What is Gematria? The Complete Guide

Updated July 17, 2026

Gematria is the practice of assigning numerical values to letters so that words and phrases add up to numbers. Once a word has a value, it can be compared with every other word that shares that value, and practitioners treat words with matching values as related. The word itself comes from the Hebrew גימטריה, most likely borrowed from the Greek geometria. The practice appears in Babylonian inscriptions, rabbinic Bible commentary, Greek isopsephy, medieval Kabbalah, and today's English-language research communities.

This guide covers where gematria comes from, how the major systems work, and how to start calculating - with live letter tables computed by the same engine as our gematria calculator.

Where gematria comes from

The oldest secure examples of letter-number substitution come from the ancient Near East: an inscription of the Assyrian king Sargon II (8th century BCE) records that the wall of his new capital was built to the numerical value of his name. In the Hebrew alef-bet every letter doubles as a numeral - alef is 1, yod is 10, qof is 100 - so every written word also has a numerical value. Rabbinic literature uses gematria as one of the classical methods of interpreting Torah, and medieval Kabbalists developed extensive systems based on it.

The Greeks had the same practice, called isopsephy, since Greek letters also carried number values. Graffiti at Pompeii refers to a girl "whose number is 545," and early Christian writers used isopsephy for both the most famous number in Revelation and its counterpart - more on 666 and 888 below. English gematria is the modern extension: ciphers that give the Latin alphabet number values so the same analysis can run on English words.

How gematria works

Every calculation needs a cipher - a table assigning each letter a value. Apply the cipher to a word, sum the letters, and you have its value. In English Ordinal (A=1 through Z=26), the word "gematria" itself works out like this:

gematria=
7513120189174

After calculating a value, the next step is finding other words that share it. In Ordinal, 74 is also the value of Jesus, cross, occult, and tarot - a group of matches often cited in gematria research. A calculator automates both steps: it computes your phrase in every cipher at once and searches a database for everything that shares the totals. See how to calculate gematria step by step for the by-hand method.

The major systems

Hebrew gematria

The original system. The standard cipher (Mispar Hechrachi) values the twenty-two letters 1-9, 10-90, and 100-400; variants extend the final letter forms to 900 (Mispar Gadol) or reduce everything to single digits (Mispar Katan). Well-known examples include חי (chai, "life") = 18, which is why gifts in Jewish tradition often come in multiples of 18. Full letter tables are in the Hebrew gematria guide and on the Hebrew Standard cipher page.

Greek isopsephy

The Greek alphabet's numerals run alpha=1 through omega=800, completed by three archaic letters. Its most famous sum is Ιησους (Jesus) = 888. See the Greek Isopsephy cipher page.

English gematria

Modern practice centers on four base ciphers - Ordinal, Full Reduction, and their mirrors, Reverse Ordinal and Reverse Reduction - plus many others: Sumerian (Ordinal × 6), English Standard, Latin, and mathematical ciphers built on primes, squares, and Fibonacci numbers. The English gematria guide covers all of them, and the cipher index has a letter grid for each.

The famous numbers

A few values come up most often in gematria discussion. 666 is the "number of the beast" that Revelation 13:18 asks the reader to calculate - most scholars read it as the Hebrew value of Nero Caesar. 888 is the isopsephy of Jesus. 26 is the Hebrew value of the four-letter divine name, and 18 is chai. Modern research communities also focus on values like 33, 93, and 47. The biblical numbers are covered in detail in Gematria and the Bible.

Gematria today

Gematria is still practiced today. Alongside its ongoing use in Jewish learning, a modern research community analyzes names, headlines, dates, and pop culture through English ciphers, comparing values across databases of previously calculated phrases. The method is the same regardless of how the results are interpreted: pick ciphers, calculate, compare. (For how this differs from life-path numbers and birth charts, see gematria vs. numerology.)

To get started, type any word into the calculator and review the matches.

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