Gematria

In numerology, gematria (/ɡəˈmeɪtriə/; Hebrew: גמטריא or גימטריה, gimatria, plural גמטראות or גימטריות, gimatriot)[1] is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word or phrase by reading it as a number, or sometimes by using an alphanumerical cipher.

It involves reading words and sentences as numbers and assigning numerical instead of phonetic values to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

the Hebrew proverb נכנס יין יצא סוד (nichnas yayin yatza sod, lit.

A short example of Hebrew numerology that uses gematria is the word חי, chai, 'alive', which is composed of two letters that (using the assignments in the mispar gadol table shown below) add up to 18.

In early Jewish sources, the term can also refer to other forms of calculation or letter manipulation, for example atbash.

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.

"[9] The practice of using alphabetic letters to represent numbers developed in the Greek city of Miletus, and is thus known as the Milesian system.

[11] Aristotle wrote that the Pythgoraean tradition, founded in the 6th century BCE by Pythagoras of Samos, practiced isopsephy,[2] the Greek predecessor of gematria.

Pythagoras was a contemporary of the philosophers Anaximander, Anaximenes, and the historian Hecataeus, all of whom lived in Miletus, across the sea from Samos.

[12] The Milesian system was in common use by the reign of Alexander the Great (336–323 BCE) and was adopted by other cultures during the subsequent Hellenistic period.

[19] The Hasmonean king of Judea, Alexander Jannaeus (died 76 BCE) had coins inscribed in Aramaic with the Phoenician alphabet, marking the 20th and 25th years of his reign using the letters K and KE (למלכא אלכסנדרוס שנת כ and למלכא אלכסנדרוס שנת כה).

Finally, he puts forth the third argument that when one uses all sorts of methods as addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and even ratios, the infinite ways in which these can be combined allow virtually any number to be produced to suit any purpose.

According to one theory, the reference to the miraculous "catch of 153 fish" in John 21:11 is an application of gematria derived from the name of the spring called 'EGLaIM in Ezekiel 47:10.

Because of their association with Gnosticism and the criticisms of Irenaeus and Hippolytus of Rome and Epiphanius of Salamis, this form of interpretation never became popular in Christianity[30]—though it does appear in at least some texts.

The number 360 is given because the numerical value of the Greek word for snake, δράκων, when transliterated to Hebrew (דרקון) is 360.

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.

"[34] 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 numerology, is 786.

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.

[43] Some authors provide lists of as many as 231 various replacement ciphers, related to the 231 mystical Gates of the Sefer Yetzirah.

The spelling process can be applied recursively, until a certain pattern (e.g., all the letters of the word "Talmud") is found; the gematria of the resulting string is then calculated.

Many various complex formal systems and recursive algorithms, based on graph-like structural analysis of the letter names and their relations to each other, modular arithmetic, 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.

[46] Historically, hermetic and esoteric groups of the 19th and 20th centuries in the UK and in France used a transliterated Hebrew cipher with the Latin alphabet.

[47][48] As a former member of the Golden Dawn, Aleister Crowley used the transliterated cipher extensively in his writings[49] for his two magical orders the A∴A∴[50] and Ordo Templi Orientis (O.T.O).

[51] Many other occult authors belonging to various esoteric groups have either mentioned the cipher or published it in their books, including Paul Foster Case of the Builders of the Adytum (B.O.T.A).

[54][55] A sample of graffiti at Pompeii (destroyed under volcanic ash in 79 CE) reads "I love the girl whose name is phi mu epsilon (545)".

[58][59] In 1525, Christoph Rudolff included a Classical Latin gematria in his work Nimble and beautiful calculation via the artful rules of algebra [which] are so commonly called "coss": At the beginning of the Apocalypisis in Apocalypsin (1532), the German monk Michael Stifel (also known as Steifel) describes the natural order and trigonal number alphabets, claiming to have invented the latter.

He used the trigonal alphabet to interpret the prophecy in the Biblical Book of Revelation, and predicted the world would end at 8am on October 19, 1533.

[58]: 44, 60 [60] An analogue of the Greek system of isopsephy using the Latin alphabet appeared in 1583, in the works of the French poet Étienne Tabourot.

It was mentioned in the work of Johann Christoph Männling [de] The European Helicon or Muse Mountain, in 1704, and it was also called the Alphabetum Cabbalisticum Vulgare in Die verliebte und galante Welt by Christian Friedrich Hunold in 1707.