Robert Anton Wilson called. He says, "23! 23! 23!"

I recently - just last Wednesday or Thursday - finished re-reading the late Robert Anton Wilson's book Cosmic Trigger.

One recurring theme in the book is the interesting string of coincidences that starts to follow you around once you start to enter the practice of magick, of "self-induced brain change" as he puts it. RAW is carefully agnostic on whether the perceived coincidences stem from psychology of perception, parapsychology, quantum physics, a holographic universe, some synchronicity beyond our ken, or what.

One of his favorites is the "23 connection". I've always been more of a "Law of Fives" man myself (remember, the harder you look, the more you'll see the Law of Fives manifest), but I've seen 23 spring up a few times.

Like when, on Saturday, just a few days after finishing re-reading Cosmic Trigger, 23s still dancing in my head, I see one of these movie posters for "The Number 23" in a bus stop shelter as Cathy was driving us to the Metro stop to go down to D.C. for the anti-war march.

So, what does it mean, we immediately want to ask, given a coincidence like that. I've pretty much eliminated parapsychology from my list of options to consider, given the repeated failures of "psychics" to perform under controlled conditions; and most occult and mystical attempts to invoke quantum theory are straight-up gobbledygook. (I'm looking at you, Deepak Chopra!) But other than that: psychology of perception, a holographic universe, some synchronicity beyond our ken, I don't know.

And, as one Zen Master put it, "don't know is closest to it". Or, as some goofball once said in response, "Don't know? I don't know?! Third base!"