Religion dictionary
666
or the Number of the Beast [siks siks siks]
What does 666 mean?
The number 666 is used to signify the devil, the antichrist, or evil in general. It’s not be confused with another, unrelated 666, used by Chinese gamers to commend skillful play.
Where does 666 come from?
The association of 666 with evil originates from a passage in the Book of Revelations in the New Testament of the Bible. As it reads in the King James Version (13:18):
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.
The idea of the “number of a man” or “beast” may refer to the practice of gematria in Jewish numerology, where every letter of the Hebrew alphabet corresponds to a number (e.g., aleph=1, bet=2, etc.), and words and names correspond to the sums of these numbers.
This is the moth baphomet RT to win 666 years of good luck pic.twitter.com/Lx9NPFYjNq
— SAX DADDY 🎷 (@ghostbcmeme) October 23, 2018
Using gematria, scholars have variously decoded 666 to learn the biblical beast’s name. A leading theory deciphers 666 as Nron Qsr or Nro Qsr, taken as the Greek and Latin, respectively, for Nero Caesar. The beastly 666, then, may refer to Nero’s persecution of early Christians, though this theory has historical problems. Another similarly problematic theory identifies 666 as Muhammed, the founding Islamic prophet viewed as a false prophet in medieval Christianity.
Regardless of whether it refers to any historical entity, 666 came to stand for the personification of evil over the centuries, thanks to the apocalyptic visions of the Book of Revelations. Some avoid the number out of fear of its evil associations, but others playfully revel in it.
Examples of 666
Who uses 666?
The number 666 evokes strong feelings in many people. Some Christians, for instance, might go out of their way to avoid the number. Others may use the number to evoke an air of darkness or find amusement in coincidental appearances of the number in popular culture or everyday occurrences.
For Chinese gamers, 666 has an altogether different meaning. Liù, the pinyin for the Chinese word for six, is a homophone for the word for skilled. 6 or a string of 6’s can be used by Chinese gamers to show respect for an instance of highly skilled gameplay.
Rock and heavy metal bands have also adopted the number. In 1968, Deep Purple listed the play time of one of the songs on their album The Book of Taliesyn as 6:66, though the track is actually seven minutes and six seconds long. Iron Maiden released an album and song titled “The Number of the Beast” in 1982. In the chorus of the song, singer Bruce Dickinson chants: “666, the number of the Beast / 666, the one for you and me.”
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The number 666 has inspired many superstitions. After their second term in the White House, Ronald and Nancy Reagan retired to 666 St. Cloud Road in Bel-Air, California, but had the house number officially changed to 668. Reagan himself has been subject of conspiracy theories, where the number has an active life, because Ronald, his middle name Wilson, and Reagan are each six letters long. In 2003, US Highway 666 was renamed to US 491 after “decades of complaints,” according to the Albuquerque Journal.
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of 666 like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of 666 that will help our users expand their word mastery.