gematria
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I understand gematria as the concept of cipher between man and man or man and non-human entities.
I also understand the concept of number as concealing some abstract "deeper" meanings based on the quality of numbers itself.
Where I sometimes feel a disconnect is when people string words together which have the same number value and claim that these words must be related in some way, as if the word or name itself was the result of a Universal computation that evaluated all the factors of infinity and spat out a numerical expression veiled as the letters of a word that represent the underlying quality of the thing.
Maybe it works a little "better" if you stick to specific alphabet gematria, but I don't see why it should make a difference, really. The Universal computation aspect seems a little farfetched whether you're comparing Hebrew values to American English values or not.
Is there an easier way to describe what is going on in gematria that will make more sense to me?
I recently searched for a definition of "Bes-na-maut" from Liber Resh and found this entry from "Thinker's Numerology Dictionary":
128 Licking, Baphomet, Aphrodite, Besnamaut, Bitter, Offering, Temples, Otherwise, Wickedness, Emperor, Bringing, Trident, Righteous, Concealeth, Precious, Pendulum, Fighting, Inspire, Disciples, Alignment, Promotion, Mirror, Curriculum, Jehovah's Witnesses, Clairvoyance, Transpierce, Starflower seeds, Love, Aeon of Isis, Egregore, Freemason, Kisses of Nu, Lustral Wine, Precious, Relocation, Righteous, Scarlet Woman, the Beast, the cube, the Ordeal, War-engine,
I like how "Jehovah's Witness" is stuck in there. If we can find a relationship between all of these things, why stop there? What about peanut butter?
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@zeph said
"There's crap gematria, and there's useful gematria. You happened to find crap gematria and gave it more value than it deserves. As is your wont.
"I gave it some attention, I guess, but that was merely to bring up the point. (I wasn't attributing much value to it at all, actually, but I hadn't discounted it entirely out of sheer ignorance).And so, now that this has been brought up, perhpas you could explain crap vs useful gematria. What is the determining factor?
When I look through 777, I see lots of related items that seem unrelated. I am currently reading the Greek Qabalah by Kieren Barry which explains the origins of magical correspondences and they seem in many ways naive. I can see how they would be convenient for creating a "mental space" with which to focus your mind, but other than that, I wouldn't say it's a very exact science at all.
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@zeph said
"There's crap gematria, and there's useful gematria."
I think even with "crap gematria" one can explore the endless and interesting synchronicities of the universe we live in. I do not believe in chance or coincidence, so if two humanly conceived words have the same numerical value, one can attach meaning of some sort to that.
along this line of thinking, crossing languages and alphabets in the gematria context also seems to be a fairly reasonable practice to me. -
Redd Fezz wrote:
"I like how "Jehovah's Witness" is stuck in there. If we can find a relationship between all of these things, why stop there? What about peanut butter?"
Sayeth it not, in the Book of the In-Laws, "The khabs is in the khu, next to the peanut butter" ?
I like the idea of Jehovah's Witnesses being in here. For Bes-ne-Maut to be a witness of the operations of YHVH strikes me as pretty neat.
Generally, is gematria about specific concepts, or is it about a relationship between them? If we're looking for a kind of category, such as Chesedic stuff or dark-vibes stuff, then the established lists of correspondences don't always work too well. If we are looking at certain numbers pointing to an interrelationship, the field of view changes.
I find certain numbers come up for me, while some of the 'heavies' don't. If I try to impose a kind of number-grid on the universe, I just get a migraine. If I let the universe speak (at times it chooses) through number, then gematria is not so crazy.
Edward
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@Redd Fezz said
"And so, now that this has been brought up, perhpas you could explain crap vs useful gematria. What is the determining factor?
"For me, the determining factor is the intent of the "author." The further you go from the field of experience of the author, the crazier the correspondences can get. I guess this is similar to literary criticism, where there have been controversies raging throughout the 20th century about how far one can go in this regard; see
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intentionalityI'm sure one could make a list of PhD dissertations from English departments that strayed pretty far from the authors' intents... stuff like "Marxist Ideology in Barney the Purple Dinosaur." (I made that up, but I wouldn't doubt something similar exists!)
The problem enters, of course, when the author isn't just a conscious human mind anymore; say, Aiwass! Any attempt at gleaning the author's intent almost requires full K&C of ones own HGA. Even for analyzing Liber Legis itself, I still think it stretches credibility to suggest gematria that Crowley himself wouldn't have known about. For example: using schemes of English gematria that didn't exist in 1904. (But what about Liber Trigrammaton, though...?)
If I ever decide to become a center of pestilence and produce my own Commentary (something I'm thinking about doing, even if it's something that I end up editing and mulling over the next several decades before even thinking of showing it to anyone!), it would probably end up being the most gematria-free -- or at least gematria-lite -- version of all of them.
Steve
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@Herr Sorath said
"I think even with "crap gematria" one can explore the endless and interesting synchronicities of the universe we live in. I do not believe in chance or coincidence, so if two humanly conceived words have the same numerical value, one can attach meaning of some sort to that."
Fair enough. This points to what is, for me, the really useful thing about gematria, which is as a method of meditation which allows one to set up paths of thought that lead... somewhere. The way my mind functions, I like the stricture imposed by a more traditional gematria -- it just works better for me to concentrate my attention on a smaller handful of words when tracing out those paths of thought. I'm also just a conservative old fool, so there's that, too.
I've completely bypassed the question of whether there's an objective gematria. Some Qabalists hold that the Hebrew tongue was devised by God, so that there is in fact Divine intervention which lends a more mystical meaning between words than sheer coincidence [def: two events occurring simultaneously] would allow. Others believe that the Hebrew language was put together by Great Rabbincal Scholars who sat around constructing the language based on what they knew to be the truth of the Universe. I'll keep bypassing that.
I also agree with Redd that if you can find a relationship between "Licking", "Pendulum" and "Jehovah's Witnesses", then why not? The thing is, you don't need gematria for that. Just go find the relationship between things. There is always a relationship between things.
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Kieren Barry has some interesting "facts" to offer about gematria. First of all, he claims that gematria came from Greek tradition, not Jewish. It is interesting that the word "gematria" itself is a Greek word. I never thought of it before, but it does sound decidedly Greek (and Wikipedia verifies it).
From pg. 152
"It is plainly evident that Christianity, under the influence of Gnosticism and contemporary Hellenistic philosophy and theurgy, absorbed and adapted the techniques of Greek Qabalah, as did its parent, Judaism. It would be fanciful to suggest that the Bible contains an inner code of numerology on the basis of the evidence we have, though recent evidence suggests a contrary conclusion would have made this book a best-seller. The Old Testament cannot do so, because its Hebrew writings predate use of alphabetical numerals. Likewise, examples of Greek isopsephy extracted from the New Testament by recent authors cannot be safely or objectively regarded as any more than coincidence. However, we have seen that there are a few examples of the use of Greek Qabalah to be found in those texts included in the New Testament (in Revelation), and in contemporaneous Christian writings that were rejected (such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Epistle of Barnabas)."
In the preface, he does point out that the term "Qabalah" is Jewish, not Greek, and that the use of his term "Greek Qabalah" is anachronistic but nevertheless accurate (according to him) term based on the historical facts (according to him) that Greek Gnosticism impacted Jewish mysticism so greatly that most of what is now known as Qabalah of a Jewish tradition is actually Greek.
from p. xiii
"It was, in fact, the Greeks who, as early as the eighth century B.C.E., invented alphabetic numerals, the very essence of Qabalistic numerology. They introduced the idea to the Middle East only after the conquests of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C.E. Examples of Greek Qabalah can also be found outside of mainland Greece well before the third century C.E. in Egyptian amulets, Roman graffiti, Gnostic philosophy, and early Christian writings. This is the earliest likely date of the first known work in Hebrew Qabalah, the Sefer Yetzira, or Book of Formation. This early work was essentially a product of the impact of Greek gnosticism on Jewish mysticism, and shows the influence of numerous concepts, such as the Gnostic theory of creation by emanations, the Pythagorean decad, Platonic philosophy, Ptolemaic astrology, and the four elements of Empedocles, all of which were already part of the existing Greek alphabetical symbolism. It is this earlier Greek gnosis, anachronistically called here by the later Hebrew term Qabalah, that is investigated and presented in this book."
So, now I'm all confused. I thought gnosticism was a development of Christianity, but apparently I'm wrong. Apparently it came before even the Old Testament?
Now there's another interesting book to read is called Not Out Of Greece, but it doesn't present itself in so scholarly a fashion as Kieren Barry's does, with footnotes and dozens of references at the end of each chapter (that's, like, supposed to be "proof" for numbskulls like me who surely won't buy those books). But, Not Out Of Greece has just as controversial a claim, probably, if you find this sort of thing controversial:
"Were it not for the contributions of Egyptians and Sumerians to mathematics we would definitely not have progressed to the present level of science. We would still be in the dark age Europe of 2000 years ago. In other words, the origin of logic, science and mathematics is NOT OUT OF GREECE."
This is what I had thought, anyway, but after reading Kieren Barry's "facts" presently so neatly and researched so thoroughly, I was wondering where the evidence is in favor of Egyptian gematria/Qabalah/Etc. Barry does point out repeatedly that the Greeks took different letters and ideas from Egyptians, including Gods. But, he never goes as far as to say the Egyptians invented the Qabalah or gematria. There must be some reason for this. As Barry was attempting to present a factual, historical timeline as opposed to esoteric conjecture (the book is dry), maybe the "paper trail" of artifactual evidence stops with the Greeks??
for hundreds of years and it is likely that one culture surrounded by these cultures would be familiar with such an idea" so, if we analyze Egyptian culture and find similar ideas, isn't it just as logical that the "paper trail" would pick back up and lead us there? And, if that's the case, then why couldn't there have been just as much gematria and Qabalah in Hebew culture as in Greek, if both received it from Egypt?Here is one review of "Not Out Of Greece"
"Many of us are familiar with George G.M. James seminal work, Stolen Legacy in which James irrefutably proves the Greeks were not the creators of philosophy or metaphysics the West credits them with being, but rather were students of and in many cases plagiarists who took credit for African and Asian discoveries, ideas and bodies of knowledge that pre-dated Greece by thousands of years."
I will stop right there. This reviewer goes on to give Not Out of Greece a glowing review, but he has begun his review by mentioning G.M. James' "Stolen Legacy," which appears to be a load of crap. (Check the Amazon reviews which explain some of this false history).
I have one book of Ra Un Nefer Amen's called "Tree of Life Meditation System." It seemed logical and made a lot of sense, but as soon as I tried to explain it to people well-oriented in traditional Western Traditional Qabalah, I ran into problems. People wanted to place the Egyptian gods on different sephiroth, they didn't like the idea that the pillars "crossed over" at the top (theoretically, not diagrammatically) and, frankly, I think some just didn't like the idea that someone was trying to suggest there was an Egyptian Qabalah that is somehow more "authoritative" than the Jewish Qabalah... and who can blame them? I don't think there's really any evidence out there to support Ra Un Nefer Amen's ideas otherwise we probably would have several books describing the Egyptian Qabalah, complete with ancient Tree of Life diagrams made by Egyptians.
What's my point? Who said I had a point?
These are just some interesting and confusing opinions regarding gematria/Qabalah I thought I'd share. Reading Kieren Barry's book has really put the whole thing into perspective... kind of a Picasso perspective, if you know what I mean. -
@Redd Fezz said
"It is interesting that the word "gematria" itself is a Greek word. I never thought of it before, but it does sound decidedly Greek (and Wikipedia verifies it)."
Yes. Or, rather, "close enoug." The Greek is geometria, from which came the post-diaspora rabbinical term gematria.
"In the preface, he does point out that the term "Qabalah" is Jewish, not Greek, and that the use of his term "Greek Qabalah" is anachronistic"
Yes, it is - exactly like "Hors d'Oeuvre Special" on a menu!
"Greek Gnosticism impacted Jewish mysticism so greatly that most of what is now known as Qabalah of a Jewish tradition is actually Greek."
Setting aside the timeline of the writing of the Torah for the moment, the simpler statement here is that both the Sepher Yetzirah and the Zohar, as well as all of the collateral literature related to and surrounding each, dates to no earlier than late 1st Millennium A.D., meaning post-diaspora. Before this time, there was nothing called Kabbalah, though there was, of course, Kabbalah of many varieties which had other names. The main point is that 100% of all literature normally lumped in as Kabbalistic is after this absorption of the Greek word geomatria into Hebrew as gematria.
Whether there was a Rabbinical tradition before this is a separate question, but at least there's no doubt about this part of the question.
"So, now I'm all confused. I thought gnosticism was a development of Christianity, but apparently I'm wrong. Apparently it came before even the Old Testament?"
Depends on definitions. If the Essenes are labelled Gnostic, then it existed a generation or so prior to Christianity's roots, and likely as one of its two direct predecessors. If you take the purely Greek use of it, then it's older.
The term "Gnostic" is tossed around rather liberally - for example, the so-called Gnostic Catholic Mass Crowley wrote as a general Thelemic mass isn't Gnostic at all (which, btw, is why Temple of Thelema renamed it The Thelemic Mass).
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Hi Jim, glad this caught your eye!
What do you make of this quote?:
"It would be fanciful to suggest that the Bible contains an inner code of numerology...The Old Testament cannot do so, because its Hebrew writings predate use of alphabetical numerals. "
That was the most surprising statement I read in the whole book. It is just put so matter-of-factly.
I've been learning the hidden meanings of the Hebew alphabet thanks to the direction and inspiration of a Thelemite named Lon Milo DuQuette. In one of his books, he advises the student join B.O.T.A., which I did, with the hint of a promise that one day the student will be able to turn to Christians who condemn your occult practices as devil-worship with the sublime retort, "I can actually read the Bible in its original languages. Can YOU do that?" I read this and thought, "Wow, no wonder DuQuette is so sure of himself! He knows what the Bible REALLY says!"
Since Christianity has made such a huge impact on society, I really wanted to be able to pick it apart with what I thought was the "secret meaning" method of understanding the Bible— the Qabalah, which I was only vaguely familiar with at the time. Once DuQuette implied the Bible was written by Qabalists which can be deciphered throughout, I thought, "Wowee! It's more than just some piece-meal 18th century invention!"
Now, Barry's comments casually and matter-of-factly contradict that whole premise.
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I avoided responding to that because it's new information. Kieran tends to research well, though, without checking this entirely new (to me) factoid, I have no basis for an opinion without research.
Since it doesn't actually affect a single thing in my life, and my available time is at negative zero, I'll probably get around to researching it in five to ten years.
Also, I'm not worried much about intentionally encoded "secret meanings" except in a few specialized places. I'm much more interested in the inherent meaning - the idea that the words have esoteric (translate: real) meaning in most cases independent of whether it was intended by the writer or not. That's way more interesting to me.
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@Jim Eshelman said
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Since it doesn't actually affect a single thing in my life, and my available time is at negative zero, I'll probably get around to researching it in five to ten years."Haha, fair enough!
@Jim Eshelman said
"Also, I'm not worried much about intentionally encoded "secret meanings" except in a few specialized places. I'm much more interested in the inherent meaning - the idea that the words have esoteric (translate: real) meaning in most cases independent of whether it was intended by the writer or not. That's way more interesting to me."
Is this kind of like what I was trying to describe as the "Universal calculator" which spits out numerically significant words into our brains? That idea certainly fits with PFC's POT statement #2:
"Through me its unfailing Wisdom takes form in thought and word."
which quite possibly relates to statement #3:
"Filled with Understanding of its perfect law, I am guided, moment by moment, along the path of liberation."
"Perfect law" here being interpreted by me in this instance as the Universal computer which automatically orders everything, one function of which would be providing proper names and words for things spontaneously into our brains when we "think" up what we feel is a proper name for something. But, gah, it's too bizarre if I think about it long enough. I wonder what the Qabalistic significance of "geegaw" and "widget" would be.
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>I'm much more interested in the inherent meaning - the idea that the words have esoteric (translate: real) meaning in most cases independent of whether it was intended by the writer or not. That's way more interesting to me.
Yes, I agree. That's actually what got my interest in magick to begin with when I read philosophy and got to the nominalists.
I thought for a long time (and still haven't gotten it straight, I think) that magick was the idea that there is an inherent meaning in every concept we can conjure up in our minds and that the universe therefore is finite and every motion reiterates the static Logos, which of course can be traced to the source no matter where one's at in the sphere of consciousness since it by definintion must be stringent. The stability is in the core since motion is the fluctuation between polarities. I see life as a homing signal with specific qualities, nowadays according to the Qabalah. This is why I like fractals and the fractal disposition of the Tree of Life.The way the universe is eternal this way is that the possible extractions from the static core can be seen as filling up a complete sphere (contrary to finite, where the sphere would have gaps here and there) and that's also why I think gematria can be taken as meaningless, since all existing interpretations of course must be possible, but the point of it seems to me to be the pattern of expansion it follows rather than any specific word itself.
So if a word e.g. is near the Logos gematrially speaking shouldn't the proof of that be that it would be hard to split up to give any new meaning? As with prime numbers in mathematics e.g. -
@Jim Eshelman said
"Also, I'm not worried much about intentionally encoded "secret meanings" except in a few specialized places. I'm much more interested in the inherent meaning - the idea that the words have esoteric (translate: real) meaning in most cases independent of whether it was intended by the writer or not. That's way more interesting to me."
My first instinct is to be skeptical of "inherent" meanings; beyond the realm of etymology. Too much like "Platonic forms" in that they can be whatever you want them to be. But I've no direct praeterhuman guidance...
It is fun to go through dictionaries of Indo-European roots to see "deep connections" between words that seemed completely unconnected. Some may say that there's just as much fuzzy speculation in that kind of "reconstructive linguistics" as in some gematria, though!
I didn't mean to be overly dismissive of gematria. The well-established core metaphors of Thelema do mean a lot to me; 93=THELEMA=AGAPE, of course; also Achad's 31=AL=LA, and the crossovers with the Rosicrucian tradition (RC=220 and others that Case wrote about in T&IRO). And I think there's far more evidence that the Bible does indeed contain intentional gematria-coding (especially Revelations!) than there's evidence against.
Steve
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@Steven Cranmer said
"And I think there's far more evidence that the Bible does indeed contain intentional gematria-coding (especially Revelations!) than there's evidence against.
Steve"
Is that just an "off the top of your head" kind of statement, or have you verified this for yourself? Kieren Barry does mention Revelations as the only book specifically to have gematria-coding, but according to Barry it is far less than one might imagine (as I had imagined). There's plenty of symbolism related to magical correspondence, but it's not gematria. Interesting to note, when Barry discusses 666 in Revelations, he makes no mention of the sun whatsoever.
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I think I would answer some of the points raised here like this:
The core idea of Gematria is that words of the same numeration are understood to disclose something about each other.
Sometimes, gematria only discloses instruction intentionally encoded by teachers of the past. At a deeper level, though, it provides an inner language by which its devotees sustain a silent conversation with the Divine. In this sense, it is a specific branch of the deeper levels of Gnana Yoga.
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@Redd Fezz said
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@Steven Cranmer said
"And I think there's far more evidence that the Bible does indeed contain intentional gematria-coding (especially Revelations!) than there's evidence against."Is that just an "off the top of your head" kind of statement, or have you verified this for yourself?"
Sorry; yes, just off the top of my head. I'm no biblical scholar; just a collector of trivia that seems to point in this direction. Jim earlier talked about the 32 paths (10+(3+7+12) ) encoded in Genesis. There's also "encoded" letter symbolism in Psalm 119 and "hidden" acrostic messages in other psalms (my list gives 34, 111, 112, and 145, but I haven't looked at them in ages). The Aryeh Kaplan books on Kabbalah are filled with pointers to more.
One can go too far in looking for this stuff, of course; the "Bible Code" books seem to be the far-fetched extreme of looking for connections in randomness.
But again let me take off my science hat and say that looking for connections in randomness can be an extremely useful and valid thing to do, even for non-mystical purposes of jump-starting ones' creativity. The tension between the usefulness and the futility of this kind of search was summed up perfectly by Hermann Hesse's novel The Glass Bead Game.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Bead_Game
Let me just give one quote from the book that shows how the act of searching for connections can be thought of as a sacrament in the truest sense of the word...
"I suddenly realized that in the language, or at any rate in the spirit of the Glass Bead Game, everything actually was all-meaningful, that every symbol and combination of symbols led not hither and yon, not to single examples, experiments, and proofs, but into the center, the mystery and innermost heart of the world, into primal knowledge. Every transition from major to minor in a sonata, every transformation of a myth or a religious cult, every classical or artistic formulation was, I realized in that flashing moment, if seen with a truly meditative mind, nothing but a direct route into the interior of the cosmic mystery, where in the alternation between inhaling and exhaling, between heaven and earth, between Yin and Yang, holiness is forever being created."
Steve