Gematria: What It Is, How to Calculate It, Letter Value Table

Introduction

Gematria is a method of Jewish exegesis: each Hebrew letter is assigned a number, and a word is assigned the sum of its letters' values; words with equal gematria are traditionally considered symbolically connected. The term is known in rabbinic literature from the second century CE and became one of the main tools of the Kabbalah. It is important to distinguish the method from familiar Western numerology from the outset: gematria works with words and names, not with dates of birth.

All material on the site is for entertainment and educational purposes and does not constitute scientific, medical, psychological, or financial advice. All interpretations are presented as "according to tradition" and "according to one of the methods," not as established scientific facts.

What Is Gematria

Definition

In the most general sense, gematria (Hebrew גימטריה) is the practice of assigning a numerical value to a name, word, or phrase: the letters of the alphabet have standard numerical values, the word is summed, and the resulting number is compared with the gematria of other words. The gematria of a word is precisely the sum of the numerical values of the letters that compose it.

The Jewish Encyclopedia (1906) defines gematria as "a cryptograph which gives instead of the word thought of its numerical value, or a cipher obtained by a transposition of letters" — that is, originally the term covered both the numerical and the alphabetic (anagrammatic) technique. In Russian Wikipedia, gematria is described as one of the methods for analyzing the meaning of words and phrases based on the numerical values of letters — alongside notarikon and temurah.

The Triad of Jewish Exegetical Methods: Gematria, Notarikon, Temurah

In the classical tradition of interpreting sacred texts, three methods are mentioned together:

• Gematria — the letters of a word are replaced by numbers, the word is summed; words with equal sums are compared.
• Notarikon — a Talmudic method of interpreting biblical words as acronyms: a word is treated as an abbreviation whose initial letters are "unfolded" into a phrase; in the Kabbalah the same term denotes the use of an acronym of a biblical verse as a name of God.
• Temurah (Hebrew תְּמוּרָה) — transposing the letters of a word or sentence according to certain rules to extract hidden meaning; the simplest example is atbash, replacing a letter with the letter from the opposite end of the alphabet.

Numerical and Anagrammatic Gematria

According to JEBE, historically anagrammatic gematria may have been considered a separate, thirtieth hermeneutical rule, whereas in popular literature "gematria" refers only to the numerical method. Both meanings are documented here: the article is primarily about numerical gematria, and anagrammatic techniques (atbash, albam, etc.) are described in the section on letter transformations.

History and Origin

Etymology of the Term (Debated)

The origin of the word "gematria" is not reliably established. There are three main versions:

1. From Greek γεωμετρία ("geometry") — in the sense of arithmetic, the "art of counting" (version of S. Krauss);
2. As a transposition of Greek γραμματεία, from γράμμα "letter" or γραμματεύς "scribe" (version of W. Bacher);
3. From the combination "gamma-tria" — gamma as the third letter of the Greek alphabet.

In English, the word is known from the seventeenth century — from translations of the works of Pico della Mirandola. In the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) itself, numerical gematria is not mentioned; anagrammatic gematria does appear: the word "Sheshach" (ששך, Jer. 25:26; 51:1) is read in atbash as "Babylon."

Predecessors: Isopsephy and the Miletan System

The assignment of numbers to letters is a technique known long before Judaism. The letter-number system developed in the Greek city of Miletus (examples known from the sixth century BCE). Aristotle wrote that isopsephy — the numerical interpretation of letters — was part of the Pythagorean tradition founded in the sixth century BCE. The Miletan system was officially adopted in Egypt under Ptolemy II (284–246 BCE). The first evidence of using Hebrew letters as numerals dates to 78 BCE.

From Sargon II to Rabbinic Literature

The first documented application of gematria is an Assyrian inscription of the eighth century BCE: according to King Sargon II, the wall of his palace in Khorsabad was built to a length of 16,283 cubits "in accordance with the numerical value of his name."

The term "gematria" itself was first recorded in the 29th of the 32 hermeneutical rules of Rabbi Eliezer ben Jose HaGelili (circa 200 CE). Gematria appears in rabbinic literature from the second century CE — in the Jerusalem Talmud, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah (95:3), in tractates Sanhedrin (38a: "wine" = 70 = "secret") and Yoma (20a: "Satan" = 364). The method was developed especially intensively among Ashkenazi mystics of the twelfth–thirteenth centuries.

Gematria in the Kabbalah and Western Esotericism

In the Kabbalah, gematria received theoretical justification: creation is viewed as an emanation from Ein Sof (the Infinite), the first stage being the ten sefirot, from the last of which (Malkhut) the 22 letters developed. Letters are dynamic forces, and since they are also numbers, "everything that proceeds from them is number"; "number is the essence of things" — the identity of numbers points to the identity of essences (JEBE). On the Kabbalah itself as a tradition — the sefirot and the Sefer Yetzirah — more is told in the article on Kabbalistic numerology; here only the mechanics of the method are examined.

In Western esotericism, gematria was established through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: S. L. MacGregor Mathers published a transliterated Hebrew cipher in The Kabbalah Unveiled (1887); it was used by Aleister Crowley and Paul Foster Case. Later, James Lees's "English Qaballa" (1976) appeared. In twentieth-century esoteric literature, the term "angelic gematria" also appears (the system of M. Berthelot in The Voudon Gnostic Workbook, 1989) — this should not be confused with Doreen Virtue's angel numerology, which is covered in a separate article.

How to Calculate Gematria: Methods of Computation

The same word yields different numbers with different methods — this is not an error but a feature of the system. Most methods are enumerated by Moses Cordovero; in the manuscript Ms Oxford 1,822, 75 forms of gematria are described, and some authors bring the number of ciphers to 231 — corresponding to the "231 gates" of the Sefer Yetzirah. Below are the main methods.

Mispar Hechrachi — Absolute Value (Standard Method)

The main and most widespread method: the 22 Hebrew letters are assigned values 1–9, 10–90, and 100–400 in alphabetical order. A synonymous name is mispar ha-panim ("face number"), in contrast to mispar ha-achor ("back number"). It is according to this method that the value table in the next section is built.

Ordinal and Reduced Methods

• Mispar Siduri (ordinal value): letters receive values 1–22 in alphabetical order — a simple system for beginners.
• Mispar Katan Mispari (integral reduced value): the word's sum is reduced to a single digit by repeated addition. Example: "emet" (אמת, "truth") = 1+40+400 = 441 → 4+4+1 = 9.

Mispar Gadol, Milui, and Other Techniques

• Mispar Gadol (great value): five final forms of letters (sofit) receive values 500–900.
• Otiyot be-Milui ("full letters"): the value of a letter equals the sum of the values of the letters of its full name. Alef = א+ל+פ = 1+30+80 = 111; Bet = ב+י+ת = 2+10+400 = 412.
• Mispar Katan (small value): the value of each letter is calculated by dropping zeros (for example, Yod = 1 instead of 10).
• Mispar Kidmi (preceding value, also mispar meshulash): the value of a letter equals the sum of the standard values of all preceding letters: Alef = 1, Bet = 1+2 = 3, Gimel = 1+2+3 = 6.
• Mispar Perati (partial value): the square of the standard value of the letter: Bet = 4, Gimel = 9.
• Mispar Musafi: the number of letters in the word is added to the sum.
• Kolel: the number of words is added to the sum (for a single word — one).

Vowels (nikkud) in Hebrew are usually not counted; in lesser-known methods they are taken into account (for example, patach = 6, hiriq = 10 or 1 — values differ among sources).

Letter Transformations: Atbash, Albam, and Others

In addition to numerical methods, there are alphabetic transformations: atbash (first letter ↔ last: Alef ↔ Tav, Bet ↔ Shin…), albam (the alphabet is divided in half and the halves are paired), as well as achbi, ayak bakar, ofanim, achas beta, avgad. Atbash appears in the Bible itself: "Sheshach" instead of "Babylon" (Jer. 25:26; 51:1).

Step-by-Step Calculation Example

Let us analyze the word "chai" (חי, "alive") by the standard method:

1. Chet (ח) = 8, Yod (י) = 10;
2. Sum: 8 + 10 = 18;
3. Reduction (mispar katan mispari): 1 + 8 = 9.

It is precisely because "chai" = 18 that in Jewish tradition 18 is considered a lucky number, and multiples of 18 are traditional sums for lucky gifts.

Table of Numerical Values of Hebrew Letters

In the Jewish numeral system, 22 letters of the alphabet are used as digits with values from 1 to 400. Zero is absent, the system is additive, not positional: a number is composed of the values of letters, and order does not matter. The letter designations were borrowed from the Greeks (the Miletan system) and entered Jewish usage by the second century BCE.

Value table (based on the table in the Russian Wikipedia article "Gematria"; confirmed by English Wikipedia and JEBE):

Final forms of letters (sofit) in the Mispar Gadol method receive values 500–900:

Notes on the table. Numbers 15 and 16 are written as ט"ו (9+6) and ט"ז (9+7) to avoid combinations resembling the name of God (Yod-He and Yod-Vav). Letter-numbers are marked with geresh (׳) and gershayim (״). In the Mispar Gadol method, final letters are separate values 500–900; in other variants (including our calculator), sofit forms are counted by the value of the regular letter — this is a widespread practice; on the discrepancy see the "Controversial" section.

Examples from the Tradition

Classical examples from the Talmud, Midrashim, and Scripture (with letter breakdowns):

Other well-known examples from JEBE and the Jewish Encyclopedia (1906):

• Serpent, messiah, sacrifice, renewed — four words with a common gematria of 358: נחש ("serpent"), משיח ("messiah"), קורבן ("sacrifice"), מחודש ("renewed").
• Money and gallows: הכסף ("money," Est. 3:11) = 165 = העץ ("gallows") — a hint at Haman's fate (Esther Rabbah vi).
• 613 commandments of the Torah are derived by gematria with letter substitution: 400+200+9+4 (Numbers Rabbah xiii. 15–16).
• 666 in the Revelation of John — gematria of the Hebrew transliteration of the Greek name "Nero Caesar"; 888 — isopsephy of the Greek name "Iesous" (Jesus); with gematria the 153 fish from John 21:11 are also connected — but this is a researcher's hypothesis, not a direct statement of tradition.
• Tetragrammaton: יהוה = 10+5+6+5 = 26; "full" (milui) spelling yields variants 45, 52, 63, 72; the "quadruple combination" י+יה+יהו+יהוה = 10+15+21+26 = 72.

Gematria of Names and Words

Names and Onomancy

The main object of gematria is words, names, and names of God. Application to personal names (onomancy) works the same way: a name is converted to a number, then compared with the numbers of other words or words with the same sum are found. For example, the name "Eliezer" = 318 refers to the number 318 in Gen. 14:14 — thus gematria "reconciles" two passages of Scripture.

Kabbalistic Astrology

In Kabbalistic astrology, there is a method linking a name with a planet and a zodiac sign: the gematria of a person's name is added to the gematria of his mother's name, the result is divided by 7 and by 12, and the remainders point to the planet and sign. Details in the article on Kabbalistic numerology; on the meaning of specific numbers in the Kabbalah (13, 26, 32, 72, 137, 613, etc.) in the article on Kabbalah numbers.

Gematria Calculator Online

Practical calculation of the gematria of a word or name — online in the gematria calculator: enter a word in Hebrew, Cyrillic, or Latin, choose a system (Hebrew classical / Russian ordinal / Latin Pythagorean) — and get the sum, reduction to 1–9, and letter-by-letter breakdown.

Russian Gematria

"Russian gematria" is Cyrillic adaptations of gematria widespread in popular literature and online services. An honest caveat upfront: there is no encyclopedic description of Russian gematria in open sources, no single canon exists, and all interpretations below are "according to one of the popular versions."

In popular practice, the following variants are encountered:

1. Ordinal adaptation: Cyrillic letters in alphabetical order — а = 1, б = 2, … я = 33 (sometimes with reduction of the sum to a single digit).
2. Adaptation of Agrippa's code: the Latin arithmantic code of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (A = 1…I = 9, K = 10…S = 90, T = 100…, with J = 600 and U = 700), transferred to Cyrillic and reduced to the range 1–9.
3. "Simple gematria": the sum of the ordinal numbers of letters with reduction to a single digit.

Why this happens: Agrippa in Occult Philosophy (1532) gave specifically the Latin code that became the basis for Western adaptations; the Cyrillic tables are private developments whose original source is not confirmed by open sources. Russian Wikipedia mentions only analogues of gematria in other scripts — abjad (Arabic script), akshara-sankhya (Devanagari), and isopsephy "in languages with Greek and Cyrillic script" — but does not describe "Russian gematria" itself. Online services offering calculation in Cyrillic are commercial sources; their descriptions are not used as original sources.

Differences from Pythagorean and Chaldean Numerology

Numerology schools are often confused in popular services — here they are clearly distinguished:

Pythagorean numerology reduces the digits of the date of birth and the letters of a name to numbers 1–9 (see the article on the Pythagorean system); in gematria, reduction to a single digit is only a private method (mispar katan mispari), and the main operation is comparing word sums. Cheiro's "Chaldean alphabet" is attributed to Chaldeans and Jews, but it is a Latin table of 1–8 — a twentieth-century reconstruction, not to be confused with Hebrew gematria (more in the article on the Chaldean system).

Criticism and Scholarly Status

Criticism of numerical interpretations of letters is as old as the practice itself. The Neoplatonist Iamblichus (as reported by Proclus) presented three arguments against isopsephy:

1. letters with the same value may have opposite meanings;
2. the form of letters changes over time — and so do the "numbers" of words;
3. an infinite number of ways to combine operations allows obtaining practically any number for any purpose.

Irenaeus of Lyon criticized the Gnostic Marcion for interpreting letters; because of its connection with Gnosticism (Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Epiphanius), the method did not take root in Christianity. Within Judaism itself, the Talmudists treated gematria as an "asmakhta" — a mnemonic support, not a proof; beginning with Ibn Ezra, the attitude became dismissive, and Joel Sirkes and Leon de Modena ("Ari Nohem") spoke sharply against the method.

Scholarly status: gematria as an exegetical technique is a historical-religious fact, not a predictive system. Numerology in general is not recognized as scientific knowledge: skeptical experiments in Great Britain (1993) and Israel (2012, professional numerologist and 200 participants, experiment repeated twice) yielded negative results — predictions did not differ from random guessing.

How to Calculate: Block for the Calculator

Step-by-step instructions for a word in Hebrew:

1. Write the word without vowels (vowel points are not counted).
2. Substitute each letter with its value from the table (mispar hechrachi): Alef = 1, Bet = 2 … Tav = 400.
3. Add the values — you get the word's gematria.
4. If desired, reduce the sum to a single digit (mispar katan mispari): emet = 441 → 4+4+1 = 9.
5. Compare with the gematria of other words — equality of sums is the subject of interpretation.

Ready calculation (Hebrew, Cyrillic, Latin; absolute, ordinal, and reduced modes) — in the gematria calculator.

Controversial

• The etymology of the term is not established: the versions "geometry" (Krauss), "writing/scribe" (Bacher), and "gamma-tria" are presented in sources without consensus.
• One word — different numbers: absolute, ordinal, reduced, milui, and other methods yield different values for the same word. This is not an error but a feature: always specify which method was used.
• Anagrammatic vs numerical gematria: according to JEBE, anagrammatic (atbash, etc.) may have been a separate rule; in popular literature "gematria" = only numerical. Both meanings are documented.
• Vowels: in Hebrew they are usually not counted, but in lesser-known methods they are taken into account with varying values; in Cyrillic adaptations, the question of vowels is resolved differently.
• Kolel and Musafi: adding the number of words or letters to the sum yields discrepancies among sources; in calculators this is an option, not a rule.
• Discrepancies in sofit tables: the classical Mispar Gadol assigns final letters values 500–900; in widespread practice (and in our calculator), the sofit form is counted by the value of the regular letter (Kaf-sofit = 20, not 500). Both practices exist — the classical table is shown in the article.
• Russian gematria without a canon: all variants (alphabetical 1–33, Agrippa's code, "simple" reduction) are private developments without authoritative original sources; presented as "according to one of the popular versions."
• Scholarly status: all interpretations are "according to tradition," not established facts; the experiments of 1993 and 2012 were negative. The material is for entertainment and educational purposes.

See Also

• Kabbalistic Numerology — the Kabbalah as a tradition: sefirot, Sefer Yetzirah, names of God, Kabbalah numbers
• Kabbalah Numbers — meanings of numbers in the Kabbalistic tradition
• Pythagorean Numerology — Western school with dates of birth and master numbers
• Chaldean Numerology — Cheiro's system and the "Chaldean alphabet"
• Gematria Calculator — online gematria calculation for a word
• Numerology — general hub: what numerology is and its schools
• History of Numerology — isopsephy, the Miletan system, predecessors of gematria
• Angel Numerology — modern practice of "angel numbers" (not to be confused with "angelic gematria" of Berthelot)
• Number 7, Number 11 — individual numbers and their meanings