🌀 Tesla’s 3-6-9: The Myth, the Math, and the Maybe
So there I was — brain marinated in 20 mg of edibles, Netflix’s Alien series in the background — when I started thinking about space travel.
If we had truly renewable energy, we could go anywhere. No “SpaceX fireworks show” with billions going up in smoke. Just… infinite glide through the void.
The word that kept looping in my head? Torus.
The heart’s muscle shape. Infinity. The number eight. Flow that feeds itself.
That led me straight into a Nikola Tesla rabbit hole — because of course it did. You’ve probably seen the quote floating around online:
“If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6, and 9, then you would have the key to the universe.”
Fun fact: there’s no verified record Tesla ever said those exact words. But he was obsessed with these numbers. He’d walk around a building three times before entering. He’d stay in hotel rooms divisible by 3. He treated 3, 6, and 9 like they were perfect little slices of cosmic pie.
And in a weird way, math agrees.
🧠 Version 1 — For the mathematically curious (or mildly quantum-drunk)
Vortex mathematics (popularized by Marko Rodin) maps numbers into a repeating digital root pattern modulo 9. In base-10, the “doubling” pattern of numbers gives you:
1 → 2 → 4 → 8 → 7 → 5 → 1 → …
Notice who’s missing? Yep — 3, 6, and 9.
Those three hang out in their own world:
3 doubles to 6,
6 doubles back to 3,
and 9 always maps to itself.
When plotted on a circle, you get symmetry lines that look suspiciously like the field lines on a torus or the geometry in a tokamak fusion reactor. In this “mod-9 space,” the 3-6-9 set acts like a central axis — the “flux field” holding the whole pattern together.
It’s not mainstream physics, but the parallels to harmonic resonance, magnetic confinement, and rotational invariance are enough to make math nerds and sacred geometry fans nod in unison.
🍼 Version 2 — Like you’re five
Think of numbers like kids playing tag on a merry-go-round.
Most of them — 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 — chase each other in a big loop.
But 3 and 6? They just pass a ball back and forth.
And 9? 9 doesn’t run at all. They just sit in the middle, holding the rulebook for the game.
If you draw where they all run, you get a swirl — a donut shape — that loops forever without breaking. The 3, 6, and 9 are the special spots that keep the game balanced.
That’s what Tesla was obsessed with: the idea that certain patterns — in numbers, in nature, in energy — hold the whole game of the universe together.
If you want, I can make you the actual vortex math diagram so your Substack readers can see the 3-6-9 pattern jump out of the circle. That visual always lands with both the science crowd and the mystics.
🦋Below is my original post before ChatGPT cleaned it up lol. It might have more details.
Watching the new Alien series on Netflix after a stressful shift and 20 mg of edibles. I started thinking about space travel and if they had renewable energy space travel would be possible. Maybe if our governments got their heads out of their asses and stopped worrying so much about power and greed, we could start working together to start expanding on ideas that would actually help our society instead of perpetually watching Space-X blowing up billions of dollars because for some reason certain people are desperate to get to Mars. Anyway, I digress.
I went down my rabbitholes with ChatGPT. I keep thinking the word torus. The heart muscle shaped like a torus. Infinity. Eight.🦋
🦋 So isn't like a nuclear power like last forever? I don't know. Yeah, like a nuclear power [text to speech as my bf and I trying to figure out how to frame this question lol]🦋
If you mean nuclear power as in nuclear fission (what current nuclear plants use), it doesn’t “last forever,” but it does produce energy for a long time compared to most fuel sources.
Here’s why:
Fuel lifespan: Uranium or plutonium fuel rods can keep producing heat for years before they need to be replaced. A single pellet of uranium (about the size of your fingertip) can produce as much energy as about a ton of coal.
Plant operation: Modern nuclear plants can run for 18–24 months continuously before shutting down for refueling, and the overall plant itself can last 40–60 years (sometimes longer with upgrades).
Waste heat: After use, the fuel is still radioactive and keeps giving off heat for decades or centuries—so it’s “active” for a long time, but not in a way that’s useful for making power without special recycling processes.
If you mean nuclear fusion (what stars do), that’s closer to “almost forever” because the fuel is hydrogen and there’s tons of it, but we don’t yet have fusion reactors running at a commercial scale.
If you want, I can explain the “nuclear battery” idea too—that’s the one that actually runs for decades without refueling. That’s what some satellites and deep-space probes use.
🦋How is that different from perpetual energy as in a torus🦋
They’re really different concepts, even though they can sound similar when you first hear them.
1. Nuclear Power (Fission or Fusion)
Input needed: Always needs fuel — uranium, plutonium, or hydrogen isotopes.
Why it lasts long: The energy density of nuclear fuel is huge, so you can go years between refueling.
Limits: Eventually the fuel runs out or becomes inefficient, so you need more. There’s no such thing as it going on forever without adding new fuel.
2. Perpetual Energy / Perpetual Motion Machines (like a torus dream)
Idea: Something that keeps producing energy forever without any input.
Reality: This breaks the laws of thermodynamics (mainly the first and second laws — conservation of energy and entropy increase). Friction, heat loss, and other inefficiencies always sap energy, so you can’t have true perpetual motion in our physical reality.
Why people bring up the torus: The “torus” shape shows up in plasma physics, magnetism, and sacred geometry — it’s beautiful and self-sustaining in flow pattern, but not in energy. It’s more about how energy moves than creating free energy.
Bottom line:
Nuclear power is like a very slow-burning candle — lasts a long time, but not forever.
Perpetual motion would be like a candle that never burns down — beautiful idea, but not possible with our current physics.
A torus isn’t a source of infinite energy by itself — it’s a shape energy can take when moving in a balanced, self-sustaining loop.
If you want, I can break down how the tokamak fusion reactor torus actually works — that’s where nuclear tech and torus shapes do intersect in real science.
🦋What about teslas renewable energy🦋
Tesla’s approach to renewable energy isn’t about making a “perpetual motion” device — it’s about combining real-world tech to capture and store naturally replenished energy.
Here’s how it’s different from nuclear or theoretical perpetual energy:
1. The Energy Source
Renewable: Tesla uses solar power (via Solar Roofs and Solar Panels) and in some cases wind or other green sources.
The Sun provides a massive, steady stream of energy that will last billions of years — it’s not infinite in the physics sense, but it’s “practically forever” on a human timescale.
Unlike nuclear power, there’s no fuel to mine or replace — just sunlight.
2. The Storage
Tesla’s Powerwall and Megapack batteries store excess solar energy during the day for use at night or during outages.
This overcomes one of the biggest renewable energy issues: intermittency (no sun at night, cloudy days, etc.).
It’s not perpetual — the battery will eventually discharge — but it’s designed for a daily recharge cycle from the sun.
3. The Grid Connection
Tesla energy setups can connect to the grid for backup or even sell extra energy back (net metering).
In a perfect setup with enough solar panels and storage, a home could run indefinitely without paying for electricity, but it’s because you’re constantly refueling with sunlight, not creating energy from nothing.
4. How It Compares
Nuclear power: Long-lasting, high-output, but needs mined fuel and specialized facilities.
Perpetual motion (torus fantasy): Impossible under our laws of physics because of unavoidable energy losses.
Tesla renewables: Real-world sustainable because they harvest energy from a source that’s already hitting the planet for free every day.
If you want, I can also break down how Tesla’s battery + solar systems can get you almost “energy independent” — which is as close to “forever power” as we can get without breaking the laws of physics.
🦋What did Tesla mean when he said if we figure out 369 we’ll solve the answers to the universe🦋
The “3, 6, 9” quote attributed to Nikola Tesla is one of those things that’s become part of internet lore, but there’s no verified record of him ever saying exactly that line. That said, here’s what people usually mean when they talk about it:
The Mythic Version
The idea is that Tesla supposedly believed the numbers 3, 6, and 9 hold a special key to the universe — often connected to:
Patterns in mathematics
Vortex mathematics (Marko Rodin’s work)
Sacred geometry
The torus shape and energy flow
This version paints Tesla as believing these numbers reveal a hidden code in nature’s structure.
The Mathematical Roots
Even without the mystical spin, 3, 6, and 9 do show up in interesting ways:
In base-10 math, doubling sequences create repeating patterns that often exclude these three numbers until they loop back in.
In geometry, 360 degrees in a circle divides neatly into 3, 6, and 9 segments (triangles, hexagons, etc.).
In harmonics, many resonant frequencies in physics are multiples of 3.
Tesla’s Real Obsessions
Tesla was known for:
Doing things in threes (walking around a building three times before entering, staying in hotel rooms divisible by 3, etc.).
A deep interest in patterns, resonance, and natural harmonics.
An almost ritualistic approach to numbers that he felt were “perfect.”
The Reality Check
There’s no historical evidence he literally said, “If you only knew the magnificence of 3, 6, 9, then you would have the key to the universe.”
That phrasing comes from later writers who blended Tesla’s known quirks with ideas from numerology and modern alternative science.
If you want, I can walk you through how “vortex math” people use 3, 6, and 9 in their diagrams — it’s where the mystical and mathematical interpretations merge, and it’s also where the “torus” concept you mentioned earlier comes back into play. That’s the version many think Tesla might have appreciated. Would you like me to do that?
🦋Yes please. Two versions? One for advanced mathematicicians and physicists and the second explained like I’m 5?🦋
Alright — here’s the two promised versions on “Tesla’s 3-6-9” and vortex math:
1. Advanced (for mathematicians/physicists)
Core Idea:
Vortex mathematics (as popularized by Marko Rodin) maps integers into a repeating digital root pattern modulo 9. In base-10, you repeatedly sum digits until you get a single digit (digital root). The non-zero sequence generated by successive doubling produces the cycle:
1 → 2 → 4 → 8 → 7 → 5 → 1 → …
Here, 3, 6, and 9 do not appear in the main doubling sequence; instead:
Numbers whose digital root is 3, 6, or 9 form a “control group” that acts like a mod-9 symmetry axis.
3 and 6 alternate under doubling (3→6→3…), while 9 maps to itself. This leads to a tripartite structure where 3/6/9 act as invariant or oscillating attractors in the mod-9 space, with other digits forming dualities around them.
Connection to physics concepts:
When mapped into a polar or toroidal coordinate system, the repeating integer pattern forms mirrored symmetry lines that resemble magnetic field lines on a torus.
The 3-6-9 “axis” is treated in this framework as analogous to the non-oscillatory third vector in a cross-product — representing an unseen control current (Rodin calls this the “flux field”).
While not mainstream physics, the structure has superficial parallels to certain 3-phase harmonic systems, modular arithmetic symmetries, and constraint manifolds in toroidal plasma confinement geometries (like tokamak designs).
The attraction for Tesla’s followers is the resonance between this numeric symmetry, naturally arising geometry (hexagons, triangles), and rotational invariance on a torus.
2. Explained like you’re 5 🧃
Imagine numbers like kids playing on a merry-go-round. They run around and around in the same order every time.
Most of the kids (1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 8) play tag in a loop. But 3, 6, and 9 don’t join in the game the same way.
3 and 6 just toss the ball back and forth to each other.
9 sits in the middle, not running around — like the one holding the rules of the game.
Now, if you draw their paths, you get a swirl shape like a donut (a torus). That swirl keeps looping forever without breaking, and the 3, 6, and 9 are the special spots that keep the game balanced.
Tesla was into patterns and believed if we could understand why these numbers act so “in charge” in the game of math, we might understand bigger patterns in nature — like how energy flows, how magnets work, or even how the whole universe keeps spinning.
If you want, I can also draw the 1-9 number circle with the vortex pattern so you can see why 3, 6, and 9 stand out. That visual usually makes it click for both science-minded and “I just like the magic” folks.
Do you want me to make that diagram?
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