Where every cipher table comes from

Principles

A gematria value is only meaningful if you know the table that produced it. The rules below govern every cipher on this site.

1. Name the source. Each table is traced to a primary text (Agrippa, the Talmud, Cheiro) or, for modern inventions, to the person or site that introduced it. “Everyone uses it” is not a source.
2. Name the convention. When a label is ambiguous — “English gematria”, “Jewish gematria” — the page says which of the competing tables the label means here, and what other calculators mean by it.
3. Record disagreements rather than resolve them silently. Where sources conflict, the section for that cipher explains the alternatives and which one is implemented, so you can reconcile results with any other tool.
4. Test against traditional values. Every table is checked against well-known results (Eliezer = 318, Jesus = 888, Nero = 1005 …) at build time. If a table drifted, the site would fail to build.
5. Separate arithmetic from meaning. This page documents how numbers are produced. What they signify is a matter for the traditions that use them, addressed on Is gematria accurate?.

How text is counted

The same rules apply to every cipher. They are deliberately conservative: the calculator counts letters and nothing else.

• Only letters count. Digits, punctuation, spaces and symbols are ignored. A phrase is split into words on whitespace; the total is the sum of the words and each word’s subtotal is shown separately.
• Case is ignored in every Latin-alphabet cipher except Francis Bacon, which is case-sensitive by definition.
• Accents and points are removed before counting. Text is decomposed (Unicode NFD) and all combining marks are stripped: Latin diacritics (é counts as E), Hebrew vowel points and cantillation (U+0591–U+05C7) and Greek breathings, accents and iota subscript (U+0300–U+036F). Pointed and unpointed Hebrew, and accented and bare Greek, therefore give identical values.
• Hebrew final letters (ך ם ן ף ץ) count as their base letter in every method except Mispar Gadol, where they take 500–900.
• Greek final sigma (ς) and lunate sigma (ϲ) count as sigma, 200. The archaic numerals stigma ϛ (6), koppa ϟ/ϙ (90) and sampi ϡ/ͳ (900) are counted only when those specific characters are typed — the letter pair στ is 200 + 300, never 6.
• Mixed-script phrases are counted per script: an English cipher sees only the Latin letters, a Hebrew method only the Hebrew letters. Ciphers with no matching letters show “—” rather than 0.
• The reduced value shown beside every total is the digit root: digits are summed repeatedly until a single digit remains (74 → 11 → 2). Zero stays zero. Master numbers (11, 22, 33) are not preserved.
• Nothing else is applied. No kolel (adding 1 for the word itself), no notarikon, no letter substitution, no “integral” or “squared” values. Those are legitimate traditional techniques, but they are separate operations and are not silently mixed into a result.

English (Latin-alphabet) ciphers

No Latin-alphabet cipher is ancient. The Romans wrote numbers with I, V, X, L, C, D and M and never used the alphabet as a numeral sequence, so every English table below is either a Renaissance construction (Agrippa) or a nineteenth- to twenty-first-century convention. That is not a criticism — it is simply the provenance.

English Ordinal

Table. A = 1, B = 2 … Z = 26. The natural position of each letter.

Provenance. The ordinal numbering is the obvious way to number a 26-letter alphabet and has no single inventor. It is the “Simple Gematria” of Gematrix^{[11] Source: Gematria calculator} and the “English Ordinal” of Gematrinator^{[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator} and of Zachary Hubbard’s Letters & Numbers, which made it the first of four “base ciphers” in the online decoding community^{[10] Source: Letters & Numbers}.

Disagreements. None about the values. The only confusion is the name: some sites call this “English gematria”, while Gematrix reserves that label for the ×6 table below.

Verified. gematria = 74 · Jesus = 74 · cross = 74 · Messiah = 74. The 74 coincidence (Jesus, cross, Messiah, gematria) is the most-quoted result in English gematria and a useful sanity check.

Full Reduction

Table. Each ordinal value reduced to a single digit: A–I = 1–9, J–R = 1–9, S–Z = 1–8.

Provenance. This is the letter chart of modern Western numerology, conventionally called “Pythagorean”. The attribution to Pythagoras is traditional rather than historical; the chart in this form appears in English-language numerology books from the early twentieth century onward^{[8] Source: Numerology}. In the gematria community it is Hubbard’s and Gematrinator’s “Full Reduction”^{[10] Source: Letters & Numbers[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator}.

Disagreements. Two. (1) Some numerologists leave K = 11 and V = 22 unreduced as “master numbers”; Gematrinator offers this as a separate “Single Reduction” cipher. This site reduces fully (K = 2, V = 4) and treats the master-number variant as a different cipher, not a setting. (2) Numerology practice usually reduces the final total to one digit as well; here the full sum is shown and the digit root appears beside it, so both readings are available.

Verified. gematria = 38 · Jesus = 11 · love = 18.

Reverse Ordinal

Table. Z = 1, Y = 2 … A = 26 — English Ordinal run backwards, so each letter’s two values sum to 27.

Provenance. A modern construction popularised by Gematrinator and Hubbard as the third base cipher^{[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator[10] Source: Letters & Numbers}. It is sometimes compared to the Hebrew atbash substitution, but atbash swaps letters (א↔ת) and does not assign numbers; the analogy is loose.

Disagreements. None known.

Verified. gematria = 142 · Jesus = 61 · love = 54. A useful check: for any word of n letters, Ordinal + Reverse Ordinal = 27n (gematria: 74 + 142 = 216 = 27 × 8).

Reverse Full Reduction

Table. Reverse Ordinal reduced to a single digit: Z–R = 1–9, Q–I = 1–9, H–A = 1–8.

Provenance. The fourth of Hubbard’s base ciphers^{[10] Source: Letters & Numbers}; also on Gematrinator^{[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator}. Purely derivative of the two tables above.

Disagreements. As with Full Reduction, a master-number variant exists (P = 11, E = 22 left unreduced). Not implemented here.

Verified. gematria = 52 · Jesus = 34.

Sumerian (English Ordinal ×6)

Table. English Ordinal multiplied by six: A = 6, B = 12 … Z = 156.

Provenance. Gematrix presents this table under the heading “English Gematria”^{[11] Source: Gematria calculator}; Gematrinator and most later calculators call it “English Sumerian” or simply “Sumerian”^{[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator}. The name alludes to the base-60 arithmetic of Sumer and Babylon^{[14] Source: Sexagesimal}, but the connection ends there: cuneiform was not an alphabet, and no Sumerian text assigns 6 to a letter A. Treat the label as a nickname.

Disagreements. Only the name. Because every value is 6 × ordinal, a Sumerian total is always divisible by 6 and carries exactly the same information as the ordinal total; it is included because “English gematria = 444 for Jesus” is so widely quoted.

Verified. gematria = 444 · Jesus = 444 · cross = 444.

Jewish (Agrippa Latin)

Table. A 1, B 2, C 3, D 4, E 5, F 6, G 7, H 8, I 9, K 10, L 20, M 30, N 40, O 50, P 60, Q 70, R 80, S 90, T 100, U 200, X 300, Y 400, Z 500, J 600, V 700, W 900.

Provenance. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia (1533), Book II chapter XX, which gives the Latin alphabet the same units–tens–hundreds structure as Hebrew and Greek^{[3] Source: Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia Libri Tres), Book II, chapter XX: “What numbers are attributed to letters; and of divining by the same”}. Agrippa’s printed list runs A 1 … I 9, K 10 … S 90, T 100, V 200, X 300, Y 400, Z 500, then fills the remaining places of a 27-character scheme with “I and V simple consonants” (J = 600, consonantal V = 700) and the aspirated pairs HI = 800 and HV = 900. The English-language version used by Gematrix and Gematrinator^{[11] Source: Gematria calculator[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator} is what this site implements under the name most people search for.

Disagreements. Several, and they matter:

• It is not Hebrew. Despite the popular label “Jewish gematria”, this is a Latin table applied to English letters. Real Hebrew gematria is the Mispar Hechrachi family below. This site keeps the popular name so results can be compared with other calculators, but labels it “Agrippa Latin” everywhere it appears.
• U, V and W. Agrippa’s alphabet had one letter V, used as both vowel and consonant (200 as a vowel, 700 as a consonant). Modern tables assign U = 200 and V = 700 regardless of function, and give W = 900 — taking over Agrippa’s HV, which he notes “the Germans … use a double vv” for. Agrippa’s HI = 800 has no modern letter and is dropped, so no English word can total 800 through a single letter in this cipher.
• I and J. Agrippa distinguishes vowel I (9) from consonantal I (600) by sound; modern tables assign 9 to every I and 600 to every J by spelling. “Iesus” and “Jesus” therefore differ by 591 here, where Agrippa would have counted them alike.

Verified. gematria = 233 · Jesus = 985 · Messiah = 233 — matching the values published by Gematrix for the same words.

Chaldean

Table. 1 = A I J Q Y · 2 = B K R · 3 = C G L S · 4 = D M T · 5 = E H N X · 6 = U V W · 7 = O Z · 8 = F P. No letter is 9.

Provenance. The table was fixed in its modern form by Cheiro (William John Warner) in Cheiro’s Book of Numbers (1926)^{[7] Source: Cheiro’s Book of Numbers}, who claimed a Chaldean–Hebrew origin and grouped letters by sound rather than alphabetical position. No ancient Chaldean (Neo-Babylonian) source for the assignments is known; the name reflects Cheiro’s framing, not attested history^{[8] Source: Numerology}.

Disagreements. The letter values are stable across modern Chaldean numerology books. Two practice differences: Chaldean numerology omits 9 because it is regarded as sacred, so a letter is never 9 (a total can be); and practitioners usually read the “compound” total (e.g. 21) alongside its single-digit root (3) — both are shown here.

Verified. gematria = 21 · Jesus = 18.

Septenary

Table. A–G = 1–7, H–M = 6–1, N–T = 1–7, U–Z = 6–1. The values climb to 7 and fall back twice across the alphabet.

Provenance. Introduced by Marty Leeds in Pi & The English Alphabet, where the 26 letters are folded around a seven-count^{[9] Source: Pi & The English Alphabet, vol. 1}. Adopted by Gematrinator under the name “Septenary”^{[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator}, which is how most people meet it.

Disagreements. None on the values. Note that the two halves (A–M, N–Z) are identical, so any word and its “shifted by 13” counterpart share a value.

Verified. gematria = 32 · Jesus = 27.

Francis Bacon

Table. Lower-case a–z = 1–26; capitals A–Z = 27–52. This is the only case-sensitive cipher on the site.

Provenance. The case-sensitive 52-value table is a modern convention from Gematrinator^{[12] Source: Gematrinator calculator}. It borrows Francis Bacon’s name, but Bacon’s own published cipher (1623) is a five-bit biliteral steganographic code, not a letter-value table^{[13] Source: Bacon’s cipher}. The “simple cipher” used by Baconian theorists of Shakespeare authorship is a different table again: a 24-letter Elizabethan alphabet with I/J and U/V merged, in which BACON = 33.

Disagreements. Three tables carry Bacon’s name; this site implements only the one online calculators mean. Because capitals add 26, results depend on how you type: “Gematria” = 100 but “gematria” = 74. The decoder page explains this before you use it.

Verified. Gematria = 100 · gematria = 74 · Francis Bacon = 157.

Hebrew methods

Hebrew (like Greek, and unlike Latin) is an alphabet whose letters genuinely were numerals: from the late second century BCE the 22 letters were used to write numbers (א = 1 … ט = 9, י = 10 … צ = 90, ק = 100 … ת = 400), and they still are, on Hebrew calendars and in chapter numbering^{[19] Source: Hebrew numerals}. The four methods below are the classical ones named in the reference literature^{[1] Source: Gematria[2] Source: Gematria[4] Source: Gematria}; the Jewish Encyclopedia lists more than twenty further techniques (squared, cubed, “integral” and so on) that are not implemented.

Hebrew Standard (Mispar Hechrachi)

Table. The standard absolute value: א 1, ב 2, ג 3, ד 4, ה 5, ו 6, ז 7, ח 8, ט 9, י 10, כ 20, ל 30, מ 40, נ 50, ס 60, ע 70, פ 80, צ 90, ק 100, ר 200, ש 300, ת 400. Final forms ך ם ן ף ץ count as their base letter.

Provenance. The Jewish Encyclopedia’s “normal value”, in which “the five final letters have here the same values as their respective initial forms”^{[1] Source: Gematria}. This is the method behind the best-known Talmudic examples: Eliezer = 318 read from the 318 men of Genesis 14:14 (Nedarim 32a)^{[15] Source: Nedarim 32a}, and the 30-day Nazirite term from יהיה = 30 (Nazir 5a)^{[16] Source: Nazir 5a}. When a source says “gematria” with no qualifier, it means this.

Disagreements. None about the 22 base values. The only live question — whether final letters take 500–900 — is what separates this method from Mispar Gadol; some calculators blur the two by defaulting to Gadol without saying so. Here they are separate rows.

Verified. שלום = 376 · אליעזר = 318 · תורה = 611 · אמת = 441 · משיח = 358 · נחש = 358 · יהוה = 26. (משיח “messiah” and נחש “serpent” both 358 is a famous kabbalistic pairing; יהוה = 26.)

Mispar Gadol (final letters 500–900)

Table. As Hechrachi, but the five final forms continue the hundreds: ך 500, ם 600, ן 700, ף 800, ץ 900.

Provenance. The Jewish Encyclopedia’s “major value” (מספר גדול), “in this value the final letters count as hundreds”^{[1] Source: Gematria}; also listed as Mispar Gadol in the Encyclopaedia Judaica survey and modern references^{[2] Source: Gematria[4] Source: Gematria}. It extends the numeral alphabet to 27 characters and 900, matching the Greek system’s range.

Disagreements. The name “Mispar Gadol” is occasionally applied by some writers to a different technique (spelling out letter names and summing those); the reference works above use it for the final-letter method, as this site does. Words with no final letter (אליעזר, תורה) are identical in Hechrachi and Gadol — a quick way to tell which method a source used.

Verified. שלום = 936 · אלהים = 646 · אדם = 605 · אליעזר = 318.

Mispar Siduri (ordinal)

Table. Ordinal position: א 1, ב 2 … כ 11, ל 12 … ת 22. Finals count as their base letter.

Provenance. Mispar Siduri (“ordinal number”) appears in the standard lists of Hebrew methods^{[4] Source: Gematria[2] Source: Gematria}. It is the Hebrew counterpart of English Ordinal.

Disagreements. None known.

Verified. שלום = 52 · אליעזר = 66 · יהוה = 26.

Mispar Katan (reduced)

Table. Each standard value with its zeros removed: א–ט = 1–9, י–צ = 1–9, ק–ת = 1–4.

Provenance. The Jewish Encyclopedia’s “cyclical or minor value” (מספר קטן), “where the tens, hundreds and thousands are reduced to units”^{[1] Source: Gematria}; Mispar Katan in modern lists^{[4] Source: Gematria}.

Disagreements. Two related methods are easy to confuse with it: Mispar Katan Mispari, which reduces the total to a single digit (the “reduced” column on this site does that for every cipher), and Mispar Meshulash or other operations that some calculators bundle under “small number”. Here Mispar Katan means letter-level reduction only.

Verified. שלום = 16 · אמת = 9 · אלהים = 14.

Greek isopsephy

Greek Isopsephy

Table. The Milesian alphabetic numerals: α 1, β 2, γ 3, δ 4, ε 5, ϛ 6, ζ 7, η 8, θ 9, ι 10, κ 20, λ 30, μ 40, ν 50, ξ 60, ο 70, π 80, ϟ 90, ρ 100, σ/ς 200, τ 300, υ 400, φ 500, χ 600, ψ 700, ω 800, ϡ 900.

Provenance. This is the standard Greek numeral system in use from the Hellenistic period, in which the 24 letters plus three obsolete signs — stigma/digamma (6), koppa (90) and sampi (900) — give 27 numerals^{[5] Source: Greek numerals}. Its use for words, isopsephy, is attested in Pompeian graffiti, in Suetonius’ lampoon equating Νέρων (1005) with “killed his own mother”^{[18] Source: The Lives of the Caesars: Nero, §39[6] Source: Isopsephy}, and in Irenaeus’ discussion of 666 through the names Euanthas, Lateinos and Teitan^{[17] Source: Against Heresies, Book V, chapter 30}.

Disagreements. Modest. (1) Whether to include the three archaic numerals at all — they never appear in ordinary words, so including them changes nothing for normal text. (2) Final sigma ς is sometimes given a separate entry; it is 200 like σ. (3) Some calculators treat the letter pair στ as the stigma ligature (6); this site counts στ as 200 + 300 = 500, because that is how the word is spelled, and reserves 6 for the actual character ϛ.

Verified. Ἰησοῦς = 888 · Νέρων = 1005 · Λατεινος = 666 · Τειταν = 666 · ἀγάπη = 93. Ἰησοῦς = 888 is the classic Christian isopsephy; the three 666 names are Irenaeus’ own examples.

Where sources disagree — summary

The table collects every naming conflict documented above, so that a value from another calculator can be mapped onto the right row here.

Verification

The values in each “Verified” line above are not typed in — they are computed by the same engine that powers the calculator, at the moment this page is built, and compared against the traditional results. If any table were edited so that Eliezer stopped equalling 318 or Jesus stopped equalling 888, the site would fail to build and this page would not be published. The full A–Z, א–ת and α–ω tables are on the chart page for hand-checking.

If you find a value that differs from a source you trust, please report it with the word, cipher and source. Real errors are corrected and logged below.

Changelog

15 September 2026

No table changed. Calculator gained compare mode (two phrases side by side, matching ciphers highlighted), CSV and image export, saved phrases, dark mode and offline support; the on-screen Hebrew and Greek keyboards were added to the home page. Verification values re-run at build and unchanged.

13 September 2026

Initial publication. Fourteen tables verified against the sources listed. Agrippa’s Book II chapter XX checked against the Peterson edition of the 1651 translation; Hebrew value names checked against the Jewish Encyclopedia article.