Living in Portland

Law of Fives

Posted on 07 November 2009

The Law of Fives is summarized in the Principia Discordia:

The Law of Fives states simply that: All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5

The Law of Fives is never wrong.

—Malaclypse the Younger, Principia Discordia, Page 00016

Like most of Discordianism, the Law of Fives appears on the surface to be either some sort of weird joke, or bizarre supernaturalism; but under this, it may help clarify the Discordian view of how the human mind works; Lord Omar is quoted later on the same page as having written, “I find the Law of Fives to be more and more manifest the harder I look.”

Another way of looking at the Law of Fives is as a symbol for the observation of reality changing that which is being observed in the observer’s mind. Just as how when one looks for fives in reality, one finds them, so will one find conspiracies, ways to determine when the apocalypse will come, and so on and so forth when one decides to look for them. It cannot be wrong, because it proves itself reflexively when looked at through this lens.

At its basic level, the Law of Fives is a practical demonstration that perception is intent-sensitive; that is, the percipient’s intentions inform the perception. To whatever extent one considers that perception is identical with reality, then, it has the corollary that reality is intent-sensitive.