User:Caliban666

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[edit] ČÄĿĮβÁÑ ςξζ

Hello -- My name is Patrick Raymond Pottelberg, but my friends call me Ray. I have been a user of Wikipedia almost since it began but have only registered here recently -- July 17, 2007. I don't know why I delayed so long. Wikipedia is certainly one of the most valuable resources on the Internet. I hope I may play a small part in making it even better.

My background: I have been in the arts, in one way or another, for most of my life, notably as a sculptor, designer and writer. I have also worked as a librarian, a book editor and a landscape architect. From time to time I have made a few contributions to the world of scholarship in subjects that interested me. I am 48 years old now, and retired -- or as retired as anyone in the arts can be ... I still write, paint and design.

A rather lengthy note about my username here: It is Caliban666. Caliban of course is a character from Shakespeare's Tempest -- my favorite of his plays. In the play Caliban is a savage, the son of the sorceress Sycorax who had been the mistress of the magical island before Prospero, the once Duke of Milan, was banished there by his wicked brother. Some scholars believe that Shakespeare meant the name Caliban to be an anagram of canibal -- a common spelling of cannibal in those days, and that the character was based on tales of the “savage“ natives of the New World encountered by European explorers. Shakespeare is believed to have written the play -- his last -- right around the time of the first English settlement in Virginia.

Caliban works for Prospero -- grudgingly -- doing menial tasks like carrying firewood and drawing water. He resents Prospero and thinks that he, Caliban, should be the lord of the island by right of birth. Though savage and sometimes treacherous, there is also a gentle nobility about the creature at times, and Shakespeare gives him some of the prettiest lines describing the enchanted island, the only home Caliban has ever known. My friends are often surprised when they find out I use Caliban as an on-line nickname -- they always say I am more like Prospero, the old magician, scholar and former duke, than like the wild savage Caliban. And it is true, I sometimes feel very much like Prospero, especially as I get older and my every other thought is of my grave as he says in the play. But while I may be Prospero, I sympathize with Caliban totally. Like Caliban, I was born and lived a great part of my my life, often alone, in a wild, enchanted place that had belonged to my mother -- only leaving from time to time to work -- grudgingly -- for others.

The 666 part of my nickname is, yes -- the dreaded number of the beast, the Antichrist, from the Book of Revelations in the New Testament. Well, I assure you, I am not the beast, nor any kind of devil worshiper. The 666 part of my nickname was automatically generated by a website I joined years ago. When I tried to register there as caliban it insisted that I must have letters and numbers in my user name, and it generated caliban666 as a suggestion. I was so delighted, I have used it ever since. There is nothing sinister about it.

At the top of this page you will see (if your browser displays Unicode letters properly) ČÄĿĮβÁÑ ςξζ -- CALIBAN followed by three squiggly characters. Those three symbols -- ςξζ -- are the three lower case forms -- beginning, medial and final -- of the Greek letter sigma, s, and that is exactly how 666 is written in the oldest Greek manuscripts of the Book of Revelations of Saint John (except for the copies that say the number of the beast shall be 616 -- but that is another story). Other than Biblical scholars, most people will have never seen how the 666 was written originally, and I thought it would be interesting to show you here. The three sigmas together look like three cobras, I always think. The final form of the sigma -- ζ -- is traditionally call the stigma (mark in Greek) from which we get our words stigmata -- the wounds on the hands and feet of Jesus -- and stigma, a figurative mark of infamy

If your browser is not showing ČÄĿĮβÁÑ ςξζ as CALIBAN followed by three squiggly Greek letters, then you should download Mozilla's Firefox browser which shows Unicode correctly. This is not a plug for Firefox -- I myself prefer Internet Explorer^† for general purposes -- but Firefox automatically shows Unicode characters that Explorer will only show with difficulty or not at all. Being able to see Unicode special characters will greatly enhance your use of many Wikipedia articles.

signed:

-- ČÄĿĮβÁÑ ςξζ

† In fact, my Internet Explorer 7 does show ČÄĿĮβÁÑ ςξζ correctly -- but it will only display about half the Unicode special characters commonly used in mathematics, chemistry, logic and physics in Wikipedia and elsewhere on the Internet.