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Gematria is an intellectual mysticism. It is one of the reasons that metaphysical texts like to capitalize seemingly random words. It indicates that there is hidden meaning in the words mathematically. This tradition was then picked up on as a style and has resulted in random silliness by modern writers... but comes from a meaningful practice.

from wikipedia:

The most common form of gematria is used occasionally in the Talmud and Midrash and elaborately by many post-Talmudic commentators. It involves reading words and sentences as numbers, assigning numerical instead of phonetic value to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. When read as numbers, they can be compared and contrasted with other words. A commentary almost completely dedicated to gematria is Baal ha-Turim by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher.

Personally, I found gematria to be like a mental yoga. The benefit, in my mind was to reach the point of mental exhaustion when it was impossible to think anymore. At that point I would experience something.

It appeals to mathematical minds.

Get out your decoder ring.

Goodnight koan :rolleyes: :wah:

Mystical Gematria

I'm actually really impressed with the wikipedia article.

Gematria is a system of recognizing a correspondence between the ten sefirot, or fires of God, and the twenty two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. This system is elaborated in many mystical Jewish writings such as the Zohar.

One example of gematria are the twenty-two solid figures that are composed of regular polygons. There are five Platonic solids, four Kepler-Poinsot solids, and thirteen Archimedean solids. Since there are twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet, a correspondence can be inferred between these two disparate categories. The art of gematria is knowing which solid is associated with which letter.

Another example is that of Hebrew numerals. Although there are twenty-two letters, there are twenty-seven numerals necessary to express each number up to 999 (one through nine, ten through ninety, one hundred through nine hundred). The mystical Hebrew numeric system notes that the missing final five letters of the numeral system match exactly with the five 'sofit (word-final) alternate forms of the Hebrew letters.

It can also be noted that there are 22 major arcana in the tarot deck and they have correspondences to the paths between the sephirot. There are 32 paths, 22 major arcana and the numbers 1-10. Each major aracana corresponds to one of the 22 Hebrew letters.

It's like cirque de soleil :yh_party

Now, think about it...

There are 32 degrees in the order of the Freemasons

oops, sorry, guys. No more secrets. They weren't yours in the first place.

(the 33rd degree is kinda BS - just means they've gone "beyond")



(I'd agree)

It's like cirque de soleil :yh_party



I went to the Allegria show a couple of yrs ago. It was nothing like that. :wah:

A wicked person is called a rasha in Hebrew. The word for a pure person is tzaddik. The numerical value of rasha is 570. The numerical value of tzaddik is 204. The difference between them is 366

Beneath every rasha is a hidden tzaddik. We just need to remove the layers of evil and we will find his goodness. Numerically, we have to remove 366 to get 204 from 570.

So we must blunt his teeth. "His teeth" in Hebrew is shinav. Its numerical value...366. De-fang the rasha, and you will find his inner tzaddik.

By Aron Moss

Rabbi Aron Moss teaches Kabbalah, Talmud and practical Judaism in Sydney, Australia