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To: fiatlvx@cmns.think.com From: RJB@u.washington.edu Subject: Isopsephic interpretation Date: Fri, 17 May 1996 10:27:54 -0700 (PDT) "Isopsephic" is described in the OED thus -- Of equal numerical value; said of words in which the numerical values of the letters (according to the ancient Greek notation) made up the same amount. Also as sb. (in pl.) Isopsephic verses. So isopsephism (aIs&schwa.U'psi:fIz(&schwa.)m), isopsephic relation. 1882 FARRAR Early Chr. II. 291 note, They [the Greeks] called verses isopsephics when their letters made up numerically the same sum...On the Gnostic gems the word Abraxas is used as isopsephic to Meithras (the Sun) because the letters of both names = 325. 1886 FARRAR Hist. Interpr. ii. 98 This method resembled the Greek isopsephism and consisted in establishing mystic relations between different conceptions, based on the numerical equivalence of value in the letters by which they are expressed. I think this makes it clear that the practice of making (or finding) connections based on numerical equivalences is not, historically, unique to Hebrew. In fact, it occurs not only in alphabetic languages (it is a traditional practice in India, for example) but also in Chinese. Also, the word "gematria" has been used in English for some centuries -- as one can see from the OED examples: gematria (gi:'meItrI&schwa.). Also 7 gematry. [Rabbinical Heb. gematriya, a. Gr. gamma-epsilon-omega-mu-epsilon-tau-rho-iota-alpha- GEOMETRY. (The suggestion that it represents Gr. gamma-rho-alpha-mu-mu-alpha-tau-epsilon-iota-alpha- is unfounded.)] A cabbalistic method of interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures by interchanging words whose letters have the same numerical value when added. 1686 GOAD Celest. Bodies II. i. 156, I am perswaded..that there may be something in Cabala, Gematry, something in the mysterious Force of Numbers, in Critical Days, Climacteric Years, &c. 1730-6 BAILEY (folio), Gematria, the first kind of arithmetical cabala, in use among the cabalistical Jews. 1884 GOW Gr. Mathem. 44 The supposed antiquity of gematria depends solely on a conjectural and improbable comment on Zechariah xii. 10. There is in fact no clear instance of gematria before Philo or Christian writers strongly under Philonic influence (e.g. Rev. xiii. 18; Ep. Barn. c. 9). 1892 Edin. Rev. July 77 Belief in the gematria or mystic value of letters in the Scriptures. The idea that isopsephic interpretation of English words was original with Crowley is, to say the least, unhistorical. (It is odd that the image of Crowley has such an obsessive, fascinating power for so many people that he either becomes the source of everything admired or of everything detested, as though he were an irruption of the utterly holy (or demonic), rather than a human being.) Isopsephia, like punning, is an ancient and commonly occurring *literary* device (though punning does not depend on writing, and isopsephia does, so punning could better be called a rhetorical rather than only literary, device). Like any device for making (or finding) meaning, it can be (and has been) used in any number of ways, secular or sacred, straight-laced or libertine, moralistic or antinomian, superstitious or philosophical. I'm more than a little bemused to see people who present themselves as knowledgable about esoteric traditions carrying on a discussion that resembles nothing so much as would-be litterateurs enmeshed in a controversy about whether rhyme and alliteration were holy or unholy, were innately Republican or perhaps a perverse invention of the Kennedy family, or whether the occurrence of alliteration invalidated or supported the arguments of a scientific paper, should be shunned as a source of heresy or embraced as an infallible indicator of truth, and so on. LeGrand Cinq-Mars rjb@u.washington.edu
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