Thursday, November 02, 2006

Categories Of Gematria

Ideal Form: chelek hamishkhal1
numerical equivalence between two words where each word also has the same number of letters; subcategories include chelek hachibur and chelek haperud where some letters may be combined or separated to form other letters

9 principle ways1 for calculating word values:

1. mispar hame'ugal (the round number, mispar katan, cheshbon za'ir deChanoch2)
all tens and hundreds are reduced to single digits 1-9;
ק = י = א = 1

2. mispar hakadmi (cumulative value, mispar kidmi)
each letter is the sum of the values of all the letters from alef to that letter, inclusive; א = 1, ב = 3, ג = 6, etc.

3. mispar hechrachi (normative value)
simple sum total of the normative values of the letters, אחד = 13

4. mispar musaphi
same as mispar hechrachi except for also adding to the sum-total of the word the number of the amount of letters in the word אחד = 16, or adding the kolel (1 for the word as a whole) אחד = 14

5. mispar hameruba haklali
squaring of the mispar hechrachi, אחד = 132 = 169

6. mispar hameruba haperati
squaring of the individual numbers, אחד = 12+82+42 = 81

7. mispar shemi (miluy)
numbers of the names of the letters, filling in the letters where aleph (א) is the number (111) of its name, אלף; such that אחד = 953

8. mispar hamispari
sum of the numbers spelled out as words; echad,one (13) + shemonah,eight (395) + arba'ah,four (278) = 686 = אחד

9. mispar hamispari hagadol
combination of #7 and #8; each letter is spelled out fully (miluy) and that equivalent number is spelled out which in turn has a numerical equivalent;

y 10 י + yod 20 יוד + esrim 620 עשרים
so, in this system י = 650

Additional methods1,3,4 of calculation:

10. mispar gadol3 (the great number)
five final letters have values 500 (kaf), 600 (mem), 700 (nun), 800 (pey), 900 (tzadi)

11. mispar kaful
multiplying letter-units instead of summing them

12. mispar temuri
taking the gematria of a permutation4 of the original word

footnotes:

1 Spice Of Torah - Gematria, Gutman G. Locks; Pardess Rimonim 30:8, R. Moshe Cordovero
2 Zohar III:251a; Tikunei Zohar 10:26a
3 Aruch, s.v. at-bach; Rashi on Sukah 52b, s.v. at-bach; Chochmat Shlemoh, Maharshal on Sukah 52b
4 via alphabetic transformations (Chilufei Otiyot), for example

additional references:

Sefer Abudraham, R. David ben Yossef
Gematria, The Mathematics Of Torah
Types of Gematria Table

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