666 angel number
Three sixes, the number of the beast in the Book of Revelation. Angel-number writers read it differently: for Doreen Virtue it meant thoughts too focused on the material world.
Meaning
666 carries two unrelated meanings. In Christian scripture it is the number of the beast in Revelation 13:18. In the New Age angel-number belief, which Doreen Virtue popularised, it is a message from angels like the other triple numbers; that reading is a claim of the belief, not of the Bible. Virtue’s 1999 list says 666 means “your thoughts are out of balance right now, focused too much on the material world”, and asks the reader to balance them “between heaven and earth”, citing the Sermon on the Mount. Mental Floss’s 2026 guide says that “despite its Satanic reputation” 666 is an angel number and not a bad omen, and that numerology ties six to “unconditional love, care, and empathy”.
Origin and history
Irenaeus of Lyon, in Against Heresies, explained that the beast’s name, reckoned “according to the Greek mode of calculation” by the values of its letters, would come to 666. He named Evanthas and Lateinos as names with that total, and refused to say which was meant. He also knew copies that gave the number with one ten instead of six, that is 616, and blamed the copyists; 666 was the reading of “all the most approved and ancient copies”. Later readers made the sum fit their opponents. Britannica records that the German Protestant Andreas Helwig, in 1612, added up the Roman numerals in Vicarius Filii Dei, a title falsely ascribed to the pope, to get 666, and that in the sixteenth century Michael Stifel, a Protestant, decoded 666 as Pope Leo X while Peter Bungus, a Catholic, decoded it as Martin Luther.
Is 666 in the Bible?
Yes, once. Revelation 13:18 reads, in the King James Version: “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.”
Six in Chinese numerology
A separate tradition counts six as lucky. Tai Chin, who taught Mandarin at UCLA, told NPR in 2008 that six sounds a little like lu, good luck in one’s career.
A number people fear
John W. Hoopes, writing on apophenia for Psychology Today, lists “an evil 666” among the number patterns people fear, beside “dangerous 13s”, and calls numerology a form of apophenia in which patterns of numbers “are considered to be meaningful when they’re not”.
See also
777 angel number, 000 angel number, 111 angel number, 222 angel number, 333 angel number, 444 angel number.
Sources
- Revelation 13:18 (King James Version), Bible Gateway, Revelation 13:18
- Against Heresies, Book V, chapter 30, Irenaeus of Lyon, translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, New Advent (Ante-Nicene Fathers), V.30.1–3
- Number symbolism, Ian Stewart, Encyclopaedia Britannica (Wayback Machine copy, 5 September 2026), Seven; Numerology
- Number Sequences From The Angels, Doreen Virtue; the page gives it as a book excerpt from Healing with the Angels (Hay House, 1999), Spirit Library (spiritlibrary.com), Number Sequences; Number Combinations
- The Meanings of All the Angel Numbers, From 1111 to 999, Eden Gordon, 4 September 2026 (written from within the belief), Mental Floss
- 8-8-08, A Lucky Day For Weddings, Ki-Min Sung, Day to Day, 7 August 2008 (transcript), NPR, Transcript
- 11-11-11, Apophenia, and the Meaning of Life, John W. Hoopes (University of Kansas), 11 November 2011, Psychology Today
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Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research