During the years 1985 and 1986 I fooled around with numerology. Not that I made a religion out of it, but it was fun to turn letters into numbers and figure out the total. I went to a dinner party where the subject came up and one woman insisted that women had to use their maiden name . In my case it should be Ute Herbig Kaboulian. The last name should  be the original one which I did not know. At Ellis Island they had changed the "ou" into 'oo". I had used Kaboolian and  had encountered the number 666, the devil’s number as the kids told me. All Catherines have the 666 also. When Haigaz asked the Motor Vehicles people to save a real nice number for him like 444, or 555 he came back one day with the number 666. “That’s the devil’s number,” the kids shouted. “Figures that they gave you that one, ha ha.”

     I had always made funny associations with the devil somehow. Haigaz told a cute story where a man goes into the woods, comes upon a rock, moves it, and out jumps the devil, says hello and jumps right back in. The man puts the rock back quickly, goes home to his wife, and says, “Wife, I’m gonna unearth a treasure.” “Not without me you’re not,” she says. “I’m coming with you.” “No, you’re not.” “Yes, I am.” So they both go. The husband finds the rock and is ready to jump into the hole. The wife pulls him back and jumps in instead. The husband covers the hole with the rock and goes home and has himself a real good time. After a week or so he thinks, might as well get her back now. To his utter astonishment when he moves away the rock it’s the devil who jumps out. “Get me away from that woman. Ever since she came I have no rest. She moves around my furniture every single day, I can’t stand it.”

     Then I remembered the fairy tale of my childhood with the devil’s grandmother who outsmarted her grandson every time. I never feared the devil somehow.

     I had also bought Runes by Ralph Blum. Every time I used them they were right on the mark. Then I wrote my Rune poem, the only one that orally simply ‘came to me.’ I trusted it and wrote it down though it sounds more like Middle English somehow. I had Old English in the university but not Middle English though we had to read Chaucer. Well, once again in the bookstore there was the one book that called out to me to be picked up. It was the only one. The title was Fortune Telling By Runes. The authors were David & Julia Line. Here there was a different alphabet consisting of Hebrew and some Greek letters and where the number nine was omitted and the letters were not in the normal order. Nr. 1, which in the usual alphabet consists of a, j, s was here a, i, q, j, y; Nr. 2 was b, k, r; Nr 3 c, g. l, s; Nr. 4 d, m, t. Nr. 5 e, h, n. The famous Nr. 6, which in our regular alphabet sums to fox is u, v, w, x. Nr. 7 is o and z, and Nr. 8 is f and p. Well, I got a surprise when I did my name Ute Herbig Kaboulian with this alphabet. In the middle of the triangle was the 666, and there was twice the number 616 even, but the most astounding  thing was this: Something made me add each horizontal line of the triangle up and note the result next to it. I stopped at two lines above the 666. It totaled 40, which I always thought of as fullness. Underneath it was a small triangle containing the 666 of which the top line 1515 added up to 12. I added this partial one. Then I added the totals of the horizontal lines vertically: the very first one, which totaled 61 and the last one, the partial one, which totaled 12, and was the one of the small triangle I came up with, and couldn’t believe my eyes: This total was another 666 right next to the line with the 666 inside the triangle. Amazing? Sure, I thought. Oh, and as far as names are concerned I couldn’t help wonder.  How about the authors’ names, which were appropriately David and Julia Line? What lines they gave me! Love it!