What is Gematria

Gematria gives  a numerological value to the written letters of the Hebrew alphabet,  which allows practitioners to derive extra mystical (esoteric) insights  into sacred writings or even obtain new interpretations of the texts.

The word, gematria,  itself is Greek from geometria and was originally, at least for the Israelites, a form of witchcraft where the letters warded off spells and curses.

Later Hebrew Rabbis (teachers and priests) started to think that the real value of geomatria was hermeneutical, and that it uncovered hidden meanings.  This ended up becoming a philosophy of its own, with letters and numbers leading to the ultimate (and unknowable)  truth or "Ain Soph".  (True Kabbalists like the Gnostics believe God is not Ain Soph but that it s greater than him so making Ain Soph an  unreachable, unknowable and all encompassing summit.)

In Hebrew, gematria breaks up the alphabet in sets with the first ten given number values consecutively from one to ten.  The next eight span from 20 to 90 in intervals of ten but not encompassing the next series, so that the final four letters equal 100, 200, 300, and 400, respectively.

See the grid to the left for a pictorial representation -- the yellow shaded area is the first set; the white the second and the third the final set.

The site I got this from has lost it so it was from Yahoo's  Image Search Crawler.  As this was put up with the NOFOLLOW unchecked, maybe it can work its way back to the site for them to update.  Hey, you never know.

The Romans, the great engineers of Ancient World,  improved this method by adding an  intermediary 5 shown in their system a V & called Pente by the Greeks,  punch in Hindi, hand in English to stop one from losing track.  So 8 becomes viii and 28 is now XXViii which is still cumbersome and soon the symbols become almost an equation in itself i.e. MCMCDLVXIII.

All of this is because the invention of zero had yet to happen.

The idea of letters corresponding to numerals is not unique to the Hebrew alphabet.  The Ugaritic, Aramaic, Babylonian and Phoenician inscriptions also show numerals as well as the later Greek and Arabic alphabets.  One famous example is the 9 BC Moabite Stone  (mesha stele ) which commemorates  the victory of King Moab over the Israelites.   Who came up with this numerical system, first, is a matter of debate and probably lost to time.