Gematria (; he, גמטריא or gimatria , plural or , ''gimatriot'') is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase according to an alphanumerical

cipher In cryptography, a cipher (or cypher) is an algorithm for performing encryption or decryption—a series of well-defined steps that can be followed as a procedure. An alternative, less common term is ''encipherment''. To encipher or encode ...

. A single word can yield several values depending on the cipher which is used. Hebrew alphanumeric ciphers were probably used in biblical times, and were later adopted by other cultures. Gematria is still widely used in

Jewish culture Jewish culture is the culture of the Jewish people, from its formation in ancient times until the current age. Judaism itself is not a faith-based religion, but an orthoprax and ethnoreligion, pertaining to deed, practice, and identity. Jewis ...

. Similar systems have been used in other languages and cultures: the Greeks isopsephy, and later, derived from or inspired by Hebrew gematria, Arabic abjad numerals, and English gematria. Although a type of gematria system ('Aru') was employed by the ancient Babylonian culture, their writing script was

logographic In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, '' kanji'' in Japanese, '' hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms ...

, and the numerical assignations they made were to whole words. The value of these words were assigned in an entirely arbitrary manner and correspondences were made through tables, and so cannot be considered a true form of gematria. Aru was very different from the gematria systems used by Hebrew and Greek cultures, which used alphabetic writing scripts. Similar systems have been used in other languages and cultures derived from or inspired by Hebrew gematria; Arabic abjad numerals, and English gematria. There is currently no academic consensus over whether Hebrew gematria or Greek isopsephy was used first. Gematria sums can involve single words, or a string of lengthy calculations. A well-known short example of Hebrew

numerology Numerology (also known as arithmancy) is the belief in an occult, divine or mystical relationship between a number and one or more coinciding events. It is also the study of the numerical value, via an alphanumeric system, of the letters in ...

that uses a gematria cipher is the word '' chai'' ( "alive"), which is composed of two letters that (using the assignments in the ''Mispar gadol'' table shown below) add up to 18. This has made 18 a "

lucky number In number theory, a lucky number is a natural number in a set which is generated by a certain "sieve". This sieve is similar to the Sieve of Eratosthenes that generates the primes, but it eliminates numbers based on their position in the rema ...

" among the Jewish people. Donations of money in multiples of 18 are very popular. In early Jewish sources, the term "gematria" can also refer to other forms of calculation or letter manipulation, for example

atbash Atbash ( he, אתבש; also transliterated Atbaš) is a monoalphabetic substitution cipher originally used to encrypt the Hebrew alphabet. It can be modified for use with any known writing system with a standard collating order. Encryption Th ...

Etymology

Although the term is

Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...

, it may be derived from the Greek γεωμετρία ''geōmetriā'', "

geometry Geometry (; ) is, with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. It is concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is c ...

", which was used as a translation of gēmaṭriyā, though some scholars believe it to derive from Greek γραμματεια ''grammateia'' "knowledge of

writing Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

". It is likely that both Greek words had an influence on the formation of the Hebrew word. Some also hold it to derive from the order of the Greek alphabet, gamma being the third letter of the Greek alphabet ("gamma tria"). The word has been extant in English since at least the 17th century from translations of works by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. It is largely used in Jewish texts, notably in those associated with the

Kabbalah Kabbalah ( he, קַבָּלָה ''Qabbālā'', literally "reception, tradition") is an esoteric method, discipline and Jewish theology, school of thought in Jewish mysticism. A traditional Kabbalist is called a Mekubbal ( ''Məqūbbāl'' "rece ...

. The term does not appear in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Sargon II Sargon II ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , meaning "the faithful king" or "the legitimate king") was the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire from 722 BC to his death in battle in 705. Probably the son of Tiglath-Pileser III (745–727), Sargon is gener ...

. In this inscription, Sargon II states: "the king built the wall of Khorsabad 16,283 cubits long to correspond with the numerical value of his name." Various scholars have raised the possibility of gematria on various occasions in the

Hebrew Bible The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Hasmonean king of Judea, Alexander Jannaeus (died 76 BCE) had coins inscribed in Aramaic with the

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an alphabet (more specifically, an abjad) known in modern times from the Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions found across the Mediterranean region. The name comes from the Phoenician civilization. The Phoenician al ...

, marking his 20th and 25th year of reign using the letters K and KE (למלכא אלכסנדרוס שנת כ and למלכא אלכסנדרוס שנת כה). It is the oldest known use of Gematria in Hebrew. Some old Mishnaic texts may preserve very early usage of this number system, but no surviving written documents exist, and some scholars believe these texts were passed down orally and during the early stages before the

Bar Kochba rebellion The Bar Kokhba revolt ( he, , links=yes, ''Mereḏ Bar Kōḵḇāʾ‎''), or the 'Jewish Expedition' as the Romans named it ( la, Expeditio Judaica), was a rebellion by the Jews of the Roman province of Judea, led by Simon bar Kokhba, aga ...

were never written. Gematria is not known to be found in the Dead Sea scrolls, a vast body of texts from 100 years before and after 0 CE. Neither do any of the documents found from the Bar-Kochba revolt circa 150 CE. A sample of graffiti at

Pompeii Pompeii (, ) was an ancient city located in what is now the ''comune'' of Pompei near Naples in the Campania region of Italy. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the surrounding area (e.g. at Boscoreale, Stabiae), was burie ...

(destroyed under volcanic ash in the year 79 CE) reads "I love the girl whose name is phi mu epsilon (545)". According to

Proclus Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor ( grc-gre, Πρόκλος ὁ Διάδοχος, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophe ...

in his commentary on the '' Timaeus'' of

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

written in the 5th century, the author Theodorus Asaeus from a century earlier interpreted the word "soul" (ψυχή) based on gematria and an inspection of the graphical aspects of the letters that make up the word. According to Proclus, Theodorus learned these methods from the writings of

Numenius of Apamea Numenius of Apamea ( grc-gre, Νουμήνιος ὁ ἐξ Ἀπαμείας, ''Noumēnios ho ex Apameias''; la, Numenius Apamensis) was a Greek philosopher, who lived in Apamea in Syria and Rome, and flourished during the latter half of the ...

and

Amelius Amelius (; grc-gre, Ἀμέλιος), whose family name was Gentilianus, was a Neoplatonist philosopher and writer of the second half of the 3rd century. Biography Amelius was a native of Tuscany.Porphyry, ''Vit. Plotin.'' 7 Originally a student ...

. Proclus rejects these methods by appealing to the arguments against them put forth by the Neoplatonic philosopher

Iamblichus Iamblichus (; grc-gre, Ἰάμβλιχος ; Aramaic: 𐡉𐡌𐡋𐡊𐡅 ''Yamlīḵū''; ) was a Syrian neoplatonic philosopher of Arabic origin. He determined a direction later taken by neoplatonism. Iamblichus was also the biographer o ...

. The first argument was that some letters have the same numerical value but opposite meaning. His second argument was that the form of letters changes over the years, and so their graphical qualities cannot hold any deeper meaning. Finally, he puts forth the third argument that when you use all sorts of methods as addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and even ratios, the sheer infinite ways to combine them will allow you to produce virtually every number for anything you are investigating. There are at least two cases of gematria appearing in the New Testament. The reference to the miraculous catch of 153 fish in John 21:11 is largely seen as an application of gematria derived from the name of the spring called 'EGLaIM in Ezekiel 47:10. The appearance of this gematria in John 21:11 has been connected to one of the

Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...

, namely 4Q252, which also applies the same gematria of 153 derived from Ezekiel 47 to state that Noah arrived at Mount Ararat on the 153rd day after the beginning of the flood. Some historians see gematria behind the reference to the number of the name of the beast in Revelation as "666", which corresponds to the numerical value of the Hebrew transliteration of the Greek name "Nero Caesar", referring to the 1st century Roman emperor who persecuted the early Christians. Another possible influence on the use of 666 in Revelation goes back to reference to Solomon's intake of 666 talents of gold in 1 Kings 10:14. Gematria makes several appearances in various Christian and Jewish texts written in the first centuries of the common era. One appearance of gematria in the early Christian period is in the

Epistle of Barnabas The ''Epistle of Barnabas'' ( el, Βαρνάβα Ἐπιστολή) is a Greek epistle written between AD 70 and 132. The complete text is preserved in the 4th-century ''Codex Sinaiticus'', where it appears immediately after the New Testament ...

9:6–7, which dates to sometime between 70 and 132 CE. There, the 318 servants of Abraham in Genesis 14:14 is used to indicate that Abraham looked forward to the coming of Jesus as the numerical value of some of the letters in the Greek name for Jesus as well as the 't' representing a symbol for the cross also equaled 318. Another example is a Christian interpolation in the Sibylline Oracles, where the symbolic significance of the value of 888 (equal to the numerical value of ''Iesous'', the Latinized rendering of the Greek version of Jesus' name) is asserted.This and several other examples of the appearance of gematria are given in D.S. Russell. "Countdown: Arithmetic and Anagram in Early Biblical Interpretation". Expository Times 1993. The Gnostic uses of the numerological representation of Jesus with the number 888, as the sum of the numerical values of the Latinized transliteration ( IĒSOuS ) of his name in Greek ( ΙΗΣΟΥΣ ), was condemned by the Church father

Irenaeus Irenaeus (; grc-gre, Εἰρηναῖος ''Eirēnaios''; c. 130 – c. 202 AD) was a Greek bishop noted for his role in guiding and expanding Christian communities in the southern regions of present-day France and, more widely, for the de ...

as convoluted, and an act which reduced "the Lord of all things" to something alphabetical. esus ( יֵשׁוּעַ‎ ), the Aramaic form of the name Joshua, actually equals 386 in the Hebrew/Aramaic reckoning. Irenaeus also heavily criticized the interpretation of letters by the Gnostic Marcus. Because of their association with Gnosticism and the criticisms of Irenaeus as well as Hippolytus of Rome and

Epiphanius of Salamis Epiphanius of Salamis ( grc-gre, Ἐπιφάνιος; c. 310–320 – 403) was the bishop of Salamis, Cyprus, at the end of the 4th century. He is considered a saint and a Church Father by both the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. He ...

, this form of interpretation never became popular in Christianity—though it does appear in at least some texts. Another two examples can be found in 3 Baruch, a text that may have either been composed by a Jew or a Christian sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries. In the first example, a snake is stated to consume a cubit of ocean every day, but is unable to ever finish consuming it, because the oceans are also refilled by 360 rivers. The number 360 is given because the numerical value of the Greek word for snake, ''δράκων'', when transliterated to Hebrew (''דרקון'') is 360. In a second example, the number of giants stated to have died during the Deluge is 409,000. The Greek word for 'deluge', ''κατακλυσμός'', has a numerical value of 409 when transliterated in Hebrew characters, thus leading the author of 3 Baruch to use it for the number of perished giants. Gematria is often used in

Rabbinic literature Rabbinic literature, in its broadest sense, is the entire spectrum of rabbinic writings throughout Jewish history. However, the term often refers specifically to literature from the Talmudic era, as opposed to medieval and modern rabbinic w ...

. One example is that the numerical value of "''The Satan"'' (השטן) in Hebrew is 364, and so it was said that the Satan had authority to prosecute Israel for 364 days before his reign ended on the Day of Atonement, an idea which appears in Yoma 20a and Peskita 7a. Yoma 20a states: "Rami bar Ḥama said: The numerological value of the letters that constitute the word HaSatan is three hundred and sixty four: Heh has a value of five, sin has a value of three hundred, tet has a value of nine, and nun has a value of fifty. Three hundred and sixty-four days of the solar year, which is three hundred and sixty-five days long, Satan has license to prosecute." Genesis 14:14 states that Abraham took 318 of his servants to help him rescue some of his kinsmen, which was taken in Peskita 70b to be a reference to Eleazar, whose name has a numerical value of 318. The total value of the letters of the Islamic Basmala, i.e. the phrase ''Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim'' ("In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful"), according to the standard Abjadi system of

, is 786.Shah & Haleem (eds.), ''The Oxford Handbook of Qur'anic Studies'', Oxford University Press, 2020, pp581, 587–88 This number has therefore acquired a significance in folk Islam and Near Eastern folk magic and also appears in many instances of pop-culture, such as its appearance in the 2006 song '786 All is War' by the band Fun^Da^Mental. A recommendation of reciting the basmala 786 times in sequence is recorded in Al-Buni. Sündermann (2006) reports that a contemporary " spiritual healer" from Syria recommends the recitation of the basmala 786 times over a cup of water, which is then to be ingested as medicine. Still today, the use of gematria is pervasive in many parts of Asia and Africa. In modern day Israel, Gematria has been used in parodies such as the Baba Bubba a fictional Sephardic rabbi (played by Mony Moshonov during the gulf war of 1991) on the widely popular Zehu Ze! TV show, would calculate how Israel should not be concerned with Iraqi Scud missiles shot at Israel, and how the US and coalition forces would demolish Saddam Hussein's army.

Methods

Standard encoding

In the standard (''Mispar hechrechi'') version of ''gematria'', each letter is given a numerical value between 1 and 400, as shown in the following table. In the ''Mispar gadol'' variation, the five final letters are given their own values, ranging from 500 to 900. It is possible that this well-known cipher was used to conceal other more hidden ciphers in Jewish texts. For instance, a scribe may discuss a sum using the 'standard gematria' cipher, but may intend the sum to be checked with a different secret cipher. A mathematical formula for finding a letter's corresponding number in Mispar Gadol is: :

f(x) = 10^ \times ((x-1 \mod 9) + 1),

where ''x'' is the position of the letter in the language letters index (regular order of letters), and the

floor A floor is the bottom surface of a room or vehicle. Floors vary from simple dirt in a cave to many layered surfaces made with modern technology. Floors may be stone, wood, bamboo, metal or any other material that can support the expected load ...

and

modulo In computing, the modulo operation returns the remainder or signed remainder of a division, after one number is divided by another (called the '' modulus'' of the operation). Given two positive numbers and , modulo (often abbreviated as ) is ...

functions are used.

Vowels

The value of the Hebrew vowels is not usually counted, but some lesser-known methods include the vowels as well. The most common vowel values are as follows (a less common alternative value, based on the digit sum, is given in parentheses): Sometimes, the names of the vowels are spelled out and their gematria is calculated using standard methods.

Other methods in Hebrew

There are many different methods used to calculate the numerical value for the individual Hebrew/Aramaic words, phrases or whole sentences. More advanced methods are usually used for the most significant Biblical verses, prayers, names of God, etc. These methods include: * ''Mispar Hechrachi'' (absolute value) is the standard method. It assigns the values 1–9, 10–90, 100–400 to the 22 Hebrew letters in order. Sometimes it is also called ''Mispar ha-Panim'' (face number), as opposed to the more complicated ''Mispar ha-Akhor'' (back number). * ''Mispar Gadol'' (large value) counts the final forms (sofit) of the Hebrew letters as a continuation of the numerical sequence for the alphabet, with the final letters assigned values from 500 to 900. The name ''Mispar Gadol'' is sometimes used for a different method, ''Otiyot beMilui''. * The same name, ''Mispar Gadol'', is also used for another method, which spells the name of each letter and adds the standard values of the resulting string. For example, the letter Aleph is spelled Aleph-Lamed-Peh, giving it a value of 1+30+80=111. * ''Mispar Katan'' (small value) calculates the value of each letter, but truncates all of the zeros. It is also sometimes called ''Mispar Me'ugal''. * ''Mispar Siduri'' (ordinal value) with each of the 22 letters given a value from 1 to 22. * ''Mispar Bone'eh'' (building value, also ''Revu'a'', square) is calculated by walking over each letter from the beginning to the end, adding the value of all previous letters and the value of the current letter to the running total. Therefore, the value of the word ''achad'' (one) is

1 + (1 + 8) + (1 + 8 + 4) = 23

. * ''Mispar Kidmi'' (preceding value) uses each letter as the sum of all the standard gematria letter values preceding it. Therefore, the value of Aleph is 1, the value of Bet is 1+2=3, the value of Gimel is 1+2+3=6, etc. It's also known as ''Mispar Meshulash'' (triangular or tripled number). * ''Mispar P'rati'' calculates the value of each letter as the square of its standard gematria value. Therefore, the value of Aleph is 1 × 1 = 1, the value of Bet is 2 × 2 = 4, the value of Gimel is 3 × 3 = 9, etc. It's also known as ''Mispar ha-Merubah ha-Prati''. * ''Mispar ha-Merubah ha-Klali'' is the square of the standard absolute value of each word. * ''Mispar Meshulash'' calculates the value of each letter as the cube of their standard value. The same term is more often used for ''Mispar Kidmi''. * ''Mispar ha-Akhor'' – The value of each letter is its standard value multiplied by the position of the letter in a word or a phrase in either ascending or descending order. This method is particularly interesting, because the result is sensitive to the order of letters. It is also sometimes called ''Mispar Meshulash'' (triangular number). * ''Mispar Mispari'' spells out the standard values of each letter by their Hebrew names ("Achad" (one) is

1+8+4=13

etc.), and then adds up the standard values of the resulting string. * ''Otiyot beMilui'' ("filled letters", also known as ''Mispar gadol'' or ''Mispar Shemi''), uses the value of each letter as equal to the value of its name. For example, the value of the letter Aleph is

(1 + 30 + 80) = 111

, Bet is

(2 + 10 + 400) = 412

, etc. Sometimes the same operation is applied two or more times recursively. In a variation known as ''Otiyot pnimiyot'' (inner letters), the initial letter in the spelled-out name is omitted, thus the value of Aleph becomes 30+80=110. * ''Mispar Ne'elam'' (hidden number) spells out the name of each letter without the letter itself (e.g., "Leph" for "Aleph") and adds up the value of the resulting string. * ''Mispar Katan Mispari'' (integral reduced value) is used where the total numerical value of a word is reduced to a single digit. If the sum of the value exceeds 9, the integer values of the total are repeatedly added to produce a single-digit number. The same value will be arrived at regardless of whether it is the absolute values, the ordinal values, or the reduced values that are being counted by methods above. * ''Mispar Misafi'' adds the number of the letters in the word or phrase to their gematria. * ''Kolel'' is the number of words, which is often added to the gematria. In case of one word, the standard value is incremented by one.

Related alphabet transformations

Within the wider topic of gematria are included the various alphabet transformations, where one letter is substituted by another based on a logical scheme: * ''

Atbash Atbash ( he, אתבש; also transliterated Atbaš) is a monoalphabetic substitution cipher originally used to encrypt the Hebrew alphabet. It can be modified for use with any known writing system with a standard collating order. Encryption Th ...

'' exchanges each letter in a word or a phrase by ''opposite'' letters. Opposite letters are determined by substituting the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet (Aleph) with the last letter (Tav), the second letter (Bet) with the next to last (Shin), etc. The result can be interpreted as a secret message or calculated by the standard gematria methods. A few instances of Atbash are found already in the Hebrew

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...

. For example, see

Jeremiah Jeremiah, Modern: , Tiberian: ; el, Ἰερεμίας, Ieremíās; meaning "Yah shall raise" (c. 650 – c. 570 BC), also called Jeremias or the "weeping prophet", was one of the major prophets of the Hebrew Bible. According to Jewis ...

25:26, and 51:41, with

Targum A targum ( arc, תרגום 'interpretation, translation, version') was an originally spoken translation of the Hebrew Bible (also called the ''Tanakh'') that a professional translator ( ''mǝturgǝmān'') would give in the common language of the ...

and

Rashi Shlomo Yitzchaki ( he, רבי שלמה יצחקי; la, Salomon Isaacides; french: Salomon de Troyes, 22 February 1040 – 13 July 1105), today generally known by the acronym Rashi (see below), was a medieval French rabbi and author of a compre ...

, in which the name ששך ("Sheshek") is thought to represent בבל (

Babylon ''Bābili(m)'' * sux, 𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠 * arc, 𐡁𐡁𐡋 ''Bāḇel'' * syc, ܒܒܠ ''Bāḇel'' * grc-gre, Βαβυλών ''Babylṓn'' * he, בָּבֶל ''Bāvel'' * peo, 𐎲𐎠𐎲𐎡𐎽𐎢 ''Bābiru'' * elx, 𒀸𒁀𒉿𒇷 ''Babi ...

). * ''Albam'' – the alphabet is divided in half, eleven letters in each section. The first letter of the first series is exchanged for the first letter of the second series, the second letter of the first series for the second letter of the second series, and so forth. * ''Achbi'' divides the alphabet into two equal groups of 11 letters. Within each group, the first letter is replaced by the last, the second by the 10th, etc. * ''Ayak Bakar'' replaces each letter by another one that has a 10-times-greater value. The final letters usually signify the numbers from 500 to 900. Thousands is reduced to ones (1,000 becomes 1, 2,000 becomes 2, etc.) * ''Ofanim'' replaces each letter by the last letter of its name (e.g. "Fe" for "Aleph"). * ''Akhas Beta'' divides the alphabet into three groups of 7, 7 and 8 letters. Each letter is replaced cyclically by the corresponding letter of the next group. The letter Tav remains the same. * ''Avgad'' replaces each letter by the next one. Tav becomes Aleph. The opposite operation is also used. Most of the above-mentioned methods and ciphers are listed by Rabbi

Moshe Cordevero Moses ben Jacob Cordovero ( he, משה קורדובירו ''Moshe Kordovero'' ‎; 1522–1570) was a central figure in the historical development of Kabbalah, leader of a mystical school in 16th-century Safed, Ottoman Syria. He is known by th ...

. Some authors provide lists of as many as 231 various replacement ciphers, related to the 231 mystical Gates of the ''

Sefer Yetzirah ''Sefer Yetzirah'' ( ''Sēp̄er Yəṣīrā'', ''Book of Formation'', or ''Book of Creation'') is the title of a book on Jewish mysticism, although some early commentators treated it as a treatise on mathematical and linguistic theory as opposed ...

''.Elazar Rokeach, ''Sefer ha-Shem'' Dozens of other far more advanced methods are used in Kabbalistic literature, without any particular names. In Ms. Oxford 1,822, one article lists 75 different forms of gematria. Some known methods are recursive in nature and are reminiscent of

graph theory In mathematics, graph theory is the study of '' graphs'', which are mathematical structures used to model pairwise relations between objects. A graph in this context is made up of '' vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') which are conn ...

or make a lot of use of

combinatorics Combinatorics is an area of mathematics primarily concerned with counting, both as a means and an end in obtaining results, and certain properties of finite structures. It is closely related to many other areas of mathematics and has many a ...

. Rabbi Elazar Rokeach (born c. 1176 – died 1238) often used multiplication, instead of addition, for the above-mentioned methods. For example, spelling out the letters of a word and then multiplying the squares of each letter value in the resulting string produces very large numbers, in orders of trillions. The spelling process can be applied recursively, until a certain pattern (e.g., all the letters of the word "

Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...

") is found; the gematria of the resulting string is then calculated. The same author also used the sums of all possible unique letter combinations, which add up to the value of a given letter. For example, the letter Hei, which has the standard value of 5, can be produced by combining

1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1

2 + 1 + 1 + 1

3 + 1 + 1

4+2

2 + 2 + 1

, or

2+3

, which adds up to

30

. Sometimes combinations of repeating letters are not allowed (e.g.,

2+3

is valid, but

3 + 1 + 1

is not). The original letter itself can also be viewed as a valid combination. Variant spellings of some letters can be used to produce sets of different numbers, which can be added up or analyzed separately. Many various complex

formal system A formal system is an abstract structure used for inferring theorems from axioms according to a set of rules. These rules, which are used for carrying out the inference of theorems from axioms, are the logical calculus of the formal system. A fo ...

s and recursive algorithms, based on graph-like structural analysis of the letter names and their relations to each other,

modular arithmetic In mathematics, modular arithmetic is a system of arithmetic for integers, where numbers "wrap around" when reaching a certain value, called the modulus. The modern approach to modular arithmetic was developed by Carl Friedrich Gauss in his boo ...

, pattern search and other highly advanced techniques, are found in the "Sefer ha-Malchut" by Rabbi David ha-Levi of the Draa Valley, a Spanish-Moroccan Kabbalist of the 15th–16th century.Sefer ha-Malchut, "Sifrei Chaim", Jerusalem, 2008 Rabbi David ha-Levi's methods take into consideration the numerical values and other properties of the vowels as well. Kabbalistic

astrology Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Di ...

uses some specific methods to determine the astrological influences on a particular person. According to one method, the gematria of the person's name is added to the gematria of his or her mother's name; the result is then divided by 7 and 12. The remainders signify a particular planet and Zodiac sign.

Absolute value

The most common form of Hebrew gematria is used in the

and

Midrash ''Midrash'' (;"midrash"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''. he, מִדְרָשׁ; ...

, and elaborately by many post-Talmudic commentators. It involves reading words and sentences as numbers, assigning numerical instead of phonetic value to each letter of the

Hebrew alphabet The Hebrew alphabet ( he, אָלֶף־בֵּית עִבְרִי, ), known variously by scholars as the Ktav Ashuri, Jewish script, square script and block script, is an abjad script used in the writing of the Hebrew language and other Jewi ...

. When read as numbers, they can be compared and contrasted with other words or phrases – cf. the Hebrew proverb (', lit. "wine entered, secret went out", i.e. "''in vino veritas''"). The gematric value of ("wine") is 70 (=10; =10; =50) and this is also the gematric value of ("secret", =60; =6; =4)‎.

Use in other languages

Greek philosophy

The extant examples of use in Greek come primarily from the Christian literature. Davies and Allison state that, unlike rabbinic sources, isopsephy is always explicitly stated as being used; however, this is a dubious conclusion to make because it relies solely on the pure assumption that there is no hidden isopsephy in Christian literature.

(c. 427–347 BCE) offers a discussion in the '' Cratylus'', involving a view of words and names as referring (more or less accurately) to the "essential nature" of a person or object and that this view may have influenced – and is central to – ''Greek gematria''.John Michell
The Dimensions of Paradise: Sacred Geometry, Ancient Science, and the Heavenly Order on Earth
2008. pp.59–65 ff.

English Gematria

The first numerical cipher that is known to be assigned to the English Alphabet was by Cornelius Agrippa in 1533, in his work ''De Occulta Philosopha''. Agrippa gave value to the English letters without trying to transliterate them from Hebrew or Greek, so L is 20, rather than 30 (for Lamed), M is 30, rather than 40 (for Mem) and N is 40, rather than 50 (for Nun). This cipher is sometimes erroneously labelled as "Jewish" or "Hebrew" by popular numerology calculators, such as Gematrix and Gematrinator.

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn ( la, Ordo Hermeticus Aurorae Aureae), more commonly the Golden Dawn (), was a secret society devoted to the study and practice of occult Hermeticism and metaphysics during the late 19th and early 20th cen ...

employed a transliterated version of the Standard Hebrew Cipher (Mispar Hechrechi), using digraphs to represent letters such as shin ש (Sh), tav ת (Th), and tsade צ (Ts or Tz). Aleister Crowley learned the transliterated English cipher from the Golden Dawn, but he also claimed to be in possession of the "true numerical keys" to the Bible and '' the Book of the Law'' which he called "The Key of it All". He never published these keys during his lifetime, but left a numerical riddle (AL II:76) in the Book of the Law and said that his successor would reveal it. Since the death of Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) a number of people have proposed numerical ciphers for the purposes of numerology with the

Book of the Law ''Liber AL vel Legis'' (), commonly known as ''The Book of the Law'', is the central sacred text of Thelema. Aleister Crowley said that it was dictated to him by a beyond-human being who called himself 'Aiwass'. Rose Edith Kelly, Crowley's w ...

. The ALW cipher (also known as the New Aeon English Qabalah) was proposed by James Lees in 1976. In 2015, cryptographer Bethsheba Ashe discovered a gematria cipher that worked with both the Bible and the Book of the Law, and encoded the ''Shematria Gematria Calculator'' with its values. This cipher is not used for numerology, but for a formal rhetorical system of early

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

that was used by biblical authors and Aleister Crowley. It has identical values for the regular letters and final letters, and the value of 3 for Shin (ש), and 4 for Tav (ת). When parsed with the formal system of biblical gematria, both the first line of Genesis 1:1 and the Book of the Law, each sum to exactly 700, and the sub-figura number of the Book of the Law is the same as the value of the Hebrew name of the book of Genesis (BraShiTh): בראשית 20+ אלהים + השמים + הארץ = 700 220 + Had + Manifestation + Nuit = 700.

Notes

References

* Acres, Kevin, ''Data integrity patterns of the Torah: A tale of prime, perfect and transcendental numbers'', Research Systems, Melbourne, 200

* Clawson, Calvin C., ''Mathematical Mysteries: The Beauty and Magic of Numbers'', Perseus Books, 1999 * Davies, William David and Allison, Dale C., ''A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew'', Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004 * Davis, John J. ''Biblical Numerology''. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1968. * Hughes, J. P., ''Suggestive Gematria'', Holmes, 2008 * Genesis Rabbah 95:3. Land of Israel, 5th Century. Reprinted in, e.g., ''Midrash Rabbah: Genesis''. Translated by H. Freedman and Maurice Simon. ''Volume II'', London: The Soncino Press, 1983. . * Deuteronomy Rabbah 1:25. Land of Israel, 5th Century. Reprinted in, e.g., ''Midrash Rabbah: Leviticus''. Translated by H. Freedman and Maurice Simon. ''Volume VII'', London: The Soncino Press, 1983. . * Klein, Ernest, Dr., ''A comprehensive etymological dictionary of the English language: Dealing with the origin of words and their sense development thus illustrating the history and civilization of culture'', Elsevier, Oxford, 7th ed., 2000 * Lawrence, Shirley Blackwell, ''The Secret Science of Numerology – The Hidden Meaning of Numbers and Letters'', New Page Books, 2001 * Menninger, Karl. Number Words and Number Symbols: A Cultural History of Numbers. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1969. * Ratzan, Lee, ''Understanding Information Systems: What They Do and Why We Need Them'', ALA Editions, 2004 * Rawn, Jonathan D. ''Discovering Gematria: Foundational Exegesis and Primary Dictionary''. 1,968 pp. Gematria Publishing, 2008. * ''Sefer hamilim. Qonqordantzia hakhadash (lekol ha

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
'' Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

'' * Zeitler, William. ''Musical Gematria''. Musica Arcana, 2013, {{Authority control Hebrew alphabet Jewish mysticism Kabbalah Kabbalistic words and phrases Numerology