Independent vs derived
Nine English tables sound like nine chances to find a match. In fact only five are independent; the other four are transformations of English Ordinal and can never disagree with it about whether two words are equal.
Independent tables
- English Ordinal — A=1 … Z=26.
- Jewish — Agrippa’s 1533 Latin key applied to English letters; the "Jewish Gematria" of Gematrix/Gematrinator.
- Chaldean — Sound-based 1–8 system; 9 is never assigned.
- Septenary — Values rise 1–7 and fall back, twice across the alphabet.
- Francis Bacon — a–z = 1–26, capitals A–Z = 27–52 (case matters).
Derived tables
| Cipher | Derived from | How |
|---|---|---|
| Full Reduction | English Ordinal | Each letter value reduced to one digit (digit root). Not a simple function of the word total, but fully determined by the letters. |
| Reverse Ordinal | English Ordinal | Reverse = 27 × (letters) − Ordinal. Completely determined by the ordinal total and word length. |
| Reverse Full Reduction | Reverse Ordinal | Reverse Ordinal with each letter reduced to one digit. |
| Sumerian (English Ordinal ×6) | English Ordinal | Sumerian = 6 × Ordinal, always. |
Two consequences follow. If two words of the same length match in English Ordinal, they must match in Reverse Ordinal and Sumerian — the “three-cipher match” is one coincidence. And the reductions are not quite so tightly bound, because reduction works letter by letter, but they are far more crowded: with only nine possible letter values, unrelated words share totals constantly. The accuracy page puts numbers on both effects.
English, Hebrew, Greek
| Alphabet | Letters | Numerals | Range | Historical use as numbers | Standard method |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hebrew | 22 | 22 (27 with finals) | 1–400 (900 in Gadol) | Yes, from c. 2nd century BCE; still current | Mispar Hechrachi |
| Greek | 24 | 27 | 1–900 | Yes, from the Hellenistic period; still liturgical | Isopsephy |
| Latin / English | 26 | — | 1–26 (Ordinal) to 1–900 (Agrippa) | No; Roman numerals were symbols, not the alphabet | English Ordinal (by usage) |
Hebrew and Greek are numeral systems that acquired an interpretive practice; English is an alphabet to which several practices have been retro-fitted. That difference matters more than any table. A Hebrew value comes with two thousand years of commentary about what to do with it; an English value comes with a convention that may be a decade old. Neither is thereby right or wrong — but they are not the same kind of thing, and comparing a Hebrew word’s value with an English word’s value compares two unrelated systems.
Within Hebrew, the four methods relate much as the English ones do: Siduri and Katan are derived from Hechrachi (ordinal position and digit-reduction respectively), while Gadol differs only on five letters. Greek has a single standard table.
Which cipher should I use?
- Reading Hebrew scripture or rabbinic texts
- Mispar Hechrachi. Use Gadol only when a source says so, and note that words without final letters are identical in both. Hebrew calculator →
- Reading the Greek New Testament or classical Greek
- Isopsephy — there is only one table. Mind the spelling of the text you are using. Greek calculator →
- Checking a value from Gematrix
- Its three columns are, in order, Agrippa Latin (“Jewish”), Sumerian (“English”) and English Ordinal (“Simple”). Jewish (Agrippa) →
- Checking a value from Gematrinator or a “decode” video
- Usually the four base ciphers: Ordinal, Full Reduction, Reverse Ordinal, Reverse Full Reduction. Decoder →
- Numerology (name numbers)
- Full Reduction (“Pythagorean”), or Chaldean if the book says so. Pythagorean → · Chaldean →
- Learning how gematria works
- English Ordinal, then Hebrew. Simple calculator →
- Comparing two English phrases
- English Ordinal first; treat Reverse and Sumerian as the same evidence; treat any reduction as weak evidence; count independent tables only.
Same name, different table
The most frequent cause of “your calculator is wrong” is a label that means different tables on different sites. The short list:
- English gematria — A = 1 (most sites) or A = 6 (Gematrix). Here: English Ordinal and Sumerian.
- Jewish gematria — Agrippa’s Latin values on English letters, not Hebrew. Here: Jewish (Agrippa Latin).
- Hebrew gematria — finals as base letters (standard) or 500–900 (Gadol). Here: separate rows.
- Pythagorean — K = 2 and V = 4 (Full Reduction) or K = 11, V = 22 (“Single Reduction”). Here: Full Reduction.
- Francis Bacon — 52-value case-sensitive (online) or 24-letter “simple cipher” (Baconian theorists). Here: the online table.
- Gematria Primus — not a letter table at all but Cicada 3301’s rune-to-prime key, gematria in name only. Not offered here; explained in its own article.
The full mapping, with sources, is on the methodology page.