taken, which equates the Emperor Nero with the number 666.

If one wants to check whether Barack Obama is the Antichrist, we follow the same methodology.  We convert his name to Hebrew letters, and then add the numbers up.

However you have to be very careful about making the conversion.  It’s not enough to get a copy of the Hebrew alphabet and make a simple converstion from the Latin alphabet – especially as the Hebrew alphabet only has twenty-two letters.  Indeed, if you want to do the transcription yourself, without any external aids, you need some knowledge of the Hebrew language.  This is one of the reasons why, in the early Twentieth Century, attempts to create a popular system of numerology, linked to the Hebrew alphabet, fell flat on their face.  It was just too complicated!

As far as Barack Obama’s name is concerned, I’ve done a bit of research, and the general consensus seems to be that it converts to BRQ AUBMA.  We can find his number as follows:

BETH = 2
RESH = 200
QOPH = 100

ALEPH = 1
VAU = 6
BETH = 2
MEM = 40
HE = 5

Which totals 356, which isn’t 666.  I have, in the past, tried other names, for example Barack Hussein Obama, President Obama, President Barack Obama, even Obama Caesar.  But none of them add up to 666, even with variant spellings.  I therefore concluded that Barack Obama wasn’t the Antichrist.

So what is he?  Well, Hebrew numerology, often known as Gematria, is about finding equivalents.  You can understand the nature of the name Barack Obama, which adds up to 356, by comparing it with something else that also adds up to 356.

One word in Hebrew that adds up to 356 is AMRYQA.  We can deconstuct this word as follows:

ALEPH = 1
MEM = 40
RESH = 200
YOD = 10
QOPH = 100
HE = 5

Which totals 356.  AMRYQA is of course the Hebrew for America.

We can therefore say that Barack Obama’s name is on exactly the same frequency as America.  It’s then hardly surprising that this country elected him its President!

As far as the 2012 Presidential Election is concerned, the numerical association between his name and his country will, I think, be decisive.  However bad the opinion polls are, in the run-up to the election, when it comes to election day the 356 link-up will kick in, and Obama will be re-elected for a second term.  Assuming, of course, that he decides to stand.

Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop

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I recently wrote an article about the family of Nazi leader Josef Goebbels.  On May 1 1945 Josef Goebbels’ wife Magda killed their six children, and the couple then committed suicide.  The day before, April 30 1945, Adolf Hitler had committed suicide.

The article I wrote was based on astrology.  In this article I want to focus on names, letters and numerology.

It would seem that Magda and Josef Goebbels thought that it was really cute to give their children Christian names beginning with ‘H’.  The children’s names were as follows:

Helga Susanne Goebbels
Hildegard Traudel Goebbels
Helmut Christian Goebbels
Holdine Kathrin Goebbels
Hedwig Johanna Goebbels
Heidrun Elisabeth Goebbels

It has been suggested that the reason the children were given names beginning with ‘H’ was in honour of Hitler.  However this probably wasn’t the case.  Josef Goebbels was Magda’s second husband.  Her child from her first marriage, who was born in 1921, was named Harald, another ‘H’ name.

However this doesn’t mean that the Hitler connection wasn’t important.

When  you name all of your six children with a name beginning with ‘H’, you’re creating a certain energy.  Especially when those children are under the shadow of a man whose last name also begins with H.

At some level, the destiny of these children was being linked with Hitler, and arguably the buckle that bound them was the letter ‘H’.  When Hitler died, the children died.

From a numerological point of view, ‘H’ is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so some would say that it is strongly connected with the number eight.

According to the Western tradition, codified by the occultist Cornelius Agrippa in the Sixteenth Century, the number eight is in turn linked with Saturn, a planet that traditionally is very unfortunate.  So we could say that a collective, Saturnine destiny awaited the six children.

It should be noted that Madga’s first child, Harald, who was an air force officer, survived the war.  He was killed in a flying accident in 1967.

Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop

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If you want to understand numerology, you have to understand what numerologists are trying to do.  They are trying to make a link between on one hand modern day names and dates, and on the other hand millennia-old secret wisdom.  In particular, they’re trying to link their numerological interpretations with a sacred alphabet.

Now some numerologists might not be aware of what they’re doing.  They perhaps regard numerology as a complete system, that doesn’t have to be questioned or analysed.

However in the early Twentieth Century it was very important to be able to connect numerology with ancient alphabets.  This is quite clear if you read the numerological works of Sepharial and Cheiro.

So what do I mean by a sacred alphabet?  It’s an alphabet that has mystical significance, because it has a direct connection with religious or spiritual knowledge.

There are going to be lots of claims about what constitutes a sacred alphabet, but the big three must surely be Sanskrit, Hebrew and Greek.  Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, Hebrew and Greek of the Old and New Testaments.

Sanskrit is certainly very important, and numerological systems based on Sanskrit tend to emphasise the important of sound.  This is hardly surprising, given the significance that Hinduism attaches to the recitation of mantras.

Yet Sanskrit is outside the main Western tradition, and in this article I want to focus on the Greek and Hebrew alphabets.

Both of these alphabets can be directly linked with number.  Alpha, the first letter of the Greek alphabet, is equivalent to 1; aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, is also equivalent to 1.  As you go through the order of the alphabet, the numbers get bigger.  So the second letter of the alphabet is 2, the third 3.  Yet after the tenth letter, the numbers go up in increments of 10, in both alphabets.

This means that the tenth letter of the alphabet, which is yod in the Hebrew alphabet and iota in the Greek, had 10 has its equivalent.  The eleventh letter, respectively kaph and kappa, is equivalent not to 11, but to 20.

Numerologists like Cheiro regarded Hebrew numerology with mystical awe, and they wanted to apply it to the modern-day Latin alphabet.  This was a big problem, because the Hebrew alphabet only has twenty-two letters.

In many cases, the numerologist would have to use his or judgement to decide how best to convert someone’s name to its Hebrew equivalent, so as to derive the right number.  This was no good for the mass market, which is why the current system of Western numerology was adopted.

However simplicity has a price.  Once numerologists stopped trying to convert to the Hebrew alphabet, they were losing touch with their own tradition.  Any claims about a millennia-old method were no longer valid.  They then had to re-invent their own mysticism, focusing on Pythagoras rather than the Kabbalah.  But that’s another story.

Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop

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It’s a long time since I did my degree in psychology, but the name of B.F. Skinner sticks in my mind.  He was a behaviourist psychologist, who took the view that behaviour can be conditioned by the environment.

B.F. Skinner did a lot of experiments with animals, and from the point of view of astrology and numerology, we should be most interested in his experiments with pigeons, in which he demonstrated that they can be conditioned to become superstitious.

He gave pigeons food pellets at random intervals, so that they had no way of knowing when the food was going to show up.  The pigeons soon came to the conclusion that there must be something about their behaviour that was making the food pellets materialise.  So if they were standing on one leg when the last food pellet appeared, they would repeat this action, hoping that they would be given another food pellet.

We can laugh at the pigeons, but actually, we’re pretty similar.  We hate the randomness of life, and we are desperate to find a meaning for what’s going on around us.  If I was wearing a pink shirt the last time I won some money, I’d be tempted to keep wearing this shirt, because of its association with previous good luck.

As far as numerology is concerned, it’s difficult to believe that the name we were given at birth was an accident.  It wasn’t a crazed whim of our nutty parents, it was instead the hand of fate that decided that we had to have a particular name.

Indeed nothing about the letters of our name, and the way they interact with the numbers of our birthday, are random, are they?

However we have to understand that human beings love finding patterns.  We look into the clouds and see a kangaroo chasing a butterfly, we look at a tangle of numbers and see spiritual meaning.

Now don’t me wrong.  I am not saying that science can reduce everything to stimulus and response, that there’s no magic or mystery in the world.  After all, I am an astrologer, and I absolutely believe that astrology works.  But what I am saying is, that we have to be careful, and we have to always guard against deluding ourselves.

In the case of astrology, there is no ambiguity about the position of the planets at the time of birth.  There is also no ambiguity about what the planets mean, both individually and in terms of their mutual interaction.  At the same time these meanings can be validated with reference to at least two thousand years of uninterrupted history.

With numerology, by contrast, you’re walking on thin ice.  There is a debate about which name to use – in other words whether one goes for the name on the birth certificate or the one that you call yourself by.  Though the trend now is to use both.

There is also the problem that a full numerological analysis has little or no connection with ancient knowledge.  You just have numbers that create other numbers, and these numbers can be converted into a stream of words, that with a bit of clever crafting can sound very convincing.

At this stage I should make it clear that I am not necessarily saying that astrology is ‘better’ than numerology.  Many modern astrologers have fallen into the same trap as the numerologists, by creating their own system, without regard for tradition.

For example, it’s common practice in some circles to use dozens of asteroids in chart interpretation.  In my considered opinion the vast majority of these asteroids are meaningless, and they create a psychological fog that allows the astrologer to find whatever they like in the horoscope.

This fog is a mathematical certainty. As the number of factors increases, the possible interpretations will also increase, exponentially.

When you’ve hit this level, you’re functioning at the level of a pigeon.  In other words, you’re creating meaning for yourself out of things that are essentially meaningless.

Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop

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It really is ‘Hello World!’.  I’ve just set up this website, which is dedicated to Elemental Numerology.  It’s a system of numerology that I have been working on for many years, and it really is astounding.

When researching Elemental Numerology, I took a close look at existing systems of numerology.  There are some wonderful systems out there.  For example the Kabbalistic system of Gematria, and the Ancient Greek system of Isopsephy.   They really work, and in the case of the Gematria, they allow us to understand the hidden meanings of names, especially in a Biblical context.

However the systems of numerology most commonly practiced in the West are effectively nonsense.  Their supporters claim that they’re ancient techniques, going back thousands of years, but this is untrue.  They were invented in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century, and probably the reason they are so elaborate is that their practitioners were trying to compete with astrology.  If someone can do a complex astrological chart and make money out of it, why can’t you do the same with numerology?

Anyway, I’ve got a lot to explain, and hopefully you’ll want to join the ride.

Copyright © 2010 Archie Dunlop

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