Learn Gematria
Eight lessons, in order. Start with what the practice is and how the arithmetic works, then move through the individual alphabets and the questions people actually get stuck on.
The Lessons
What Is Gematria?
Where the practice came from, what it actually does, and what it was never meant to do.
How to Calculate by Hand
The three steps every system shares, worked slowly on a short word.
The Hebrew Alphabet
Twenty two letters, three ranks of value, and the five that change shape at the end.
The Systems Compared
Why one word has many values, and how to tell which system produced a number.
Greek Isopsephy
The Greek cousin of gematria, attested on walls in Pompeii and inside Revelation.
Gematria in Scripture
How the technique is used in rabbinic commentary, and where it is read into the text.
Name Gematria
Calculating a personal name, the transliteration problem, and what the number is worth.
Numbers and Their Meanings
The recurring figures - 7, 18, 26, 40, 666 - and where each one comes from.
How to Use This Section
The lessons build on each other. The first two are foundational: what the practice is, and how to do the arithmetic yourself. Skipping them and jumping to the number meanings is the single most common way people end up repeating claims they cannot check.
After that the order is flexible. If you came here for Hebrew, read the alphabet lesson and then scripture. If you came from an English cipher chart, read the systems comparison first, because it explains why the number you were given may not be reproducible.
What You Will Be Able to Do
By the end of the eight lessons you should be able to take any word in Hebrew, Greek or English and calculate its value by hand in the appropriate system, without a table in front of you for the common letters. That is the mechanical half, and it is the easy half.
The more useful half is judgement. You should be able to look at a published figure and work out which cipher produced it, spot when a Hebrew total has quietly switched between the standard method and Mispar Gadol, recognise when a claimed match is the product of a large search rather than a discovery, and tell a gematria that appears in classical commentary from one invented last year. Those four skills are what separate reading the subject from being pushed around by it.
What This Section Assumes
No Hebrew or Greek. Every letter is given with its name and value, and every example is worked in full. What it does assume is that you would rather understand a result than be handed one, which is why each lesson shows the arithmetic rather than asserting a total.