August 6, 2002

A Letter to the Webmaster (Mr. Davey, I presume?)

Dear Sir,

On this the occasion of Harry's 57th birthday, I am writing to offer my thanks for the many excellent perspectives you have given us about The Boomer Bible. From the homilies on the Table of Harrier Days, to the photographs of key people and places in the gospels of Harry, to the fleshing out of filtered sourceworks, to the ICR map of "There isn't any God"—you have given me, and I'm sure many others, a flood of new insights about how to read this wonderful but baffling book.

As I've mulled over the things I've learned or discovered from this website, I finally realized that you might appreciate an act of giving back. I'm not much of a literary critic, but I'm not bad as a puzzle solver, and so I've found an area in which I might have something to offer you and your visitors.

The area is numerology, which is a doorway to the many numbers games in TBB—mentioned but nowhere elucidated in the site. I tumbled to this topic by eavesdropping at the Boomer Bible Forum and conducted some excavations of my own. I don't claim to be presenting a key to unlocking TBB's mysteries. That's beyond my abilities. Numerology, I will say at the outset, is provably bunk. Otherwise the text version of nine would equal 9. It doesn't. Moreover, Pspeciastes is quite clear on the topic:

Psp.3.18: And I have counted these numbers again and again, and their sum is inanity, precisely, with nothing left over.

And yet it is also true that numerology is used extensively in TBB as a literary device. It's there, it's in action—much like the ICR—working its hidden effects and sounding its hidden messages even as most of us stumble along from line to line, blind to all but the crawl of words. Taking the lid off these concealed workings (as you have done with your ICR maps) is fun. It's like opening some panel in an old library and seeing an entirely unexpected vista of fireworks and fantasy that just might be as real as the dusty books on the shelves.

I've also done this for a practical reason. Many readers of TBB, I'm convinced, are scared of the "numbers game" because it is somehow connected to the Tarot and the occult. There may be some concern that this is a sinister aspect of the book, anti-Christian, even Satanic. The truth is, it isn't. Numerology is connected to the Tarot, and the Tarot is connected to Astrology, and all of them have ties to Christianity and Judaism as well. Truth and belief wear many faces. We shouldn't be afraid to look at all of them.

Again my thanks to you for inspiring me. If you care to share these works with your visitors, I will be pleased. First there is an introduction to the Numerology of TBB, which differs somewhat from classical numerology. And second, there's an essay called "Harry's Toys," in which I hope I have provided an example of how to have fun with numbers in TBB. Perhaps others will be inspired to give back to the website with some thoughts of their own.

Sincerely yours,

Henry Elders

P.S. I've also appended some other little essays that grew out of the ones above. If you're engaged by puzzles and games, take a look at The Numerology of Harry, Numerology of the Titles, Numerology of the Signs & Symbols, Numerology of the Harry Lands, Numerology of the Punks, and the The Numerology of Jesus Christ.