The Number of the Beast

We will return to the chakras, but there is one path left that we should follow before we concentrate on the deep mysteries. Since Roger let us know about 'ZBS-Infinity', it will occur to us to try 'ZBS-666'. And when you do, you go to a quite different place.

After the ominous demon in front of the jukebox display we are shown this rather plain memorial. Not a lot to go by here, but ...

Google Image has managed to find this. The place has been dolled up and accessorized since the mid-eighties, and there are more revealing angles. Mount Sunflower, Kansas - altitude 4039' - on the western edge of the state. Surprisingly, the sunflower is not drawn in, that's how the railroad spike figure structure renders in black-and-white. While it's the high point in Kansas, as you look around, that fact does not stick out.

Roger refers to this as 'the high point of nothing' - I think he is a native, only a native could foster that special tone of familiar contempt. He did go to school here - University of Kansas, near Kansas City, on the east side of the state.

Next we find out the year. This graphic is brought up - it is Rembrandt's etching sometimes titled "Doctor Fautreius, the Dutch philosopher" from about 1652 - and is typically retitled as "Faust", from its use in Goethe's Faust, a play in which the scholar Faust makes a deal with the devil.

Here is the original etching, this version now held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While Rembrandt did not even leave us with a title for this work, some scholars think Rembrandt was imagining a Jewish scholar investigating Hebrew mysticism and the Kabbalah, and that the apparition contains the inscription:

INRI - ADAM TE DAGLRAM - AMRTET ALGAR ALGASTNA

Rembrandt was a deeply religious, Christian man, but he was not unsympathetic to Jewish culture, since he thought deeply about the Old Testament.

In the game, a date is gradually displayed in the symbolic ball area, one Roman numeral at a time:

MDCCCXCVII - 1897 - it takes a while. 

And then we are moved to the book. We did page through this book earlier when we went through the 'infinity' path, but I just presented the synopsis, without a screen capture example, since it was in normal English font there.

Roger is generous with his exposition here - but it is all Greekified! - you may have a headache before too long. As a service to the reader, I will exhibit one section here as presented, and give you a synopsis of the following content. Next time.