What Is Gematria? A Beginner’s Guide
Learn what gematria is, where it comes from, how Hebrew and English ciphers work, and how to read the numbers responsibly.
Gematria is the practice of turning letters into numbers so that words and phrases have a numeric value. Because the Hebrew alphabet has been used for counting as well as writing, every Hebrew word has a built-in number, and gematria is the habit of noticing and interpreting it.
The basic idea
Each letter is assigned a value. The values of all letters in a word are added to give the word's total. If two different words have the same total, a reader of the tradition may take that as a hint that the words are linked in meaning. A classic example is the Hebrew word for "love" (אהבה) and the word for "one" (אחד), which both total 13.
Where the word comes from
The origin of the word "gematria" is debated. Many scholars connect it to the Greek word geometria, while others suggest a link to the Greek gramma, meaning letter. What is clear is that the practice is old: Greek writers used a similar method called isopsephy, and Arabic scholars later used abjad numerals in the same spirit.
Main Hebrew methods
- Mispar Hechrachi (absolute value): each letter has a fixed value from 1 to 400. This is the standard method.
- Mispar Gadol: final letter forms are worth 500 to 900.
- Mispar Katan: zeros are dropped, so 10 counts as 1 and 100 as 1.
- Mispar Siduri: the ordinal method, in which the letters are simply numbered 1 to 22.
- Atbash: a substitution in which the first letter is swapped with the last, the second with the second to last and so on.
English gematria
English has no traditional letter values, so modern writers created ciphers such as English Ordinal (A = 1 to Z = 26), Reduction, Jewish English and Sumerian. These are conveniences rather than inherited traditions. Our cipher pages show every table and explain how each one is built.
How to read a result sensibly
There are only a few hundred possible totals for ordinary words, so many unrelated words land on the same number. That is why gematria matches are common and why they cannot prove anything about the world. Used with that in mind, gematria is a way to explore language, tradition and word play, which is how most people enjoy it.