TWIL #49: From 666 to Multipurpose Housing

Every Sunday, I write down a few things that caught my attention that week: details I tripped over, ideas that lingered, questions I needed to understand by putting them into words. This isn’t about being right or complete. It’s about noticing, wondering, and thinking on the page.

Thanks for reading. I hope something here sparks.

Nero = 666 = Satan

I’d always heard that 666 was the number of Satan.

Then I was listening to a podcast about Nero, the crazy Roman emperor, and someone casually mentioned that 666 was originally… his name. In numbers.

That sent me down a rabbit hole.

Write Nero Caesar as it was spoken in the eastern Roman Empire, then transliterate it into Hebrew:

נרון קסר
Neron Qesar

Why Hebrew? That confused me too. Until I learned the missing piece.

Ancient languages didn’t separate letters and numbers.

Hebrew, Greek, and early Latin alphabets were their number systems. There were no separate numerals. If you could read, you could calculate. Every word carried a numerical value.

Not mysticism. Infrastructure.

So once you know that, the rest clicks into place:

נ (50)
ר (200)
ו (6)
ן (50)
ק (100)
ס (60)
ר (200)

Add it up: 666.

Not symbolically. Literally.

Some early manuscripts even give 616, because spelling Nero slightly differently changes the math. Same man. Same accusation.

Which brings us back to the real question: why Nero?

Because to early Christians, Nero wasn’t abstract evil. He was immediate danger. They were a small, distrusted group who refused to worship Roman gods or the emperor, met in private, and spoke of another “king.”

When Rome burned in 64 CE and rumors pointed at Nero, he needed a scapegoat. Christians were visible enough to blame and powerless enough to crush. What followed was public, theatrical violence: arrests, crucifixions, burnings. Punishment as spectacle.

Nero died.
The code survived.
The context faded.

The number remained and slowly turned cosmic.

666 wasn’t born supernatural. It was born political.

Multipurpose houses. Living architecture.

I came across this video from The Metropolitan Museum of Art that documents the sikien: castlelike earthen homes built by the Batammariba people along the border of Togo and the Republic of Benin.

These structures are more than shelters; they are spaces for living, ceremony, storage, and spirituality, shaped by generations of knowledge and care. Built from organic materials, each house has a natural life cycle that requires continual maintenance, tying architecture directly to community, land, and time.

The film offers a quiet but powerful reminder that buildings can be alive: rooted in place, responsive to their environment, and sustained through collective effort.

That was it for this year! I wish you all a great 2026.