Gematria
Gematria is a system of numerological interpretation of Hebrew origin in which each letter of the alphabet has a numerical value. By adding up the values of the letters of a word, one obtains a number that can be compared to that of other words to reveal hidden correspondences.
Origin and etymology
The term gematria probably derives from the Greek geometria (geometry) or from grammateia (the art of letters), which passed into Hebrew as gimatriya. The practice is attested from late antiquity in rabbinic Judaism: the Mishnah and the Talmud allude to it, and the Sefer Yetzirah (between the second and sixth centuries) systematized the values of the 22 Hebrew letters. The system was then codified by medieval Kabbalah, notably in the Zohar (composed in Spain in the thirteenth century, attributed to Moses de León), and by Abraham Abulafia, an ecstatic Kabbalist of the thirteenth century who made the combinatorics of letters a mystical path.
Evolution and tradition
Three main variants exist. Hebrew gematria, the oldest, assigns: aleph=1, beth=2, gimel=3… then 10, 20… up to 400 (tav). Greek gematria, or isopsephy, applies the same method to the 24 Greek letters and feeds Pythagorean and Gnostic thought. Arabic gematria, called abjad, orders the 28 Arabic letters according to a sequence derived from the Phoenician alphabet. In the seventeenth century, Christian Kabbalah (Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala Denudata, 1677-1684) introduced gematria into Europe. In the twentieth century, Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn integrated the system into their esoteric correspondences (Liber 777, 1909).
Practical use
To calculate the gematria of a Hebrew word, simply add up the numerical value of each of its letters. For example, chai (חי, life) equals 8 + 10 = 18, which explains the Jewish custom of giving donations in multiples of 18. Ahava (אהבה, love) equals 13, like echad (אחד, one) — hence the Kabbalistic idea that love is unity. Gematria also makes it possible to bring together biblical verses sharing the same sum. In a modern numerological approach, you can apply it to your transliterated first name.
Going further
The secondary variants of Hebrew gematria (mispar gadol, mispar katan, atbash) multiply the possible readings, which makes it both a rich hermeneutic tool and an easily instrumentalized device. Linguists and historians, such as Gershom Scholem in On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (1960), recall that gematria is an asmakhta hermeneutic — a mnemonic support — and not a demonstrative proof. Its prophetic or predictive use has no scientific validity.